DRW50

Lateasha 'Sweet Tea' Lunceford Leaving Bravo's 'Married To Medicine' After 2 Seasons

The show isn't great right now, but I do hope it can stay on, unlikely as that may be. I guess at least it's better than this time last year. I will say it doesn't really feel like Shortland Street anymore.

The biggest joke is many of the people who are upset over this would not be saying a word if he had their position on Gaza. As you've said before, he was always what he is now, it's just this was seen as their idea of a blue-collar Bernie hero. The story of how he treated that jogger was all I needed to know.

If they show clips of Terry Lester and Alex Donnelly I will watch.

I don't think they were the biggest factor, but I do think there's a specific style to Dano's work that wasn't helped by how pointless her character often felt (and later on the various writers clearly saw the character as a joke).

Sorry, just realized I'd somehow lost a whole paragraph in that last post.

Thanks @Paul Raven They should have brought Billy back in the early '90s for more drama with Hart and Blake. Maybe Blake would have gotten involved with him to try to ruin him in Roger's eyes, but realize under his sweet nature, Billy was a player himself.

Long ago, this Rachel fan channel uploaded a number of clips of Rachel with Felicia during the alcoholism story, and this one in particular stands out for me. And then you have this scene, which is the dark mirror of the above, especially the final moment: Felicia started out as camp bitch on a very dreary show (with Cecile being the only somewhat fun character around that point) and then got into a lot of comedy. Some of the comedy was very stupid, but many viewers still felt drawn to it, to Lily, Cecile, Cass, Felicia, Kathleen, Wallingford. There was a vibrancy which Dano fit well in, her fashions and melodrama parodied in a gentle way. This was missing in some of the long-suffering parts she'd had on shows like ATWT. By the late '80s, especially after Wallingford's death, those times were gone, and Donna Swajeski added further misery to Felicia with the Gold Street backstory. Luckily, after a bit of time the show found a good framing for this new twist on Felicia. The stories with finding and losing a love from her past, learning that a woman she hated was the daughter she'd spent years searching for, sinking into alcoholism, they all fit into the type of material suited for the '40s and '50s screen goddesses. When Dano tried some of this old weepy type of material when she went back to ABC, it mostly fell flat, as the atmosphere wasn't the same and her character always felt shoehorned in. It worked perfectly at this period on AW because you had Iris, you had Rachel, you had Donna - you had a number of tough-but-vulnerable women of a certain age, most of them grandmothers by this point, but still trying to find love, find themselves. This is what AW could have had earlier if they hadn't dumped Pat and Alice, but better late than never. This is an approach you saw more often on British soaps than on US soaps, which for a number of years respected women in that age group. Both UK and US soaps have done away with this, both countries having the ladies devolve into perpetual ingenues (with added doses of endlessly self-aware camp in the UK) or just being shipped off entirely. You could even see that on AW with the treatment of Iris (shipped off, never to be mentioned again, too old to return), Donna (repeatedly humiliated and crippled), Felicia (regressed into degrading herself with married John), Rachel (mother to newborn twins, put into lengthy periods of trauma through her new relationship with Carl).

Thanks again @Paul Raven The Arlene/Ben/Betsy triangle is one I wish I could see for myself as on paper it doesn't tend to excite me but I can see how well-constructed it was. I wish I could see the Rick/Meg relationship too, although I wish they'd had him genuinely fall for Meg after he gets together with Cal. The whole Brooke/Deacon/Bridget story on B&B was horribly damaging to Brooke as a character but it was dramatically very sound because I could completely believe Deacon would fall for messy and vulnerable Brooke after finally settling down with the more docile Bridget.

Thanks!

IIRC, there was fan outcry when viewers realized Donna was going to be killed, although someone more in the know might have a better idea. Donna was always more popular with viewers than she probably should have been, which I credit Stuart for. I do agree she would have been easier to write out than Felicia or Rachel. Cass and Donna dated briefly during the Malone run (late 1997). http://www.anotherworldhomepage.com/cassd.html AW should have invested much more in Quinn than they did. All the pieces were in place for her to, at the very least, have a steady build in importance the way Jessica did on ATWT at that time. AW had moved away from usual patterns by bringing Henrietta and Quinn into the show to diversify the canvas. What always bothers me is the comment an AW person gave to SOD after fan complaints over Quinn's death - essentially, they did not know Quinn had any fans. Says it all.

