DRW50

Thanks. The link hadn't been posted here. I am trying to remember if I'd ever seen the episode on Youtube in another form - the Jef and Emily scenes are a little familiar as is the funeral scene. Probably just merging them with another memory. The music they use for those opening scenes remind me of the Friday the 13th opening theme (the TV show), just with added guitars. Jef is one of the few Emily love interests I liked her with. It was nice to have a normal-seeming guy (not bad on the eye either). There's a good bit in this where Jef tells Emily what Ellen and Dani have been saying about her (as he lives in the apartment above their house) - it's a glimpse of what could have been with expanding the Stewarts if Valente hadn't fired Pat Bruder and made Emily such a monster. Such a restrained performance from Eileen Fulton, in what would turn out to be her last story, and one of her best. The funeral scenes also have a genuine atmosphere - cold and dead. The moment with Damian where he helps her say goodbye to Eduardo in Italian is so touching. The episode is also a reminder of how much I liked Kirk and Sam. I have never understood why Tom Wiggin was fired around this time. Sadly, nothing was the same with Kirk and Sam after that point. Early 1995 was a period of more improvement from ATWT than I had expected after slogging through 93 and 94...although Rosanna and Mike are there to remind me of the failures still present. Love the start with Liz Hubbard reminding us to stay tuned after the OJ recap. I'd say that's beneath Liz but she makes it seem fun so who am I to judge?

To be honest with you if I was just going through episode by episode via Youtube now, I don't know if I could either. I took a number of long breaks (especially in the '00s). And I simultaneously am just as partial to GL as I am critical of it because ATWT and GL were "my" soaps. They'll be with me to my last days.

It probably does sound very shady, although Matt was mostly just green at first. Tammy was a little more than green, but she did get much better.

I think there were a number of little moments, some good performances, etc. I appreciated the return of Jordan Clarke, an actor I adored and never thought would be back, and somehow, he stayed (off and on) for another 13 years. I appreciated getting to see Tammy Blanchard and Matt Bomer learn how to act. I was very glad to see Vanessa written like her old self again (in the last few years of the show), which I didn't ever expect. Amy Ecklund gave some very strong performances as Abby, from the rape storyline to Abby leaving Rick. I liked that the show brought Mindy back several times after the character was consigned to the wastelands when Barbara Crampton left. She was used just enough to remind of what a good presence she was but not enough to be ruined. Ditto for India (I am disappointed we never saw India in the last few years though). The 60th and 70th anniversaries were well done (better than many soap anniversaries). Mary Stuart had some wonderful moments in an otherwise very rough period for the show. I'm glad she got to spend her last few years reminding viewers why she had been a soap icon for generations. I was always glad to see David Andrew Macdonald, even if he rarely got material up to his charisma. Ditto for Paul Anthony Stewart, maybe one of the biggest overperformers in GL history compared to what Danny should have been. There were good moments here and there with very squandered characters like Holly and Ed. I was always glad to see Ross, even if Jerry was so wasted. I appreciate that the show somehow made me care about Dinah, a character I wanted to shoot out of a cannon for the first 2-3 years of Wendy Moniz's run and a character I blamed in part for the decline of my beloved Vanessa. As others have said over the years, I'm glad GL eventually shook off a lot of the gloss and airs put on Reva. I will always appreciate the returns of the finale weeks, even if some weren't what they could have been. Even after all this time I'm still touched by the beautifully character-true and perfectly pitched farewell for Nola (I'm guessing Lisa Brown did the whole thing, not the script, but I don't care). The show ended with a lot of love and a lot of heart, which is not as common as it should be for soap finales.

SNL almost always makes their musical performances private after a week or two.

Thanks. I guess they knew most fans weren't going to pay attention, even in the VCR era.

That's a good way to look at it. Both Ally and Shana interacted with AMC characters too (I wonder if that line was before or after Shana actually met Trevor).

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/tony-roberts-dead-woody-allen-annie-hall-1236130177/ Tony is listed as playing a doctor on the November 1, 1994 episode. Was it just a small part?

