DRW50

@Vee I am so glad you have kept these recaps up. You have provided us better analysis than many paid reviewers have for any show, let alone a 40-year old soap. You've also given me so many insights into characters I generally saw as plot devices, like Lillimae. And when you have no real use for a character I liked (such as Ginger) you don't beat a dead horse about it. Seasons 5 and 6 may be the show's overall strongest, if my memory serves, a time when I could invest in the travails of nearly every character and the umbrella stories flow naturally. I hope you enjoy them. I am glad you have appreciated Richard so much as a character. I tend to agree with you that he had to go in order for Knots to evolve, but John Pleshette was easily the best actor on the male side of the character, and Richard was an endlessly fascinating character even at his most pathetic. His exit from the show is very moving. He does get a few good little moments when he returns, although, unfortunately, the lazy choice to never properly age or develop Jason blunts impact that would have been there if the show had been more invested in Laura.

What a surprise, MSNBC platforming grifters/cultists.

Barbara Eden interview around the time of her Dallas guest spot.

I would agree that I'm not sure how much of a role politics plays. Soaps are arguably the most conservative genre now on television, maybe aside from all those miserable Yellowstone shows some people keep trying to force on the public. Ingo Rademacher kept a job for years spewing all kinds of [!@#$%^&*] on Twitter until his complete irrelevance and aging did him in. Melissa Reeves is a mess and she still comes and goes from DAYS when she chooses.

Yes, Family Ties is the one I was thinking of with the good SNL sketch. Mad Magazine also had a very good rip on those. The SNL sketch starts at about 15 minutes: https://archive.org/details/saturday-night-live-s-13-e-11-justine-bateman-terrance-trent-darby

Oh he's trolling. There's not much reason to pass the hate and ugliness of bleary-eyed body bags off as a grander strategy - they are going to do these things, but that isn't why he's saying it. She truly is just a lump of souring dough, and unlike her lump of a father, has zero charisma. I still don't know why the Arkansas GOP decided she should be their governor - she has no skills and no future in the party. @Vee I've heard over and over about how much more violent the police are toward liberal or progressive protesters than they are toward the right. It's always so dismaying to see, no matter how many times I hear it.

She'd mostly left for Falcon Crest, I think, then only returned for several months to kill Hope off.

I noticed it most with late '80s sitcoms and the myriad flashback episodes (which inspired a good SNL sketch, if nothing else), but you're right, Trek is blatant too.

@Vee Wonderful writeups, as usual. I don't tend to go back while reading these but I did seek out a few parts of these episodes to refresh my memory, especially the Ciji biking scene. That was so unusual for Knots that I do wonder how people felt at the time, if they knew what was coming. The visuals of the last act of the episode you make clear enough to where they enhance my memories of those moments. And of course the psychological disturbance of Ciji staring right at us, into a future she will never see, all through Ginger's performance - shades of Laura Palmer's photo at the end of the Twin Peaks closing credits. I do think the Richard and Laura angle of the Ciji story was underwritten - a hasty friendship and some homophobic jeering - but everyone involved sold the hell out of it, leaving more of an impression than some other, heavily played aspects (like Diana/Chip). Pettet has some physical resemblance to Lisa Hartman, which adds a certain unease when we cut from Mack reacting to Ciji on the slab to reacting to Baines. I wonder if that was intended. Even in the underwhelming and borderline aimless late '80s (which was around the peak of the bloated episode orders, I believe), I do think Knots managed to make those extra episodes work. I was never a fan of the talking point that less episodes = more quality, and I notice fewer and fewer people say this due to the mediocre state of so much network and cable programming.

Engelbert Humperdinck's people have been uploading full episodes of his 1969 variety show on his Youtube channel. They're up to three so far. https://www.youtube.com/c/EngelbertHumperdinckTV/videos

An episode of Kristian Alfonso's short-lived (and, no offense Kristian, vaguely trashy) Love Stories show has been reuploaded to Youtube.

I would agree Cindy was the main strength of the character, but I think a proper recast could have still had a lot of value, especially for Philip's story. Philip would have no maternal figure on the show, aside from Alex, sometimes, and Alex was not a strong enough character by the '90s for that to matter.

For people who had never left, Tina Sloan.

Oh they will come up with fancy wording - it's not about gay marriage, it's about a wrong legal decision, you can support gay marriage and oppose Obergefell (that's the line Ben Shapiro is using, even though he is virulently anti-gay to the point of not even bothering to fake it with sycophantic grifters like Dave Rubin). I would like to think the honesty in their bigotry will make a difference with voters, but I don't think that country exists, and it never has. If it takes a half-dollar off gas, death camps would get a collective shrug. Wasn't this one of those things Manchin was angry about as he saw it as making people lazy? I can't keep track.

