DRW50

Kirkwood brought so much to the show, but the stories became so dark and some of the pacing was so off. I still wish they'd kept Kieron around. I think he had incredible potential outside of the relationship with John Paul, which always seemed too plot-driven. I think a large cast change is almost guaranteed, given the size of the cast and Kirkwood's exit. I just hope they get rid of the right characters. It's frustrating because I think some of their best actors play characters who are lost at sea, like Nancy. I don't think any of this "bisexual love triangle" has worked. Kris is better at comedy than romance. Or they could have paired Kris and Nancy and never involved Ravi. He could have gone with Russ. Or they could have written Ravi out and made his brother Ash bisexual. I think that would make a better story, since he's more straitlaced.

I keep forgetting Justin's on the show. I will never understand why they gave him almost nothing to do for all of 2008. A casting cull is on the horizon. 10 actors.

I can't believe OB's left a year ago. He came back to see Max die, but his real departure was last February. I feel like so much of the heart of the show left with OB and Max. Now they're left with all these undefined characters who go between bad and good too many times to mention, or characters they seem to have run out of stories for, like Steph. They could also do with not focusing so much on Calvin or Warren. This Christmas 2004 clip of Craig, Steph, and Debbie (the forgotten Dean) is funny. Also very weird, since Steph and Craig have changed so much since then. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCoWlg3SFb4

Original cast member Wendy Richards, who played Pauline Fowler for over 20 years, has passed away. Don't let those bad later episodes (or any of the bad later years of EE in general) make up too much of your mind. Pauline was a great character in her prime.

A deal has been reached with Amazon On Demand. 200 episodes, set between Christmas 2007 and July 2008, which be available by the end of the month at 50 cents an episode. 20 more episodes will be added per month. If they do well enough then they may eventually have older episodes available.

ITV may be working on making Corrie available in America. They say maybe even the show's entire archive. That would be amazing.

I admired the original Dark Shadows team for getting what they did on such a small budget (some of those sets in the time travel stories are beautiful, as are the costumes), but you could definitely see the squeeze. I think the 1795 story was better in the primetime version (with the big exception of Angelique, who is nothing without Lara Parker), one reason being that they kept going back between 1795 and present-day, and because there was less filler. For the time travel stories my favorite was 1840 (so many fascinating characters and over the top stories), then 1897. I wish Barbara Steele had done more TV work after the primetime DS. No one can replace my love for uber-camp Grayson Hall, Woman of A Thousand Faces, but Barbara was excellent as Julia and absolutely brilliant as Natalie du Pres. I remember. This was a very brave storytelling attempt, and mostly they pulled it off. Gerard was extremely menacing and the way he tormented Julia was gripping. I also liked seeing the old Mrs. Johnson in her last days, even if she blinked after she was supposed to be dead. The followup story in 1970 wasn't as good, but had some very strong scenes, like the one where Julia and Barnabas realize Quentin has gone mad.

Hard times have hit the cast and crew. Bill Roache, the only original cast member left, unexpectedly lost his wife Sara, who was also very close to most of the people on set. Kym Marsh, who plays Michelle Connor, had to deliver a premature son at 18 weeks. He died soon after birth. One of the show's mixers has also died. They've shut the set down for the first time since 1999, when longtime cast member Bryan Moasley died. Scripts have to be rewritten because Bill and Kym are both in major storylines at the moment. Meanwhile, ITV is so bad off financially that they may have to sell Coronation Street to another production company. Some rumors even say an American production company, which, if the American soaps are any indication, should make the older cast feel very nervous.

Guza wrote for Loving? Did he suck there too? Laura Wright, Michael Weatherly, and Paul Anthony Stewart are all such charismatic performers (and Laura Wright had such an earnestness back then and in her early years as Cassie on GL), most soaps would have been lucky to have found even one of them, much less three at the same time.

Betsy Durkin is the one who looked like Ruth Buzzi? I liked the third Vicki, just because she had that genteel quality. The Quentin story is probably Maggie's best, or one of her best. She gets to be strong and in the middle of the drama, knowing most of what's going on, instead of always being in the dark.

