DRW50

GH isn't that character-driven a show in recent decades. I think reaction depends on whether the character has a passionate fanbase. A character like Ava always has people who will defend her and back her up, as does a character like Nina (when they used to write for Nina, anyway). Dante doesn't.

https://deadline.com/2025/05/night-court-canceled-nbc-1236391772/ I wonder if Melissa Rauch was pretty sure the show was ending and that's why she did what she had for the finale twist. Mostly just sorry to see more scripted shows canned for yet more sports.

An Another World episode from around October 7th, 1993 just popped up with Beth in the credits as Nurse Stanton.

A partial episode from June 1985 was uploaded - I don't think it's been up before. You get Susan Marie Snyder's brief appearance. In a lengthy set piece where Rick is going undercover in some punk bar, he introduces himself to her. There's a surprising moment where when she says her name is Sam, he is thrown and is about to ask a very personal question before she further explains that it is short for Samantha. Grant Show is one of those guys who is classically very good looking, but I'm not sure how often I've ever actually felt attracted to him. This episode is an exception. He just looks hot as hell in what they put him in and how they do his hair and face. I can't say I go back to this period of the show very often, but I certainly am glad I watched this one.

@slick jones An episode (maybe the only episode?) of Susan Marie Snyder's Ryan's Hope stint has popped up. July 1985. Her character's name is Samantha. I'll post the video in the show's thread.

I could see the second as happening. I could also see him switching to independent like Manchin and Sinema and Eric Adams.

I didn't like the Harry story, but Nazar did have a great introduction. He was probably the highlight of last year. Now that you mention it, I guess the truly dire stories (Nicole, Harper/Drew/Phil, Nicole) didn't start until summer.

He'll probably return when whatever is going on between Marco and Lucas hits the rocks.

And her evolution was so subtly done. There was nothing like the depraved shows later on, like Game of Thrones, where they said a woman needed to be raped in order to find empowerment. The layers of Laura were what got me hooked on Knots, somewhere in the season 3 repeats. And I agree that her becoming a therapist would have made sense - look at how much her trauma over her mother drove her decisions early on.

In some ways, the scene of Greg kissing Paige in front of Laura (or at least when she's at home) is tough to take as it feels like they are building his next romance in front of the woman they are dumping from the canvas, but I do appreciate that Laura was in no way bothered. She knew Paige wasn't a threat, and she also knew that even if Greg did move on, she had come through worse and wasn't going to let herself be in a Richard-like marriage ever again. I'm also glad they didn't ever try to have her choose a wife for him - not a fan of that trope. (although she probably would have chosen anyone, including Leona Helmsley, over Abby)

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.