All My Shadows

I’ve never seen It’s a Living, and I really want to. It definitely should have showed up on TV Land for a run or two in the early 2000s. Barrie Youngfellow is more recognizable to me for her appearance in one of my favorite Three’s Company episodes, “Triangle Troubles,” where she plays a classmate of Jack’s trying to hide the fact that she lives with two (hot af) guys.

I've become a fan of Julia's thanks to Pluto TV. I don't even know if fan is the right word. I enjoy her onscreen persona, especially watching how it changed over the years. She was severely nervous and earnest in the BW French Chef but was pretty confident and grandiose in the color French Chef (just compare the theme music from the two runs). By the 90s, she was kind and grandmotherly in Master Chefs/Baking with Julia, but when it was her and old friend Jacques Pepin together, she was ornery and mischievous with Jacques Pepin. I'd love it if they added her late 70s series into the rotation. Seeing her kitchen at the Smithsonian a few months ago was a big moment, so I guess I really am a fan. I'll watch this series but I kinda agree with you, j swift, that we know her story so well at this point that telling it again just seems redundant. I just hope they portray Simca with all of the no-nonsense bitchery that she has on her appearances on French Chef.

Such beautiful thoughts!! And as if your avatar was ever going to disappear, now it absolutely has to stay forever and ever.

Oh man, I’d forgotten that her mom passed last year. Our girl is strong, and I hope she finds peace with all of these changes.

I’ve already been broken up over Tom Parker’s death, and now to see that Helmut has passed… Tom was my favorite in The Wanted - idk why, I just really loved his wild man vibe. I knew he was sick but I guess I didn’t realize the end was so near for him. And Helmut…sigh. Erica had plenty husbands but Susan had Helmut and no one else. I honestly like to think that she willingly shared him with all of us. He was OUR husband. I will miss her Instagram videos of his cooking!

After all these years, I'm glad to finally see that I'm not alone in thinking that Ray could have been a good long-term character and that the abuse story was unnecessary. I'm not sure if Caroline McWilliams had staying power as his boozy ma, but they at least brought something different to the 90210 circle.

Currently up to episode #60 in watching the series (I torrented the first 30 over a decade ago, and I've rewatched those while continuing on via the Shout! Factory DVDs), and it is just so GREAT to be knee-deep in well-plotted, slow-moving soap. It took sixty damn episodes to get to the climax of George shooting Elliott, but you look back and realize that each and every one of those sixty episodes served a purpose toward getting us to where we are now. The suspense that began with the intro of delicious instigator Paul Hanley just built and built until now, and everything is tense and emotional - perfect soap.

I will always be okay with and excited about a new Degrassi series. To me, it really is the phoenix of teen dramas - it's always been centered around a school and its ensemble of students. You don't have to look into bringing back a bunch of old characters or cast members, you don't have to make the set exactly the same, etc. There should be little tie-ins to the previous series, but the focus should always be on the new/current characters and their stories. I do worry about the possibility of them trying to chase the current view of what a "real" teen drama. DTNG went off the rails a lot post-2010 and lost a lot of what made it such a good, grounded school drama. Next Class was better but it felt a little try-hard/forced (the focus on social media/phones, the "all-inclusive" club). I worship the ground Linda and co. walk on, but I think they did good by choosing to step away. I just hope the new PTB have studied the template carefully.

My favorite anniversary show will always be AMC's 20th - The remaining originals just sitting around and interacting, in character, as the present a sort of "This is what you missed in the first twenty years" clip show. What I love the most about it is how Erica, when surrounded by all of these much older characters who'd been with her since she was still a spoiled brat, couldn't help but release a little bit of her adultness and be that spoiled brat all over again. None of the character interactions were forced just for the sake of the concept - these were characters who'd had real relationships with one another for twenty years, and you absolutely believed that they could all be together that night just the way they were. Also, no annoying musical montages - just straight up flashbacks telling the story of the show's first two decades. Though it was tarnished by residual baby switch mess, the 35th anniversary was good for all of the related scenes at the hospital. Agnes awkwardly stumbling through her lines with a big ass grin on her face (definitely saying "I made all of you bitches" under her breath) while Ruth Warrick rolls in to applause - it's just AMC af. Plus, it doesn't get much better than Bianca reading Mona's letter, though, ending with the AMC poem. It hits even harder all these years later as so many of the cast members who were so alive and vibrant are no longer with us now.

