titan1978

Well it didn’t help that JFP tried propping Jensen in favor of JZ. That had potential. Let Melissa come between Roy and Bobbie. You could even have still had Bobbie be neurotic about it and do some questionable things, but eventually coming around to herself and recognizing she was just panicked about losing Roy again and revisit how traumatic the original loss was and formative to the Bobbie that wasn’t trying to steal Scotty or fig he all the time with Laura. And then I would just turn Melissa into a slow burn maniac, that ends up holding Bobbie hostage or something soapy and fun like that, while Roy is clueless. They could have even had Jason and Carly rescue her, still allowing the show to revolve around them lol.

It’s like they got the casting right, just as the show settled into a couple of years of really shallow storytelling.

Correct me if I am wrong, but by the time Ed Scott arrived as the senior EP, was there any real independent power there? If there was cleaning house, it was done on Bell’s behalf. From everything I have read, Conboy was the only EP that did what he wanted, and would piss Bell off when he saw the air shows.

I also have never enjoyed Jackson. Give me Dimitri or Travis any day.

I thought everyone like Laurel. I seem to recall people being upset when she was killed. I wasn’t. I didn’t enjoy her at all. And truthfully, I didn’t like Trevor either!

What I remember most about Sunset Beach was I thought the cast was pretty great, with a couple of duds that were quickly rectified. And that original theme song. I thought it was incredible, and did not at all suit the show I was seeing. The updated one fit much better, but I kind of always wanted that show- sexy, filled with intrigue. And I have always found Gary Tomlin’s production style to look incredibly cheap, even on a Spelling show. I think it’s the lighting he prefers.

I didn’t start checking the show out until the Annie Dutton story, and then this year I watched as much of the Curlee/Demorest and company I could find. So Buzz was really annoying to me back then, but there are moments when he first arrived that I do enjoy. I think loosing Nadine really did the Coopers a lot of damage. She is just a delightful character. She’s a mess, and I really like her, and it was a shame that they killed her off and from what I read nobody in town even knew for months? What a shame.

Michael Logan loves that Greta Garbo of daytime line. He used it here and in his interview with Beverlee. I like a lot of Deas work that I have seen on YouTube. He was adorable as Tom Hughes and in Ryan’s Hope. But Buzz is a drag.

I didn’t mean they had their own story. They just had a part to play again in story involving their family. Instead of generic hospital scenes and commenting on stories they were really removed from. ”I hope Robert can figure this out.” Type of stuff. Once Tom came back they had scenes about the Hardy family again.

Why did Hilary Edson quit? I liked what I have seen of Eve, I liked her as Tania on GH too.

Monty was revolutionary but she was still steeped in old school soaps. Thanks to this site I have learned that she had a much more extensive soap directing and producing background than I had any clue of. She knew to keep those vets around, even if she didn’t give them a lot to do. The fact that the show survived the 1981 transition and outlandish storytelling is pretty incredible and shows just how much the audience loved the newer characters. It went to heights it had never seen before while loosing a huge amount of major characters in a two year period. An entire era of the show could easily be defined by the storylines involving Diana, Peter, Jeff and Heather. I seem to recall reading that Rachel Ames did leave somewhere in the middle of Monty’s tenure, and I know Beradino was critical of the show treating Steve like a talk to only. Loosing Jeff really hampered his story for years. Was it Wes Kenney or Joe Hardy that brought Tom back as an adult and really gave Steve and Audrey material again?

Yeah, that is a get. I wonder what the role is? Recast Classic, or new story?

That was Monty’s style for GH if you ask me, which really cemented once PFS got there. One umbrella plot that was usually focused around the action adventure crew (Luke, Robert, Anna,Frisco, etc), and another umbrella plot around more grounded human stuff- epic romance, relationships falling apart/affairs, murder or accidental death, etc airing simultaneously. There would be crossover of characters and themes, but you still had the action team and the normal people. As stupid as carbonic snow is, the details are so well constructed as these recaps point out. People questioning Mikkos is a great part of these summaries. Until now, I would have had no idea Alex Quartermaine was uneasy with aligning herself with The Cassadines as the plans are revealed. I thought she was always a part of it. Also- Doug Sheehan was adorable then, and I loved him on Knots Landing (and a sitcom I watched that was cancelled in the late 80’s). Joe deserved better pairings. Also- reading so many Marland quotes and stories from the GL and ATWT cancelled threads makes me think he must have hated working with Monty. He was so particular about his work, and here you have someone that the script is a guidepost, and she and the actors will retool and improvise and on her terms change the story right in the moment if it is not working. Back then she had the experience and the chops to do that well. But I bet he hated it!