My favorite period on Dark Shadows was the time right before they went to 1795, and then parts of 1897 (some parts dragged horribly, others were pure deliciousness), and finally the 1970 parallel time story. I can't tell you why, but I have a very strong attachment to the parallel time story. I also adored Vicky and to this day I'm still bummed about her just vanishing into the past, followed by Peter Bradford showing up a few years later saying she'd been killed by the Leviathans. I wish she'd had a stronger exit, if they could have just brought Alexandra Moltke back for a few days. I've been trying to get through the pre-Barnabas episodes, which isn't easy. I'm near the murder of Bill Malloy. I used to watch the primetime version during the original airing. I've started again. I flipped when I realized Liz Foster (Julianna McCarthy) was Mrs. Johnson. I did not remember that at all. I think what stands out for me most is while they did a good job of casting actors who could play the roles (Barbara Steele, Joanna Going, Ben Cross all did fantastic work), they didn't match the quaint charm or distinctive personality which Grayson Hall, Jonathan Frid, and Alexandra Moltke brought to their roles. I think they should have moved away from the show in ways which would have helped create a new yet still familiar identity. Like keep Daphne Collins around (Rebecca Staab fit the part perfectly, which I can't say about the women who played Carolyn or Maggie) and write out one of the other young women instead. Can anyone tell me why some of the nighttime scenes in those early episodes of the primetime show looked like they were filmed in broad daylight?

What role did Myrtle have on Loving? Cesar Faison appeared on Loving several years after being "killed" on GH. He kidnapped Ava and I think they went to Disneyworld or something.

Rosie's affair with her teacher (John Stape) started around autumn 2007. In 2005 and 2006, Rosie had been a more gloomy Goth-wearing girl, to match her Goth boyfriend, Craig Harris. When the actor who played Craig left Corrie, they began to make Rosie into the sexpot, since their young female sexpot, Sarah Platt, was leaving the show at the end of 2007. Rosie and John started sleeping together before he became her teacher (they met when he was giving lessons to her mother, who also had a crush on him). After he became her teacher, he wanted to break things off, and stay with his girlfriend, Fiona (AKA Fiz). Rosie enjoyed having power over him and blackmailed him into continuing to sleep with her. At Christmas of 2007, through a Christmas gift mixup, Fiz realized John was sleeping with Rosie. Rosie's father Kevin beat the tar out of John and was sent to prison. John lost his job and left town. Around summer 2008, John returned. He wanted to reunite with Fiz and tried to steer clear of Rosie. By this time he and Rosie had no feelings for each other, but the whole fling and the lies still stayed with Fiz and even when she tried to take John back (against the advice of all her friends and family), she couldn't go through with it. John blamed Rosie. First he yanked her into a cab and demanded she leave town. A few weeks later, Rosie went missing. At first everyone assumed she'd just went off for a vacation without telling them, but eventually they started to get worried. Meanwhile, Fiz took John back, and they were very happy together. John kept telling her he had to go to his grandmother's house to feed her cat (his grandmother had recently died). One day, John left the keys at Fiz's apartment, and she decided to feed the cat for him. She found various items which led her to believe John was sleeping with Rosie again. John showed up and she confronted him. He told her he'd been keeping Rosie in the attic, just to keep her out of the way. Fiz said he had to let Fiz out. Fiz and John went up to the attic and Rosie hit John over the head and fled the house. John was arrested and sentenced to prison. Rosie sold her story to a magazine for big money. Tina's current storyline involves her father, Joe, who is dating David's mother, Gail. Joe has bad money problems that only Tina knows about and he's having a mental breakdown from the stress of it all. Meanwhile, there's a new family in town, the Windass (yes that's their name) family, who hate Joe because they tried to cheat him when he built them a new kitchen and then David forced them to write Joe a check. The Windasses have a son, Gary, who is Tina's age. He loves winding David and Joe up, and he does this by flirting with Tina. Tina tells him she's not interested, but she still talks to him and is polite to him, which means David is becoming more and more angry with her. This is all going to end with a big fight between David and Gary, which David won't see the better end of, given that Gary is an amateur boxer. I try to keep up with the show as much as I can, since in many ways it reminds me of what American soaps used to be. There are still some things that drive me crazy, especially Michelle Connor, who is a very cold, selfish woman, and yet everyone on the show constantly talk about what a wonderful person she is. The best story on the show right now is the return of Peter Barlow, the son Ken Barlow shipped to Scotland when he was a little boy. Peter is now all grown up and is a very tortured alcoholic, trying to raise his own son, Simon.

