DRW50

On 3/7/2024 at 5:00 PM, Khan said:

Any soap that lasts more than a few years is bound to evolve, with new characters and families replacing or supplanting old.  But, I believe that what makes a GOOD soap in that respect is that it still feels like itself even with all the changes.  Yes, there was a period in Marland's second run when ATWT felt dark - although, nowhere NEAR as dark as Passanante and latter Sheffer - but it still felt like ATWT (at least, to me).  And it didn't matter who was still on the show and on the front burner and who wasn't.  It still felt like home, if you know what I mean.  That's the difference we talk about when we talk about Sheffer in relation to everything else connected to the show.  His stuff might have been exciting to watch (...for the most part...) and a tremendous boost of energy after a period when it was clear no one involved knew which direction to go after Marland's death, but did it still feel like we were watching ATWT?  That's the question!

Much of the hype for Sheffer at the time was about lifting him above ATWT, all about the changes he wanted to make to ATWT and wasn't allowed to do. Sheffer, Guza, JFP, Ron Carlivati, all hyped for themselves, not for what they did for the genre. We were never meant to care about ATWT itself when he was there - it was just the template for his work. Marland certainly put his own issues into ATWT, but he also respected the traditions of the show. When you run a show for almost 8 years, you will inevitably change the show irrevocably, but he still tried to keep the core intact. To be fair, by the time Sheffer got there, most of the core was gone, but it's still extremely difficult to watch a show where someone who seemingly has such contempt for their show, or their genre, is treated as such a god. 

The darkness under Marland was in some ways harder to watch because you did care about the people involved. You felt the pain. '00s ATWT was just a corpse being kicked, as you were encouraged to watch and laugh.

I haven't watched these in years so thanks @Vee for the review. From what I've read, Katie Bot...er...Britt's response got the response those usually do.

I imagine many fans here already know about this, but I didn't until recently. A "visual soundtrack" that was a Japan-only laserdisc release in the early or mid '90s. A neat little CGI intro leads to a tour of the real city, all with that gorgeous soundtrack. There are some neat surprises, and some deeply sobering moments, like a tour of a train car...

22 minutes ago, vetsoapfan said:

As the years went on, it was clear TPTB on many soaps did not respect their vets as much as they once did. I think savvy veteran performers knew it was in their best interest to be discreet in their public statements.

(That comment by Penny was hilarious, and echoed what many viewers were thinking, I'm sure!)

I agree. I suppose Liz Hubbard and Helen Wagner also knew what it was like to be out of the show and back in (even if that never stopped Eileen - although she was generous when at the Paley Center goodbye to ATWT she thanked Goutman for keeping her on).

It was priceless. I still wonder how they snuck that in. And she said it in the middle of godawful screeching from Molly, who was shoved down the throats of viewers at that time.

I know that Iris and her anger over Alice's relationship with Elliot/bond with Dennis was used to help reunite Alice and Steve. Did Iris and Alice, or Alice and Dennis, ever have any major interaction after that story ended? I wonder if the show ever thought of the story potential of pairing Dennis and Sally.

10 hours ago, vetsoapfan said:

Wagner was very vocal, and made her displeasure about being sidelined quite clear, back in the early 1980s when she was off contract for a few years. During the 2000s, however, I don't recall her making any public comments about how little Nancy was being used. Maybe she felt that her current position on the canvas was tenuous, and she did not not to rock the boat too much.

The last time I remember any statements from her along these lines was when she was interviewed around 1998 or 1999 (whenever the yacht sinking was), which was also around the time of the priceless scene where Penny exclaimed "who ARE these people?" to Ellen. I think even by that point she may have been more guarded.

There's been a great deal of criticism on the left against Adam Schiff (soon to be Senator B from California, or whatever the terminology is) for elevating Steve Garvey (R-Comatose) in the top two system, locking out Katie Porter and Barbara Lee. One of the biggest criticisms is that his decision was selfish because now many Democrats will stay home while Republicans run up the score. 

