sungrey

Hey Thelma... on Somerset, Sam had been lured into an affair with a woman named Chrystal Ames, who was planted by the syndicate to try and distract Sam from the mob activities at Delaney Brands. The two dallied for a bit... when the going got rough, Sam sent Lahoma and Susannah, their daughter, out of town with the promise he'd join them later. Lahoma found out about the affair and wanted a divorce (off camera).

Sam went to Bay City for about a year and then Lahoma called, wanting a reconciliation. Exit Sam, never to be seen again. lol

Soapsuds, did we watch the same show? lol

Holy crap, was this show fantastic... the thing it suffered from was too much turnover among the secondary characters, which in turn brought down the show in a long run. That and the battle between the Dobsons and NBC/New World Television. I have to wonder if the Dobsons had stayed if Lane, Nicolas and a few others wouldn't have departed.

Priceless, priceless, priceless!! I'll have to re-read this interview when I have a little more time.

I agree with the Alicia Coppola comments, by the way. She's definitely a looker and still is to this day. Went on to do a lot of prime time and I think she's a semi-regular on a show right now (someone help me out?) As I recall, it was her choice to leave AW, not the show's.

Saynotoursoap just posted an Another World episode from Christmas 1982 with a toast from Doug Watson at the end. God, I miss that show AND his toasts. I'm sure someone will embed it here soon.

Not to mention that daughter/father scene lasted about what, six or seven minutes? Some executive today would be like "that's gotta be one minute, tops..." To which if I were writing, my first response would be "and the horse you rode in on, dirtbag..."

Aw, I miss Robert Thaler. Pearl was such a joy and it's too bad they never really found anything for him to do.

The scene where Keith pricks CC with a pin is one of my all-time favorites. That's how suspenseful and comedic SB could be at the same time.

Interesting at 4:00 that Somerset won the time period, although none of the three shows garnered truly blockbuster ratings. I mentioned in the Somerset thread that the soap's ratings seemed to be on the rise during the Slesar era. So Somerset had a better clearance than Three on a Match. Wow.

Hmmm... I'm going to say that the lack of interesting characters concept certainly came into play after, oh, say 1991. That's when the familiar dynamic of Capwells vs. Lockridges and all the other superb characters began to be back-burnered for the Walkers and other secondary people not connected with the core families.

To me, although Santa Barbara was still very good, that's when the show began to slide backward. Marcy's exit didn't help matters any and when A Martinez left in late 1992 the writing was on the wall. Was the cancellation already announced before A left?

What's really funny about these ratings for game shows, to go off topic for a moment... Newlywed Game had an 8.5/29 in September 1974 yet was canceled three months later. Wonder if ABC regretted that move soon after...

Rhyme and Reason was the No. 1 game show in August 1975 and it was a fun show to watch. Interesting tidbit, though: Bob Eubanks wrote a book several years ago and he hinted R&R was quite popular, but ABC essentially canceled it because Mark Goodson offered them Family Feud and the only way they could have Feud was if R&R were canceled (Mark didn't like the show because it resembled Match Game too much).

I'd love to see someone do a game-show rating history. This is where I miss Steve Beverly's website devoted to games.

God rest JER's soul, but I would have stopped watching Days if he'd come back a third time. His second stint was a disaster IMHO.

I'd have to check the ratings for April-December 1982, Sedrick, but I recall Texas' ratings actually got worse. Some NBC executives were against Texas going to the morning slot because of Price is Right (which was drawing blockbuster numbers back then).

Everyone's right about NBC daytime at that time, though. Clueless. And this was with Brandon Tartikoff at the helm.

I wish Coolwafferman would put up the rest of this show. I don't know if he has it, though...

Rcsnj, I would love for anyone to look at it! It's over at DRTV: http://s9.zetaboards.com/DRTV/index... it isn't really a continuation of the original serial so much as it is a revisit to the city. It's grown up a lot over the years. The plots are mostly domestic drama/romance with a little melodrama thrown in. There are references to original Somerset characters, and the first few episodes deal with Susannah (Sam and Lahoma's daughter) moving to Somerset, with Sam and Lahoma along to help out.

I'd have to wonder how well Somerset would have done had the network aired it at 3:30, right after Another World. Of course that couldn't happen because P&G had its rule about shows not airing opposite one another.

When he took over Somerset, I remember an interview he did (I saw it in an old book) where he said "I'm writing Somerset as simply a story about a town." Ya, that could have meant anything... lol

I think the stories he was most known for were the Mark/Edith Mercer business at Delaney Brands, the Greg/Heather brother and sister story, and the beginning of the Martin Nell/Stephanie Dillard plot. I'm not sure if Somerset changed writers before the Martin Nell plot concluded.

That's the exact point I wanted to make, too. Edge's quality was still very good (this was around the time the spectacular Taffy Sims/Morlock story was going on over on Edge), but P&G's screw-balled decision to move the second-highest rated show from 3:30 to 2:30 really killed Edge's momentum on CBS.

If Slesar had stayed with Somerset, maybe that show would have broken into the top half of the soaps going into 1974 and 1975. Instead, Slesar was reassigned to Edge, Roy Winsor took over and the show immediately became a story "about a town" instead of about crime and melodrama. Winsor later used some crime in his plots, but you could tell the difference.