This is the man who posted a photo of himself with a bottle of Corona in early 2020 just to troll people who were worried about being sick and dying. He's just a ghoul, and seeing people trying to rationalize his ugliness is another example of a subset on social media who either get paid to lie or who have to deny reality to get through the days. They have already destroyed public schools and brought back segregation as it is - they might as well go all the way in their minds. I'm sure Clarence Thomas would cheer them on. Speaking of not caring about subtlety: (this is the Hitler-praising Congresswoman)

Yes it was a great surprise to see Helena, in what must be some of her earliest appearances. I just love watching Rose Alaio and I don't know why Kobe and Long didn't keep her on. Oh well. I notice the material for Amanda hits a lot of the same beats Marland hit with Heather Rattray's Lily where she becomes aggressive in business because of heartbreak and being a little girl lost, etc. Fortunately Heather was not dressed like a child. Marland never really wanted to write aggressive businesspeople, but women seemed to get the main psychoanalysis if they were power players in the boardroom. I don't have a lot of use for a full group hectoring her and being aghast at her taking the company from Alan (who had been a very ruthless figure himself, not that you would know it from any of this dialogue). The most interesting parts are through Vanessa, who presumably took a break from ordering Russian peasants to be shot. I'm sorry that Kathleen never really got to play Amanda as a tougher and unapologetic businesswoman. Again I do wonder why Long and Kobe decided why she had to go - some of the characters they kept hanging around for several years are people they really didn't do anything of value with (like Katie and Floyd). I felt bad for Vanessa in that she so clearly adored Mark even as he was already discarding her. Maeve adds so many layers to Vanessa even in this heavy caricature period. One of the more unique points of Marland's run compared to what came before or after is his exploration of transitory relationships, like Tony going through Katie, Vanessa and Hillary in the space of 3-4 months. It's much more honest than the daytime world, or daytime viewers, tend to accept, and it's not somtehing I remember him doing on most of his other soaps (it's not really something GL did either - even when you had characters like Rick or Philip who passed through various turnstiles in the mid/late '80s, we would usually hear they were "in love" with these women - maybe aside from Philip and India).

I also wonder if they wanted to have a more soothing contrast to the B-52s to keep the conservative viewers from being more upset.

Bertie Higgins performed on June 8th (that video is a page or two back). Someone on the Jennifer Holliday video says she sang on May 17th. Not sure if there are any others.

Not Tracy-related, but the two Guiding Light episodes the B-52s were in have been uploaded to the University of Georgia archives, and they including some Carrie Todd Marler material that I don't think has been out there before. https://bmac.libs.uga.edu/pawtucket2/index.php/Detail/objects/363158

Holy [!@#$%^&*]! I don't know if these were posted here before, but I don't remember them. Various B-52s videos were put into an archive for the University of Georgia. They were, as I'm sure you all know, on Guiding Light, and clips of them, in not the best quality, have been online for a number of years. I saw that someone had clipped these clips on Youtube again, with some footage I hadn't seen before, so I clicked on the link to the archive. I had half-assumed they would just have the performances, but hoped for more. As it turns out, they uploaded, IN FULL, BOTH April 1982 (don't know the exact date) episodes that the band was in...commercials and everything! Yes, there's a watermark in the middle, but honestly, who can complain??? I know the late Ricky Wilson was very proud to get to be on GL. Given how dire our times are now, I'd like to think he helped do this to give his fellow fans some brief joy... @victoria foxton @Mitch @Mitch64 @slick jones @soapfan770 @Vee @Paul Raven @Soapsuds@bboy875 @j swift @MichaelGL @zanereed @jam6242 @Tonksadora https://bmac.libs.uga.edu/pawtucket2/index.php/Detail/objects/363158

They're loving it, because they can ignore own culpability and use this to gleefully shame and berate Democrats and mock anyone who votes. Even worse are trust fund babies like Carlos Maza who are going around calling for armed violence when they, and their retweet friends and their many guillotine gifs, will never be the ones out there risking anything. They are reprehensible.

I feel like if I talk about this topic it takes away from the women and children who are going to suffer from the Roe decision, but yes, I also thought about this, as you have and so many others have. Moreso where we are likely heading - a model of Turkey and Russia, idolized by much of the US right, which will be lgbt people officially listed as groomers and dangers to the family, unable to work, unable to foster or adopt, or have any access to even their biological children, unable to share legal benefits, or a home, with their partner. Unable to have dating or sex lives. Inevitably put in camps, tortured, and killed. Yes, people should fight, and one twist of fate or person can make a difference, but it's hard to shake what is likely coming. (and I don't buy the lies from the right that these policies are up to each state - look at the SCOTUS gun ruling for proof of what a joke that is). I've been ashamed of this country ever since we "liberated" Iraq. I should have been long before that, probably, but that was when I fully saw what the apparatus was...and while there were good people who made a difference in some years, and still are, there has been no going back.

Thanks @victoria foxton Very kind of Mark Arnold to share these with fans.