I have some doubts on this one, namely because I think with Trump on the ballot, many Republicans and Republican-leaning voters would have flocked to the polls anyway, but beyond anything else, I think it shows what a poor candidate Porter was. In spite of tons and tons of money, six years of glowing media profiles and cable news coverage, she couldn't even get second place. And it wasn't especially close for the second and third spot either.

I initially believed the praise surrounding Porter, but after she endorsed that loathsome grifter Nina Turner, I began to see it as a sham. Her little stunt during the endless Speaker vote reading a "not giving a [!@#$%^&*]" book was another reminder. I was not surprised to see Turner, always eager to get people to stay home or vote third party, jumping in yesterday when Porter had a sore loser session.

@Vee This is one of those polls I mentioned of stupid people who now remember Trump's economy as the good old days.

(it may make me sound elitist to call them stupid, but I'll take it)

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/poll-trump-leads-biden-economy/

1 minute ago, JaneAusten said:

In what world was this reality? Because Welch agreed with that irrelevant loser Nate Silver? Or because a bunch of worthless pundits agreed with Silver? 

Welch gave Silver's talking point more weight because he's a senator. That means less people will dismiss it the way it should be dismissed.

Thanks for tagging me @slick jones Warren was so warm and wonderful on Twin Peaks. Really wish Lindsay had stayed on ATWT a bit longer but it's a credit to her she did as much with Betsy post-Steve as she did. 

Amazing news. Astonishing. Miraculous. Thanks @Vee for tagging me.

I almost don't even want to believe it's true, because I don't want to get my hopes up. I can tell myself that at least they are considering a new soap, which is, I believe, the first time that's even been a possibility since Passions was created - almost 25 years! There have been trends leading here, especially the shift away from younger viewers being seen as the ideal, and presumably costs have come down enough to make a soap more viable, but I still never thought it would happen. 

I never hear anything about LMAD or TPiR (and that show used to be iconic to many), and The Talk you only hear about when people are leaving it, so if they want to have a soap that would be made at a good cost and potentially get more buzz, it might make sense. 

I've said on here before that the conversation I would see on Twitter about GH's Trina/Sprina and her family felt so organic, and so different from the weary, deeply cynical way we often have to deal with soaps in the last few decades. If someone sees that and decides to tap into the black audiences who were treated so cavalierly and disrespectfully by daytime in perpetual chasing of viewers who did not and would not ever care, it's long overdue.

I always thought that P&G's efforts at integrating a number of their soaps, while not all they could have been, never got enough attention. It feels right if they finally take the steps they should have taken in more diversity as a mainstay. And I've always thought if basic care had been taken, GL and ATWT would still be on the air today. It feels right if a P&G soap is what rises from the ashes. I was and will always be a P&G boy, and I miss my P&G soaps every single day.

I guess we'll see what happens. I do have a lot of respect for Michele Val Jean and I'm sure she will do whatever she can.

I remember that somewhat ghoulish Entertainment Weekly article on the death of soaps, circa 2012 or so, with a drawing of a graveyard of soaps. They truly were on the brink of death at that time, and in many ways still are, but still, it leaves me satisfied that a decade later, we're still plugging, possibly one more on the way, as EW is barely hanging on as a horribly designed website coughing up the same gossip regurgitated from ten other places.

10 hours ago, Wendy said:

Polls, schmolls.

"Polls" predicted Dump would expertly dominate in his primaries. He has UNDER-PERFORMED in almost every metric predicted.

Polls said Hillary was a lock in 2016.

Polls screamed about Red Wave 2022.

The media hates it, but since Dobbs and the fall of Roe - among other key issues - polls have s-h-i-t the bed ever since.

Could Dump win? Anything is POSSIBLE, but without expanding the base he has left, not PROBABLE, IMO.

But that doesn't mean the nation should be complacent. Vote as if the nation and its democracy is on the line. It is.

