Soap Dirt looks at the Hits and Misses for the week of August 4-8 in the worlds of Days of Our Lives, General Hospital, The Bold and the Beautiful, The Young and the Restless, and Beyond the Gates.
Top 10 Hits and Misses
10. MISS: Cane’s endgame (Y&R). Wanting to take over the town’s major family corporations should come off as formidable and vision-forward. But it doesn’t. Cane’s (Billy Flynn) main motivations for this aren’t clear yet, and hopefully that will come. Instead, it just comes off un-serious.
9. HIT: Anna calls Joss’s WSB training “expedited” (GH). When Anna (Finola Hughes) called Joss’s WSB training “expedited,” we were glad that somebody acknowledged it. Joss (Eden McCoy) sparred a little and did a few field exercises, and they dubbed her an agent. And now she’s traveling to Croatia on a recon mission that you know won’t stay recon. Things will probably get dangerous.
8. MISS: EJ calls for a mistrial (DAYS). While the scenes were fun to watch, EJ’s outing of his relationship with Belle (Martha Madison) to the judge was an exercise in futility. There was no way that judge was going to let EJ (Dan Feuerriegel) play the conflict of interest card because there were already a million conflicts of interest at play in this trial. Major HIT to the judge for not letting EJ get away with murder.
7. HIT: Barbara’s tribute (BTG). We knew Anita (Tamara Tunie) would pull out all the stops for The Articulettes concert, but we didn’t think she would honor the OG Articulette, who took her own life back in the day. She paid proper tribute with a video, and it ended up being an amazingly poignant moment. Minor MISS to Anita for taking all of the blame for what happened. Tracy (Maria Howell) and Sharon (Bonita Brisker) should have publicly accepted some of the blame as well.
6. MISS: ADA Turner and Sonny “flirtation” (GH). As much as we love Nazneen Contractor (seriously, we love her, especially in Hallmark+’s movie Love on the Danube: Love Song), her ADA Turner is good opposition for Port Charles’s shadier characters like Sonny (Maurice Benard). So far, we’re not feeling this flirty enemies-to-lovers trope the show is currently attempting.
5. HIT: Cassandra Creech’s performance (B&B). Wow, B&B really had Grace royally mess with Liam (Scott Clifton) so she could pay off Reese’s (Wayne Brady) debts. While the story destroyed Grace’s character, reputation, and may cost her her freedom, we only have good things to say about Cassandra Creech. She pulled out all the stops to play Grace’s scenes with Finn (Tanner Novlan), then again when she confessed to Liam and Hope (Annika Noelle).
4. MISS: Hayley’s confusing explanation for the non-ultrasound (BTG). We’re still confused about the story behind her refusal of an ultrasound a couple of weeks ago when Dani (Karla Mosley) took Hayley (Marquita Goings) to the hospital. Whatever that story was, Naomi (Arielle Prepetit) bought it and didn’t come clean to her dad about her questions about his wife. What we’re clear on is that Hayley has faked everything — her pregnancy, the ultrasound results, and the miscarriage. Now somebody needs to tell Dani she was right!
3. HIT: Claire stands up to Victor (Y&R). It took way too long for Claire (Hayley Erin) to get to this point. But she’s finally over Victor (Eric Braeden) manipulating her life. He won’t even let Kyle (Michael Mealor) and Claire buy Adam’s (Mark Grossman) home! We’re here for Claire venting about granddad to Kyle and her standing up to Victor face-to-face.
2. MISS: Brooke and Ridge reunite (B&B). This was the inevitable conclusion to the Brooke (Katherine Kelly Lang) / Ridge (Thorsten Kaye), Nick (Jack Wagner), and Eric (John McCook) Italian jaunt. And now Ridge the Waffler is in effect once again. Don’t get us started on how this development turned Nick into a slight bump in the road on the way to this Bridge reunion.
1. HIT: Sami mourns John with Marlena and alone (DAYS). We love it anytime Alison Sweeney returns to Salem. But this time, her return was even more highly anticipated because we had yet to see her react to John’s death. Her reunion with Deidre Hall’s Marlena instantly triggered our tears, which continued in her scenes with Carson Boatman’s Johnny.
When she reminisced about her complicated history with John while she was alone in Marlena’s townhouse, we shed even more. Hearing Sami talk about how wrong she was to blame John for so much and acknowledge how much he meant to her was everything, and so were those flashbacks.
Honorable Mentions
B&B
HIT: Sheila finds out Luna is alive. The thought of Luna’s grandmother and aunt in on the same secret is kind of delicious. However, once Luna (Lisa Yamada) wakes up, Li’s (Naomi Matsuda) plan to redeem Luna so she becomes a softer, gentler, kinder version of the two-time murderer and kidnapper had better win out. Let’s hope that Sheila (Kimberlin Brown) won’t let her darker tendencies influence Luna.
BTG
HIT: Elon and Jacob go toe-to-toe at Joey’s casino. We didn’t expect Elon (Malachi Malik), the Chief of Police, to admonish Jacob (Jibre Hordges) so thoroughly. He let him know that his son couldn’t have one set of rules for himself and then treat everybody else to impossibly high ethical standards. By the end of the heated conversation, Elon benched his detective son. Loved Malachi Malik as Chief Elon Hawthorne.
MISS: Andre might be turning into the town waffler. Just about every soap has one, and since BTG is new, we weren’t sure who the town waffler would be. Tomas (Alex Alegria) is in the running for sure. But the frontrunner (for now) is Andre (Sean Freeman). The way he seems to be unable to decide between Dani and Ashley (Jen Jacob). Honestly, it shouldn’t be such a close competition.
DAYS
MISS: Where’s Leo the juror? We’ve seen Leo (Greg Rikaart) take his spot in the jury once or twice, maybe? His presence on the jury was much needed in Friday’s episode. Even before the jurors were sent back to the holding room, it would have been great to see Leo react to EJ sending the courtroom into chaos with his request for a mistrial.
And you know he would secretly be taking notes for the inevitable book he will write once this trial is over. We wish that instead of being a juror, he were more of a Dominick Dunne-type, who sat in the back of the courtroom gathering inspiration and taking notes for a true-crime novel or a series of Vanity Fair articles depicting Salem’s trial of the century.
GH
MISS: Molly needs to be clued in sooner rather than later. It’s frustrating that Molly (Kristen Vaganos) is in such a passive place right now. Her mom, sister, and dad are keeping huge secrets from her, and now Kristina (Kate Mansi) is manipulating her budding relationship with Cody (Josh Kelly).
Y&R
MISS: Victor fires Audra…again. Audra (Zuleyka Silver) may be the most stubborn person in Genoa City in a sea of stubborn people. Why did she think that her association with Victor would end any other way? And then she rejects Sally’s (Courtney Hope) very good job offer. We would love to see these two work together.
HIT Audra points out to Jack the hypocrisy of the town’s residents. Audra had a point when she told Jack (Peter Bergman) that she does the same things that everybody else in town has done a million times over. But apparently, she’s not allowed to do them because she doesn’t have the all-important last name like Newman, Abbott, Chancellor, or Winters.
