All My Shadows

If they think those kids aren’t listening in the hallway…and if those kids really aren’t listening in the hallway… I wasn’t being serious.

This secret would’ve been more exciting if the scene played out like the XHamster video it was setting itself up to be.

Martin: “Does any of this make sense to you?” Baby…

I'm in Spring 1973 and also loving every episode. I spread myself too thin over so many different shows that it feels like I'm making my way at a snail's pace, but I have to remind myself that they were only putting out two episodes a week back then, along with some time off. Peggy just had the twins, and Penny's friends Gwen and David just arrived. One of the things that I've had to get used to is that this is a show about the Sugdens, and most everyone else is temporary. New characters roll in, and I really start to like them, but then I read that they are only around for a few months, maybe a year. Not a problem because I really could watch the interactions of Annie, Joe, Jack, Matt, and Sam around the kitchen table all day (Peggy gets on my damn nerves, but I know she ain't long for the world). (I really want to message the saint who posts these episodes and ask if he can flip the playlists upside down so that they play in order instead of backwards)

I'm referring more to pre-shooting JR. Last time I popped in, I expressed much of the same thoughts as everyone else about JR in the ensuing seasons, and that's a big reason why I've stalled on Dallas at the end of season six while plowing through both KL and FC. My feelings about Abby remain the same, though, and after watching more over the weekend, I think one factor that plays a role in it is that she's running schemes surrounded by people who do not run schemes. Other than Greg, no one else is playing those types of games with her, so it just feels like she's an opportunist taking advantage of easy targets. Angela started off similarly, but by season two, she had to worry about Richard and Melissa, plus Lance's loyalties were no longer set in stone and Chase had also become a contender. Idk, it just feels like the others had some level of cat-and-mouse going on. Even JR at his smuggest had adversaries to fight against (even if the rule was that he always had to win, the fight was still there). Right now, in season five of Knots, Abby doesn't have that, and all her secret deals and bedroom bargaining are reflecting poorly on her as a character because she's doing all of this for what reason other than she loves money and greedily wants more and more of it? *** Realizing now that I used "enduring" when I meant "endearing"

Yes. Any time I go through the trouble of pulling episodes up, I really enjoy watching them, but I refuse to waste my time with the platform they're on when the process to watch other classic soaps is just so much easier. I wish The Doctors was as accessible.

Some further season five thoughts as I venture to the halfway point of the season. Laura and her place on the canvas has changed, and it makes me sad. In no time at all, she's become a sideline character whose only function is as an advisor to Abby and Gary. We've barely seen her in the cul-de-sac this season much less actually been inside her house. She should have been a lot more shaken up over Cathy's arrival than she was, given how close she was with Ciji, but her reaction was summed up in maybe a scene or two before she was back to playing games with Abby. I feel like the writing was on the wall for her in a scene where Abby asked what makes her happy, and Laura's only response was a cold, emotionless, "Money." This has to be the season where Abby is almost at the point of no return because I get no enjoyment out of watching her right now. There's nothing fun about who she is or what she does. She's making all these moves behind Gary's back and also sleeping with Greg, but she's also trying to hold Gary to a standard of faithfulness that she herself isn't honoring. I mean, obviously, she's a conniving schemer, but where's her lighter side? Alexis, Angela, and JR all had those light moments that endured them to the audience, but Abby has none. And the thing about her and Gary that gets me is that in the famous Abby/Val confrontation in "China Dolls," Abby throws it in Val's face that Val treats Gary like a child, but here we are, Abby is treating Gary like a child, and she's bored with him. The ONE positive thing I can say about that idiotic shrew Diana is that her presence does give Abby the soft edge she needs from time to time and is a reminder of who Abby was before the show glamified. Other than, I can honestly say that Diana Fairgate might be the dumbest character in the big four primetime soap canon. I go back and forth on if she could have ever been saved, but I really do think that they made a mistake by keeping her on Team Chip going into season five. Everything up to their capture in Oklahoma could have made sense, but the fact that she continued to do his dirty work along with giving every single person on earth (besides Abby) the nastiest attitude every time she opened her mouth just makes her absolutely insufferable. I can see why Michele Lee wasn't crazy about the pill storyline. To me, it would have made more sense for Karen to slowly descend into depression until she reached her breaking point. In a matter of two short years, her entire life has changed. She was a typical suburban mom dealing with typical suburban issues, but now her husband has been killed, her daughter has chosen an abusive murderer over her, her new husband is willingly getting involved in criminal elements, her close-knit neighborhood has been broken up, etc. She really doesn't know who she is anymore, and it wouldn't be surprising at all if she just snapped and needed time away at some point. Idk what the general consensus is on Ben and Val, but I love them together, and I love them both as individual characters right now. Val has grown so much as a person since leaving Gary, and I guess I didn't expect her journey to be so good when all I've ever heard is that she is "poor Val." I absolutely love that despite the very evident evolution of the show in season five, she still has a pretty natural place at the center of most of it, and her relationships with various characters still feel so real. Chip's death. I've never been crazy about impalement scenes in movies/TV because come on...is it really possible for that pitchfork to drive clean through his body like that? It's not like he fell from a rooftop onto it. He literally stumbled backwards and tripped. At most, he should have some puncture wounds. But all the way through the bone, muscle, and organs? That is KNOT very likely! And one nitpick. I'm a person who needs for things to match. The "new" mix of the opening theme while the closing credits run under the "old" mix of the theme is driving me nuts, especially bc if you go back and listen, they went through the trouble of making a new arrangement of the "old" theme for the closing.

I didn't know he was sick. Here Come the Brides is still one of my favorites to watch when I think to stream it, I definitely want to give it a full rewatch soon. The entire main cast is now gone, with most passing within the last five years.

