Chris B

@NothinButAttitudeThank you for tagging me! That is not surprising, but disappointing to read. Sounds like an absolute disaster which we could all suspect from watching around that time.

When they first announced it, they said the pre RetroTV episodes would be online only exclusives, but then Covid hit and that never happened. Considering they didn't revisit that after discovering the final episodes were missing probably tells us everything we need to know unfortunately.

The Generations music is nice, it's the visuals that were all wrong. Something like the later years of Ryan's Hope paired with the music would've worked better. Or even something like Love of Life's later opening which was similar to Y&R's with the cast photos.

Girls5eva, which stars Renée Elise Goldsberry (ex-Evangeline Williamson, OLTL) has been canceled by Netflix. This was a hidden gem. We were lucky to get 3 seasons of it. I expected this so I'm not sad, but just happy for what we got.

The company that owns The Doctors is I believe called SFM Entertainment. Unless they outright sold the series to Retro I believe they'd be the ones who have to request the additional tapes from NBC. I personally don't think they reached out to anybody. It doesn't make sense to me that NBC would've wiped those tapes when that wasn't a practice at the time. I do believe that they have the early episodes of The Doctors because they've streamed a few of them. I do wonder what the hold up is on uploading what early episodes they have. That would've been a nice treat to make up for what we lost.

In terms of intro, looking at how high energy the show appears, I wouldn't mind something similar to what Footballers Wives had. It was a quick and punchy theme, but set the tone for the show well. Personally I'm hoping they avoid an opening with the actors included because the US soaps have always struggled with keeping them updated. If they were to do an opening with the actors, I'd do something like Hollyoaks or Neighbours which I feel is easier to update because they can film the shots between scenes on the already existing sets/locations. They could easily recreate this at the country club set:

Those two I would be so excited about! My one dream soap to see is Return To Peyton Place. I feel like with it being produced by FOX, it's probably in a vault somewhere. I've read that Bing Crosby Productions saved Bright Promise as well. I wonder just how many short lived soaps are out there waiting to be discovered.

Glad they started running it on TV! I guess my prediction of something dropping the week The Talk ended was correct. Now that we have something, I'm really excited for January and February and seeing how they amp up the promo. I hope they hit up mainstream outlets as well as interviews with Black outlets.

I'm glad they haven't given up and are doing something with the show. I feel like the expense of doing their own streaming platform may have been too much for them, but putting it on an existing platform is a smart way to utilize all the work they did getting the show ready for streaming. Hopefully an Amazon/Tubi deal is next so they can do more traditional streaming. Dark Shadows has become a streaming staple and to also have The Doctors easily available would be nice. I just hope these moves continue to inspire others to utilize their soap catalog. You can't convince me that AMC wouldn't do well in streaming, among others. Just takes someone willing to do the work.

They also had Behind the Screen with Debbi Morgan, Janine Turner and Michael Sabatino. That reminds me, there are three short lived David Jacobs series I'd LOVE to see. Behind the Screen, Married: The First Year (with a pre-Knots Landing Constance McCashin) and his 90s extremely short lived soap Four Corners with Ann Margaret.

I was so upset when Mackenzie and that hunk of a toad were written off but I must admit I'm loving the show right now. I feel like they've navigated those exits well and the show feels like it's in a good place. I'm glad they didn't kill Toadie off so he has room to appear here and there as needed. Having Nell move in with Terese was a smart idea and I'm happy she's not in that house alone. I wasn't thrilled with Terese and Paul getting back together but they do have good chemistry so I'm not mad about it. I'm glad that Cara and Remi have a storyline that is about them and not JJ for once. It's highlighted how strong both actresses are and I hope they continue to give them substantial stuff to do. Another highlight for me is Max Ramsey. He has good chemistry with Byron and Sadie and it's nice to see them in a new storyline. I also think they're doing a much better job with Chrishell Strause than they did with Mischa Barton. For one, she's a better actress and she seems like she wants to be there. I'm enjoying her chemistry with Holly and Nicollette and I love the bits and pieces they give us of her backstory. I'm not sure how long she'll be around but they appear to be using her time wisely. The only low point for me is Leo and Krista who are as dull as dishwater and the lack of Karl and Susan. I imagine Leo and Krista must have their fans so I don't expect much from them, but I do hope we get to the point that Karl and Susan get something to do. I feel like more than anybody, the reboot has not been favorable to them.

Ed Scott has definitely improved the lighting and the directing has improved to give the sets more dimension/make them look larger, but nobody is doing it like GH these days. Not just the size of the sets, but the amount of them is really impressive in this day and age.

That promo looks amazing and it looks like from a production standpoint, Atlanta was a smart choice. Compared to how Y&R and B&B look these days, it's nice to see a soap with such expansive sets. I hope they're able to weave location shooting in throughout and not just at the beginning. Happy they're starting to promote it.

