DRW50

Some of the backstage rumors involving Victoria make me less interested in ever seeing her in leading material, but I do agree there's more they could do with her. Leyla going will never make any sense to me. I blame that whole unit with David being ruined, again partly due to backstage issues. I do wonder if that would have been Steph's fate if Lorraine Chase hadn't wanted to leave.

I agree with you. It sucks that Valentini won't even go a little further. especially in key moments like Laura reuniting with her children. I wonder if he has convinced ABC this is the only way to save money and they don't care enough to disagree.

I was mostly thinking of her compared to Ellen, who generally always just had David, aside from brief periods. Claire was with Jim Lowell, then Doug, then Michael, for serious relationships. Thanks. I didn't realize they had gone that far. I guess it was the early '80s... You and @All My Shadows are both making great points about Nancy. I always enjoy seeing Nancy, but I felt like she was especially off the chain in that 1973 episode, whereas in some past episodes Grandpa was more of a balance. By the early '80s, with Grandpa gone and Chris not appearing as often, she could have really been a force, if the show had seen her value. Is he the one that Kim dated when she and Bob were separated? I knew he and Ellen dated but haven't watched enough of that time to realize they'd become intimate. I am glad Caso at least kept Pat Bruder on (until he was fired) but I am sorry we didn't get more of her finding a new love and life.

This is very dangerous and would be getting more attention in a press or a country that cared. Sadly, we live in a country where two major plane crashes in two days get a shrug and claims that anyone who isn't a white man was to blame are treated as profound wisdom. And JD Jaundice, replaced by Elon, spends his time arguing with failed Tories on social media about how real Christians want the world to be full of hate and pain. Exclusive: Musk aides lock government workers out of computer systems at US agency, sources say | Reuters https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/01/31/elon-musk-treasury-department-payment-systems/

A journalist who wrote an op-ed for the LA Times has said the owner (who also refused to let the paper endorse Kamala Harris) rewrote his op-ed to be pro RFK Jr. https://www.politico.com/news/2025/01/31/la-times-rfk-jr-opinion-patrick-soon-shiong-010210 Various media outlets are also being investigated and punished by Trump, even when some of them have given him favorable coverage for years. Trump’s FCC chief investigates NPR, PBS : NPR https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/pentagon-removes-major-media-outlets-nbc-news-dedicated-workstations-p-rcna190276

If you can find it through...whatever means, try to watch Marianne's infamous performances on SNL. Her voice was completely gone that night, but it's oddly haunting and enthralling, especially on the second song. It also fits the episode, which is among the most hellish and disorienting in the show's history. She later sang with Metallica, briefly, in a late '90s episode. A writeup of that night from her bio. https://justbackdated.blogspot.com/2014/05/marianne-faithfull-on-saturday-night.html

@prefab1 Thanks. I'd never seen that. He looks oddly like Van Hansis here (just with a mustache). Of course he played Michael... I imagine the complaining was another reason the Dobsons were fine with writing Jay out, although I'm not sure what story was left for him. Anything of him later on just seems to be about pride and money problems, the same tedium they would then give his replacement (Steve). He is right that they should have done more with a Jay/Lisa relationship. And then they teased again with Lisa and other younger men (Brad, Brian, the other Jay). Never happened. Lisa never had any stories with younger men. @EricMontreal22 you have probably already seen these, but Jay is in a number of the clips (full episodes chopped up) WLS posted from October 79-early 1980. Here's the first (he's in the last sections). @Vee I was going to say that killing Susan's son gave her a chance to be given more storylines than Ellen had, but I guess Denise Alexander leaving mostly put a stop to that. The odd part is they were fine with giving Ellen's mother Claire several love interests (at least until they realized they'd made her a great-grandmother and killed her). I suppose it's because she never had a steady partner. Or because she was labeled a "neurotic" so that meant more stories about men who didn't love her. Ellen always had David. By the time she didn't, they weren't really writing for her. I don't even know if she had any other serious love interest during the period she and David almost divorced.

That's a fun line. By this time Mac was such a thoroughly good character that they seem to be going overboard to show us how normal he is compared to elitist Iris. You never would have seen Palmer or Adam Chandler acting that way.

Thanks!

Thanks so much. Really appreciate the help. I'll add that.