@Dion, are you watching these episodes on YouTube? Just reading your synopsis makes me want to watch the whole story unfold. The part with Hutch, the bomb and the orderly sounds more exciting than anything I have seen on GH this year. Plus it involved characters we like!

Ron Carlivati seems to have never grown out of this mindset 😆

I think Bill Bell and team were just taking the temperature of that time period. More realism was popular on primetime and daytime (minus DAYS). A lot of shows lost a sense of fun around that same time (GH I’m looking at you). Plus Sharon and Nick become a huge focus and they were never fun characters. We had just come off a run of intense stories but also still with a sense of fun- characters like Nina, Lauren, Drucilla, Sheila, Leanna, Katherine and Jill were sometimes in serious material but they were also fun to watch and could go from soapy to gritty.

I had characters and a history figured out for a small town soap in the mid 1990’s, and it was going to be very dark (not as supernatural or esoteric as Twin Peaks, but that same vibe of hidden secrets and a shocking death to start things off). I even turned part of it into a college writing short story, but I haven’t seen it in years. When Guza left GH for Sunset Beach and GH started to kind of unravel, I started to write down some plots I would want to see, and it kind of turned into about two years of story. I really tried to service the characters that were there already (although I did kill off Sarah Webber), and not just bring back all the vets I loved that were not on the show anymore. Outside of giving Lesley Webber more prominence, I really stuck to the then current cast with a couple of additions. The only major things I remember were Celia Quartermaine visiting briefly and she had twins that ended up staying in PC, Felicia and Mac/Robin and Jason ended up in a mystery that involved a mob story with Sonny, Luke, Faison and Stefan/Helena Cassadine (well before he came back during the Lucky storyline), I added a mixed race Ward teen who was also gay (and they ended up falling in love with one of Celia’s kids), and Lesley Webber got her life back together relatively quickly and reopened the clinic, where Laura ended up working as a counselor. I also gave Simone Hardy way more to do, and in my dream the original actress was back to play this as that was what I imagined. I can’t remember much else, although I know people like Lucky, Emily, Bobbie, the Q’s, Brenda and Lois (who came back) had story, I am just fuzzy on the details.

Carbonic snow might be the stupidest thing ever. But these recaps and many of the scenes from the story I have seen are a lot of fun. I can see why the show was really building to peak attention at this point. Robert, Luke and Laura are fun as a team.

Talking about Laura’s lack of friends reminded me something I really missed once Guza arrived- the emphasis on friendships. Once Anna arrives and becomes established in the mid 80’s, you had a strong core of Robert, Anna, Sean, Tiffany, Frisco and Felicia that had individual friendships and were also kind of a group too. It made scenes and plot driven stories fun, because you wanted to see them interact. Once Labine arrives we get smaller groups but there are still great friendships invested in. After Guza’s return from Sunset Beach most of that just slowly falls away. They kind of had it going again with Robin and the other doctors, but not like back in the day. And that felt like copying Grey’s anyway.

I miss Amy. She was on just the right amount in the 1980’s. I didn’t need to see her in a story. I just liked seeing her causing trouble with her big mouth. In my dream timeline, when Lesley came back they actually invested in her, we saw her rebuild her life and skills, and she was back in the hospital orbit for a couple of years. Maybe even becoming Chief of Staff when Alan has his pill addiction. Much to Monica’s chagrin. Which would also have given Laura an active support person on the show.

She really walks a fine line but remains lovable as Tiffany. In hindsight it really hurt Laura not having her after the show got rid of Tiffany and Sean. She just didn’t really have many people that were friends and had that past connection at that point, especially when Mary Mae Ward died. Everyone was more tied to Luke. It’s not like she could confide much in Amy, unless she wanted it to go everywhere.

I don’t think I have ever heard Rauch’s GL and that period of ATWT summed up so well. I also started sampling/watching both in the late 1990’s, and this pretty much reminded me of why I also stopped a lot.

While Cricket drove me absolutely crazy in her pre lawyer days, I have to say she added to the storytelling balance on the show. She could be the crossover character between various groupings that didn’t usually cross in Bill Bell’s day, she had romantic storylines, thrillers, issues, and was a talk to. When I think of classic Y&R storytelling (post Abbots joining the show era), in each episode there was always a character longing for something, a romance touched upon, someone in turmoil, a business storyline, and whatever other plot was boiling- usually a psychopath. Cricket was utilitarian for that story balance.

He is absolutely tone deaf and willfully ignorant. Why even say it, then get called out and respond that way? As an aside- I will never understand how both he and Valentini treat LGBTQ characters on their shows.

The fact that JFP’s current excuse is that she learned her lesson with Maureen...and then admitted the lesson she learned was not giving the actor she wants to get rid of for whatever reason good material the audience is invested in. “The audience only cared about Maureen because of the affair and death.” She does not get it at all.