I feel like ABC is more invested in GH than we sometimes think. It's live ratings hover around 2 million and it's always top ten on Hulu which suggests some interest. I know GMA3 has long been an issue for them so I could potentially see them using that timeslot for a soap in a perfect world.

I finally decided to continue my season 9 rewatch and as much as I hate the early episodes, I do think it picked up with Noises Everywhere which I found to be stunning. I know there was talk of them going to the Sumner Ranch and just filming the cast improving and using that to format the episodes. I really could feel that in the first episode and the second one felt more like a traditional structured episode. I will always defend Laura leaving Knots Landing to die as being in character, but with this re-watch, it highlighted to me just how minimized her character had become and that make me more angry when she died. We deserved more. On the other hand, I will say that I felt they did Lilimae and Julie Harris justice from beginning to end. I hate she had to leave but I appreciate that she always was given good material to work with and her exit storyline was really cute. I'm looking forward to revisiting the doomed Williams family and Jill vs Val. Noises Everywhere does a great job of setting up Jill's descent into madness. Her disgust over Peter's ashes on Greg's coffee table was equal parts heartbreaking and hysterical. She also had great chemistry with John Pleshette which had me wondering what could've been.

True. I could see them pivoting to a tv series for that. I wouldn't be surprised if their overall goal is to use those movies as a pilot to see if there is an audience. I know Lifetime is trying to reinvent it's content so I could see an eventual AMC reboot landing there as well.

Sad but true. I'd heard The Talk wasn't doing well but when I recently looked at the ratings I was surprised just how bad it was doing. The drop off after B&B was pretty shocking. Since we don't have much to discuss right now, I have a hypothetical question. If this ends up premiering and doing well, do yall think we will get another soap? Not on CBS, but do you think ABC or NBC will try their hand at it?

My bad! Got my dates mixed up but I do think it would be good to let the audience know while there is still new programming in the timeslot.

With The Talk ending tomorrow, that would be a good day to run something just to let viewers know what's coming next in the timeslot.

I've always fancast Vanessa as Lucy Ewing coming home due to Val's death. She always went to Europe when outside of Dallas so you could believably put her in the Treadwell story. I do agree it would've been easy to add a new family and I wish they had done that. It was a mistake not to have someone move into Laura's house when the Williams were finally gone.

Season 3 was a nice balancing act of the old format and bringing more soapy/continuing themes into the show. They also had to deal with Karen's grief over Sid. Giving her a season to deal with that only made season 4 and Mack's arrival stronger. Those final episodes of season 3 make it all worth it. The Valene/Gary/Abby developments that season were absolutely delicious.

I thought Randy Spelling was good on Malibu Shores. Can’t speak on Sunser Beach yet but am curious to see him. Right now I’m 7 episodes in and I have to say, it has my attention straight away. There aren’t any big glaring errors I want them to resolve. I know Adrienne Frantz gets recast then the character is dumped but I find her to be enjoyable. The cast overall feels solid and I feel like the story hit the ground running. When you compare it to the slow starts Melrose Place and 90210 had, they definitely seem to have learned from the failures there. I’m not looking forward to when they tone down the production model. I really like how the show looks. Early standouts for me are Annie of course, Vanessa, Tiffany, Aunt Bette, Olivia, Gregory and Meg. I know she doesn’t last long but I do enjoy Kelly Hulu’s character.

I couldn't tell you why but I've never as much as seen a clip of Sunset Beach. With BTG coming and you posting this link I decided to finally give it a go. I've watched the first two episodes so far and I enjoyed it enough that I'm going to stick with it. This is definitely a Spelling soap. I can see how it may have been difficult for soap fans to take, but I like that Spelling did his own thing and didn't change his brand to fit what people think a soap should be. The production values are amazing and I love that he is utilizing his location so well. This is what I want out of B&B being LA set. I'm going to wait until I finish the first full week because for soaps I view it as a pilot week, but so far I do think they're making the right moves to get new viewers to stick around. How long would you all say it took them to really get going? I believe I've heard the show wasn't great initially.

I wish I hadn't gotten so far in my re-watch now that I see how good the show looks on prime. It also is nice without the awkward commercial breaks. I'm currently in season 9 which I have a lot of issues with so I think I'm going to take a little break before pushing through.

I like the idea of this and wish they did more of this instead of the usual trend of creating people out of thin air. A good example would be the convoluted story Y&R told where they created a dead, unknown sibling to the Abbott's and made Theo an Abbott/Brooks when they could've just made him the son of Brooks Prentiss. I've wanted Days to do something with Sandy Horton to revitalize the family, but this could be good as well. I just hope Ron didn't pre-emptively kill off his father like he did to Eli's dad. I would love to see the new writers bring Dougie on. I also think considering all that's been going on, it wouldn't be a bad time to bring on Scotty.