DRW50

British soaps have a much healthier relationship with their veterans and handle the exits in a much more satisfactory way. Generally speaking.

Yes, they do, with the exception of Wendy Richard. I still can't believe that exit.

Barbara left the show for a few years because of health problems so I'm not that surprised she's leaving. I just wonder what will replace her. The Mitchell family is depleted. Roxy is dead weight, Phil is dead weight, so is Billy. They've done a lot of damage to Ronnie.

jfung79, I wouldn't really disagree with you about 90s Eastenders. While I loved many of the characters and I do think they were much better at pacing stories and having good conclusions, they certainly did go for shocks, and they were also much too focused on Grant and Phil.

Since the people who ran EE in 2003-2006 did huge damage to the show (the worst mistake was killing off Kathy), I know they have had to do repair work, but the show seems somewhat hollow now. It can be entertaining, but the character integration, followthrough, and the spirit isn't there. From all the stupidity of the Nick/Dotty story, to Danielle's death and Ronnie becoming a baby-obsessed nutter, to the limp Syed/Christian story where nearly all the relationship between them takes place offcamera, to Tanya burying Max alive, Lauren running him over...they're good at these "big" moments, but I think the show doesn't have the heart, or the strong characterization, or the grit it had in the 80s.

But certainly, the show has come a long way in the past few years, in terms of viewer support.

I still prefer Emmerdale though.

I had forgotten about that.

I guess there was the Lorelei book too.

I wonder if they'll have any teens run anyone over or impregnate Heather.

Barbara is one of a kind and has had many standout moments as Peggy. I will probably miss her relationship with Pat most of all.

I hope they take the opportunity to write out the Mitchells. With the possible exception of Ronnie I think they've all had their day.

Emmerdale has been better than Eastenders this year, although neither of them are what they could be. Corrie, Hollyoaks, they've had a lot of problems.

I think EE's biggest problem is they don't like to tell stories. It's just shock value, then dead spaces, then more shock value, and gimmicks.

Zainab Masood is pregnant. There is some conflict because her son Syed made her think her husband Masood was cheating on her with Ian Beale's wife Jane. The family is dealing with having "Bad Boy" scrawled on their front door. This is blackmail, as someone saw Syed and Jane Beale's brother Christian kissing (offcamera, naturally).

Sam Mitchell returned to town and is facing charges due to her part in covering up Den Watts's murder. She's engaged to Ricky and is living with him in Bianca's house, but she's bored and has been sleeping with Jack Branning.

Jack's ex Ronnie, still a mess because of the death of her daughter Danielle, tracked down her boyfriend from her teen years, Joel. He left his wife and kids to move into the Vic with her, but she dumped him when she learned he was sterile, as she wants a child.

The Fox family is struggling because Lucas's estranged wife Trina was killed. Lucas let her die, although he didn't actually kill her (she fell on a rake). Lucas's girlfriend Denise Fox was briefly charged but then the death was ruled an accident. Meanwhile, Denise's daughter Libby is happy that her father Owen, an alcoholic who once tried to kill her, was released from jail. He is trying to reform, and Libby is giving him a chance. Libby is also engaged to her boyfriend, Darren, and has no idea that he recently had a baby with Heather. Shirley is selling drugs to try to get enough money to take care of Heather and the baby.

Janine is working with Archie Mitchell to get the pub from the Mitchells.

Stacey Slater was recently sectioned because she stopped taking her meds and had a complete meltdown in the Vic.

I think it's still his job. I know some people were saying he comes up with the shock value stuff.

Diedrick Santer has been the main producer since early 2007.

They have various writers. Their most respected is Simon Ashdown, who I believe wrote the hugely popular Zoe/Kat, "Because I'm your muvva (mother)!" episode years ago.

Eatenders isn't very real now. They have some hard looking actors, but they don't operate under the grittiness, the sense of things building and building, that they did for the 80s and most of the 90s. Now it's usually just glum characters involved in somewhat ridiculous stories that are never followed up. Like Tanya burying her husband alive. Or his daughter running him over.

One of the more recent, which managed to combine both the show's need for shock value and their false mining of history, involved comic relief character Heather (whom they ask us to alternately laugh at and pity for being a self-loathing, overweight weeper) having a baby. We didn't know who the father was, and in a ripoff of the reveal of Den Watts being the father of teenage Michelle Fowler's unborn child, they had various male characters all getting a text and leaving to parts unknown. Then finally, the character who showed up was Darren Miller, who is barely 18, and looks even younger. It added a very weird tone to a story which could have been somewhat moving, and seemed to be done just to get press.

Anyway, in better news, Carol Jackson is returning to visit her daughter Bianca. Her kids Sonia and Robbie are also returning. The Jacksons did a lot to keep Eastenders going in the 90s. I can't wait to see Carol again. She's one of a kind.

