DRW50

I don't have very much of 1979 - Paul Raven has posted some 1979 recaps before, and hopefully those are still available. Not totally sure on the dates, but I think this is from the 11-6-79 issue.

I never knew that about Pam. I think she was called Pammy. Wish we'd seen her on AW. I wonder if Rachel ever even met her. I liked Felicia and Mitch, although I also kind of wish we'd seen more of him with Rachel. SOD said around the time Jenna arrived that AW was going to recast Lisa. Clearly that never happened. Do you know anything about that? I've also spent too much time wondering why SOD mentioned Jamie/Brittany and Cass/Amanda pairings (this was when Schentzer has first returned as Cass, in summer 87 - I assume that the story would have been Rex fleecing Amanda. I don't know).

Who was Pam? I never understood why they got rid of Nancy. I think the actress was too sugary to be a relative to Ada or Rachel, but they could have recast after some time away. Reginald should have brought drama but he was so hammy, Donna was so dumbed down, and Peter just became a sniveling lapdog. Why not have Peter as a strong, positive force against Reginald, vying for head of the family? Why make his children so weak? What was the point? The biggest problem AW had in the mid 80's, IMO, was trying to cast "names" - with the exception of David Forsyth, they all failed. The only new hires who developed a following were newcomers, like RKK, Sandra Reindhart, Anne Heche.

I think Maisie and Quinn died because they were "of a certain age," and the show seemed to feel they already had enough of that age group - they were also easy targets, as they weren't core characters. Julie Osburn left the show. I'm not sure what happened with Nicole (I assume they felt the actress that was there in late 1986 wasn't working out - or they decided to drop the Nicole/Michael story). Probably the same went for Vicky. I'm not sure what happened with MJ, other than Sally Spencer paying the price for a lousy story. I also thought that Lisa was saddled with such an ugly backstory - raped as a young girl and stalked by said rapist, cursed with psychic powers that make her "die" each time someone was killed by her stalker. Not to mention the weak pairing with Jamie. It's too bad that Joanna Going never really had her chance to shine.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGfhWCjBnwI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Df2vIOCyOFY

Her being ushered out of town also bothers me. I think part of it was just that the story didn't seem very popular and she was easy to write out, but it also seems like a cheap exit. DePriest seemed to preside over a lot of hostility towards women in both of her stints as AW headwriter. Both times there are storylines about women being slaughtered. Her writing for Donna, both times, was horrid (and she and JFP would have killed Donna off in 1996 if viewers hadn't complained).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91AnxGw6ly4

This is the start of the story - when MJ runs into a prostitute who used to know her. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdFyekSah5E&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL 1987 recaps. http://www.igs.net/~awhp/aw1987.html Essentially, MJ was hiding her past as a prostitute; Chad Rollo, who had once been her pimp and/or lover, came to town. She still had feelings for him, but loved Adam, who was an upstanding detective. She tried to keep her past a secret, stealing a black book that had her name in it as a hooker. Chad became friendly with her younger sister, Cheryl, to make her jealous. Chad got a video of MJ from when she was with a john. Two thugs stole the tape from him and a gangster began blackmailing them. After more wrangling over this, Wallingford and Chad stole the tape from the gangster, but the gangster still had a copy, which was sent to Adam. It seems like a very sordid story, and one of many around this time which presented women as weak, pathetic, desperate.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AWTzz84ZfQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzIZQGttaZI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLhcM-Pdiik&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL

It's strange, because his head looks pasted on. I know he had a great body, it's just that photo which seems pasted together.

What did you think of those torrid stable scenes between them when she still thought he was (whatever he went by when he was pretending not to be Max)?

So you liked both Maxs then?

I was just watching the August 5 94 episode, when Erica had just found Mona and called Joe. Susan played the shock of it all very believably; I can't say enough good things about that long, quiet scene at the end where Erica looked through Mona's purse. Nothing like that would be on TV now. What was it she said Mona always had - a stick of gum? The part about the driver's license, expired, got to me. I was never a fan of Ray McDonnell in these dramatic scenes - he often relied on a nervous grin - but I was moved when he told Ruth "Our circle has become smaller." It was a touching nod to that original core and how special they were. In a lot of ways I'm kind of glad AMC left soon after most of that original core was gone - the show without Mona, Myrtle, Phoebe, Nick, certainly functioned, but wasn't quite hte same.

February 27, 1979 Digest

It's the bellbottoms. I kept trying to figure out if she'd wandered into Collinwood's foyer set.

Marilyn Chris left OLTL for a year or two. Lee Lawson, probably best known as Bea Reardon on GL, replaced her. I'm not quite sure why they were so quick to recast these roles of the supporting characters like Anna, Wanda, Vince, as none of the recasts seemed to work out.

Wow, there's that OTT camp queen Barbara which is one of the things that drove me away from ATWT. It sounds so silly to say Barbara is too OTT, but there's a certain line where you still know you're seeing a character, and where you see an actress playing hammy writing. Bailey Chase isn't as old as I remembered him looking at the time; perhaps I was just put off because Dunphy looked so young. Still don't like Jen.

It tells you how much I was watching at this time - for some reason I thought Mick Hazen was already playing Parker. Clearly not.

I never knew she was on there. The photo looks so unlike any other I've seen of her. Did you see her on Dallas? I don't think I did.

Can those who were watching in those years tell me when Phoebe accepted Donna?

January 1979 Digest

I think Labine or JFP started that hostility and bitterness in OLTL, and it's sort of hovered ever since, aside from a year or two here and there. There's often a feeling that the show is skirting going to some kind of insane hell - they've had about 50 serial killer stories in the last decade. Generally I never got that feeling with ATWT, aside from the Sheffer years. OLTL is a very unique show, and I always feel a little odd watching it because the years I enjoyed most are from before I ever actually started watching it. But writers like RC IMO tend to have a lot of built up resentment for soaps or soap viewers and it seeps through to the entire canvas. There are occasional episodes which have some community and fun which isn't built around sexual perversions - the last was Bo and Nora's 2010 wedding.

That's true. Sometimes SOD just wanted to run photos, I guess, and came up with a caption to fit them (for instance, showing an actor going to the Emmys, and then saying ____ is in good spirits/is dressed up for a fun night). Maybe they didn't interact onscreen.