DRW50

Cindy's return has been pretty rough as they don't even bother to write for her relationships with anyone, even her kids. Just repeats and "shocking" moments. They left so much on the table. She could be anyone. EE has been stuck in repeat and meta hell for years. I still wince at the attempts to make Sonia into Dot and the endless trumpet jokes.

Charlie always seemed too old for her.

Olivia had such a presence. And many consider Black Christmas to be their favorite horror film. Dayle Haddon has also passed away. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/dayle-haddon-dead-model-actress-1236094849/

I do wonder how people would have felt if Matt had stayed as Brian for the Dixie/Brian story. The recast allowed them to just make him a brand new character.

Having Cindy attacked shows they have no faith in the story itself (with good reason). The laughable choice to literally recreate a scene from 1986 shows how little faith the show has in its own future.

That's lovely. Thank you.

Given Ron's huge ego it's hard to believe he'd willingly leave to go write for someone else, even if they are a friend. Based on the quality of his work for the last fifteen years, the idea of him shrugging and coasting his way over to another soap may be worse than him being fired.

I think that would be an interesting idea, if the Joss/Carly relationship was more compelling and if Carly didn't seem so empty these days. Still, it would have to be better than whatever else they've done with the characters.

I wonder when they decided to go from Ken to Kenny. Kenny makes more sense for who he was. That photo looks nothing like either of them. I have to laugh at Bobby being included in the ad as insurance. Her relationship with Olivia had no layers under them. She was mostly just the mean mama Olivia lectured. When she cut Olivia off as she left the show, I was thrilled, which shouldn't have been the reaction for the moment. Then we had all the money woes with Olivia and Harold, and I just did not care. It was clear the show didn't either. The only reason they or Michael seemed to get anything to do was because of the expanded episode orders of those years. I didn't mind Harold, but it was obvious Olivia got tired of him quickly, and they shouldn't have been kept together. Beyond looking good without a shirt he offered nothing to the canvas.

It's always hard for me to know what's real or not with fan followings online. With Sonny and Nina, I get the feeling many of them are Nina fans, all of Liz's pairings are mostly just Liz fans, etc. I would say Anna and Valentin are more mutual, even if I don't know why Anna fans would want the pairing at this point.

I wonder if it's his awareness of just how little he matters to the current show, compared to the hype over his coming back and the heyday of his badass shootouts and motorcycle rides. Being one of a million in the Q mansion must be deflating to him, especially since his big years were where Guza and others made sure everyone knew the Quartermaines were poisonous and pathetic. Anna and Valentin seem to have a lot of Twitter fans, for whatever reason.

I imagine everyone here keeps up with Eddie Drueding's channel, but in case you don't, he has shared some clips from 1988 episodes he does not have copies of. I suppose this explains why I have never been able to find the scene where Rachel ices Liz out. I had all those on tape but had to get rid of them several years ago. I hope they show up someday. Sadly, this also means if you haven't seen this period closely you will not realize just how odd and spread thin the show was becoming by the last month of the strike. On the positive side, that means you are spared a lot of the terrifying Chris. I love the Thanksgiving montage in this second set of clips, especially knowing it is our last Thanksgiving with Mac.

They are not good numbers but it's tough to compare to GL as that show went off 15 years ago.

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/