All My Shadows

The Webster family dynamics have been really good. I like them, but I don't know what's going on with Sophie. In the last episode I watched (first episode from January 26), there was some stuff with her and some towel, and apparently some hot guy used it to dry off or something. The Windasses are a pain in the ass, especially the obnoxious dad. I could so do without him. Maria is nuts, but I'm loving every second of it! Did Tony really kill Liam and Jed? I think I read that Jed returns soon, so Maria's obviously jumping to conclusions there.

Someone put up a bunch of full episodes from late January to the present over at YT, so hopefully these stay on for a while before Granada makes them delete. I think I like Sally Webster. She has some good sense in her, but she's not a snooty bitch about it. I'm shocked that I've been enjoying Gail, too. I'm so used to rolling my eyes at her.

QUOTE (Chris B @ Jan 29 2009, 10:39 AM) Right now I'm watching the episodes when Vicki has been recast, not sure how long it lasts, but know it's not long. This first recast, I believe her name is Betsy Durkin, isn't too bad. It's a difficult role to recast, but I would've accepted her if it meant keeping the character on screen. I feel like her Vicki is stronger than what we had been getting towards the end of Moltke's run. Losing the character is going to be a major blow and Maggie just isn't a suitable replacement, IMO. I've always found her a big harsh and too fragile and whiny at the same time. Storywise, the Adam/Eve story is FINALLY over and Nicholas Blair is gone. I hope he and that actor never returns! I know many fans seemed to enjoy him, but that character and story did nothing for the show. Right now it's looking promising with this warewolf/ghost of quentin collins story. Looks like they're going back to the basics which is just what I need after such an over the top story. Humbert Allen Astredo (Nicholas) sticks around pretty much through the end of the series. I think his last episode is about 30 or so episodes before the final one. He's gone for one of the storylines, though. I need to shell out the cash to get the DVDs, seriously. I only have a couple of episodes that I taped from Sci-Fi circa 02-03, and you can only watch Hoffman and Angelique try to make PT Maggie jump out the window so many times before you can start reciting the lines.

Am I the only one who is totally skeptical about Hallmark picking the show up? They've sat on the rights for years, and every time someone comes up with a statement from them on the matter, it always seems to be one of those manufactured things that they throw out whenever they get asked about anything. But on the other hand, it's totally possible. They just added "I Love Lucy" on New Year's and they'll be adding "The Golden Girls" later on in the year when it finishes up its run on Lifetime, so they're obviously trying out other genres beyond the family dramas and mystery shows (which I love, BTW lol). I wish they could work with P&G!

LOL. It's baaaad. I hate her part in the opening, with that atrocious top. It's atrocious because it's on her...anyone else would have looked decent in it. The Dylan/Toni stuff was so quick and blink-and-you-miss-it to me. Maybe it was better when it originally aired because it was spread out more? All I know is that their little romance came and went over about a week and a half. How is it that Dylan and Toni knew each other for only several episodes and then got married, yet everyone knows that if, say, David and Donna had upped and got married during the first or second year of college, everyone would have shat bricks all over Beverly Hills. I'm loving Val and Kelly too. I love Val because she says what needs to be said to Kelly...like when Val, Kelly, Donna, and Clare went on the road trip and got lost, and Kelly was making all kinds of snide comments about Val sleeping with Ray, but then Val brings up the whole summer of deception, and so Kelly just brushes her off, "You don't even know anything about that," blah blah blah. There's not much more to know about it, Kelly. You fooled around with your best friend's boyfriend while she was away in Paris, and then the both of you proceeded to lie about it for months. In the words of Brenda, "I hate you. Never talk to me again!" Susan does suck. Boring as hell and Brando deserved better.

Cokeheads Kelly and Colin are hilarious! Donna's latest boytoy, Joe, is so delicious. Why is it that she always gets these hotties? She ain't much! I think I can appreciate the show in both forms. I love the high school/family drama of the first four seasons or so, but at the same time, I'm also loving this slightly campy, MP-esque stuff that we're seeing now on SOAPnet. It actually does make me itch for some good old MP, but that ship has sailed...ugh.

