titan1978

That FOJ list- do we count someone like Zaslow? He was on GL before she arrived and after. I know she brought him to OLTL for a very short term return but that was more for him due to his illness than a typical FOJ situation.

About the letter- am I remembering correctly that Genie does not do a voice over for it? Tony says the words in the letter. I don’t remember where I saw it, but I recall Genie at some point saying she refused to do the voiceover of the letter because it glosses over the rape.

I think that is the most iconic part of the wedding. His catch, Laura’s shocked face, and Luke jumping down to fight him. I read Geary said he misjudged the distance and almost broke his leg when he jumped.

Even though I hate the rape part of their story for L&L, I think Kin actually gained a more fun character that always had the ability to generate story due to Marland not getting his way. Scotty was a blast after his heart was broken. Plus Laura got to go on all those adventures and I can’t imagine her without that life. Speaking of sharing lovers, these two were both involved with Scotty and Luke.

The Balkan had potential, in that both of them were played be excellent actors that didn’t get eaten alive by the soap pace. The story made no sense. But they hired the right people to play it.

I still loved him from the return until just after lucky died. The truth for me is that he does his best work when he is with someone very grounded. That’s part of what I loved about Labine, even if he hated it. I prefer Laura, but I can’t stand her marriage to Kevin. It’s just not working. When you watch their earlier run, it’s pretty clear why both of them became stars. It is comical to me when we get to Luke as mayor though. Ridiculous.

To give Guza credit- it was the start of a slow burn where both of them were beginning to question their loyalty to Sonny in regards to his loyalty to them always being whatever he wanted. It culminated with Michael in jail, and how torn up Jason and Carly were. And then when things fell apart with Brenda, we finally had a Sonny that admitted power was always going to come before everything else- love, family, etc. There was a period of time there where I felt like the show was really being written to root for Dante and Jason over Sonny’s impulses.

It was vomit inducing. The only part of it I liked was Jason and Carly starting to turn on Sonny.

It’s more nuanced for me. While I do think if you have a large cast, everybody should be used. But at the same time, some characters/actors just drive story and are compelling over decades. I loved the ensemble nature of Curlee’s GL. But I also grew up under the star driven GH and never got sick of Robert, Anna, etc. until Guza’s second run and the affair with Felicia, I could watch Luke 4 days a week and not get tired of him.

I read a comment that she said Frank lead the charge for it to be required. I do think her posting about it in regards to her union might have rushed things along. But then again, maybe she knew GH was headed that way and she’s just pressuring her union to do the same all over?

Becoming a doctor. Maybe the cancer thing. Outside that, no. I cannot imagine her in a relationship with Sonny, or the horrible double stuff with Tyler and that terrible rape storyline. I didn’t hate NL, but she was more in the mold of a traditional soap heroine. I think AT seemed more natural for the character and had better romantic chemistry with Zander.

I assumed at the time the thing with Emily was more about Helena and Stefan having some control over Nikolas more than her not being from a family “good enough.” With Emily they had more of an outsider, which does not bode well for the Cassadines. It was still a stupid storyline.

The show was so good for those few months!

Thanks to @JAS0N47’s stats for DAYS, we can clearly see how often Macdonald Carey was onscreen, especially back in the show’s first decade. He’s still very highly ranked all things considered and he has been dead since the early 1990’s. When the casts were smaller, the shows played a lot of the same characters all the time. I wonder if people felt like the balance was off back then?

It was so stupid to give Luke a version of DID. Awful. He should have been Bill.

It had pockets of mess during her tenure. I actually liked a lot of the show under her and Levinson even before Labine arrived. Even though I watched GH a lot as a kid, I was just the right age to fall in lust with Jagger, and I loved Brenda, Karen, Jason and Robin. Up through Guza’s first run it was excellent. It falls apart when she launched PC and Culliton/Harris ran out of Guza/Harris story projections. Then it was pretty amazing again when Guza came back, and was often great, but also not quite often. The whole show kind of stalled out as I recall after Lucky died. Jacob Young was miscast, Tyler’s replacement wasn’t as brooding, and even before that Billy Warlock just didn’t seem like AJ. New characters came in as blatant replacements for Vanessa Marcil, and didn’t work. Riche has even admitted that she should have left a year or so before she did.