There's another episode up now. I think I've figured out what seems odd to me. Have they used some kind of AI to upscale the thumbnails?

It was killing off so many characters, the lack of characters I could care about (beyond Victoria, I suppose) and just finding the story very heavy going that made me check out of the revival as it went along. I remember the DS anniversary book that came out in '91 or so suggesting that House of Dark Shadows being so dark was why the show lost more viewers. I don't think that's entirely true - DS was a fad with a lot of young people who were growing out of watching and the pace of the show also couldn't be sustained - but I do think DS at its core is extremely dark in ways that the ridiculousness the show could veer into post-1795 or so managed to mask or balance. The revival being more polished meant the ridiculousness was gone. The Big Finish audios, the few I've listened to, are the same - good, but incredibly bleak. I know the Tim Burton film is campier, but I have no real interest in seeing it, especially after Lara Parker's comments about hambone Helena Botham Carter being two-faced. Holy hell - as I was finishing this post the old commercial reel I was watching had KLS selling houses for Century 21. How eerie. How fitting for DS.

I think this was the scenes that got laughs at the time because Alex was holding Andi hostage with a curling iron or something along those lines. I am not sure if Alex was in those. I did wonder if they might have been thinking of moving Alex over to OLTL. I think it was around March? I can't remember.

@EricMontreal22 A lot of AMC was purged from Youtube, at least the full episodes, although some is back. There is or was a lot of '80s AMC on Archive.

Kamar going to PC to help kick the show off would have been a good idea, if it had worked out, although there was probably too much going on to really fit him in. I had forgotten about the Nora and Gannon crossovers to AMC, which may be for the best as IIRC the Cutting Edge one isn't great. I also did not remember Paul Martin returning to OLTL in 1983. That must have been difficult for Paul Mooney. I think they missed Alex appearing on OLTL in 1997. The only reason I know about the Princi Dorian/Adam Chandler crossover is the AMC cards I used to have. Jake doing a stint on GH with Lucky Lippman could have been fun, although if this was during the big Monty changeover I'm not surprised she wouldn't go for it.

They were there for the Dolly story - I am not sure if that was down to them as someone at the network pushed it (then again, they did supernatural stories at PC). I think Lucky Gold was there for the portrait story. Ghost Reva was right before McTavish, I think. Wiki lists her as starting right after Douglas Anderson, but I could have sworn there was some gap in-between. Maybe not. You're not wrong about the tone of GL at that time.

@EricMontreal22 Thanks! Kamar going to PC to help kick the show off would have been a good idea, if it had worked out, although there was probably too much going on to really fit him in. I had forgotten about the Nora and Gannon crossovers to AMC, which may be for the best as IIRC the Cutting Edge one isn't great. I also did not remember Paul Martin returning to OLTL in 1983. That must have been difficult for Paul Mooney. I think they missed Alex appearing on OLTL in 1997. The only reason I know about the Princi Dorian/Adam Chandler crossover is the AMC cards I used to have. Jake doing a stint on GH with Lucky Lippman could have been fun, although if this was during the big Monty changeover I'm not surprised she wouldn't go for it. I don't know if I buy that about Ceara and Jeremy being a popular couple... I didn't know Deborah mentioned Erica being on AMC. That's a very sloppy line that should have never gotten through. Erica was even mentioned on Loving as a real person after Jeremy died.

Most of them want Democrats to lose. They hate them. They hate us. They hate America. They love Trump because he has done more to end the "American empire" than anyone outside of Putin, and because he gives them permission to be bigots - he makes it cool and fun. They continue to insist that Harris lost because she didn't do all they wanted, because they can't admit how little power they have in this country outside of an increasingly tiny social media following, and half of those are Nazis.

He can always hope for another Big Brother guest hosting stint. I'd never heard of most of these shows. I'd say Extra possibly ending is an end of an era, but that era ended 10 or more years ago. These days people just go online for celebrity gossip.

