DRW50

Durkin was awful. The writing did her no favors, but she was all wrong for the part, lacking the mix of mystery, steeliness, sorrow and hesitancy that defined Victoria. I still have the awful memory of Adam lugging her around like a rag doll. She looked much more like one of the Blue Whale dancing extras than Victoria. And her voice... Maybe I am too harsh. With that said, Curtis didn't seem as bothered. I see from a fan review mentioning Barnabas & Company that Durkin was asked to return for Victoria's final episodes and declined as she had a Christmas trip to Europe with her husband planned and wasn't interested in just a few appearances. I refuse to believe Victoria actually died during the Leviathan storyline. If Barnabas and Angelique could come back 8 times, she could come back a few.

I'm not even sure why Zoe would care, even if they know each other offcamera. I can't see Jean going, but if she is - good riddance at this point.

I have to admit Annie exhausted me somewhat before she went nuts. So much anxiety. She and Robert were OK I guess. Didn't ever stick out much one way or the other.

Unfortunately, that period of the show would likely just put you to sleep. A part of me agrees, as I do think Robert is a good actor (better than I gave him credit for at the time), but I'm not sure, aside from Harley, how much he ever clicked with other ladies. He did have some spark with Crystal Chappell. I know there were claims they didn't get along either, although I remember reading somewhere (I think) a story about how Michelle was panicking when they had to film the rope ladder scenes in Venezuela, and Kim had to help her through...and Kim had also had a bit to drink. (I hope I have the details right)

Oh I knew it was common (I did not realize Muenker's channel was gone - I'm glad I saved all those videos). I just didn't realize it was the case with the rape episode. I never really felt like she dominated the show in her second stint either, although I can see where she probably did. I can feel it more in some of her first run, because the show was much different before she came in and suddenly a woman we'd seen for a year was [!@#$%^&*] and marrying an entire family. In that sense Reva is more like Babe than Erica Kane. One of the more infamous AMC lines was, "Babe is love." You just know HB would have said that line about Reva at some point.

I initially read this as Marilyn Manson and did a double take. Thanks for the screen grabs. The outfits are horrible. Somehow Victoria's Miss Piggy dress is the best. Ashley looks like a French madam bent on revenge, and Abby looks like she hot glued lace scraps to her garbage bag.

The implication that Rita saying Roger raped her was done for the sake of his rape trial with Holly is interesting, as that wasn't really the case. Maybe it was if you just watched the show, I don't know as I've never seen the episodes, but the Dobsons wrote it as a rape between Roger and Rita and then wrote the Roger and Holly rape in part because of the show turning what he did to Rita into a seduction. I did not realize the only reason the Roger and Holly rape material exists is due to the actors saving it. I guess P&G didn't start saving their material until very late in 1979, based on the German DVD release.

That's an interesting point. I generally think of Long as taking inspiration from Tennesse Williams and other Southern writers. The only one that comes close for CBS soaps may be Lucinda Walsh or Sally Spectra, and maybe those grotesque later years of Stephanie Forrester where she kept beating people up and attacking them with canes.

I also do not like the bits I've seen with Delia during Labine's 83 return. I am glad when she came back for the last time in 1986, she allowed Delia to move on from Frank.

Thanks. I barely remember any of the backstory there, just his ties to her parents. It was all so convoluted, everything with Tangie.

An early TV role for Carolyn Groves, the Victoria recast we deserved.

They are pretty rough in 1981 too, although at least we know the characters.

Roger mostly just had a conscience if it affected him, although there were a few bits here and there. Didn't he look out for Tangie out of loyalty to her parents? Even at the time I don't know if I could have argued that Roger had been ruined, given that he had raped two women, but there was a complexity in the writing for Roger for most of his return until Laibson/McTavish. He just became a one-note heel. Even worse, I just found Dinah completely unwatchable as Wendy Moniz was incapable of playing a heroine (I know even the best could not have made that material work).

There are details through the thread, but yes, as mentioned, she hated Ellen Wheeler, and lambasted her for crying a lot, for her decisions with firing and Peapack, etc. Back in the day she also hated Pam Long, who created Reva and gave Reva all of her best material. The producers or writers she liked most seemed to be those who saw Reva in the most generic of molds, although she likely doesn't see it that way. She was OK on OLTL; I think @Vee could probably give a better summary. She was earthy and added her usual hard work to some trash material. There was nothing special going on, as yet again with patron saint Carlivati it was all plot, no character, and he cared more about writing for a cutesy child character. You're right about what they could have done with Reva. Reva, Erica, and any women who are in story long enough face this problem. The biggest difference is Reva was allowed to age (even with the post-menopausal baby), which Erica was not.

