Ryan's Hope Discussion Thread

[DRW50]

Comparing to other soaps it's still amazing the amount of major recasts RH had. I don't blame them for the death of the show though - I put that on ABC meddling and Labine/Mayer starting to repeat stories around 1979 and 1980.

[vetsoapfan]

Yes, although some of the recasts of major roles were jaw-droppingly awful, I think the declining writing is what ultimately lead the show to fail. At least in its final months, when Claire Labine returned as headwriter, the show enjoyed a resurgence in quality, and the once-beloved series went out with a bang and not a whimper. So many other soaps had atrocious final episodes, but in the end, RYAN'S HOPE felt like...RYAN'S HOPE, and came to a comforting, poignant conclusion. Just the other day, I rewatched the scenes from the finale, in which Maeve Ryan thanked Jack Fenelli "for loving my Mary," and I choked up as if they were my own family members, to whom I had to say goodbye.

 

I am glad that all the eps of this series have been preserved, even if they will probably never be broadcast anywhere ever again.

[NothinButAttitude]

Been sitting down and watching a lot of RH as of late and I am wondering why Jill was so beloved by fans during this era when a character like her (the mistress) would be disliked nowadays? I find myself gravitating towards Delia more than Jill. 

[DRW50]

A lot of the popularity Jill had, especially in the first year, was down to Nancy Addison IMO, as she was one of the most exquisitely beautiful, talented soap actresses around. Her actions and the affair with Frank was just sleazy and the idea of her waiting around years for Frank #1 (who was just a dull middle aged looking man who could barely speak) was laughable. The idea that viewers were supposed to root for their eternal love and that he'd been manipulated into marriage by Delia because he had a hero complex and so on didn't make it any less skeevy. That's likely why they ramped up Delia's nastiness.

 

I read an article once where Ilene Kristen said she had expected a lot more hate from viewers than she ended up getting. I think that's because most of the characters on the show who hated Delia were often insufferable (especially Faith and Mary).

[NothinButAttitude]

Yes, I adore Mary but she can be sanctimonious from what I've went back and watched as of late. I like Siobhan and Pat, as they seem to not be the golden kids likes Frank & Mary, and they typically marched to the beats of their own drums until recasts came in and it seem they started to become preachy like the rest of the Ryans. 

 

I like Delia even though she can be childish at time and I never understood the need for her to wanna be apart of the Ryans so desperately. Did she eventually move out of the Ryan's orbit and find solace elsewhere? 

 

Jill seems compelling but yeah.... I do find her waiting for Frank to be pathetic. Much like Faith waited for Pat. 

[slick jones]

In honor of St. Patty's Day, Maeve's final song.

 

[vetsoapfan]

 

During the first few years of the series, I was surprised at how gratuitously insensitive or downright mean some of those sanctimonious Ryans were towards Delia. Objectively, I knew that Delia had been an irritant to the family for years, but we in the audience had not witnessed a lot of that back-story first-hand, as so much of it had played out before the show debuted in 1975.

 

There was a scene in the hospital where Mary was particularly cutting towards Delia, and I thought, "Are we supposed to like Mary? She's such a bitch!" And in another scene, an impatient, frustrated Pat cracked jokes (to Bucky, I think)  about finding Delia curled up on her mother's grave. It made me think Pat was repulsive; it did not help me understand why the Ryan family was fed up with Dee.

 

Once, Jack Fenelli bought a book about Irish history for Maeve, and read aloud a section about the Irish people. The description was not to Maeve's liking, and she (along with Bob Reid, who was there at the time) bitterly lambasted Jack...for comments that had not even originated from him, were not his own, and which he was only reading . Like when Pat was so insensitive to Delia, this made me dislike Maeve intensely.

Edited March 18, 2016 by vetsoapfan

[DRW50]

They did that a lot. One of my most angry moments as a viewer was when Maeve was so tired of Delia's bragging over using Maeve's tips for her stocks that she started giving her false tips so Delia would lose her money. It was just cruel and felt out of character. Then Johnny (who took money from Delia) berating her day after day, along with that nasty Kevin - just ugh. I gave Maeve a pass, but so much of Johnny's behavior around this point made me detest him, and I never went back.

[vetsoapfan]

I always felt Maeve was a cold shrew, but Johnny was an outright bully, and when Jack was injured and unable to walk, Johnny's belligerent bad nature was out of control.

 

There's a reason I never felt this was one of my favorite series. I found several key characters to be a major turn-off.

[NothinButAttitude]

@vetsoapfan and @DRW50 do you both think that b/c so many of the characters were major turn-offs that it partially had something to do the show's waning ratings throughout it's history? 

 

Plus, I find it horrible to hear that Maeve, who is supposed to be a matriarch, would do something to cruel by giving Delia false stocks tips, thus causing her to lose her money. 