SOAPnet started season 5 about a week ago and I'm enjoying it so far...I actually like it a tad bit better than season four, which is a surprise because I was ready for the sky to fall once Brenda left. ~ Brandon was such a douche throughout most of season four. From the moment he and Steve had that beach house in the very beginning of season 4, he just became so....un-Brandon. The stuff surrounding Josh Richland's death brought him back to good old Brandon for me, the Brandon that had the ability to just make me cry like a little bitch. He's better this season, but there's one thing that's annoying the [!@#$%^&*] out of me, and that would be... ~ Kelly. I just plain hate her. Really. Reeeeeeally. Her interest in Brandon is about a gallon of style and an ounce of substance, pretty much. She's so superficial! When Brandon was all emo after Josh's death, all she could do was look at him, touch him, feel him up, and nudge towards the bed. Slut. She had no idea how to make him feel better without [!@#$%^&*] him. And then she thinks she's the [!@#$%^&*], as if she's some supreme being. No, girlfriend! ~ Steve has been sort of in the background so far, it seems. Doesn't he get with Clare later on down the line? And what's the deal with him and Val? He set his eyes on her, and suddenly he acts as if they're engaged or something. ~ Andrea. Oh, God. Why did Carteris plead with TPTB to write in her pregnancy? Andrea even hates her for having them write in the pregnancy. She's so disconnected from everybody else, and it's just....wwwwwhy is she still there. It's sad because I loved Andrea all throughout the high school years and the beginning of the college years, but once she got with Jesse and got pregnant, she went downhill. ~ Dylan. What a wreck! He's hooked on drugs because he doesn't know how to tell Brandon that he loves him. Okay, thank you, goodbye. ~ David and Donna. Zzzzzzzz. Why are men attracted to Donna? She's a complete and total ditz, she's not that bright, and let's face it, she's not the prettiest girl at California U. And plus she's keeping her legs closed, so...what is it? The only thing I appreciate about Donna right now is that she's great for laughs (however unintentional), and if not for her, we wouldn't see the gorgeous Ray Pruit, who just turns.me.on. ~ Jesse. Pointless and boring. He ruined Andrea. He does NOT fit in at all. I hate how everyone acts as if they're friends with him, but it's like......okay, and how do Jesse and Donna know each other? They barely share scenes, but they're "friends?" ~ Valerie. LOVES her. The second I saw her lighting up that blunt in Brenda's room, I was on Team Val all the way. All. The. Way! The stuff with her and Dylan was kinda dull but hilarious at the same time...they had tons of sex in just a couple of episodes. ~ Jim and Cindy. I wish they were on more, simply because Jim is so lame and Cindy....well she's just Cindy. All and all, I'm liking things so far. I loathe Brandon and Kelly, though, as a couple. I hate that Shannen leaving meant that Jennie Garth got second billing, and thus making it seem as if Brandon and Kelly are the "stars" of the show. Gag.

Oh God, one of the episodes that I missed was Dylan's first appearance. I watched like the first twenty or so minutes of it...like, right up until the part where Brandon is hanging with Dylan and his friends at night. I'm always trying to find the time to watch the rest of it lol I think they all wanted a piece of ol Dylan. Why do you think Jim was so against him at first? He didn't like the feelings Dylan was making him feel!

LOL. That second sentence is probably the single most sexiest sentence I've ever read in my life. Brandon/Dylan is the hottest case of hoYay! in history. No doubt in my mind. Just thinking of it gives me the vapors.

Ahem. Come on, how can you not appreciate the subtly androgynous sexual orientation of this picture? Dylan's resting his head on Steve's junk while David is all snuggled up next to Brandon. Fanboy obsession? I think not!

Adam and Eve...good lord...I couldn't stand it. Couldn't stand it one bit! My favorite eras of the show are the 1795 storyline and pretty much everything from 1968 to the end of the first half of the 1970PT storyline.

Do you want her to come back and kick your ass?

