DRW50

Robin Strasser's best performance?

To me the biggest problem with Somerset seems to be why was it created in the first place? Carol Roux left after six months...they had no way of guessing that? Ann Wedgworth was probably an obvious candidate for leaving too - I'm surprised she stayed as long as she did. They did cast other very talented actors like Marie Wallace and Georgann Johnson but there never seemed to be a structure. I've only seen two episodes - one on a tape (India and her husband were arguing in an empty dining room or something), and one put on Youtube.

That's true. I guess you might say there was a certain mania not quite there in Marland's writing that could sometimes be fun, but he knew his strengths and he also knew how to get the best out of other writers, it seems, and the cast. The only criticism I would have is that I think it was a mistake to continue to rely as much on the Snyder farm by the early 90's - stuff like Hutch and Rosanna. Rosanna in particular was a dull retread.

I hadn't seen this before. It's when Viki first arrives in Heaven. Some cool, and very 80's, effects.

That was C. David Colson, who does look handsome - I think that's kind of what suits Tom best, the stiff upper lip guy with classic looks (as Gregg Marx also had). I wonder if they always had a clear story plan with Tom/Carol/Natalie, and if they had Tom marry Natalie because she was so nice and so stable, which he never had growing up. Then he was drawn to a woman who was closer to what he was used to, which was Lisa. Then you had Joyce, who was also hovering around the Hughes family in these years. They seemed to run out of ideas for Tom in the late 70's - what if Joyce had seduced him? Imagine Lisa's fury, and the collective outrage of the Hughes family. Marcia is a bit crazy but it can be passed off as just obsessing over Douglas. It's very clever though because you genuinely don't see any reason to believe Doug is the one who is killing people. I think the last good villain ATWT had was Claire Bloom's Orlena.

October 17 1989 Digest.

October 31, 1989 Digest. I'm not sure of the exact date on this but the material in question ran in early to mid-October 1989, so I guess this was probably a November issue. There was also a thing about one of the characters impersonating Elvis.

March 21 and April 4 1989.

Thank you both so much for all of this detail. I feel like I have seen the show now, thanks to both of you. I have to admit the stories sound a bit cliched, but it's all in the execution. I'm sorry that it was such a horrible experience. What other soaps was Jaffe involved in? I read in an early 70's Daytime TV that he wanted to do a soap called Three for Justice. The Hud story sounds very creepy. Francie seems to be in the middle of one trauma after another. That story reminds me of the one about the man who made his lover's corpse into a wax figure and kept it in his home for years and years. Who played the professor?

August 22, 1989 Digest.

Ha. I know that was too long...I almost cut out the first part, which had little to do with Somerset, but I kept it mostly to build up to the second part.

Thanks. I thought that was Frances' daughter but I kept getting her mixed up with Marta Heflin, who would have been too old. I guess I wondered if they could have just said this was a woman from Jay's past, since we knew little of him before 1984 (other than growing up as the rebellious son of the McColl housekeeper). I don't mind camp when it helps to illuminate characters or isn't just done for the sake of camp. I thnk you can see that in some of his GL work, especially with Vanessa. It's not as heavy at ATWT, but Marie is very very campy. I'd love to hear Mady's thoughts on the role, as she gives one hell of a performance (especially in some of the post-death scenes where a vision of Marie terrorizes Marcia). I don't know if there was a change in the casting department when Calhoun arrived, but it seems like generally the casting got much stronger by late 1985.

