All My Shadows

I think most would agree that RH was rooted in those three things as well, and probably her GH, too.

I liked Jake Weary as Luke and was very upset when I learned that they'd be recasting for the coming out storyline, but I took to Van pretty quickly, and I genuinely thought he was a fantastic actor the first year or two. .I don't recall a whole lot of backlash at the time. Ultimately, I think the Luke/Noah pairing (and, by extension, them as individual characters) suffered from a lack of real planning and care on TPTB's end. It was established pretty early on that they didn't have to do too much to keep the fanbase happy. Granted, they cycled through the same stories over and over again with the other characters, but with Luke and Noah, as long as they ended up together (complete with kisses and cliched lines), that group was going to give a resounding applause. In fact, the ONLY huge backlash from the Nuke Squad was when the show had gone too long without showing a Luke/Noah kiss, and so IIRC, these fckers literally ended up on CNN to talk about it. I was pissed because I wished that much effort and attention had been focused on improving the stories themselves. But, like I said, the stories simply did not matter to a lot of people as long as they got those one or two scenes of fluff per week. Oh, and Re: JS being uncomfortable. I don't necessarily mean uncomfortable playing gay like Chris Engen was uncomfortable playing gay (which...well, I'll leave it alone). I mean uncomfortable in that he was just completely awkward and clumsy with it. Maybe it was more the pacing of shooting a soap, idk. I always thought he seemed more at ease in scenes with anyone other than VH.

I think by then, VH realized he wasn't going to get the type of material he might have wanted and was just going through the motions. That's my conjecture. He was excited in the beginning, and it showed, but after sticking around with nothing to do and then getting saddled with a very hollow love story and having to sell, sell, sell, it was pretty obvious that he was just over it. ESS was awesome, Reid was a great character (relatively speaking, at least - as great as he could have been on this particular show at that particular time). If that had been the story in 2007, then maybe things would have turned out a lot differently with Luke. I could see that, but I also think some actors just don't have heat. It was the same way with Martha Byrne, although she and Paolo had their moments. The Larry Lau/Luke story is one that would have worked for me because it would have been such a trainwreck, but otherwise...I don't know. Then again I may have said something totally different years ago. I haven't seen these episodes in such a long time. It's easy for me to be glib now. I do wish they'd brought in more gay characters for more stories. This is true. A recast might have helped give a little zest to the character, but IDK. They always treated Luke with kid gloves because he was The Gay Character, and that goes back to the writing. Maybe a more dynamic actor would have inspired them to go there a bit more with the character.

I think by then, VH realized he wasn't going to get the type of material he might have wanted and was just going through the motions. That's my conjecture. He was excited in the beginning, and it showed, but after sticking around with nothing to do and then getting saddled with a very hollow love story and having to sell, sell, sell, it was pretty obvious that he was just over it. ESS was awesome, Reid was a great character (relatively speaking, at least - as great as he could have been on this particular show at that particular time). If that had been the story in 2007, then maybe things would have turned out a lot differently with Luke.

Jake Silbermann was awfully wooden the entire time he was on the show. He was SO not into it, and not to excuse VH, but sometimes it showed, to me at least, that VH was tired of doing the heavy lifting required to sell the couple. Don't get me wrong, I thought VH was downright dreadful by the last two years of the show's run, but I feel like he understood who the audience for this story was (not hip young kids but older gay men who were thrilled to see a young gay couple on the soap they'd been watching for decades) and he played to that. JS just followed his lead 95% of the time and never felt comfortable in the role. Once again, that's all just my opinion. After a few years of watching their stories unfold, I think I came to the conclusion that they should've just chalked the relationship up to Noah wanting to experiment but eventually going back to Maddie. They didn't play it was a triangle nearly as long as they should have, and in the end, Noah made more sense with Maddie (and JS was way more comfortable playing that). Luke would have been scorned, which would have been FINE because this is a soap, for Christ's sake, and he would have moved on with his life. If they'd had any sense, they would have taken their time to create a more complex character. Didn't we spend LOTS of time in the weekly threads crafting the perfect love interest for him? I think we wanted David Lago as sort of an eccentric rich kid with his head in the clouds. ITA!! I was always hoping/waiting for the news that a new Christina Hughes would show up. They missed a golden opportunity to have a Hughes who wasn't put-together as Bob's kids/grandkids, who really rocked the boat and played against everything the rest of the family wanted. Mary was pregnant with Christina for the big anniversary in 1986, so with her age adjusted for SORASing, she would have been around the same age as Chris and Katie. I'm one of the few people who really appreciated the Katie/Nancy dynamic, but Nancy would have been better served in her final years straightening out a granddaughter who wanted everything but to be a "damn Hughes." Shame on them for never bringing Christina on or at least ONE of the Ward quads. Like damn! I know they were really over the Stewarts after having them be so frontburner during the late 70s and early 80s, but when they were trying to rebuild the family in the 2000s, instead of giving us that unfortunate Dani Andropoulos recast or the random son of Emily and Larry McDermott, it would have been nice to have one or two of the quads show up. Their SORASing would have put them a little older than Chris, but hell, one of them could have been for Luke. One of them could have been for Katie so that they might have stopped putting her in the toxic orbit of Jack and The Angry Blonde One. Laurence Lau is the actor. He is most famous for playing Greg Nelson on AMC in the early 80s (of Greg & Jenny fame).