Ron is a loser, and I'm sorry, but all of his DAYS cronies publicly high-fiving him in the comments would make me stop watching/supporting the bag of warm sh!t that is Days of Our Lives immediately - that is, if I was watching it. It seems to me that very few people involved care about what they're bringing to the audience at all. They're completing tasks so that they can get paid. Hey, that's fine, we all gotta eat. But if audience satisfaction is that far from your realm of caring, then don't cry when your ratings tank. And this person suffers from the same ailment as Ron, the legitimate belief that the history of daytime soap opera began in the 80s. What the fck do you mean DAYS has "always" been popular because of campy comic book action/adventure nonsense? Bill Bell ought to smite the sht out of whomever wrote this foolishness.

Dropping in to get a taste of what these shows are doing. So wait. DAYS is currently doing a storyline meant to be a "tribute" to an actress/character that died last summer and was on the show for three years nearly 40 years ago!?!?!? These people really just write whatever the fck they want.

I've been checking to see if they've added anything else, but it doesn't look like it. If all they're going to offer is 2018 era Y&R and B&B, then I literally have no reason to watch.

I don’t think anything j swift has said is meant to imply that he was watching the show in the 70s lol

I don't think Tad and Erica ever needed to happen simply because it just never needed to happen lol I almost feel the same way about as I do/did Ryan and Erica. These are characters who were around each other for years and never expressed romantic interest in each other. Having them do so "just because" is such a boring and tired move, IMO, and ruins the idea that characters on soaps can have relationships with one another that aren't strictly familial or romantic. I'm not saying Erica was ever "friends" with Ryan or Tad, but you could definitely argue that she was like a mentor to Tad in the 80s and somewhat of a mother-in-law type to Ryan in the 00s. Why mess up the chance to have those varied character connections just to run through another coupling that's destined to be unsuccessful anyway? Erica/Tad probably would have grossed me out.

I've always had Y&R at 11am (central time zone for life over herrrrre), immediately following TPIR and preceding a 30-minute newscast before B&B. Is that the norm in the central time zone? For many years, we have Y&R via the Baton Rouge affiliate at 4pm, and I think that was just a no-brainer as almost all of the family I knew who watched would tune in to that airing due to being at work earlier in the day. They moved it up to 11am a few years ago.

AMC's first huge year of transition was probably 1980-1981. The Cortlandts were fully integrated into the show and had a big, splashy wedding to prove it. The Tylers as a major family unit were no more - Phoebe was with Langley, Charles was with Mona, Anne was just about to be blown to bits, Linc and Kelly moved away and only returned for brief visits, etc. Nick Davis was long gone, Paul Martin was fading into the background, Jeff Martin was gone, Phil and Tara were almost out the door, Estelle was about the die, and Erica was gearing up to spend most of the early 80s in her own isolated stories. Most of the characters that took the show to the top of ABC's lineup in the mid 70s (and #1 of all soaps by 1978) were gone, and characters who had come on later in the 70s were slowly moving to the forefront while a new set of younger characters were just around the corner. It's really a miracle the show handled this period as gracefully as it did and continued to dominate. There are those 1980 episodes on YouTube where you have characters like Palmer, Nina, and Myra alongside scenes with Tara and Chuck. It's weird because you really think of them as being from two different eras.

It's always seemed to me that ATWT going to the hour is really what knocked it off its pedestal. It was quintessential 70s soap before the expansion - old-fashioned but still juicy and watched by virtually everyone. Kim's introduction, Bob/Jennifer, the climax of the Dan/Liz/Paul/Susan quad, and Lisa/Grant/Joyce kept the pot boiling for a few years. Judging from the 1978 episode that's been around for a while now, the show expanded and new characters were added alongside so many who had already been on the show but never really established as significant to the canvas. I'm thinking of the likes of Natalie, Valerie, Jay, Carol, etc. Carol and Jay were on for, what, nearly ten years? And by the time he was killed off and she left, it was like they had never been on the show at all. Neither really had any family developed around them, they had no children who were poised to be major players in the future, etc. If not for Emily and their connection to the Stewarts, Susan really would have fit in the same category after her 1979 exit.