April 1977 Daytime TV Stars Deborah Channel's Serial Review - Somerset...What Went Wrong? Many people who don't watch the soaps, but are interested in learning about them, ask me these days: "What exactly is a soap opera?" On the surface, the question seems a little silly; after all, most people do have some idea of what soaps are. The average person in the street would probably answer that soaps are tearful stories, aimed primarily at housewives, and aired in the daytime. But that conception, as we are leaning, is too simple. And so it is really not so silly to ask of a soap addict, who is also a thinking person: "What exactly is a soap opera?" Well, let's start with the basics. Soap operas are not just stories, but continuing stories. Typically, they re aired on a daily basis. Each soap must have a set of characters who remain fairly constant from year to year, although, over a long period of time, some main characters may vanish (be "written out') and other new ones may appear. Usually, though not always, the soaps attempt to re-enact the daily family lives of more or less normal people; in this regard, the soaps are different from sitcoms or crime shows, which find their characters in extraordinarily abnormal worlds. yes, it would also be fair to add to the definition of soap opera, that it is an emotional medium, aiming to effect the heart before the mind - but he bet soaps d o involve viewers in questions of moral dilemmas, and therefore are cerebral as well. It's important to add, too, that the soaps are emotional because the viewers are so involved with the characters. And unless there is continuity of characters, a soap cannot possibly be strongly involving to viewers. Many years ago James Thurber wrote an oft quoted paragraph in his series of articles on the radio soaps for The New Yorker, in which he defined soap opera in these terms: "A soap opera is a kind of sandwich...Between thick slices of advertising, spread twelve minutes of dialogue, add predicament, villainy, and female suffering in equal measure. throw in a dash of nobility, sprinkle with tears, season with organ music, cover with a rich announcer sauce, and serve five times a week." Even in Thurber's day the soaps were more complex and cerebral than he was portraying them. Today, Thurber's paragraph wouldn't be accurate at all. If we stick to the idea of continuity of characters in a fairly normal family environment (it can be five times s a week or merely once a week, as with nighttime's Family and Rich Man, Poor Man), admit that the immediate appeal is more emotional than intellectual but with ramifications that do become intellectual, then we have a good answer for: "What exactly are the soaps?" Now suppose one of our non-soap-watching friends wanted more than just an answer, but an example. That's harder. There simply is no way to discover what soaps are by just watching a few episodes. I think that's why so few slick magazine pieces on the soap phenomenon sound authentic. The writers can't afford to spend more than a week watching Days of Our Lives or One Life to Live, and so emerge from their daytime TV screens with slip-shod ideas. But if our curious friend were really curious, and were willing to get caught up in a show for months at a time, or even a few years, then I would say he can learn the definition of soap opera through example. But hold on! Not all soaps are good examples of soaps! For example, Somerset would have been a terrible program from which to imbibe the nature of a soap. For what would that curious friend have seen on Somerset, say during the course of its six year existence on NBC, before the network removed it? He would have seen, during the first few years of the show's life, several lawyers - Sam Lucas (Jordan Charney) and Ben Grant (Ed Kemmer) - their wives, and their children, mixed up in highly abnormal situations involving murder, insanity, corporate intrigue (all that Delaney Brands stuff, if you'll recall), churned in with a little bit of romance and sex scandals. Our curious friend would have gotten the impression that soap operas were like nighttime crime shows, like Kojak. Well, if the friend was able to last another year with Somerset, he would have seen the introduction of a character called Julian Cannell (Joel Crothers), and the whole bevy of pathologically disturbed women he either married, fell in love with, or both. By now, the Lucases, and the Delaneys, would have been gone; in fact, the only character from the original story lines left to remind viewers there had been an original story line was Ellen Grant (Georgann Johnson), and she had suddenly become quite a curious widow. She and her daughter Jill Grant (Susan MacDonald) - now also widowed - were beginning to compete over younger men. Ellen began driving around town on a motorcycle and sleeping with a young man suspected of mass murder! Woops! Now that sounds a little like Mary Hartman, Mary Harman - a deliberate spoof on the soaps. During a period of six years, our viewer friend would see one character after another suddenly introduced, and then just as suddenly, at the completion of a story line, went away. The viewer would also have noticed a curious lack of theme - that is, some sort of continuing idea or feeling or mood - along with the fragmented stories and the characters who came and went. "Aha!" says our viewer friend; "soap operas aren't about anything really. It's sort of like taking a lot of nighttime once-a-week shows, and squeezing them together on a daily basis, like a stylistic hodgepodge of re-runs. You can sort of tune in and tune out without losing very much, for what you see this year will have little to do with what you saw last year. The Greg Mercer (Gary Swanson) story didn't have much to do with anything, and when Greg was killed off he might just as well not have existed at all as far as the other characters were concerned. And then there was Eve Lawrence (Bibi Besch) and Ned Paisley (James Congdon). I was just starting to get interested in their story when all of a sudden they got married and then went to St. Thomas for a short vacation and never returned. Then Tony and Ginger Cooper just disappeared. Just like Rhoda. You can see a character on week, and the next week, he's gone. Well, Rhoda is better, because at least there are laughs and you know enough not to count on seeing all the characters every week. In fact, if Somerset is a soap opera, then I don't see what's so involving about soaps." Somerset was a bad example of a soap opera for our curious friend because it simply wasn't a real one - hence, of course, its six-year track record for low ratings. What went wrong with Somerset is that its management and writers were never quite able to grasp the nature of soaps, and so either parodied them, as does Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, or wrote nighttime crime shows in six-month segments. Even The Edge of Night, which is supposed to be a daily version of a nighttime crime show and designed around fragmented plots, had more continuity of story and characters than Somerset. Mike and Nancy Karr, along with their daughter Lauri Ann, along with Bill Marceau and his ward, Phoebe, have been around for many years - and Edge is not supposed to be a true soap, but a Perry Mason-type mystery. Somerset was supposed to be a true soap. Why did so many characters come and go from Somerset? It's very simple. Whenever an actor decided to leave the show, or was fired, he was usually not replaced but either killed off (as with Greg Mercer) or sent away (like Eve Lawrence). Somerset had too many writers with too little familiarity with the show's past history, and too little concern for it, to enable the show to enjoy continuity. One would think that since the show only had one producer, Lyle Hill, during its six-year existence, that his writers would have been forced by him into at least keeping the same characters around, even if they were not able to create a theme for him. Why Mr. Hill didn't - whether because he kept trying to re-do the show with new material or because he preferred to allow his writers total freedom - only he can answer. The last year or so of Somerset was perhaps its best. The newspaper setting was far superior to those inane Delaney Brands office intrigues, and Julian Cannell had finally emerged as the show's single compelling male romantic figure. Veleka Gray's Vicky Paisley was astonishingly good. For once the show had a completely convincing characterization of a rather complex female. Had the show continued I believe both she and Julian would have grown in depth and interest. Bernie Grant's Dan Briskin was also compelling. Now I've always liked Georgann Johnson, but I began having the feeling several years ago that the show simply didn't know what to do with Georgnann's ELlen Grant. Subsequently, Ellen became almost silly - schoolgirlish at times. Nevertheless, Miss Johnson coped with her sagging material admirably. I am presuming, as everyone else is, that Somerset will not be continuing on any network. If, by the time you rad this, Somerset is miraculously taken by another network, I plead with the producer and head writer to end their policies of "Revolving door" stories and characters and to make of Somerset a true soap. If the almost inevitable cancellation does come to pass, let the Somerset experience (and I hate to sound Biblical) stand as a warning to all those who would take the definition of soap opera lightly. To be daring and different is one thing; but to be discontinuous, fragment, uninvolving, and ultimately tiresome is quite another. Viewers do not want to see nighttime shows simply re-written for the afternoon lineup.