Those of you who don't remember her, but might watch Doctor Who, may remember her as a passenger in last year's plane terror episode "Midnight".

I wish they wrote original books, like they did in the UK for various shows. I know they wrote one for Robin's AIDS story on GH but otherwise it's just been novelizations.

I think I have one or two of AW, and one of GL. It's around the time Mike was dating Hope's mother.

That's a shame.

Congratulations to Marcy Rylan, she's had a baby boy:

http://daytimeconfidential.com/2009/10/22/marcy-rylan-gives-birth-to-a-boy

Really? Wow. That's fascinating. I can see why she regretted it, as her career was starting to taper off by then.

I love your Youtube videos, BTW.

I did read her Twitter earlier this year. It was quite entertaining, especially when she talked about how she asked Marah if she was upset Jeffrey and Reva had married, and when Mindy talked about Kurt Corday.

I will have to check the more recent stuff out. I'm glad they've kept it going.

That was 1998, I believe.

I don't know why they did it either, but it may have been so they would tie up a storyline, and also because they could get away with it, as that was seen as a low point for the show (twins by 2 fathers).

Funny how Jerry ver Dorn has been on 2 soaps where he plays father to twins who may or may not have different bio dads.

Apparently the BBC Channel 4 on Demand is launching a HO channel on Youtube in the coming months. So if there are any old clips on Youtube you may want to enjoy them for now because they may be gone soon.

I wanted Michelle to continue, but not in that way. She was so cold, especially during the custody fight for Robbie, that I was rooting for Danny 100%. I was rooting for a mobster over a legacy character, the daughter of the show's core family. It was very sad. I loathed her at that time and could not watch her with anyone, including Bill. There were also scenes that made me hate her, even if her actions were justified, where she told Holly not to be around Robbie, and this helped break Ed/Holly up and send Holly back to the freezer. Then I tried to tolerate her again, which I did for a while, but that amnesia story was horrible. Worst amnesia story ever, ever! I could not watch most of that.

Block was very good at playing the smarmy, sleazy Ben Warren. I also thought he managed to add layers of vulnerability to Ben which I never saw him do at ATWT. I actually thought Ben had dimension, whereas Craig was just a smug jerk. I really liked Ben with Blake (even if Bloss came first), and he was OK with Carmen, but the best relationship he had was with Beth. That was one of the only relationships I ever bought BC in.

I don't remember why Annie changed the rest results. That was a bad rewrite which they used to cut off the custody battle between Rick and the Marlers, which would have given such great drama. Out of nowhere, Annie just told Ben she'd changed the results.

They did build some foundation for Abby/Rick for about a year or so. Abby was very sheltered. Rick protected her when she moved to Springfield. She was in love with him but he was too busy pining for Annie Dutton. Then she got a makeover, and Rick fell for her and they became a couple. Not long after that was when Rick told everyone he was the father of one of Blake's children. They broke up and got back together and then the Roy story happened. Then after that they sort of stopped. Still, it was more than any of his other relationships afterwards.

I had a lot of issues with the NSA Nancy. I thought she was very cold and played Michelle as older than her years, and I never felt any chemistry between her and the leading men she had. I always wanted Danny to have a better love interest. They tried Bill/Michelle briefly in late 2002 and early 2003. That was dropped when Conboy and Weston arrived. They decided to stay friends. I didn't really buy that relationship (I did buy Danny/Cassie, which also never happened).

I'm still bitter about what they did to Ben Reade. I assume that whoever wrote that line in the finale (Bill: I miss Ben Fletcher: So do I.) was too.

Speaking of Rick, are there any clips online of Rick and Ed pulling the plug on Eve, and then Rick confessing the truth to Mindy, who leaves town so she can't be called to testify? I remember these scenes really getting to me at the time, it was the first time I was affected by GL after a very down period with me with the show during 1993-1994. At the time I thought O'Leary played it like Rick was falling for Eve.

The late ClassicGL had some clips of Eve sick, but I don't remember the rest being on there.

I never liked Jesse/Michelle. That was yet another instance of Rebecca Budig not having chemistry with her leading man, and the story was too contrived for me.

I did like Jesse with Drew. I liked Drew a lot. Tammy Blanchard was such an emotional, instinctual actress. Guttural. When she started out on the show she was awful but she really improved after a while, apparently thanks to the coaching from Lisa Brown. She could play the vulnerability and the tears so well. I liked seeing the "bad girl" slowly become good, but never saccharine, and I liked seeing her get the good guy, and find a family.

Jesse Soffer was great as Max. I remember a scene in the graveyard with the gravestone of his mother. I was really disappointed when he left for school and they recast him with that bland guy who went on to be on Wolf Lake. He looked too old for the role of Max.

I also loved the relationship between Drew and Selena. I wish we'd gotten to see more between Drew and her father Ben (the only role I've really liked Hunt Block in), and Drew and Ross.