[DRW50]

I don't think that was the reason, per se, as much as the show, to me anyway, really ran out of stories for a number of central characters (Roger, Delia, Frank, Jill, Faith) by 1980, or sunk them with bad stories (Seneca, Rae).  Delia and Frank/Jill in particular kept repeating stories again and again. There were certainly some strong scenes, but Ryan's Hope had always had stronger scenes than storylines, and this became more and more true. 

 

I also found Joe #2 and Kimberly to be unwatchable, but I know many others liked them.

Edited March 18, 2016 by DRW50

[NothinButAttitude]

Yeah. I am noticing in a lot of the 1983 episodes that Delia is still itching to be with Frank given the way he's treated and dogged her from reading a lot of synopsis on the show. I don't get that. After two bad runs with the Ryan's clan (Pat & Frank), you'd think she'd run for the hills. I'm sure it had to be frustrating for people to watch. 

 

From reading synopsis from '81, I actually don't mind Kimberly. But again, I haven't seen much from her time on the show. I've read that a lot of hardcore RH fans felt she ate the show a lot during that time. 

[DRW50]

Well a lot of people liked her, apparently. I just thought Kelli Maroney was hellish to watch and I hated that Rae and Seneca, fascinating characters, disappeared up her colon.

[DeliaIrisFan]

I personally found Ryan's Hope to be that much richer because nearly all of the characters were flawed and had significant blindspots where the characters they didn't get along with were concerned. It was so very human. I think most everyone can be off-putting to some people who come in contact with them. I watched the entire run on SoapNet essentially rooting for Delia, and thinking the Ryans could be extremely hypocritical. I also firmly believed that their rigid adherence to Catholic doctrine caused more of their problems than Delia and Rae combined, for that matter. Whether or not anyone behind the scenes shared those beliefs, just about everything that happened in those first few years made complete sense to me from that perspective.

 

Mary could indeed be insufferable toward Delia, and generally thought she knew everything about everything. She drove me crazy, but I have to say that each time I re-watched some of that material, always a few years older, I increasingly realized that I could be just as obliviously self-righteous at her age. And damn, if I couldn't relate to the issues that she and Jack dealt with so much more than the outlandish stories that keep most soap couples apart. I for one couldn't help but being emotionally invested, and the fact that I simultaneously took Delia's side when she and Mary faced off only made it more interesting.

 

As far as plotting, the stories did go off-the-rails by the end of the '70s, but I would argue that roughly the show's second and third year — once they righted the ship after deciding to keep Frank alive, and subsequently junked most of the initial story bible — was some of if not the best writing in soap history. Yes, as mentioned above, many individual scenes really raised the bar as far as what you could expect in a daytime soap script. But the long-term story itself was also tight, and just about everything that happened to a given character was integral to nearly every other main character. And the show consistently maintained a pace that I found consistently compelling without missing any beats. Whether Labine and Mayer burnt out after a while, or the multiple recasts muddied the inherent differences between the characters that were supposed to be fueling the conflicts between them, or network interference sank the show — and I think it's been fairly well established that it was some combination of all of those factors, with an emphasis on the latter — doesn't negate that, in my book.

 

PS: Speaking of Maeve and Mary's respective flaws, I can't help but think when I watch Orange is the New Black that Kate Mulgrew is essentially playing an only-slightly-more-twisted version of Maeve Ryan, and it makes me smile.

Edited March 20, 2016 by DeliaIrisFan

[vetsoapfan]

I LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOATHED Kelli Maroney and her character, and could NOT stomach watching her on-screen. 

 

There are characters whom you love to hate, but still enjoy watching, and then there are characters like Kimberly, whom you simply loathe and do not want to see or hear AT ALL. EVER .

 

UGH.

I think that, under Claire Labine, the show was beautifully written and showcased characters who were multi-dimensional, flawed, realistic human beings. I don't think that having characters behave in unlikable ways is necessarily going to alienate an audience from the show itself. In fact, the daytime audiences seems to relish interpersonal relationships among complicated characters. I still watched RH, even though several of the principle characters annoyed me; I just did not form as deep an emotional attachment to this soap as I did for, say, THE GUIDING LIGHT, whose tentpole family, the Bauers, were characters whom I generally adored, and whose flaws I found less grating.

 

I could appreciate the integrity in Labine's writing, and the often excellent acting showcased by the leads, but I never grew as attached to the Ryans as I was to the Bauers, the Hugheses and the Stewarts, the Matthewses, the Hortons, the Brooks and the Fosters, etc.

 

Of course, that being said, I suppose I did care more for the RH characters, at least on a subconscious basis, than I realized, because watching the final episodes of RH, when we essentially had to say goodbye to all these people, I kept getting choked up. Even if they vexed me, I did not want them to disappear from my TV screen...forever!

 

I think RH's ratings woes were more tied into the declining quality of writing and storylines over the years. Certainly by the time we had to endure Delia and the gorilla, the writing had become a handicap.