DRW50

Thanks a lot @SoapDope I missed that entirely. 

5 minutes ago, BetterForgotten said:

I was watching this India and Reva scene the other day. I don’t think many were allowed to really drill into Reva and read her for filth the way India did here.

Thanks for sharing that. Honestly jumping from India possessed by righteousness and delicious neurotic bitchery (whichever scriptwriter came up with "biological twitchings" deserved every raise in the world) to Warren and John Bolger's Philip makes this the gayest clip in the history of Guiding Light.

9 minutes ago, P.J. said:

From what I've been able to revisit, I think Vanessa did need to be anchored to another family. I love Henry and Vanessa's relationship, but a grown woman can't run around town being besties with her "Daddy" indefinitely  They kind of threw her at everyone when she started. If it was in pants and moved, Vanessa batted her eyes at it. Good grief, she even dated ED. (and not one of the cute Eds, Mart Hulswit's Ed, bless him.) Which they seem to have forgotten by the end of the 80's. 

I don't blame Billy for the shift in Vanessa, I blame Reva. Reva took over the "outrageous vixen" role the minute she stepped into town.  And then I blame Matt. Vanessa caught "brain MIA disease" from him.

It gets very confusing trying to figure out who she's interested in or involved with in the Marland era, likely because Vanessa was mostly a plot device. There are some entertaining moments where we see her plotting or commenting on the action (like that grainy clip of her with Josh at the disco), but there's also a very degrading tone. I think she would have likely met Diane's fate, or just left the show with no real fanfare.

Ageism was a big culprit for Vanessa's fate in the mid-90s, but I did blame Matt too (and I long held a grudge against that character). I also blame how passive they made her with Dinah, which really diminished her voice. 

I'm not going to act like the show was especially good by that point, but what I've seen of Vanessa in the late '00s feels closer to the woman I remember than the Vanessa of the mid-late '90s who often just seemed cast aside and, once again, vaguely degraded. 

Watching this also makes me realize there is a whole lot of Vanessa's backstory in the early/mid '00s about losing most of her money that I never knew of or paid much attention to (maybe whoever used to write that GL fic for P&G could write a novel on it).

14 minutes ago, kalbir said:

Maybe to a lesser extent Alexandra as well?

India too.

Helen Wagner and Eileen Fulton interviewed on Donahue. There's a 1958 clip around 21-22 minutes with Nancy and Grandpa. Donahue (sometimes I forget how much he annoyed me) talks all over the clip but Helen helpfully gives some background to what's going on. Ruth Warrick also talks a few minutes after the clip about the Edith storyline and how Irna was ordered to kill off either her or her love interest.

I can't remember if I've seen that old clip before or not. @vetsoapfan you may know. (sorry to put you on the spot)

@SFK Ruth Warrick is one of the soap legends interviewed in this. 

There's a hilarious question about eight minutes in where someone asks if she and Louis Edmonds are an item...

Mary Stuart and Larry Haines are among the soap legends interviewed in this. The first seven minutes have two clips - even if Donahue annoyingly talks over them (especially the second one). I think I've seen that one before but the first one I'm not too sure about.

The Billy/Vanessa pairing and integrating Vanessa into the Lewis family was important for her long-term status, but other than that and Little Billy I'm not sure if Long ever did a great deal with the character. (to be fair I think Maeve was not there for a good chunk of Long's second stint) Even the Dinah story, also very important to Vanessa in the long term, only happened after Long's first exit.

10 minutes ago, Sapounopera said:

I think that Vanessa would be fine in stories with Alan and Ross among others. Perhaps I am biased because I hated the Lewis invasion. 

That's fair. If I'd been watching at the time I might have the same reaction. My first memories of Vanessa were from around 1990, so it was a jolt to go back years later and see her earlier material. There are some moments of cold scheming early on with her I enjoy but it feels like they start taking her in a more hysterical direction once Quint/Nola are a focus. 

15 hours ago, Sapounopera said:

I consider Billy the end of the Real Vanessa. She went from Tracy Quartermaine to Sue Ellen Ewing for no reason. 

I feel like the Vanessa pre-Billy couldn't have been viable as a long-term character, although I don't really care for some of what they did with her in that timeframe (like the pill addiction and running over Reva).

March 12, 1986.

Last 26 minutes of an episode from March 12, 1986.

The smile when the NPR hack claims that Trump is behaving "normally" is one of the clearest reminders I've seen of just how dirty and complicit the Beltway is. They are still, after a decade, here to tell us that Trump is normal and in the center.

On 2/17/2024 at 9:52 AM, P.J. said:

I love Billy and Vanessa, but they are always miserable. Or at least the clips I manage to catch.

I also loved them, but you're right. I don't know how many times I ever remember seeing them in happy scenes.

2 minutes ago, vote4llama said:

 

You're welcome!  I won't spoil anything but you'll love it.  I hope to hear your thoughts.  I'm not even halfway through watching them but it's incredible.  I need to write my opinions at some point.  It's 26 years old...but maybe I'll use spoiler tags?

I've been hoping for something like this since the Africa Channel days.

Feel free. I would enjoy reading them. I have never seen this far back. My viewing mostly just went to the Africa Channel days. 

Thank you to @vote4llama for telling me of this and @Toups for reopening the thread.

The first 51 episodes of Isidingo are now on Youtube!

A sitcom pilot featuring Laurie Heineman a year or so after she left AW.

4 hours ago, InLoveWithSoaps said:

A few thoughts on the past year as I finish up 2023.

Gotta love how the Marshall character was erased from existence probably only because he was as bad an actor as it can get.  

I think that was another case of an actor abruptly leaving, which is probably why they still had the whole hostage crisis with Laurel and his father after he was already gone. 

I have a feeling the show, or Claire King, may feel Kim has aged out of affair stories with much younger men, but I agree Billy/Kim would have made sense at one point.

16 hours ago, te. said:

Promo for Aaron Spelling's little heard of The Round Table, which debuted on NBC in the same season as Melrose Place:

Thanks. I don't remember hearing of this show. Or if I did I've forgotten it. The early '90s is such a clear identity crisis for primetime soaps as they try to move into what was seen as a more scaled-back, "intelligent" era. It would take Melrose Place blowing up (in more ways than one) for that to stop. 

22 minutes ago, DramatistDreamer said:

Wow, these missing reels of BBC programs seem to turn up fairly often, it seems.

Sometimes I am disappointed because the stuff I want to see is never likely to materialize, but I should be happy with any new find. 

Speaking of which:

Fans get rare chance to see lost Billy Connolly Big Banana Feet film (bbc.com)

1 hour ago, Ryan Mason said:

Speaking of YouTube uploads, in case it helps any of you, I wound up creating a public 1994 playlist that has everything I could find as of last May in chronological order. For whatever reason, that particular year had a lot of duplicate postings of episodes, episodes without actual dates, etc., so it took me awhile to sort through all of it when I rewatched the Marland era to mid-1997, and I figured I may as well share my findings in case it helped anyone else! Here's the link:

Thanks for your help.