DRW50

An episode from 1955 (this episode is also on Youtube, although it's intercut with some kind of strange new logos). http://www.archive.org/details/Brighter_Day A "before they were famous" clip which includes a brief moment of Hal Holbrook on the show. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGqceODJ460&feature=player_embedded

This show was a home to a fair amount of good, solid actors who would go on to enrich us for a long time, like Lois Nettleton and Hal Holbrook (Holbrook even used a drunk scene from his character Grayling as his audition for the Actors Studio). Some of the stories seem a bit ahead of their time, like the daughter who was told by a therapist that she needed to give up her acting aspirations because the happiest place for a woman was in the kitchen, and she told him to stuff it and ran off to New York. Sam Hall mentioned the show in an interview (I think he may have also been interviewed at SON but I can't remember. http://www.tvparty.com/70-dark-shadows.html

Barnesy is Mike. First days aren't fair to go on but Bart had all these cute little attempts to show what a little rogue he was and the actor just had that DEAD VOICE throughout each scene. The scene where he listed his crimes was excruciating. The stuff with Steph and the cancer patient was really good. I wish they could keep him around.

I can imagine how great that episode with Sara must be. I wonder if the one where Teal Ames came oncamera briefly to assure the fans she was fine is also out there. Edge was such a unique show and a show that still had so much potential. Anyone with any sense would revive it, and instead we get flop revivals of shows that were already long gone by the end anyway (90210, Melrose). I wish the best for you with what you're going through.

Add in OB and Barnesy and I'm there with you. I'm trying to get through the week's episodes; I'm on Wednesday now. I guess it's easier to tie stories up than to start them up but it's kind of sad that most of my interest is going to characters who are gone and who aren't at their best days, like Zak and Kris, and not on these new, exciting hires. Is it me or are the Costellos not believable as a family? They are just thrown together and I am having an increasingly difficult time believing Heidi as any type of a mother. Nor do I buy Jem as a sibling or Riley as an older sibling to the twins. Speaking of the twins, I don't know the ages of the actors, but the one who plays Jasmine looks a lot older than Seth. Of them all Jasmine is probably the most talented, in terms of acting, and her story is the most interesting, but the family just drags. I have NO idea why they cast this "actor" as Seth. He has one of those flat, weird voices which makes everything sound like a cross between Eeyore and Charlie in the Box from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. And they keep trying to give him cheeky, cute dialogue, which makes it even worse. Why didn't they cast this role with the guy who plays the "alien," or the cancer patient Steph met? The stuff with the funeral was a bit clunky and went on too long, although Nicole Barber Lane did a good job. I laughed when she said she was "lost at sea," not realizing the woman she was speaking about had been lost at sea. I'm happy they are still using her, she can play anything and she has such a magnetism about her. As for Bart, it's very early, but he seems dull to me, and has another one of those flat voices. He also seems much too thin, and his head is bigger than his body. He looks like a marionette from a 50s children's show. And 15? Really?? Carley is still giving wonderful performances in the cancer story. Kent Riley is doing such a great job in Zak's last episodes. I still have no idea why he was let go. Just look at his work compared to the guy who plays Des, who is going out with a whimper. When Riley has been given the opportunity over the years he has always stepped up to the plate. Yet he's fired? I've never been a big big fan of Kris but ironically I think this last story he had, about being able to conform so easily and being conflicted about that, was one of his best, potentially. And I will miss his friendship with Nancy. Jessica Fox is still giving her all and I enjoyed Nancy teasing Kris. That whole episode about how his day kept getting worse and worse was entertaining.

Thanks, Paul. I'm glad you have the synopses, that's what I enjoy most. I was asking because my grandmother used to have some old soap magazines at her house, most of which were lost at one time or another, but I remember reading through some of them many years ago and a bit of the synopsis you posted reminded me of one of those I read back then, and I was trying to go based on the cover. I guess George Gaynes and Robert Mandan had some similarities later on (both in sitcoms, albeit in very different roles), but it's definitely strange to imagine Gaynes as a leading man romantic figure. He was OK as Frank Smith on GH, but that was a character part.

That's wonderful news -- not about your health, but about Maeve being kind enough to send you a note. Obviously the cast respects how much you love the show. Those two episodes must be very rare, aren't they? Congratulations on getting them. I'm sure they'll be a thrill to watch.

Wow that's fascinating, and as always, so vividly described. And I had no idea there was a writers strike in 1973. Perhaps sometime we could talk about how this affected the other soaps which were on at the time. I'd love to see the reviews you have from this era. I posted this one to see if anyone was interested, so if you have others (or if I duplicated one you already had, I apologize), that would be fantastic to see those. I love these because you get a certain look into the show which you usually won't get.