Marnie Schulenburg's widower. She was such a strong person. (I did not realize he played the Tucker Carlson knockoff on Succession)

I don't believe JFP wanted rid of Donna because she was isolated. She wasn't any more isolated than most characters on the show at that point. JFP just couldn't live out her fantasies with Anna Stuart the way she could with Linda Dano. She degraded the character instead, as happened to Donna under a number of regimes. Donna, Rachel and Felicia were never characters who were all over the canvas. Felicia probably had the most reach of the three, as she ran restaurants for a decade, but they had their own spheres. Rachel had a large role in Felicia's alcoholism storyline, as Felicia tanked her relationship with Cory Publishing and then her drinking caused her to start a fire at the TV studio, meaning Rachel had to fire her from her talk show. Rachel was at Felicia's failed intervention. Felicia and Donna had some back and forth during that strange period where Donna was dating Cass.

Nothing about Joss ever works. I can't blame them for trying a completely fresh approach for her, but she needs to be written out.

Thanks @Paul Raven Some of this sounds strong but it's all so heavy and some elements, like with Felicia and Charles, almost veer on parody. L&L seemed to almost always be a heavy show aside from some stuff we read about with Bill and Tess, but I do wonder if it all became too much for viewers.

Thanks for finding that. I may have been thinking of this blog entry.

A shame the Ben/Thomasina tease didn't go anywhere. I didn't know until last year that they brought Thomasina back a few days before Quinn was murdered. I guess it's nice that they got those last moments of happiness but then you remember they never would have brought her back if they weren't going to kill Quinn off.

I wonder if that's why Valerie quit. I think some of the magazines at the time implied issues with Valerie and the producer, although I may be wrong. Painting Diana as going bad would have made more sense to me near the end of her run.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2025/05/07/holocaust-museum-board-trump-siggy-flicker-real-housewives/

Thanks. I'd forgotten about that. It is odd she wasn't asked back. Maybe they just gave up. Harley/Philip is one of those relationships which lingered on longer than it should have. I never got the sense the show had any great interest in them together beyond the first six months or so, and there was little to no chemistry between them after that point.

I am probably veering more toward the classic thread, but I felt like her original run had her more as a moral voice for the Quartermaines than was needed (I thought her connections with Sonny and Brenda made more sense). Sonny, Carly and Jason are all suffering the consequences of being too prominent for too long. They are above any relationships due being unable to form human connections. I do still wonder just what their original plans were for Jason this time, if they even had any.

Sharina? @alwaysAMC I am glad you've kept writing about the Brent story all the way through. I think that Beaty may have had to briefly leave again, rather than scenes being aired out of sequence, but I'm not sure. You are right that the reveals of Brent's various reasons for being what he was bog down the end of the story a bit, although based on what is to come in 1996 I still kind of wish Beaty had stayed another year. I'd forgotten J and Michelle were tied to the end of the story. This J is generally just gross. I don't really remember much of anyone caring about Nadine dying outside of her family. The worst part was Frank just giving a rose and saying it was from Harley, which made me very mad at the time. I am not sure if Beth Ehlers was asked to return and declined. Luckily this is addressed when she does return. I felt like it was one of those stories that was done via mandate - trying to keep the ratings gains they had, via more location shoots, more adventures, more secrets, etc. Tony, Annabelle and Jim were thrown in as they were meant to be important to the show at the time.

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/lifestyle/shortland-street-fears-speculation-grows-about-shows-future-amid-industry-struggles/T2GECWXTI5AD3AMEV46YYYUE6E/ Still a big cloud over whether the show will get another year.

He also lost the woman he was going to marry, under very sudden circumstances. They are probably surprised Rena has wanted to stay. I think Lois works OK in her current capacity, if they allowed her to have more of a point of view, a bit more life of her own, and not just the reason for Gio's paternity being hidden. The character always felt very thin to me and on paper this dynamic with Tracy, Brook Lyn, Gio, visits from Gloria could be better for her than how overly centered she was on the canvas the first time around. But as of now she could be better used. Somehow the show that was revived due to supercouples seems completely alien to romance. The older cast has this hardest but even with tiers who are younger or middle-aged, they've really dragged their feet about Liz and Lucky, they have contorted themselves in trying to figure out how to pair a man with Joss, Kai and Trina barely get focus...and others I struggle to remember. They also blew up Sasha/Cody so now I guess we're meant to be waiting to see if she finds true love with Jason? The show is so hesitant and when you are this hesitant it means you are incapable of writing romance.

Apparently not. Given CBS/Paramount's current struggles, this is also catnip for anyone at the network who may want rid of the show, or soaps in general. @janea4old I always appreciate how thorough your writeups are on topics like this. It sucks that MVJ did likely try her best to schedule these episodes in a way that would spare them from the preemptions and it still didn't happen.