All My Shadows

On 9/3/2020 at 6:04 PM, EricMontreal22 said:

Has any soap ripped off Rebecca?  I mean AMC had elements of it with Helga before we knew that Angelique was actually alive.

Dark Shadows also had elements of it in the 1970PT story with Maggie, Quentin, Hoffman, and Angelique/Alexis.

I absolutely LOVE Mart Hulswit's overemotional Ed, and as I continue to make my way through early 80s GL, I'm really interested in seeing the difference when Peter Simon replaces him.

MH's Ed really matches up well with the very little I've seen of Robert Gentry's Ed. I have to say, just based on two short clips, I feel like RG's Ed would have been my all-time favorite.

Re: Mart being a hunk. Honestly, every picture I've seen of him from the early 70s and also for Papa's funeral, I'd say he was pretty sexy. Not so much later on, but it happens. It kinda reminds me of Michael E. Knight's changes through the years.

There is a less than zero chance of me actually watching this, but that cast has been the most appealing to me in yearrrrrrs.

I think the idea is that Marland was the only one who really had a handle on how to write the Snyders. They were a depressing and repetitive bunch for most of the time after his death.

I'll be watching this one, for sure, but with very judgmental eyes because, well, Louisiana. Nice to see Liz Reyes huge hair on that TV screen.

The trailer has the two things that I've just had to accept as part of the modern definition of "primetime soap," a tone that manages to be quirky comical and pretty dark at the same time and, of course, the central, season-long mystery that kinda automatically cuts a show's shelf life in half.

I really can't even think of anything to say because it's just so blatantly stupid lol

Thanks for the Peter White article! I’m watching a Carol Burnett marathon, and I forget how many AMC surprises you’d find throughout the opening segments of her show. She just discussed storylines with the audience and then pointed out that Peter White and Francesca James were guests in the audience that night.

4 hours ago, janea4old said:

 

 

Now, that really is sweet.

They did Denise dirty as hell.

9 minutes ago, SFK said:

I am sad to hear about Billy Goldenberg. He wrote that gorgeous theme to Bare Essence sung by Miss Sarah Vaughan. I got to see him live in D.C. as he was Bea Arthur's accompanist in her traveling one-woman show, And Then There's Bea. They had a lovely rapport and I've seen him in other videos with Bea so I assume they were old friends.

I didn't realize he'd done the Bare Essence theme, too. Of course, I've only seen the miniseries, but all throughout, you had more great examples of the main theme being tweaked and rearranged for different scenes. In reading about his passing, I did learn that he and Bea were good friends for many years.

SFK, I know you'll feel this one the same way I did, but Raymond Allen, who played "Uncle Woody" on Sanford and Son and Ned the Wino on "Good Times," has passed away at 91. I know I've mentioned multiple times before how much S&S and its portrayal of common black folk have always meant to me. Every single cast member was just so funny that any time I hear of someone from the show passing away, I immediately think of my favorite bits featuring the character. 

1 minute ago, Darn said:

That's also probably the last time TV Guide was relevant.

Yeah, I'm sitting here like...this is exciting? How? No one buys magazines anymore, and certainly not TVG lol And the two people who tune into any of the shows because of these covers will find utter shite...so?

34 minutes ago, Forever8 said:

Jade had the potential to be ATWT's newest bad girl in the vein of Lisa, Barbara, Julie, and Carly before her. I'm trying to remember who it was who said on here a few years back about how either Lisa or Carly should've taken her under her wing to have more ties to the canvas other than being tension for Will/Gwen. 

For a hot minute, they had Lisa running a teen club called Crash, and honestly, the place looked like the inside of Oleson's Mercantile on Little House on the Prairie, but that could have been the in they needed to put the two together as friends. Plus, Lisa's soft spot for Jade could have created some slight tension between her and Carly, Gwen's half-sister.

Jesse Soffer was hot, but I never really got why Jade was so attracted to Will. I've said it a million times, but let me just say it again. I needed/wanted a triangle between Jade, Aaron, and Dallas. There should have been a real bi triangle with Luke, Noah, and Maddie. To me, Gwen and Will were suited for the "stable" young couple role and honestly could have just been talk-tos to everyone else after their own drama cooled off until they left town.

I low-key lied a few days ago when I said ATWT was never truly embarrassing. Cleo Babbitt. I forgot all about her. That was the low point for me.

12 minutes ago, prefab1 said:

 

It's hilarious that THIS was CBS's idea for an inter-soap crossover event like the ones ABC had done so successfully: Amber and nu-Alison on Y&R, stripping and drugging Cane. What a surprise that didn't bring a ton of Y&R viewers over to ATWT!

It was so dumb, and I had blocked it out my memory until a few months ago.