Thanks so much for posting those synopses. Is the June 1976 one from the 8/76 or 9/76 SOD? I know the 9/76 one has Kathryn Hays and John Colenback on the cover. I'm surprised that Stu was already thinking of getting married again in 1974, hadn't Marge only been dead a few years? I wonder how viewers felt about that. The Daytime TV Stars No 18 is the only one I could find. I assume that's different than the usual Daytime TV. I enjoyed the magazine; there was the usual fannishness and certain propaganda element but there was also a surprisingly detailed amount of behind the scenes information and that critical review was something I didn't expect to see. I guess the early/mid 70s were when soaps still weren't sure where to go with feminism, like when Jennifer Hughes on ATWT was talked out of going to school by her husband and mother-in-law. I wonder if Ryan's Hope was the first soap to have the balance between career and home life treated so matter-of-factly for women. The Daytime TV Stars also had interviews with Michael Nouri and Meg Bennett. I posted them in the main soap thread. One interesting tidbit -- they say that at the time of the latest Nielsen ratings (I guess late 1976?), the show was getting 9.5 million. Does that sound right?

I also meant to ask, what did you think of Jo's love interests, at least those you saw? It's interesting to me because I mostly remember Robert Mandan for his great work on Soap, Anthony George I remember from Dark Shadows but he never seemed that inspiring to me, and John Aniston I really enjoy on DAYS but I wonder how he was in his other soap roles.

That's a great comparison to Noelle Gordon, as I've often felt that she and Annie Sugden on Emmerdale were the only long-running types of matriarchs on UK soaps that were more common on American soaps. It's a bit sad to know they were so close to killing Jo off. When Crossroads fired Noelle Gordon, there was a lot of speculation that the network was doing this to kill off Crossroads too, as the show had been seen as a laughingstock for years (personally what I've seen of the show isn't that bad at all). They did try to reinvent Crossroads but they generally kept firing more longtime actors, writing them out in crass ways (one 20 year leading vet was fired and then killed off from a tumor in a few episodes, as she'd asked for a salary equal to that of a recently hired actress -- the show then named a donkey after her character to "honor" her), and "modernizing" the show, only to see ratings sink. I guess like with CBS's attitude towards the show in finally canceling it, the ratings didn't matter as the show was seen as out of date and not relevant enough. Mary Stuart was such a warm actress and she was so consistent, you never saw a bad performance from her. Even when she was dying, she gave her best. I don't understand why soaps didn't use her even more than she was used. What did you think of the article? Do you agree with their views on the show's flaws and how it had improved? Do you think what they said about Jo's romance with that guy after Tony is true? I've never heard very much about that story. Do you think they were mistaken to kill off Jo's son? I know that upset Mary Stuart quite a bit. I think she said that she deliberately played the pain of Jo's grief so heavily that viewers couldn't accept it and the show would not be able to use the story for any type of stunt or big moment.

What periods was she at LOV and SB?

That's true about whether it might have been a mistake to kill off Eunice that way. What do you think made Bunim an ineffective producer? Did she do any other soaps between ATWT and her work for MTV?