I do think Marie works as unbalanced and viperous trash - I don't know if that's what the show had in mind but the actress (who is that?) plays it that way. I loved her faceoff with Marcia. So were Marie and Kevin planned pre-Marland and then he wrote them out? I kind of like the idea of Kevin but I don't think Weber was the right actor. I wonder why they didn't just give this story to Jay. He's about the same as Kevin in terms of characterization. Thanks for the writeup on Jay/Carol/Natalie/Tom. I wish I could see the Susan/Jay stuff, I never knew about that!

Thanks for sharing this. It's interesting, reading this, as they mention Joey and Emily Ann as characters of the future, when both were gone by 1991 and Joey only returned with a name change and a bad recast. They also mention the Eric the clown story, which went on to become one of AMC's most hated tales. Who was Dave Gillis again? I can't remember. I rarely hear him mentioned as one of Erica's "great loves." Nice to hear some of the backstage anecdotes on the early days, and some comments from the actors. I'd never heard them before. Poor Kate Collins - she never got Jeremy/Natalie back.

I don't know if it's the same show or not but I just realized I have The Africa Channel, and they are running Generations, which is listed as "soap opera." If that's it then I will let you know later.

What was Malcolm like? How did he get along with his family?

Are they still friends? The show seemed to drop that.

I'm sorry they had to let her go. I still remember how she quietly and easily stole E20 from the marble-mouthed, posturing, old-looking Zsa Zsa, who was groomed as being their new Stacey knockoff. Mercy had a real spark in that E20 and was a much-needed contrast to the usual wooden shouters like Zsa Zsa and Lucy. After that it never quite clicked, perhaps because the young women on the show now are much quieter and more introspective, like Mercy. They also never bothered to integrate her into the cast, as they have not done with any new characters in many years. I wonder what they will do with Fatboy. They seem to be struggling there.

December 24, 1991 Digest.

March 6, 1990 Digest.

July 9, 1991 Digest recap.

Late April 1992 Digest.