Polls also said Trump would lose in 2020, although he lost by less than they claimed. That's another thing I'm anxious over - he outperformed polling in two elections. On a positive note, the primary polling was also off for him in a number of states, but for the most part, I do think the polls can become a narrative and lead to a spiral. I saw Peter Welch, a senator from Vermont, parroting Nate Silver's line that Biden was hurt by not doing a Super Bowl interview. That's another example of the narrative becoming reality. 

I do hope that Democrats overperforming polling in 2022 is a sign for this year, but when so many people, in the press and in life, worship Trump as a god (the way so many Republicans and dead end leftists claimed Obama was worshipped, which was never true), it starts to feel like he just sails through unless you have a situation like 2020 with so many things breaking the other way.

Just now, Vee said:

I guess I don't see that many people doing that, beyond cherry-picked anecdotes from the NYT economy beat.

There have been a few polls going around with this result that keep getting trumpeted everywhere.

19 minutes ago, Vee said:

They'll come to it slowly over the next week or so. They always grudgingly do, often with excuses made for the GOP/Trump.

People are tired of him. They were tired 4 years ago. And while the Biden dislike factor is already heavily overhyped by media and often Very Online, even if it were more legit a lot of people would still either crawl over glass to vote against an actual corpse vs. Trump. Or, if we're talking GOP votes he's lost before and tonight, just stay home again because they're still tired. And that's not even getting to Dobbs. The only people in the general public not tired of Trump are his remaining base and the mainstream media.

I do wonder if some people have gotten amnesia over the last four years. I don't trust polls but any time I see them with people insisting their lives were so much better when he was President, I get wary. This seems to happen any time a Democrat has to clean up the mess of his predecessor.

2 hours ago, DramatistDreamer said:

One of my good friends who lives in Phoenix said over a year ago that Sinema wouldn’t be getting another term.
Sinema thought she was being clever by what she believed was spiting the Democrats, only to isolate herself and undermine what capabilities she might have had. Her constituents have little to no use for her and haven’t for quite some time.

I saw a tweet earlier where someone said they thought she assumed Mark Kelly would lose in 2022 and that would chart her whole course. It didn't happen. This is going to be very close (Lake almost won the gubernatorial race in what may have been a much better year for Democrats than 2024 might be), so I guess at least she didn't stay in as a spoiler.

30 minutes ago, Vee said:

 

Trump only got 63% in Virginia - Virginia - among his own party. Neither @marceline nor I need to put a show on in the barn to indicate what that suggests for the future.

Meanwhile, the pundits are already pointing out Minnesota and not saying a word about this.

Thanks!

I think Sheffer's idea of soap was just too cynical and dark to fit veteran characters. I still remember great choices like having Jessica and Margo, longtime close friends, fight over a man - this not long after Jessica had been raped. 

I will credit Goutman with not dumping vets for quick cash. That's better than many managed.

If we get into the realm of spent characters, a character like Lily felt more spent to me in ATWT's last decade than Bob or Kim, but then I wasn't writing the show...

Marley. Vicky, Vicky. Marley. Marley, Vicky.

2 hours ago, BetterForgotten said:

Agreed, best to wait until they appear in the credits or until we get confirmation from an office source that this is their work - even if some ghostwriting has been happening. 

Remember the ghastly hysteria you know who inflicted on these boards back in the day about someone ghostwriting AMC nonsense? Some folks were seeing changes that were never happening lol

I think even with the greatest writers in all of history there are also inevitable limitations with soaps today and networks today. I wish them the best but I'm not going to expect anything. I still wince at what happened when the Labines went to OLTL and GL.

Thanks @te. . I don't think I remember this (or if I do it might have just been a mention here years ago). At least it gave Maree some work for a while.

3 hours ago, NothinButAttitude said:

Again, that had to suck for the fandom who probably pined for those two to be together only to instantly lose the pairing. 

Did the actress want to leave the role? I know that people have said was rumored that Irna was not a fan of the actress. Is this true?

That was the first Liz, Jane House. I wonder how fans felt about the replacement actress.