DRW50

Thanks for piecing dates together. Yes, I'm sure Hogan Sheffer, with his worries about soaps not having enough men with balls, would have loved this conversation.

I don't think the statements are that hyperbolic but it's difficult to care about the story. The Tates are just so isolated and Home Farm lacks the old grandeur. It's mostly just Claire King who makes viewers care, although at least the show isn't having her ordering hits and all the other nonsense she was doing when she first came back.

She complained about choices made like having beer cans around, as I guess she felt it was cliched or overly obvious.

Thanks @Paul Raven . Poor Patricia Hodges having no idea she wouldn't be on much longer. I wonder if it was Steven Schnetzer's choice to leave - is that why he came back relatively quickly, and they just wrote Cass out for half a year or so due to Julie Osburn wanting to go? The part about making the women stronger is a laugh as the period coming up may have been the show's weakest for female characters, along with the last 5 or so years of the show.

This is lovely - a collection of Christmas sitcom clips.

I always think of ATWT and GL on Christmas. I will always miss them.

@Maxim That's very kind of you. Your detailed thoughts on late '80s AW has helped make me more involved a period I otherwise would not have been invested in. The various updates to AWHP and the Ariana Munker clips were two of my main soap highlights this past year. Even after 25 years off the air, AW is still occupying our thoughts, surprising us, never letting us go. I hope that only continues. Merry Christmas to everyone who ever walked the roads of Bay City.

I agree about the lack of diversity and history, but I like most of the characters (which is NOT something I can say about any other soaps at present) and most of the stories never drag on too long. I think some of the older cast are well-used in one capacity or another (Irene and Alf have their share of plots while John is a wonderful counsel and quasi-comic relief figure). Marilyn and Roo could be better used, especially Marilyn. I find Leah somewhat tiresome, along with Justin. If I had more of a history with the show, I might feel differently.

@soapfan770 Thank you for tagging me and for your beautiful statements. As someone who thought GH and DAYS would be gone by the mid/late '10s, I am glad they are still around (and even though I can't say I'm a fan of what they now are I still ended up being more involved in conversation about them than I have been in a while), and I'm glad four soaps somehow managed to survive to welcome a fifth. I genuinely never thought that was possible. I am not going to try to have hope about what the future holds but ideally Beyond the Gates will do well enough to bring more shows or at least get the perpetually terrified and out of date genre to take a few more risks. The staggering amount of soap losses this year likely were the main thing we will remember, and I'm glad I had this place to help remember and honor them. My soap highlight this year was the amount of new vintage soap content. A few more '50s soap episodes appeared, a soap channel that lived for a month or two provided some exceedingly rare content for AMC, Loving and ATWT, some Y&R glimmers, a few late '80s/early '90s ATWT episodes appeared, a few 1985 Search episodes that had been sought after and the most shocking find, Ariana Munker's clips of her AW run. I devoured every moment of those scenes as I never thought we'd get any more Lemay AW. Thanks to @slick jones and others, I also gained much more awareness and curiosity in cast lists this year, and tracing the often fascinating careers of actors who may have just played a nail tech in one episode 40 years ago. There's no real lost media community for soaps - you won't get the type of discussion or investigation that you will get over a Spongebob screensaver from 1999. That makes it all the more remarkable when some fragment stumbles online. Soap fans are often treated as ungrateful, but we all treasure those small moments. May 2025 have many more of them. Thank you all again for giving me a place to look forward to every day. Merry Christmas. And danfling, rest in peace.

Under Swajeski, Frankie is one of those characters you can tell the writer adores, to the point where no other character around her ever is on her level.

It was just easier - oh, poor little Dinah, she's wicked because she was put up for adoption, and so on. There was zero nuance, on a show that at its best had some of the most nuanced takes in daytime. All they cared about was making a whiny and unsympathetic cipher our lead at Vanessa's expense. I can still hear all that whining, 30 years later. I had no knowledge or interest in Dinah and resented the whole thing. Even her sleeping with Matt, which the show so clearly wanted to do, I couldn't have appreciated as great soap stuff because I knew it would somehow be treated as Vanessa's fault.

Some are speculating the show is now pushing 2011 material because they believe they aren't coming back. https://www.digitalspy.com/soaps/neighbours/a63272350/neighbours-social-posts-confusion/

I still find H&A the best of any current soaps, although that doesn't mean a great deal. It's the main show where I still care about a majority of the characters, and they have a better balance of stories. With that said, they do need a change - I would write out Harper, Tane, Mali, Bree and the members of Lyrik. I don't dislike any of these characters (maybe Harper), but I think their stories are over. The only one I might keep is Eden because of her siblings - Levi's arrival and the show's willingness to have him actually do bad things and be called out for them was one of the best parts of the show this year (his being hot helps). I would also give Marilyn a story again - a much better story than her last few.