I disagree, for the most part. Lane was definitely a central figure in the first season, at least. Her arrival in town pretty much set up the premise of the series, and for most of those 15 episodes, the bulk of the storyline dealt with the Lane/Fielding/Constance triangle, with Sam coming in every now and then to comfort Lane and Titus coming in to stir up some mess. She moved into the background a bit during the second season, but I think she still did a lot. Married Sam, got pregnant, had a falling out and reconciliation wit Lute-Mae because of Michael, etc. ITA. I loved Peter Donat, but I liked Mason just a bit better. I also wanted Annabelle to stay around for a while, but I didn't have too many qualms about her dying in the pilot, especially when Denise Galik's Christie showed up. I loved the episode where Alice Hirson played Annabelle's mom and wanted to investigate the Weldon Mill fire. Ahhh Woody....me likes Woody, a lot. Wish I could see him on "Love of Life." Between Woody's Skipper and of course the delicious Mark Harmon as Field, I don't know who was sexier. I could have never been a guest in the Weldon home...would have tried to seduce them both. I love all of the hunks from the early 80s era nighttime soaps...William R. Moses and Lorenzo Lamas from "Falcon Crest" get my motor running too. It's been so many years since I was able to watch "Dallas" regularly, so it's hard for me to truly compare on a basis that isn't just based on the fact that it's "Dallas." Mom and I would watch the FR reruns together every week and she'd tell me stories about all of the shows from that time...those are like her favorite types of shows, ever. "Dynasty" and "Dallas" were probably the last first-run shows that she really watched. She liked those two, FC, and FR, and she also liked "The Colbys" and some of the other shorter-lived ones. Wasn't too crazy about "Knots" for some reason. So of course I forgot to set my recorder and completely missed it. It may come on again this month, I'll have to check TCM's site. You probably watched the show's reruns on Goodlife TV.

Bumping this up because the movie on which the show was based is airing tonight on TCM at 1:45AM central time. I've never seen the whole thing, so I'm definitely taping it. I know that the show changed some things up, but I believe the general premise of the Lane/Field romance is there. I don't think Constance's character (her name isn't Constance) is as central.

I've heard of DOC and HTSAM airing hour-long episodes as well...I want to say that it happened in 1974, but I'm not 100% sure.

Lin Bolen is sort of a despised figure in the classic game show community. When she came to NBC in the early 70s, she wanted desperately to youth-up the game show lineup and as such, made her hosts ditch formal wear for more casual clothes, have long, wild hair (even Bill Cullen had the long hair), and replaced some older shows with newer material.

Aaah, okay. Thanks. I found another episode on the same site and it looks to be from around the same time period, so I'll check that out too. I liked the little lady who was getting her hair done, I think her name is Mavis? I like Audrey more than Gail, that's for sure. Audrey is totally the type of person that I would know. Gail, on the other hand......I can do without her lol. Every time I watch the clip of David pushing her down the stairs, I cheer. And I didn't mean old as in old. I just meant as in "old blah blah."

Okay, would someone be kind enough to let me know when this episode aired? I'm about to watch it and I'd like to find some summaries from the period so I can have a clue what's going on.

Every single Corrie clip I see, I hate Gail more and more. Can that old bitch just die off already?

Thanks, Paul, for that awesome episode guide. I'd never seen it before and I learned some little tidbits from it. I LOVE LOVE LOVE "Flamingo Road." Goodlife TV (now AmericanLife) picked it up in June 2003 and aired it on Monday nights for a year and a half, and I watched it religiously. I think that what did the show in was the introduction of the voodoo stuff midway through the second season, and it was also a very convoluted show. I had to watch the second season twice to truly understand all of the political goings-on. All of the domestic/relationship issues were great though, and I ate it all up. I loved the Lane/Lute-Mae friendship a lot, and I always wondered what Constance would have thought about her birth mother and her husband's mistress being so close. I loved Field and Constance's relationship in the second season, too, the way they would be snarky with each other but also still have feelings for each other. I loved Eudora's addiction to painkillers and how Constance's fake paralysis was revealed to Field when she was trying to calm Eudora down. My little show should have lived on, damn it! NBC put it up against "Hart to Hart," which, by that time, was a hit, and being that "Hart to Hart" was an Aaron Spelling show, it took away lots of the audience that would normally tune in to FR, so I say it was bad scheduling on NBC's part (surprise!) "St. Elsewhere" premiered several months after FR ended, so I think your memory is just playing a little trick on you.