Luke's storyline was perfectly fine for the first year, IMO. Everything beginning with "the backrub" (LOLing at how excited we were over a goddamn backrub!) all the way through to Luke saving Kevin's life at Raven Lake was well-done (and I generally enjoyed the show as a whole, especially the younger set, during this time). Kevin's negative reaction was OK with me because it was contrasted by the other people in Luke's friendgroup being nothing but positive and supportive. I wanted them to do more with the family dynamic, but that was a problem running through the entire show at the time. Everything turned to sh!t when they backburnered the character for nearly a year and then decided the best remedy for that situation would be to spend approximately thirty-two seconds creating the Noah character and then squeezing the two into a coupling at WARP speed. I always maintained that they did it so quickly to placate the people who'd been upset about Luke's lack of storylines, which, OK! I was one of those people! But too many of the Nuke diehards were just so ready for Luke to have the teenage relationship they'd never had themselves that they were perfectly willing to fill in all of the blanks themselves in regards to the story. I used to write posts that were paragraph after paragraph trying to figure out WTF drew Luke and Noah together. Recall, Luke was not at all here for Noah when he first appeared at WOAK. He was annoyed because Maddie and Noah were being all flirty and cutesy with each other instead of working, then Luke dropped a box of VCR tapes, and Noah helped him pick them up. And THAT'S how Nuke began. WTF!!! But too many were desperate for anything at all, so they accepted it and rolled with it. For a while, I was cool with it, too, but once they started laying it on so thick with the two of them, I was over it. The crazy fans were saying that Luke and Noah were destined to be "the new Bob and Kim." FOH with that!! On a more positive note, HAPPY BIRTHDAY to our dearly departed pot-boiler. 60 years ago, that black and white globe spun for the first time, and daytime drama would never be the same. Cheers to you, World Turns!

She isn't actually with Gary anymore, thankfully, although they still haven't found anyone good for him (I'd say he's waiting for the right man...) Lord knows I haven't paid attention to the show in years, but I would've bought Gary being with a man back then, so I doubt it'd be hard to believe now. It would be too obvious to say "put him with Todd," and I know they've really screwed around with Todd since he's been back, so I don't know. I like the idea on the last page about there being a flat of young guys. It sorta brings to mind the old set up of Len, Roy, and Jerry, but in 2016, you can have one of them in a relationship with a guy and explore the dynamics of that.

Wait WHAT??? Izzy is still on this show? I could've sworn she was only set to be some short-term character the last time I regularly watched current episodes of this show maybe 5 or so years ago. She is not interesting enough to merit being around this long!! And with Gary. Yikes.

I distinctly remember CZ saying at the time of the 50th anniversary that she liked the triangle with Gunnar and James the best.

Is it possible that they were considering bringing Rick back to kill John? I always read that his main story in the early 70s was trying to ruin Bob's life, and once he succeeded in driving a big enough rift between Bob and Jennifer (enough to make Bob sleep with Kim), he left town. I would assume he left around the time Frannie was born onscreen, which I think is 1973 (I forget who was born first out of her and Emily).

Soap Central says 1972-1973.

Long story short, I was reading Helen Reddy's wiki page, and there were a few passages about how when she returned to singing for a few years, she refused to perform "Leave Me Alone (Ruby Red Dress)," written by Linda Laurie. I looked up LL to see what else she'd written, and lo and behold. "Ambrose. It's dark in hea."

This has to be my #1 favorite version of this great romantic classic. That bossa nova beat together with the tension from the strings in the opening verse...just sends chills up my spine.

He played Bill Winters. Their storyline was on the frontburner for several months in the reruns.

WHAT THE F-U-C-K IS THIS

Nothing drives this fact home more than Papa Bauer's death/funeral, where Meta is seen comforting Bert. Agreed. That, and at the service Meta isn't sitting in the front row, she's sitting behind Bert, Ed, and Mike. I haven't watched that episode in awhile, but did they even address Trudy at all? I don't think they did, but it's been a while since I've watched it in full, too. There were some of the obligatory "So-and-so called..." mentions early in the episode, but I don't think she was one of them. A while back, I did a thread on DTS about the "chosen" siblings of each major family on each soap, and Meta was one of the characters I had in mind when creating the thread. For whatever reason, Bill was the "chosen" Bauer sibling early on, and I guess they just felt there was no room for Meta to be the nucleus of her own long-term family unit. And really, Bert was the "chosen" Bauer more so than Bill. It's like how Chris was the "chosen" Hughes over Edith and John (and then Bob was "chosen" over Penny and Don).

As always, Miss Channel needs her ass kicked.

Nothing drives this fact home more than Papa Bauer's death/funeral, where Meta is seen comforting Bert.

What a fantastic episode from November 1972! The social studies teacher in me really appreciates the election coverage promos. Lois Kibbee is really an underrated legend. So many of the great leading ladies of this era were pros at taking pages of dialogue and bringing them to life with nuance and tone. The Emily/Carter scenes are the best in the episode. Chris Pennock has annoyed me since I first saw him as Jeb on DS reruns 15 years ago, Carl, so you're not alone. I liked him here, though. Andrea seems like she might have been the classic babyfied heroine of the late 60s/early 70s, the woman that everyone insists upon treating like a little girl, sorta like Liz on the Doctors circa 1967-1968. Neat to see Jordan Charney. Tony is pretty hot, and some quick research tells me that the actor is a very successful playwright, best known for On Golden Pond. And of course, how lovely to see that gorgeous painting in full, vibrant color!

I'm still stuck on this supermarket playlist from 1975. This one is so sassy and elegant, and then that harmonica breakdown comes in.

YES! I got excited when I saw the picture, and then you called me out like that. I will see Margo one day.

70s supermarket music was so soapy.

Mabel Christianson's letter reads like pure satire.