I know a lot of people didn't like Selena but I thought she was a breath of fresh air. I hated her exit. For a long time GL really screwed up so many exits.

Rick and Abby were a great love story. They were built up for several years. Abby was probably one of the few real successes of Laibson/McTavish. There was a haunting episode early in her run where she first arrived in town, deaf and in the hospital, wandering the hospital, and she was terrified because she saw all this commotion and had no idea what was going on. Jugglers (for a hospital carnival), patients being rushed through the ER, Hawk Shayne screaming at her.

She had no real storyline after the one where she was in prison for killing her attempted rapist. There was a brief story where she got a cochlear implant, but otherwise that was it. I believe there was some tension because Rick wanted children but she wasn't sure.

I do have to defend the exit story, as I thought that was very strongly written. Rick didn't cheat with Claire. They had had an affair in the past and she blackmailed him by lying to him that she'd taken his medical exams for him while he was hooked on pills. There was a lot of tension because Abby resented her interfering in Michelle's life. To pay Abby back, Claire climbed into bed with a drunk Rick and Abby saw them.

What I liked about the exit scenes was that Abby told Rick she KNEW Rick had not been with Claire. She told him she was leaving him for reasons that had nothing to do with Claire. There was too much else for her to take being with him anymore.

The moment where she left, and Rick crumpled up onto the floor, was superb. That was the last real story Michael O'Leary ever had.

I don't know why they did that with Rick and Harley. It seemed to me like they originally wanted her to have Phillip's child again then changed plans at the last minute.

I never liked the Rick/Beth story.

You might as well give it a try.

There's some stuff on Youtube, a lot of 2009, bits and pieces of earlier stuff.

You should try Emmerdale too. Really good show, full of various story threads and great actors and soapy plots. Lots of hotties too.

I kept waiting and waiting for some romance and buildup between Rick and Mel. They were in love so quickly, they got together so fast, then he became sick, and suddenly she was pregnant (since they wrote in Yvonna's pregnancy), and they married. I felt like, as often happened in GL's last decade, the show had no real interest in Rick and burned through story for him at a rapid pace. I really wanted to like Mel and Rick. Instead, I ended up agreeing more with her father as to why this wasn't a great idea. And in the end I think Mel agreed with him too -- when I tuned back into GL regularly and they interacted, there seemed to be no warmth at all. I know he cheated on her with Beth (I'm glad I missed that story, it sounds awful), but still, I was surprised at how bitter Mel seemed when she would talk about being near him.

I didn't mind Cyrus and Mel together, mostly because if I were here I'd want to be all over him too, but it was rushed and I don't believe they would ever go beyond sex.

I wish they'd built up more with Rick and Mindy but I took what I could get. It always upset me that Mindy was essentially MIA for 15 years, so many newer fans probably barely knew who she was. Mindy was one of the people who got me hooked on GL. It was Kim Simms, but still, I like Krista too. Just don't get that boring Barbara Crampton anywhere near me. She was so dull that I rooted for Eve to destroy her.

I think they were laying some groundwork, the tension with Alan, as he paid for her med school (didn't he?), but then the show was canned. I think she could have been revealed as a Spaulding.

I actually liked that she was a B character. I know it sucks that they didn't do more for black characters but for me she fit in well with the background players and added some sparkle and humor. Soaps used to do that all the time.

I still don't get what they did with Leah. She wasn't even in the last 2 months of the show was she? She might have aged and died, like Dolly the clone, for all we know.

I hope you will keep Maggie Jones in your thoughts or your prayers. She plays Blanche, one of the funniest characters around. She's 75. They aren't releasing details, but she had to have emergency surgery and she's in critical condition.

This has not been a very happy year for Corrie.

At the time I was in disbelief that the only real airtime Shari Headley got was as a slave in Civil War Springfield.

I do think Lucky Gold genuinely wanted to integrate the cast, and I appreciated his efforts with Remy and Christina in the last year.

I'm not watching LMAD. I'm not really boycotting, I just don't care about seeing it. If I hear good buzz I might give it a try.

I never understood the point of Boudreau family. Both seasoned daytime vets Richard Biggs and Yvonna Kopacz Wright were completely wasted for the most part and then everyone except Mel was recasted. Remy was not used at all the until the "prestigious acting school graduate" took the role and Felicia when used had to have been the worst psychiatrist ever. Leah was idiotically SOARSed but rarely appeared after that, probably because TIIC realized their mistake. It would have been easier to have revitalized the Grant family when they had the chance instead introducing a whole new family with no purpose and no use.

I think the show brought them in as a sop. There were no actual plans to give black characters major story, but they were brought in to some fanfare to help stave off criticisms of racism. Then when the actors got sick of it and left, Rauch could just say that this was their choice.