I was more for Boonie. Adrienne Barbeau was also in that Balkan story. I do think some of the Zacchara dynamics worked, at least with Johnny and Claudia (I think Weitz was miscast). I remember, from the bits I watched, Benzali doing a good job, but I just didn't care. It came across to me as Guza being more ashamed than ever of having to be on a soap instead of getting to peddle his leather jacket publicity photo in primetime.

Thanks. That was all past me.

Me too. That was the role most suited to him as he could generally brood and provide the right atmosphere for the show, when he wasn't man #394 in love with McMurphy. I do feel a little bad for the actress who played Blaze that they are bringing in her whole family and shitcanned her. I'd rather they just write them all out for the sake of fairness.

Thanks for sharing that. I'm glad it was her choice and she's happy with where her life is now.

The initial story of Justus working with the mob, spurning everything that had been taught to him, could have had potential, with the Quartermaines as well as the triangle with legal eagle Dara and cop Taggert. As you said, they just didn't care. Someone also decided that Joseph C. Philips was wrong for who Justus now was, and brought in Monti Sharp, who, similar to his brief ATWT run, seemed to have lost most of what made him special on GL and just seemed slimy. I wasn't surprised he was only on for a short time. I don't even know what they did with the last Justus, beyond being a monk and being killed.

They've done a number on Chris' kids - Phoenix became a drug addict and committed suicide. Finn was physically abusive toward his wife Esther (although they made peace in his later guest appearances). In the finale, Harry was brought back to Ferndale (after the family had paid his way in spending most of the year on the run), and Chris, along with Finn, insisted he must face justice. Chris' brother Guy, and other son Frank, wanted him to get help but not go to the cops. After Harry held Chris at knifepoint, they finally agreed that Harry needed to be arrested. Sass, maybe the only one who could have added some personality, wasn't able to make it - I guess the actress wasn't available. Due to her absence, you had various Warner men with the designer stubble of angst, and Chris saying they were all cursed because of his father and the usual soap routine of rich families being damned and evil (sadly, no scene of him beating a tomb with a crowbar). He told them that he wanted to dissolve the family trust and give all the money to charity. They said, basically, lolfuckno, and removed him as head of the trust. And yes, the show has often had almost nothing but bleak material, even though a number of fans have told me the show often had comedy for many years. The nadir was 2023 when the "meet the new residents" program (Harry's reintro) led to none of them staying on the show, one being gunned down, and another having his hand smashed to pieces and becoming a drug addict. But the good news is he returned for about two days to have sex with Phil and then disappear.

That SNL is something many modern viewers probably wouldn't be able to process anyway. I think the show still has some good moments, but there's a huge dividing line between the first 25 years and the second 25 years.

She still had her moments, but they really bogged her down with too many stories about leaving the kids, struggling with the kids, and cheating. She began an affair with another woman this past year, named Phil, who was an awful mess of a character (she started on the show a few months earlier in a "no labels" relationship with a male doctor - in no time she was aggressively pursuing Harper and we were meant to feel sorry for her, to the point where she was given a miscarriage, a past suicide attempt, a past abusive boyfriend, etc.). They got a lot of fans, as those pairings always do, but the show ultimately had Harper return to Drew before she died. They died in a bike crash, which I don't think was all that well done, frankly, especially the choice to have wacky music play right before the crash. They also kept having Harper run into injured or dead mothers before she died, which I found somewhat trite. TK's exit leaves a bad taste in the mouth, because he has not been seen since he and his wife (who should have stayed on the show) move back to his old homestead, but we hear every month or so that he is depressed, still can't walk, and Esther avoids seeing him because it makes her feel sad. A great way to treat a character who was a lynchpin of the show for decades. When I was writing up my comments above, I forgot to say that the story with Chris' mental breakdown over his son Harry being a murderer was also a strong plot, even if I disagree with the decision to make him a serial killer. His on/off girlfriend Selina's breast cancer story was also very good - I don't remember if you were watching when the wretched Desi was there, but Selina is Desi done right. Thaddeus, the show's Damo knockoff, is also very likeable, or would be if he was not constantly given terrible plotlines with exhausted characters.