From the 1/77 Daytime TV Stars, issue #18. Dell Publishing Co, Inc If anyone has any comments on this, or on your thoughts of this era of the show, I'd love to hear them. Serial Review Search for Tomorrow - It Found Vitality, If Not Tomorrow by Deborah Channel A few years ago I took a close look at Search for Tomorrow and found it seriously deficient. The problem was, almost entirely, the writing of story and dialogue. Happily, wonderful things have happened on Search since I last reviewed it. If there are still some problems on the show, they are no where near as serious as they had been. What had been wrong with the show is it had been trying to be contemporary in the wrong ways. In keeping with the all-pervasive trend toward topicality, Search for Tomorrow had been incorporating a perfectly awful set of stories about Women's Lib. Ann Williams' character, Eunice Martin, had been rebelling against her male-chauvinist-pig husband, Doug Martin (Ken Harvey), by working as a magazine writer against Doug's wishes. The story was heavy and distasteful, giving neither husband nor wife any real dimension, or at least, color. Another story had lawyers Kathy and Scott Phillips (Courtney Sherman and Peter Simon) at loggerheads over Scott's insistence that they adopt orphan Eric Leshinski (Chris Lowe) and also whether to have children of their own, because Kathy wanted a career, not motherhood. Presumably, Kathy was a villainess for not wanting children. Neither of these stories portrayed the characters as psychologically attractive. They also misread Women's Lib and were unfair to feminism. The show's other stories were only slightly less boring. A change of writers created, literally, a whole new show. The basic tactic was to do what Love of Live did: turn at least a third of the characters into Very Young People searching for love, while retaining for the rest of the show a group of characters in their thirties and a group of characters in their forties. Youth and attractiveness replaced the dominant mode of topicality. I am most impressed by the story involving Steve Kaslo and Liza Walton. The actors, Michael Nouri and Meg Bennett, are totally alive and they written for with extraordinary vitality. Of course, their leukemia story was, in and of itself, maudlin; it pushed the actors to the very brink of pathos, scene after scene, and for many months. But the interweaving of that leukemia story with another plot involving Steve's sister, Amy Kaslo (Anne Wyndham) and Jo's ward, Bruce Carson (Joel Higgins), was so clever that it managed to sustain a good half of the show for many months. (Briefly, Steve had leukemia and only a bone marrow transplant from his sister could save him. But Amy was pregnant with Bruce's child and dared not agree to the transplant until after it was born.) All four young actors are immensely talented and the writers have used them to good advantage. But Search for Tomorrow is not a demographically young show, like The Young & The Restless, and to totally transform Search into that kind of show would be blatantly unfair to the millions who have followed its progress since the early fifties. Search has always been about heroine Joanne (Mary Stuart) and her struggle for her own happiness and the happiness of her family and friends in Henderson. The writers could not abandon Joanne and her age group and continue, in good conscience, to call the show Search for Tomorrow. They, in fact, did not. Stu Bergman had a completely viable story with Ellie Harper; Larry Haines, who is incapable of playing a scene badly, and Billie Lou Watt, were as compelling, in their own ways, as were the new, young actors. In the thirties group, Peter Simon and Courtney Sherman have become far more interesting as Kathy and Scott, primarily because their dialogue has improved and Kathy is written now more as a female sleuth than a feminist villain. I still think the story involving them with Eric has dragged on much too long and is no more interesting now than it was when Scott and Kathy were fighting about whether to keep him. Bridging tow age groups, the writers have put dynamic Val Dufour, as forty-ish lawyer John Wyatt, and Morgan Fairchild, as twenty-ish Jennifer Phillips, into a love triangle with John's wife, Eunice. Val and Morgan are sensational in their scenes. Morgan radiates incredible sexuality without even half-trying. Marie Cheatham, who plays Morgan's villainess co-hort, is devilishly colorful in her portrayal of Stephanie Collins. In fact, bad as Stephanie is supposed to be, Marie gives Stephenie so much spunky charm that I'm sure viewers are torn between hating her for her plotting nature and loving her for herself. Both Marie Cheatham and fine newcomer Lewis Arlt (as her lover David) deserve a lot of credit for pulling off the show's most spontaneous and intriguing love scenes. Sadly, the handling of Joanne has not been as articulate and tasteful as that of the other characters in the story. Agreed, Jo's love story with Tony Vincent (Tony George) was just about burned out, and for that reason the writers were justified in killing him off. But, for pity's sake, Joanne is still one of daytime television's most sympathetic heroines. To have her skip a decent period of mourning for her Tony and jump headlong into a romance with Chris Delon (Paul Dumont) is an insult to viewers' intelligence. It is as much as saying that Joanne is a mindless love-object, destined always to be the widow falling instantly in love with the next living man who shows her some kindness. (Joanne has had so many dead husbands by now that one would think that, if she were indeed a real person, she would begin to feel herself a jinx for men!) The writers have fallen into a "Formula" trap with Joanne: she only has one course of action, and that one is to fall in love and wind up a widow. It would be far better, really, to give her a different role in life for a year or so, and then perhaps to give her another great love - once she, as a feeling person, has gotten over her last one. I think the writers must have realized this when they recently wrote Paul Dumont out of the story, with a lame-brained plot involving his dying ex-wife. Or perhaps it was simply that Paul and Mary Stuart were simply not as good a romantic team as had been expected. Mary, after twenty-five years, has perfected her Joanne to the point where almost any life-involvement will work for the character. This time Jo should have something other than a new man in her life. One thing that would please me greatly, for instance, is the return of Patti and Jo's return to active motherhood. But I think Search for Tomorrow has rebounded nicely from its previously losing position. The trick has been to introduce new elements of youth and attractiveness without destroying the meaning of the show for faithful viewers. Editor's note: This is the fifteenth in a series of straight-from-the-shoulder reviews of the serials by Miss Channel. Her views are not necessarily those of the editors.