Do you know what story plans are ahead for Jacqui? I'm not crazy about Calvin/Carmel or Zack/Michaela, but I hope they can keep Mercedes and Malachy together.

All I really want to see is they give something for Max's exit, or OB's exit. They were my two favorites, especially OB. I miss them so much.

I'm surprised there haven't been any more religious soaps in recent years. Christopher Schmering's soap encyclopedia mentioned the original press release for Another Life, which said the show would involved drug addiction, homosexuality, and (I can't remember now) maybe pornography. I'm not surprised they decided not to tackle these issues in 1981, but it does make me wonder what their original plans were. Is this the show where the main villainess became born again? That idea also interests me, because on most soaps, a villainess becomes good through love, or through rape, or some type aof horrible trauma.

Was she Elizabeth Savage? http://imdb.com/name/nm0767292/maindetails

Wasn't Tammy Wynette on Capitol? How was she?

We're getting into my favorite period of the Soapnet years. Jill's anguish over losing Edmund, which was brutal to watch, but phenomenal acting from Nancy Altman. The Seneca/Jill/Frank/Rae mess, which has one hell of a climax with Rae setting Frank up (if only that story hadn't ended in Kimberly's arrival). Everything about early Siobhan, and the spellbinding Siobhan/Jack, my choice for best soap pairing that never was. I even liked Pat/Nancy, I thought that recast of Pat was very underrated. I still wonder if all the recasting is what doomed RH or if it was the very abrupt, very damaging shift towards mob stories and Kimberly's "acting" career.

I didn't think Zoe and Sarah having sex made any sense, but I've enjoyed the fallout. A story which doesn't make sense at first but is then well developed I prefer to a story which is mapped out on paper but doesn't make sense onscreen (which is why I didn't enjoy the John Paul/Kieron relationship or John Paul's reunion with Craig). With Sarah's terrible taste in men, I'm glad to see her exploring her sexuality, and she and Zoe have good chemistry together. I'm only sorry about how much Mike has been hurt, because he's one of my favorite characters. I wish Hollyoaks was better at creating new characters. Over the past few years, seems like 75% of their new characters are poor. The best new characters they've created lately were in Hollyoaks Later. I'm glad they're bringing the stripper and Malachy's ex onto the regular Hollyoaks.

My biggest memory of Loving is the dynamo performance from Christine Tudor. I'd love to see the entire story again. I still watch the Steffi/Gwen reveal scenes on Youtube. At the time I thought Ameila Heinle was great, I had no idea how she'd turn out on AMC and Y&R. I didn't care about most of the people on The City, but I started digging the show when Tracy showed up. Nancy Altman was superb as Deborah. I miss her.

Sarah Jayne Dunn played a mobster's girlfriend in Dark Knight. I wish they'd done more with her on her return. The story never seemed like the Mandy I've seen, although I've only seen her in some scattered episodes from 2005 and 2006. I wish they could write Frankie and Newt out. I don't care about Newt, and Frankie often makes me see red. And now she's living in the home of the daughter she never really cared about. Ravi as bisexual is strange. I'm glad we're spared a self-loathing/acceptance story, but he doesn't seem to think of himself as bi, and his family doesn't know about him, so we may still get the coming out story. I'm not sure Stephen Uppal would be up to the material. I was hoping they would have put him with Russ, they have good chemistry. I think this story and the Sarah/Zoe story both come across as more naturally soapy than John Paul's last few stories. His relationship with Kieron was poorly developed and then they wasted all that Kieron could have brought to the canvas. I LOL when Ravi said that when his brother sees an opening, he takes it, and Kris said, "I guess it runs in the family." I also love when people get upset about too many gay stories on one show. The way I see this is Hollyoaks is making up for the lack of gay stories on 90% of the soaps. I hope they won't break up Mercedes and Malchy. Hollyoaks needs a stable couple and I want to see them explore Malachy's HIV.