Happy birthday to the best of the best.

Some awkward vibes in the interview, although it was interesting to hear him talk about Knots Landing and also mention that he was writing a primetime project with Ken Corday (did that go anywhere?). He also mentions plans to leave again eventually for a primetime soap.

I know it won't last but I'm glad GH got the boost. They tried much harder than I thought they would to make the Nurses' Ball dramatic this year, in ways that mattered.

She was great on there. And Wings. And so many shows. I don't feel like we get those character actors as much now.

Valerie Mahaffey Dead: ‘Northern Exposure,’ ‘Dead to Me’ Actress Was 71 Loved her. I've never seen her Doctors work.

Valerie Mahaffey Dead: ‘Northern Exposure,’ ‘Dead to Me’ Actress Was 71 I just loved Valerie on my early '90s TV shows. This one gets me.

I assume they did at some point during the finale...

It probably should have worked better with Fluckers as that character did not have as much baggage, but even if they'd cast someone who could act, I'm not sure it would have mattered, as I guess it won't here. Jason Thompson did some good work on GH, but any time I see him on Y&R (I don't watch a ton, admittedly), he just looks like he needs prune juice.

Some of my first memories of GL are Reva's last episodes before she "died." As a kid, those moments were extremely dramatic, and it did make the character a bit of a legend in my mind, even though the show quickly moved on, due to the departure of Robert Newman. Due to this, I was never really upset when Reva came back. I think if the show had been in better shape, I might have been, but at the time, if I felt like anyone was eating up the show, it was Dinah. I would have taken Reva any day, even though it was clear even then that the show did not really know how to use her, saddling her with the busted Alan pairing, then at Fifth Street, and the stalled-out reunion with Josh. I got the sense the show didn't really know what tone to take with Reva and maybe even resented her a little. I missed her relationship with Sarah, and I knew Reva wasn't what she could have been. Once Rauch arrived, he put the pedal to the medal with Reva. She was centered, whereas under Laibson she had been a "big" name awkwardly fit into the canvas. She also became even more generic, and after the initial exciting Annie vs Reva tangles, the show fell into a long list of iffy story ideas that were clearly just there to keep her in story rather than benefiting the character (the island, the island hunk, the clone, San Cristobel, Jeva breakup #40, a talk show, blindness, time travel, stalking, etc.) But I never felt like Kim lost her step, and unlike Beth Ehlers, I never felt like Kim herself lost her spark in dreary material. I don't think I disliked Reva even then nor did I feel like there were times she was suffocating other characters. I think this is, again, more down to the rest of the show by this point - it was much more superficial than the GL I had started watching. Much duller. If Vanessa and Holly had been in their best years when Reva had returned, if Bev's Alex had still been around, if a new generation of compelling and complicated heroines or anti-heroines on par with Blake, Harley, even Eleni in the early '90s had been around, I would have been more annoyed at Reva's presence. But they weren't, and the few newer young characters I did connect with, like Drew, certainly had their share of story. There were reports of rivalries with rising names like Cynthia Watros, but it was clear Watros was not going to stay even if she and Kim had been BFF, which meant I never blamed Kim for that loss of dynamism in the cast. So Reva never really bothered me. However, I do get annoyed at the narrative of Zimmer the brave truthteller, Zimmer holding the show together, Zimmer as the show's face, and so forth. She was certainly a key part of GL's last years, she's a tough person who is willing to admit flaws, she always gave everything to her work, she had a legion of devoted fans. Reva just was never a character who brought me that level of love or hate. And in the end I don't think her contributions to the show, good or bad, were ever as meaningful as they are meant to be. It's just that history remembers the personalities, especially with a juicy memoir. I think that her influence is overhyped, and so are her instincts for the role, as the producer she intensely disliked is the one I think gave her most of her best material post 1990. When I think of GL, I don't ever think of Reva first, and even in the show's barest years when she was one of the only "stars," I did not. When I think of GL, it's always going to be Vanessa, or Ross, or Ed and Maureen, or Beverlee, or early Harley, or young Bill and Michelle, or Gilly, or Hamp, or Billy, or Henry, or Sherry's Blake...or just GL itself, such a nuanced, messy show, nothing else on daytime like it, not then, not now.

Thanks so much. There's a lot of stuff there I never would have known of.