I also say Love of Life. Didn't they have that one writer who came in and basically reused old radio soap plots? It seems like the show did well in the early part of the decade through to when Claire Labine and Paul Avila Mayer left for Ryan's Hope, but it was downhill from there and they just couldn't keep up with the changing soap landscape.

I saw that Eric was on that show and considered watching it. I did watch maybe the first 8 episodes of Yellowstone, and I liked it until one of the main characters murdered someone and the show just rolled along. Not for me, but I’m glad Eric is doing well.

Yes, this is what would work for me. I remember AMC had the very, very occasional recurring character Kenny, who was the Fusion girls' lawyer. I think he made some regular appearances in the early days of Fusion and then maybe showed up for an episode or two a few years later. He wasn't a fixture on the show in any way, but I *think* there was always a playful flirtation between Simone and he, and if he'd come back with a boyfriend at some point, I would have never questioned it. Perfect example of a character being gay when they clearly weren't gay before: Doug Witter on Dawson's Creek. The entire series, Pacey made jokes about Doug being gay, and Doug denied it in a very unbothered "I know I'm not gay, but please stfu, Pacey" way. Then all of a sudden in the series finale, he's gay after all and was gay the entire time, and his boyfriend is one of his little brother's friends (who is younger than him by at least 7 or 8 years). Okaaaaay...and also another example of two characters being together just because they're the gay ones on the show. In fantasy land, I like to imagine TV always being an accurate reflection of the real world and all of the public and personal dramas people have always had. Bill Bauer cheating on Bert with a man in the 60s would have knocked the light right out of the lighthouse.

I think I would have a hard time with this kind of story being told with a long-standing character regardless of who it is mainly because I feel like there would be years and years of subtext missing from the character's story. Not hitting-you-over-the-head foreshadowing or campy winks and nods at the audience but long-term "knowing" on the part of the writers. If a character like, idk, B&B's Thomas was introduced post-SORAS with Brad knowing that he wanted Thomas to later come out 15-20 years down the line (which, I know, Brad planning that far ahead is hilarious) and having enough skill to carefully include it as a thin veil of subtext throughout the character's stories, then yeah, that would be great. But I just think smacks of trying too hard to have a character who's had these whirlwind romances with the opposite sex for decades all of a sudden "realize he's/she's gay." It sounds so progressive, but it ain't. Now having them be bi later in life in a different story.

https://e2gsports.com/harold-williams-weekly-wrestling-glow-legend-matilda-the-hun-passes-away-at-age-73/ Idk how to embed from Twitter (really don’t use it, honestly), but Matilda the Hun from the original GLOW series has passed away. She was one of the show’s two heartbeats, IMO, along with Mountain Fiji. You could tell from her appearances at their reunions that she loved the experience and the sisterhood they shared because of it.

Was that when ABC was all "look, it's costing us a lot of money to make these shows, so we gotta make less episodes, so here have some reruns," and of course most of the reruns were not very exciting? I think that particular OLTL was the only one from more than five years back. I do remember the theme dubbing and us talking about it. I feel as though something like a theme song should be taken into consideration when clearing music rights for the future... I know there are some older sitcoms in the public domain that are released on those super cheap DVD sets with dubbed theme songs (mainly thinking of Beverly Hillbillies and Petticoat Junction, but I know there are others), but a soap theme in the 90s?

I wish we were still in the times where a channel would clear a weekend's schedule to just show a wide variety of TV star's work in commemoration of their death. I remember when John Ritter passed in 2003, TV Land made a very carefully crafted marathon of Three's Company, the Waltons, Hooperman, Hearts Afire, and his guest appearances on many other series, including Hawaii Five-O and Rhoda. I watched it from beginning to end, and it was just so cool and comforting to be wrapped up in the many, many facets of the man. A full weekend of Betty's best moments would probably be hard to part together considering distribution ownership of the many different types of shows she did, but man, would it be awesome to watch highlights from her career, in order.

The Mary Tyler Moore Show deaths really, really hurt this year. I know all of the attention is on her being the last of GGs to pass, and obviously it's heartbreaking to know they're all gone now, but for some reason, thinking of how quick the succession of MTM cast deaths was just really hurts. For years and years and years, Ted Knight was the only main performer gone, and in a span of just under five years, all of the rest have passed away. Dick Van Dyke and Bob Newhart need to be held high up on a pedestal for as long as they're still here. Oh, and of course Norman Lear.