I liked Marnie S. but her Alison was bland and plain. Someone who'd been through what she'd gone through should have had more rawness, more fire. If they insisted on making her the cleanest, goodest girl, they could have at least did like AMC and introduced an Annie to her Marissa. But then again, Jade Taylor was right there, ready to be the biggest thorn in Oakdale's side, but they wasted her.

RIP to Santoni. I definitely associate him most with Owen Marshall: Counselor at Law, which is one of the many shows on YT that I need to make time to watch more of one of these days.

I did a lot of off-and-on watching of RHODA this past weekend on the Decades network, and it reminded me of how much I love Billy Goldenberg's theme song for the show. I went to look up some of his other work and learned that he passed away last week. Definitely one of the GREAT film/TV composers.

My favorite of his TV themes is probably Harry O. I've been in love with the variation of the theme that opens the first act of this particular episode for years.

My latest 1979 musings:

- I knew Anna Maria Horsford was on the show in the late 70s, but didn’t realized she played a prisoner. Not really sure why I’m surprised by that. What makes it worse is that Clara is such a slave-like character! She comes in, listens to Holly’s stressing, swoons over Massah Chapman and Miss Holly’s romance, then vanishes off to her work in the prison. AMH has been a favorite of mine for years and years, and I just hoped that her first foray into soaps would have been better.

- I’m so damn tired of everyone calling her “Evie.” It’s just Eve, damn it. Rita and Viola should be the only ones calling her Evie.

- Speaking of Rita, I didn’t know that she’d eventually decide against having an abortion. I was really loving the idea of her standing firm in her decision and being annoyed and plagued by everyone around her telling her what she needed to do. I guess they were going for a warm Thanksgiving “miracle.”

- I know people have different opinions of Mart Hulswit as Ed, but I’m loving his super emotional, highly dramatic version. I have next to know history at all with Peter Simon’s Ed, so I’m not sure how the character changes, but MH’s yelling and weeping Ed seems to be in line with any clips I’ve seen of Robert Gentry’s 1966-1969 portrayal. It’s a nice contrast to cool and calm Mike, and honestly both of them are believable as sons who were raised in Bill and Bert’s dysfunctional home.

- It’s interesting how much more time and energy is spent on exploring the Bauer men’s antagonists, Roger and Alan, rather than on Ed and Mike themselves. 

- The time has come for anything, video or audio, from Roger’s early years on the show to surface.

- Katie is one of the sweetest and most kind-hearted soap characters I’ve ever seen. Everything about her is just so pure and clean without her being written as the perfect, delicate flower that needs protection at all costs. I love her and the puppets!

- Did ATWT and GL share music cues when Mi-Voix took over scoring the shows? There’s a distinct cue that plays from time-to-time that sounds identical to one heard at the very end of a 1975 ATWT episode that used to be online.
 

- Speaking of music, I think I’ve identified a character theme for Elizabeth. I guess I didn’t expect that to still be a thing at this time, besides for characters who had been on for 10+ years by this point.

- Were Jackie and Elizabeth always on good terms who was there ever heavy tension between the two? They’re good in 1977, and they’ve been good through 1979, but in between, there had to have been some drama, right?
 

- I really dislike Viola. She’s pushy and kinda passive-aggressive, and she doesn’t really seem to care about Rita’s well-being at all.

- Was Ann Jeffers ever more than just Mike’s assistant?

3 hours ago, AbcNbc247 said:

Look at when Bob and Kim got sick. Bob had a mass on his brain and needed surgery and Kim got so upset about it, she had a heart attack. They made the one joke about “his and her hospital rooms” and then the next time you saw them, they were both perfectly fine as though nothing had happened. 

Yes! That crossed my mind. I shudder to even call it a "story" because it just wasn't. Everything was just a mini-story, and the result was that sometimes you got some really, really good single episodes (Bob and Kim's anniversary drama, for example), but never a really, really good full story.

I started watching as a child in 2001 because the stories interested me, and as came to learn more about the shows' pasts, I became even more invested in what was going on. Nearly 20 years later, I'm glad to actually be able to regularly watch so much of those older episodes because they're good, and it's great to be able to see so many stories and characters that I'd only ever read about back when I was still watching first-run soaps. It's nice to keep building familiarity with each soap.

3 hours ago, Soaplovers said:

My problem was the make up and break up of CarJack.  I would have preferred if they broke up, co existed as parents while both found couplings that had decent development. It would have made their reconciliation even more powerful..imho.  Look at Bob and Kim..spent years apart..both had decent pairings..but by 1985, reconciled and the impact was felt in positive ways.