Lynn Hamilton, man 😔. I grew up watching her as Donna “the Barracuda” on Sanford and Son, and I’ve recently begun my very first journey into The Waltons. It’s crazy how both roles were strictly recurring yet still very salient parts of their respective shows. I’m glad she was able to regularly feel the love at the various Waltons fan gatherings.

Ananda's death hits hard. She was all over BET and MTV in my youngest years, and all these years later, I still think of her as a fun-loving yet thought-provoking 20something.

Dallas peaked early, IMO. Maybe not a fair statement as I’m still making my way through the first half of its run, but I think it’s hard to argue to point that S3 into S4 was its high point. Back to Knots. Wrapping up “And Never Brought to Mind.” Greg’s introduction kinda took me by surprise. I low-key dreaded his arrival bc I know he very quickly gets to the center of the show, but even though they wasted no time connecting him with Mac, Abby, Gary, and Karen, it still feels like a gradual intro. The juxtaposition of the ending of the Chip story with the heating up Abby’s plotting is quite symbolic of the changes the show was going through. I absolutely cannot imagine Kenny and Ginger having any part in any of this. Yall, the Gary/Val piano theme that they pull out from time to time is my FAVORITE. I find myself humming it constantly.

I’ve been watching Knots and FC rather compulsively for a while now. Currently in fall 1983 with both. I had Dallas in there, too, but I am rather shocked at how stale that show gets after Jock’s death. Meanwhile, I can spend hours in the vineyards and in the cul-de-sac.

*watching season 5* Me: “I wish they did more with Eric, he’s so cute and sweet.” *Eric slaps the piss out of Diana* Me: “Godddddd, I love Eric!!!!”

Dipping my toes back in, and Leslie continues to be THE star. Girl has brought the same energy since day one. Anita has become tons more interesting when played with her former groupmates. Kat is such a massive disappointment. I can’t stand her.

*Gavrilo Princip has entered the chat* I haven't watched BTG in approximately two months because of the busy season at work, but now it's summer, and I'll have time to get back into it. Do y'all think that I should do the 21st century binge-watching thing and attempt to catch up on everything I missed or should I do the traditional soap thing and just start watching again tomorrow and figure everything out from there?

I was confused too, but I think it was always a "tribute thread" (this one and OLTL's were created when their cancellations were announced). They just changed the show abbreviations to their titles spelled out, I guess to make the board just a little bit more uniform. I was lost, too lol

Not really short-lived as GH went to color in 1967, so the blue background actually lasted about twice as long as the black background. You can see it at the very beginning of this set of clips from 1974: Also would like to put it out there in the universe, as I often do, that the wait for any AMC from 1972-1976 has been too damn long. At this point, it is the only long-running soap (10+ years) that has absolutely zero video clips from that time period online. We have either whole episodes or clips from every year of the show's run except those five, which happen to be the exact years when one of my favorite characters I've never actually seen, Margo Flax, was a major player. Justice for Margo, please.

Both EE and Corrie remind me of RC's OLTL, where maybe, just maybe, if we keep bringing up the past in cheesy, forced ways, the audience will transfer their positive memories of better days onto what we're giving them now. I used to love that kind of crap, but it became so constant and transparent with OLTL, not to mention obnoxious as hell. Like when they had KDP singing the Peabo Bryson theme over the opening sequence for an episode or two. I've been reading little blurbs about Sonia's exit, and they all mention trumpets as if the she had grown up and became a trumpet virtuoso. It's too sitcommy to me, just like Bianca being damn near 50 and still wearing the jacket and hoops. But then they like to introduce new young female characters and put them in a metallic jacket and hoops so that the audience will like them right away. Things just hit better when it's more of an "If you know, you know," type of thing. Like Max watching Stacey's plane leave in 2010 as Stacey gazes down at the Thames in reference to the opening sequence...just like when Phil watched Kathy's plane leave in 1998 as Kathy gazed down at the Thames in reference to the opening sequence. It's like the more "iconic" the original scene is, the less effective the later allusion to it is. B&B and Y&R recreating their first scenes were perfect because we don't get hit over the head with how incredibly iconic those scenes were to begin with.

Lulu Roman, Star of TV’s ‘Hee Haw’ Over a Nearly Quarter-Century Run, Dies at 78 I'm a very unashamed "Hee Haw" fan, and Lulu to me is one of the quintessential faces associated with the show. There have been so many meaningful celebrity deaths in the last month that I've barely had enough time to really react, but I made it a point to watch a few episodes yesterday afternoon/evening in her honor.

Those are BIZARRE, but god I love them. I expected them to say "You could stop at five or six stores, or just one."

I wouldn't say I was shocked by this news but definitely surprised. Not surprised in a "OMG, are they really going to pull an Aunt Viv!?!!!" way (because we know any time someone mentions that as the barometer for recasts, that person has never regularly watched a soap) but more in a "Oh yeah, this really is a daytime soap" way. Obviously, people have mentioned wanting recasts of certain characters, but I kinda filed it away with a bunch of the soap aesthetic things that I just never would expect to see on a brand new soap in 2025. Like, there's no way in the world we're going to hear that "The role of Ted Richardson is now being played by..." voiceover, right? Right!? And do we know for a fact that this is a permanent recast and not a temp? I know there's 8 pages of thread here and I should just go back and see, but I ain't got the time, yall.

And if not therapy, maybe a literal trainwreck to kill her off 💥🚂

I don’t support Dani and Andre bc she needs mental help before taking anyone else on the psychotic journey that is her life.

Definitely my favorite set as well. It just feels real and is probably the most relatable to the majority of the audience. I love seeing that on soaps in the age where everyone has designer everything, even the people who would never afford it in real life.

TMG needs to play Morticia Addams at some point.