Amos Brearley - Emmerdale

Quit Playing Games With My Heart - Backstreet Boys

Crossing Delancey

Sheree Murphy is coming and going and coming back...whatever. I wish they could just write her and Anita out. http://www.digitalspy.com/soaps/s13/hollyoaks/news/a257762/sheree-murphy-to-take-hollyoaks-break.html

Steve McFadden is a very good actor but I don't care for the comedy alcoholism storylines. With Phil descending into crack addiction, I hope this might be changing now, as it makes viewers struggle to invest in anything he goes through because it will just go back to the same old Phil. Barbara Windsor has always been more about presence than performance, and it works for her -- it generally has this week. Unfortunately the scene where she was asked to cry when Phil made a spectacle of himself behind the bar was not one of those moments. I wish the story had gone on a little longer, as I liked the idea of Abi unwittingly helping her aunt buy drugs, but I'm looking forward to seeing what Rainie will do now. I laughed when she yelled that they are FAMILY!!! No wonder Phil was drawn to her. Isn't that like the Mitchell clarion call? The mini-montage didn't work for me, I think just showing them lock eyes would have been more effective, but I do think that putting them together is a great writing choice and already Steve and Tanya Franks seem to have a connection. There's something very dramatic about people dragging each other down. She reminds me of Laurie Metcalf and so much of one of the show's most damaged, and fascinating, characters, Donna Ludlow. I really wish Kathy were still around to comment on this. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donna_Ludlow Were there some scenes cut when Shirley asked Billy to go calm Phil down? That never aired and Billy wasn't seen in the following episode. I think Perry Fenwick looks good in red. Most people don't look great wearing their skin tone but he's an exception. I think they could have gotten good material out of Carol staying with Max but they never bothered. I didn't really believe Max would kick Carol out so quickly, putting that with Rainie's eviction in the same episode was all very fast, but hopefully she will have more stories now. But I could do with another break from Bianca's kids -- Tiffany is so very very stage school. My favorite moments in the episode were with Denise and Patrick and the funeral for Gem (Jem?). I'm glad they remembered her and the sadness of her funeral was like a representation of Denise's life. Then when poor Denise learned that they were burying the woman in the coffin Denise had been buried in. Then the very moving speech Patrick gave Denise, which basically served as closure for the Lucas storyline. I'm happy they tried to tie it up this way. And of course the arrival of Kim, and her increasingly exposed breasts. I swear she's just going to go around with her hands over her chest soon.

One of my favorite songs. The whole album is fantastic, one of those times covers are often better than the originals. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dsGJtkdnyI

I can see that story, about the brother. I kind of would like a story where Shabnam returns from Pakistan very very conservative and that makes Zainab regret some of her own strident views, when she sees a mirror of them. A few bits I enjoyed last night: - Finally Bianca mentions that she was going to be a fashion designer. Bianca has been a lot more fun this week, I hope it lasts. - I probably already mentioned this but I liked that Pat was there supporting Peggy, even when she wasn't sure about some of Peggy's decisions. I especially liked the scene where she casually took Phil's house keys out of Shirley's purse. For the first time pretty much ever I can believe the Pat/Peggy friendship. I think Kirkwood has done a great job so far with Pat and with Dot, two very difficult characters. I just hope this is the start of a good process...I've really missed seeing Pat written as more than a damn babysitter.

Patrick getting a story again would be great. They gave him more to do when Denise died, I hope that won't have to stop. There's still so much about Patrick to go into and he's never been with a woman, aside from a few moments with Pat, who wasn't trying to keep him in line. I'd love to see Shabnam back but I don't know if it will ever happen. I think the family would be improved if she returns, and we would see more of their dynamics.

BTW, someone at Digital Spy said that

I thought those scenes were great, especially the last scene where Dot was working so hard not to let her emotions show. After losing Bradley, and that annoying Dotty, she just can't keep letting herself get emotional. I think it goes back to the old Dot, who, like Ethel, hid a lifetime of pain, and while I did enjoy Dot with Jim, I did not enjoy the weeping lady of sorrow she had become over the last few years. I wonder how June feels about it. For all I know she hates the whole thing but I think these are some of Dot's most challenging scenes in many years, aside from the one-hander. I think Patrick is very attractive too...

New Lauren: http://www.digitalspy.com/soaps/s2/eastenders/news/a257215/new-actress-to-play-lauren-in-enders.html?sms_ss=twitter