Thanks, Carl! I may take you up on that. I'm trying to write this version of Somerset as independently as possible, but there is a chance I may call upon recaps from time to time. About the only thing I've referenced with Susannah in Somerset is her remembering that she and Lahoma left town when Susie was very young.

FYI, when Stanley and Teri moved to Arizona (as I recall, Teri's dad was ill) I wrote that they had a "later in life" baby and that doctor is now working at the hospital (and will be Susie's future love interest). So I'm kind of tying in the old with the new.

It depended on when you watched Somerset. From what I gather, the best period for the show was 1972-74, when Henry Slesar was doing double duty with this show and Edge.

I want to say there were some Nielsen charts that actually showed Somerset's ratings rising to the point where it was at the middle of the daytime pack and showing signs of becoming a hit. Then Slesar was reassigned solely to Edge (in defense of P&G, Edge's ratings were really dropping around this time) and the parade of writers began. From 1974-76, Somerset lurched back and forth between domestic drama and crime drama and really lost a lot of momentum with the stories.

It was around the end where the show got some momentum back, but by that time the damage had been done.

I actually have revived a lot of the old AW family ties and crossovers. In a recent episode, when Susannah needed to have legal counsel (even though she grew up to be a lawyer just like her dad in the story), Cass Winthrop came over from Bay City. I also had Rachel come over and see Susannah and they brought up Ada.

For what it's worth, some of you may be aware that I write an updated version of "Somerset" over at DRTV. The show bears little resemblance to the NBC soap; it's more like a "What if you visited this place 30 years later?" type of atmosphere.

The central character is Susannah, Sam and Lahoma's daughter. Sam and Lahoma have made appearances, as have Tony and Ginger Cooper and Robert Delaney. I even resurrected Robert's brother Peter on Somerset.

My plots are more romantic entanglements with some melodrama thrown in.

I think the big mistake was the 90 minutes. You can't write scripts by yourself at that length, and that's what he wanted to do a lot of the time. It was one thing when Steve Lehrman wrote most of Edge's scripts with a little help from Lois Kibbee on the side (although Henry too wrote key scenes), but 90 minutes five days a week?

Also, whoever greenlit John Randolph's death... MAJOR mistake. The show was trying to do something huge to kick off the new format. It smacked of "wow, let's really blindside the viewers!" The problem was by killing John, Pat's presence really took a major hit. Michael was off the canvas by the end of summer and Marianne and Pat were gone at the start of 1982. Removing the Randolph patriarch crumbled the family in the space of a couple years. I thought that was a terrible thing to do to the longtime viewers.

I never understood why that story didn't work. David Canary wasn't George Reinholt, sure, but he certainly was a powerhouse actor with plenty of prime-time credits and decent acting chops. He really could have led the renaissance of Another World. Sadly, the writing wasn't really solid at this point and it showed on screen.

I believe Gary Tomlin was writing AW in the 1984-85 time frame along with Richard Culliton, true? Gary is one of those people who makes a much better writer than he does a producer. He has a solid sense of what works on screen, which makes some of his Days decisions mysterious.

The other rumor was that Margaret DePriest, then headwriter, encouraged Frankie's murder because she wanted Cass to go back to the Cass she'd written for the last time (more of a playboy).

While I totally agree with her on that front, brutally murdering his wife wasn't quite the way to go about it. And, if not for Linda Dano, Cass probably would have been long gone by the time of the finale.

Correct on both counts. When I found out Alice Barrett was leaving I originally was thrilled. I too wanted Cass to go back to his old ways and maybe, just maybe, Julie Osburn could have returned to reprise that old Cass/Kathleen magic.

For me, that was a classic case of "careful what you wish for." Frankie's death was one of the straws pulled out that sent the entire structure toppling to the ground, if you know what I mean. Where GL could stand Maureen's death because of its ratings (not that I agreed with THAT move), AW's ratings were a lot softer and this killed the show.

I was always a Ted/Hayley backer, but I didn't mind the Jake/Hayley story too much. The problem was the show didn't seem to know what to do because it was so wrapped up in the Cruz/Eden and Kelly/Jeffrey stories that you were lucky to get a sniff of story if you were a secondary character. Then, when the time came to do something dramatic, it was like "let's kill someone off!"

To be fair, Santa Barbara did that a lot with its secondary characters and I think that created problems with the show's continuity.

The thing about early 1986 Another World was... well, it was just there.

The late 1985-early 1986 period was just lackluster. Sam Hall was the headwriter and he didn't have a clue how to write the show. The stories wandered aimlessly and really didn't have a point to them. (Amphora dust? Puuuuuuhhhhhlllleeeeez.) There were a lot of characters whose usefulness was winding down. As much as I liked Larry and Clarice, there was just nothing more you could do with them.

I really loved Margaret DePriest's first run. The story with Donna and Michael was excellent, the Sin Stalker mystery made sense and was integrated well into the show, and the new characters that came on brought some life back into the program. At the time, Victoria Wyndham (who was not afraid to criticize things if they weren't going right) remarked that the current writers appeared to know what they were doing.

AW needed a shot in the you-know-what back then and it happened.