I almost put Sheila & Lauren because in the early 1990’s when they were driving story I was all about both of them. Lauren had basically three men involved with her and Sheila and was also kind of a bitch and I loved her. Sheila was scary AF. I also could watch Bev’s Alex, Roger, and Sherry’s Blake every day and never get tired of them.

It was such a strange time on the show. They had Laura in limbo due to Lucky’s death, and because they were dragging out L&L reuniting until the Lucky reveal. So she had literally nothing to do but cry and try to heal while Luke went back into fun adventure mode with Felicia. To have them end up together was one of the worst of many Guza plots I hated. I did think they had chemistry as scene partners, but not a romance. And much like Tony Jones- once their character had been compromised, they were just boxed into a corner until KW left the show. This was also when I finally started to turn on Luke. I had always enjoyed him before this story. But it ruined him for me.

I can’t imagine how thrilling and hard it was to be that young, be given that pivotal a role on a soap opera, have no peers your age on the show and then to become an actual pop culture icon. The fact that she survived is pretty incredible all things considered. It’s pretty awful when you compare what was happening on GH to it’s closest clone in those days, which IMO was Days of Our Lives. Nearly every major female character was raped, and most disgustingly, it often was used as a super couple obstacle. On GH, until Karen’s storyline they just did not do stories like that after Laura was raped. I’m not saying stories of sexual violence don’t belong on soaps, they do. It’s just on DAYS rarely were they as impactful beyond a plot point instead of being a story centered on they character assaulted.

We often complain about the characters that have been forced down our throats over the years. So I started thinking about how often soaps had frontburner characters that I just never got tired of. On GH in the mid 1980’s, it felt like Anna, Robert, Frisco and Felicia were on all the time. I never got sick of them. Same with Vanessa Marcil (although I know some fans feel differently), especially during her first return. I could have watched her 4 days a week with no issue (and she was on close to that during her first return stint). Viki on OLTL- I could take Viki 5 days a week and never get sick of her (unless it was Nikki Smith). DAYS- Reilly had Marlena driving so much story in his first stint, I can’t imagine the show without her back then. I remember missing her as the show sidelined her over the years. Had I been around to see Flannery as Laura Horton on DAYS I think I would have never gotten tired of her. Or Jessie on the early years of GH. Or even Luke and Laura when they took over the whole show.

Monty learned her lesson- I don’t think there was ever another rape on the show in either of her tenures. She didn’t do a lot of damsel in distress type stuff either. Alan and Monica have some questionable scenes, but I don’t recall if Monica ever vocalized herself as being raped by Alan. Genie said later that it was date/acquaintance rape before that term was commonly know or used and that the show certainly didn’t handle it properly. That was so cool. I guess I don’t think I have seen much of that set in color either. I didn’t remember it being so blue. Cool to see all those older actors- and kind of shocking/sad. Poor Emily aged a lot from this video to 1978.

I am playing catch-up on a bunch of episodes, and I may never forgive Ron Carlivati for luring me back to the show with possession 2.0, and making me sit through Johnny singing whatever that was. And damn, Bill Hayes is really killing it here. Him not coming right out and saying it is such a Reilly throwback.

I felt this way before, and I feel it even more now. Ryan going on an actual killing spree is needed here for the buzz (have to compete with MarDevil2.0) and the needed thinning of the canvas.

I thought Meg Ward was fantastic, and just did not get the point of a recast. To then saddle her with DID, and that kid…oof.

KMc was pretty disgusted with the show using Robin’s HIV as a plot point during the Lisa storyline and was ready to move on to directing and from what I recall was talked into the possibility of return by Frank as her final scenes were being shot. He arrived not long before she was set to leave, and I’m pretty sure her death was a re-write to leave them some wiggle room.