Okay, I finally got SOAPnet a few days ago and last night, I forced myself to stay up to watch RH (no VCR/DVR on the TV...bummer) and I just fricken loved it. The two episodes focused mainly on the baptism and christening of Ryan, with some conflicts going on between Mary and Jack. I don't even know how to explain it...it was just good stuff. There was such a sense of family and togetherness, but at the same time, all of the soapy elements of the storylines still came through. It's criminal that SOAPnet airs the show in such a suckass timieslot. Their schedule wouldn't be bad if they didn't double-play all of the teen dramas. "The OC" and "One Tree Hill" should only be one episode a day, and after some adjusting, that would easily free up two hours for late morning showings of "Dallas" and "Ryan's Hope." Hell, they could put RH in its two old ABC timeslots, 11am and 11:30am.

"The Doctors" is one of the soaps that I've read a lot about and I've seen several full episodes from the late 70s and early 80s (YouTube and WoST). Several years ago, someone on the old WoST message boards typed up a year-by-year summary of the show (from the very beginning to the very end) and sent it to me. I lost it ages ago, but I wish I still had it! I've been hearing stuff like this for a while now. A long time ago, Hallmark supposedly bought the rights to the SFM Entertainment library, and some soap historians have actually claimed that because the show had been produced by Colgate/Palmolive, it started saving its episodes before most other soaps (as early as 1972-1973). For years, there was no new information, but a couple of months ago, someone posted that they'd emailed SFM and the response implied that Hallmark would be airing it soon and that there'd also be DVD releases in the works. I'm really wondering about all of that, though. I don't see any company having that much confidence in a long-canceled soap to put it on DVD (unless it's "Dark Shadows"), but putting it in reruns wouldn't be so strange.

I think you mean Birgitta and Brian Farrell, who played David. That was one of my favorite scenes of the episode, exactly for the reasons you listed. I loved Arlene so much that I took a screen cap of her lol One of the things that I love to read about early DAYS is how adjectives such as "hypersexual" and "psychological" are used to describe it. I imagine characters who are having sex all over the place then pacing around, agonizing about it for weeks on end LOL That's so vintage.

Prentiss is SUCH a 70s soapy name. In the late 70s, Y&R had brothers Lance and Lucas Prentiss (Lance was played by B&B's John McCook), and also Vanessa Prentiss. The original DAYS announcer (the one who did the "like sands..." for the first year) was named Ed Prentiss. Y&R's Prentisses were actually popular enough that one of my older cousins named his son Prentiss lol

I wrote down the credits for the episode (I loved it THAT much), but there aren't any mentions of who wrote or directed. Just four actor credits (Ron Tomme, Elizabeth Kemp, Christopher Reeve, and Birgitta Tolksdorf) and some other random credits. I think the Labine/Mayer era of LoL is what I'd probably be the most interested in seeing, too, but I think I like the idea of the show in the early-mid 1960s, with Vanessa moving to Rosehill with Bruce and having to deal with his and his first wife's family. If I remember my reading right, Bruce's son Alan and his first wife's father Henry thought Vanessa was sweet and liked her, but Bruce's daughter Barbara and Henry's wife Vivian couldn't stand her. Barbara went through some trials and tribulations, Vanessa and Bruce went through some trials and tribulations, Alan had his own dramas, etc. Barbara ended up marrying Rick Latimer, had his child, and they divorced (Barbara was supposedly immature and that's also what tanked her first marriage). Barbara left Rosehill and never returned. I think it would have been epic to have Barbara and Meg in town at the same time! Imagine them teaming up against Van! Another story from the late 1960s/early 1970s that interests me is the love story of Tess Krakauer and Bill Prentiss, played by Gene and Toni Bull Bua.