All My Shadows

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.

I figured someone would have made a separate thread for legendary Betty! She’s been on my TV nonstop since I was a kid, and I’m so thankful to have been able to watch and know the “whole” Betty White. Sue Ann, Rose, Ellen, the hundreds of game show appearances during THE golden age of the genre - in both the 70s and 80s, she was an Emmy-award winning actress on a high-profile primetime sitcom who eagerly, graciously, and consistently did panel work on daytime and syndicated game shows. No one out there today would ever do it. Then she, of course, was on B&B. I just need the mainstream conversation to tirelessly remind everyone that she was more than just Rose on Golden Girls. I see so many things about her being reunited with Estelle, Bea, and Rue, but if you really knew Betty, you know the reunion that tops them all is the one with Allen.

I love 70s Concentration for all of those same reasons! "Baby freshener" and "Toni home wave" are two of my favorite regular prizes. I also really appreciate the music used for the head starts and the prize descriptions at the end of the rounds. It really doesn't get better than Score Productions in the 70s. Have y'all been watching Whew! on Buzzr? I didn't expect to get into it like I would - I guess I was turned off by the cartoony graphics, which I just assumed were a gimmick for the entire show, but I actually really enjoy it, and I see why it's called Whew. I feel like airing this back-to-back with Split Second would have you feeling exhausted afterward. I'm super glad that I can only see Buzzr through the Pluto app because we're getting Dawson Feud instead of 90s Newlywed Game in primetime, and I don't think I've regularly watched Dawson Feud in ages, since it was still shown on GSN at a decent hour. It's made me fall in love with Feud again, which is impressive considering how much seeing Steve Harvey's version makes me hate the show so, so much.

Yes, your explanation is better than mine. "Cadence" is exactly it. The only people who can duplicate that slow-moving crustiness aren't actors, they're the ones actually living that life. There are a couple of ma-maws and pa-paws that I've seen on TikTok who would be perfect. I'm so out of touch with who's who these days that I can't even begin to think of people who could play them or others from other shows. Remember about 20 years ago there was The Rerun Show on, I think NBC? The cast was made up of a lot of SNL/MADtv types, and episodes were hit or miss, but I remember thinking it was hilarious (as a 12 year old). I recall them doing episodes of Facts, Strokes, Bewitched, Jeffersons, One Day at a Time, etc.

It is, that's how I watched it. The DS episode was great! I think the difference between the two halves is that FOL seemed to be played as a parody where all of these grown-ass people playing teenagers were clearly poking fun at what they were doing. DS was a more sincere tribute to the original series. Maybe it's because they knew they were stepping into roles played by people who are no longer here, idk. It just felt better, and Kevin Hart was a great Arnold. I'm curious to see where these go. I really want to see a Sanford and Son, but I'm not sure if there is anyone who can truly play those roles. The cast was such a gigantic part of that show. You can't pretend to be those people.

Jennifer Aniston was horrible as Blair, which hurt more because Lisa was there and looked amazing. Aniston played Blair as such a careless bitch, and that wasn’t Blair at all. My favorite on FOL was Natalie. She felt the most natural and not trying too hard. Todd Bridges as the only original cast member from DS standing on that set makes my heart weep so much, but the set looks FANTASTIC.

I've always said my preferred method of making Josh a member of the Erica Klan(e) was by simply having him be Mark's long-lost son. Depending on what they wanted to do with the character's age, he could have been the product of an ONS from prior to Mark's arrival in PV in 1976 or from any point in the early/mid 80s when he was on and off of drugs. I'd prefer to the first option. They could have brought Mark back to facilitate the revelation of Josh's paternity, and then he could have stayed on as recurring or went away again. La Mura was still alive and well and making appearances on the show from time to time. I adored Colin Egglesfield and still do. I follow him on Instagram, and honestly, between he and Susan, they post so much positive, feel-good content. I'd love to hear them both talk together candidly about the story, from her perspective as THE legendary star of the show and his perspective as this guy in his early 30s coming in and not knowing the magnitude of the story he's playing.

I've been steadily watching season four over the last few days, and I have several quick comments: - Okay, this season is definitely better than season three in multiple ways. Not sure why I was so drawn to season three when I originally watched years and years ago, but everything just flows better and is so much easier to get into in 4. The triangle heats up and is filled with melodrama, but it's pretty juicy and engrossing. - Pacey's birthday. Damn it. I forgot how dramatic the whole party and aftermath was. It's such a great example of teen drama being human drama - quiet, slow-moving, and emotional. I miss teen soaps like this so SO much. Now, the entire show would center on Dawson trying to find Mrs. Potter's missing corpse. - I never realized before that Jack was openly considered a hottie in Capeside. I've caught several times where Joey says he's "built like a Greek god" or Jen makes a sleazy face when he facetiously says "what if I started undressing in front of you." The Toby storyline is good, and it's made us see his not-so-virtuous side. Him trying to hook up with Jen was probably the most disgusting thing I've ever seen on television. I always forget how much I love this show's vibe. I just wish I could hear the real damn theme song from time to time.