Someone (not sure if they want to be named but if they do, I'll happily give them credit) kindly gave me an hour of clips (with some commercials) from summer 1984 and an hour of clips (with some commercials) from spring 1985. I don't know if these had ever been up before, but I don't see them at present. I don't want to clog up the thread so I'm just going to post the first link. You can already see some of the big shift in the show from only summer 84 to spring 85. Chris Marcantel is such a little live wire as Curtis - a shame later on they just wrote him as a psycho. There's a big argument between Ava and Stacey at about 25 minutes. Not sure if it is their first but it's a defining moment. (this is still Patty Lotz Ava, so different from what we'd have with Roya and Lisa)

I would guess they blame the ratings drops in part on longer scenes. I do think viewers can watch longer scenes, but the reports out now of younger people who can't read (even college kids) and can only watch video clips makes me less sure than I was in the past.

I'd imagine he was upset about Sasha being pregnant, while he had no real emotional investment with Brook Lyn being pregnant. They did poor Swickford (is that his name? Swickard...?) dirty with that cap. I wonder if he has lost his alpha podcaster beard as a sign that he and tradwife Brook Lyn are splitting up. Not to already pile on to the conversations about her attire, but she was dressed today like she was going to do a K-Mart ad with Rosie O'Donnell and Penny Marshall. Lois has a much more fun wardrobe.

I remember an SPW interview which had Jane, while on set as Tracy, making changes to the lighting. (wish she could do that with GH but of course that isn't her job anymore) I liked Roscoe as Nick, but he would have made sense as a Dane recast. Morgan as Ann also makes a lot of sense. I think this also would have been a natural time to bring back Lorna, maybe with a teenage adopted daughter (as otherwise she'd be blood related to most of the younger men in Corinth we knew of - although I guess there was Ava's son). She and Tess might team up against Ava but then when Lorna sees how wicked Tess is, she double crosses her. And you could pair Lorna up with Danny, if he was still on the show.

The show definitely hinted:

@GymnastGuy Thank you SO MUCH for your priceless uploads and it says a lot that Vance let you have them. We talk so much about what actors have and often just assume this material leaves us when the actors leave us. And I am amazed at hearing of scripts too (I didn't even know he started on OLTL in 1974). @EricMontreal22 I definitely see what you mean about ATWT and GL (and I agree that the other P&G soaps don't seem quite as stuck in a theme from the scraps we have of them in that period). What's around of Search, AW, or Edge are a bit more current for the time period.

Thanks for reminding us of the history with Wakefield and Loving, which I always forget. I think Agnes' choices start to seep in after some of the initial material, although we have so little available it's hard to say (I'd give her credit for Ava and Kate, at least). The good news is if you go to the New Day In Eden/Loving Friends and Perfect Couples thread, a full New Day in Eden episode was finally put on Youtube earlier this month. We've gotten so much this month I am now going to feel spoiled for the upcoming drought.

@EricMontreal22 Great to see you on here again. Welcome back! We definitely appreciate all this material being uploaded, especially in today's climate where you never know what tomorrow will be, if there is a tomorrow. I remember Joe Stuart mainly for all the stuff about Courtney, Slezak, etc. but I can also see where his changes may have moved the show into a direction it needed to go in. There are stories under his pen that are hard to imagine happening before him, like the tragedy of Lana. I'm just sorry for some of the changes that were made that probably didn't have to be, like getting rid of Nancy Pinkerton. You're right about how different the P&G soaps were to ABC at this time, based on the material we now finally have available to watch. Even if the GL episodes were a tad stodgy in places, I think sticking to their traditional format worked for them. The attempts to ABC-ify both shows in the early '80s would be a big mistake, and ATWT only recovered when they managed to find the middle ground between modernizing and their roots (GL never really managed to fully recover).

Thanks for finding a timeframe. I hope we get to see some of this someday. I wish they hadn't made Rick such a full heel.

Sarah was originally meant to be on an Aremid or DAYS spinoff that never was, right? Now that Aremid is back they may as well call it a spinoff.

I'm guessing the latter.

https://deadline.com/2025/01/little-house-prairie-melissa-gilbert-megyn-kelly-wokeify-gripe-netflix-1236273929/