I would put some on McTavish, as her writing was so allergic to proper characterization or history, but it was also the end result of recasting Michelle into a generic ingenue and saddling Vanessa with WM's Dinah. From the time she arrived Vanessa just became Dinah's hand-wringing mother, subjected to much verbal abuse she was apparently meant to deserve. The custody battle and Julie scheming to get Frank were the only stories that kept me interested in the show in 1994. I was in and out in those years but I didn't remember a relationship either, aside from through Maureen. I mostly remembered Ed and Ross...Ed seemed so isolated by that point, and maybe he always was by the mid '80s due to the Bauer decimation. The show was, in some way, savvy to try to turn their relationship into a sweeping romance novel in time with Vanessa's return, but that's where it should have ended. I never would have had her pregnant again - it just seemed like they had no idea what else to do with the character, or women in general. I'm surprised they never gave Reva a kid at that time (I mean carrying a child, not the Jonathan retcon). And none of the story was in Vanessa's voice, just as the story where she went back to work and somehow it became about her being told she should get plastic surgery was also not about her.

The show also never really committed to Trina and Gio. He was making cow eyes at Joss even as we were told he was supposed to care about Trina. Many Trina fans loathe Joss, with good reason. The optics were awful and yet again reminded them that a black woman isn't good enough, especially one who so degrades herself to the point of calling herself a "bitch" at Joss' mercy. Frank isn't going to have one of his himbos with someone the show doesn't see as the ideal. Even if the show had actually cared about a Trina/Gio pairing, some fans would have objected, undoubtedly, but that is just how a lot of overzealous fans are. Liz fans have hated all her pairings for many years, and she still gets stuck in them. They were never seriously committed to putting Trina with a white man, especially one we are meant to love. And this C-pairing with Kai will likely just serve as a "well, here's something, leave us alone," until Trina leaves next year, never to be mentioned again. They do. Even Stella, who was used well under Mulcahey and had a good response, is not getting those moments now. The show has been visibly afraid to give anything beyond a crumb of a crumb to black characters, and the election results likely just confirmed every fear or prejudice. I agree that Simone felt more centered, and the show would never make that effort today, no matter how dull Tom was (he was still seen as an important character at the time).

I definitely don't begrudge any of the actors, who are just reading lines as quickly as possible and have no say and no value. It's all on the show, which saw popularity and passion and took it out on the character and actress, then saw racial abuse and again seemingly saw it as justification to just triple down all the more on the show that those same racist fans had been begging for. I guess that's just soaps today...and America at large, I guess. (I suppose if we complain too much whoever at the show was so eager for Spencer/Esme will step in)

I feel like the reason is not just about Trina and a white man, but Trina as a character. The show is fine with a C-heroine like Jordan, similar to the way previous black B/C heroines like Claudia, Simone or Dara had been treated, but Trina had a very prominent place with some fans in the last year or so, and that rocks the boat. I've seen some fans decrying how Trina or Trina's fans ruined the place that Joss had on the canvas, and the wonderful glory days of her friendship with Spencer (and the whole Cam/Spencer/Joss unit). I wouldn't be surprised if a number of people at the show feel the same way. Emma can fit more into that vision of nostalgia which Trina can't, because Trina, like almost all black characters in GH's history, is permanently othered. Emma and Gio and Joss can take the spotlight, and maybe another cornbread piece of ass to join them. Trina can either settle for scenes with Kai that keep them both firmly in their place, or leave, never to be mentioned again, which the show would likely prefer as that means they can recast Spencer and not have to deal with any fan complaints about Sprina.

Thanks. I also liked him with Eve, although I haven't watched them together in 30 years. I forgot Hulswit didn't play the breakup.

I think that was true for most on AW in the '80s, including Nicole and Peter. So much wasted potential. If not for Anna Stuart returning Donna would have gone the same way. She almost did even with Anna. Thanks. What a resource WLS was.

I wonder if they even cared about the Steve and Alice ties. I suppose they must have, as they tried to go for Vicky/Jamie under Rhonda Lewin, but Lisa and Jamie both seemed so generic. When Lemay returned they did bring up the Steve history more but by then Lisa was going.

I think Anne has said it wasn't her choice but I may be wrong.

Didn't she also fake a suicide attempt? I can't remember. I thought Peter worked well with all of his leading ladies (the few he had), but I agree Maeve was better on that front.

Thanks @TheyStartedOnSoaps this looks oddly evil. Lloyd Bridges will rule over us all.

What I've seen of Anna's Donna before she left was very hard to sit through - weak and feeble and losing her mind. I don't think anything improved for Philece's Donna until Harding Lemay returned and they remembered she really shouldn't be pals with Felicia and allowed her to be snobbish again. I can't think of anyone who benefited from DePriest. I guess Rachel and Mac and Felicia and Mitch came out OK. (I know she brought Mitch back)

I will give the show some credit for keeping this and some other recent twists under wraps. I suppose this is one upside of the death of the soap press.