And this was a part of the bigger problem - the show did not tell many long-term stories in its last five years. No slow build-ups, no very deliberate attempts to touch on every possible emotion attached to an event, no satisfying climax (whew, calm down), no lengthy period to pick up the pieces afterward, none of that. It was an endless cycle of cartoon villains who came in and terrorized the town for a month or two before heading out and relationships that happened because...they just happened. Part of what made it frustrating for me was that this was a soap that was known, more than any of the others, for being so slow-moving, so deliberate, so life-like in how things developed.

5 hours ago, Markjeh said:

I thought quite some storyline ideas from her tenure were actually not bad, just not well executed or too fast-paced.

I have very strong feelings about ATWT’s last five years, but this about sums it up. There were so many tools in place for it to be a great show, but those tools were never utilized to their fullest potential, and it just made for a frustrating show. You had a solid core of important families, a decent spread of characters in all age groups, a cast that had a history working together on the show, characters that had long histories with each other, large enough openings to introduce new characters and explore new relationships, etc., but every single time it seemed like we were headed for something with substance, it was derailed for some short-term villain of the month story or side-lined for a boring A story.

That being said, I give a lot of credit to maybe the first two years of JP’s run because for all of the show’s faults, it was mostly not a sick or embarrassing soap. I came into ATWT after watching JER’s second run at DAYS, which became an embarrassing joke. AMC was turning into a joke as McTavish’s third run quickly soured. Later, I was deep into Ronald’s OLTL until it, too, became a sick joke. As boring and lame as JP’s ATWT became, and as far from its glory days the show had strayed, it never had dead people transported to a tropical island, never had an aborted fetus roaming its sets, and never had men running around in their underwear trying to hide bags of blood. ATWT’s “bad” was nowhere near the level of bad that I saw on other shows that I had once enjoyed watching, so it’s just hard for me to beat up on it.
 

Of course, I was a teen then, and I didn’t have the luxury of comparing the show to previous eras, but in the grand scheme of soaps in 2005-2010, ATWT was far from the worst, IMO.

William R. Moses interview from a few weeks ago. FC is talked about near the beginning.

8 minutes ago, Jonathan said:

There's only a handful of ways to write back from the dead stories.  Either 1) the person has amnesia 2) has been held captive 3) has to stay away from family in order to "protect" them.

 

The third one is probably the lamest of them all because from a critical reason standpoint, the argument tends to fall apart when you evaluate the claims made by said dead person.

I agree with three being the worst for those reasons. That's why I can understand JHB saying that Jesse's return wasn't that great. The fact that he was back - great. The path they had to take to get him back - stupid dumb sh!t.

If characters died and stayed dead, I think we would have seen less reliance on serial killers and natural disasters. But then again, the UK soaps generally keeps dead characters dead, and they will still decimate a cast in the name of celebrating Christmas, the show's anniversary, or...anything, really.
 

3 minutes ago, BetterForgotten said:

Both Tad and Dixie were so damn insufferable and unlikable by that point, and the story was so poorly plotted. McTavish clearly had no idea where she wanted to go with it, and it was proof that her ass needed to go. It didn't seem like she cared about any character that wasn't Babe/Krystal by this point.

 

And frankly, Cady seemed bored/confused by the material. She had just come off arguably the best performance of her career during her first stint on ATWT, and then returned to this crap return story.

I think Cady was excited in the beginning. I remember listening to a podcast interview with her and MEK, and they were both very happy to be working together again, but we all know how it turned out. MEK was already checking out, but I think the Dixie fiasco might have been the last straw for him and he was mostly just collecting a check until 2011. It's depressing, honestly.

McT might have cared about Babe and Krystal, but it's not like her caring translated to writing decent stories by this point. How do you manage to squander the talents of Cady, MEK, Bobbie Eakes, and David Canary? AMC had a goldmine, but it was wasted.

37 minutes ago, namkcuR said:

Then Cady first appears again around Christmas 2005 in a bizarre scene with Di in Paris where Di updates her on life in Pine Valley and asks if she's going to come home.  This is the problem with the initial return story.  Dixie would not allow Tad and JR and the rest of her family to think she was dead.  It was completely out of character.

This is my problem with back from the dead stories, in general. You have to suspend any understanding of basic human emotion to buy into it, and that's a no-go for me.

Your assessment of the story is right on the money. The false starts were stretched out for way too long that by the time Cady's Dixie returned and reunited with everyone, you just didn't care anymore. The backstory was so convoluted, and that made it even harder to accept her return without reservation. It just never felt like she was really "back" for good, so when she was killed off again, it wasn't very surprising nor was it really that sad. The show was just in a really ugly place by then.

Di was never fully developed as an actual character because I guess they didn't think they'd have to? So she became yet another aimless character in that age range, sharing the role of "female Aidan" with Erin Lavery. Mustn't forget the de-SORAS'ed frat boy Del.

Man, I was so in love with Raul and his style, that voice, those eyes. I’d love to see DL in something else these days.