titan1978

Watching Monday and hearing Ned name drop Peter made me wonder if another anvil was falling. Speaking of which, the only reason I would tolerate Lulu/Nathan (supposing he isn’t really who he says he is) is if they do not have sex, and she figures out the whole plot herself. I do think after what she has been through Lulu would be more nervous in general, but I want the spunk back. It’s bad enough that both her kids were conceived through violations and they both favor the wrong person right now. Also, they are hyping big bad Valentin! To me he was a crying mess that felt about as threatening as a plate of quivering Jell-O. The only good thing he has ever done is let Laura slap him and be revealed as one of the heads of Pikeman.

That is wild!

Talk of the more earnest and progressive era of Lifetime reminded me of Baby Cakes starring Ricki Lake. I could have sworn it was a Lifetime original but the internet tells me it was a CBS tv movie.

As we have discussed before, scrap Britt, whatever the recurring rates are for Valentin and Brad, and put that coin in the offer and give us Brenda. Jason and Sonny immediately have story, and they could finally go there with Guza’s 2002 plan to pair Jason with Brenda. Brenda can also be quippy and bitchy when written correctly. She was always a smartass, especially towards Carly. Let her walk in the door with some kind of secret and also as the buyer in a hostile takeover of Deception, working with Lois. And Brenda’s plot point son can be the HBIC gay man they have always wanted.

I watched so many of those trashy USA films. For years I thought the Cheryl Ladd thriller Lisa was a TV Movie and it was an actual film!

It’s so pathetic and being telegraphed a mile away. I hope it doesn’t come to pass but I have my doubts. We are about to be dominated by recurring characters again and the actual contract players are going to be the B characters in all their stories again. The only recurring person I want to see a lot of right now is Ric Lansing, and the occasional drop in with Lucy Coe. Rick Hearst is one of those handful of soap actors that just seems to have chemistry with everyone, even if his character is gross.

The only logic I can assign to the audience liking Valentin, Franco, Finn and Julian Jerome as much as they do is the clear acknowledgement that people actually do want romance stories on this soaps. All of them have had tortured romances almost their entire runs. I have to count the ABC viewers long term fandom of Roger Howarth and Michael Easton too. But ultimately I think it’s that they were all constantly coupled up. In the same toxic way fans wanted Luke and Laura together in 1979, they wanted Alexis and Julian to get back together after he tried to kill her.

Agreed! I cannot believe they are all slowly working their way back onto the show. And Valentin is getting the FV special for his friends- tie them to a core character like Carly. They have used Liz for this so much that I’m surprised he didn’t parachute into her yard and need medical help. It’s like they all forgot their ratings were not great when all these people were leading the show the first time around. They tanked the show themselves fighting for control after Mulcahey got there. Things did pick up when Michael was recast, and they were blowing through stories at lightning speed. But then Britt’s return and Ronnie derailed everything and you can feel the story manipulation happening again to prop those tired old characters. Valentini has driven me away before doing this. The fact that Laura has something marginally entertaining going on is keeping me watching.

It was way beyond too late to recast Edward with someone like Jed. One of the strangest recasts during JFP’s tenure.

This is the description of so many soap hunks over the years! And Chase fits that generic soap hunk mold so well!

Damn. Shots fired! Too funny! But in his defense, he had more personality than Nathan!

Less critically acclaimed but one I loved from USA was Body Language, starring executive Heather Locklear and her Fatal Attractions assistant, Linda Purl. It’s pretty trashy but a lot of fun!

It is comical how we as a nation have allowed fundamentalists to dictate media so much. Because TV was way more intense when I was a kid, and they were also more graphic, and TV Movies were often risqué. And if their was backlash it amounted to very little compared to now when every little thing is scrutinized. The Burning Bed was aired on NBC, was a real high point in Farrah Fawcett’s career, and is incredibly intense and very good. TV movies used to be the place to tell a ripped from the headlines type of story before Law & Order really dominated that trope.

I still wonder if Diana Taylor would have been killed off had Valerie Starrett still been there. And I like Brooke Bundy, but she works better for me with an edge. If Diana had stayed after Jeff took his kid and Peter was dead, I could see BB playing Diana taking a turn for the dark side.

As a fan since the 80’s when I was a kid, one of the things I loved was the deeper material Riche brought to the show allowed many of those actors a chance to really shine. They were always good, the show just didn’t really give them a lot of deeper stories to sink their teeth into. This clip might already be posted here, it’s been on YouTube for a long time I think. But it has a lovely short interview with Emily McLaughlin and Genie Francis introducing the story in 1982 after she left the show. It has some good bts shots of the sets of the time too.

The show’s styling of KT as Tina did not help. Maybe if I watched it now I would feel differently, but at the time, after Evans and Witter, her Tina just seemed like a suburban mom without the kids. I recall a lot of pantsuits, and her shorter hair, neither really worked for Tina. Especially since they wanted her to be more of a schemer again.

They even threw her under the bus to prop up the idea we should have sympathy for poor Britt!

Except Audrey’s son Tommy played a major part in stories, as did Diana Taylor’s child before the PJ stuff. Scotty and poor Jessie’s many tragic babies and miscarriages count too. By the early 70’s it was a hybrid between the workplace soap it began as and the later version. But the hospital was almost the family home still. Monty would agree according to many reliable sources.

The way they treat Liz is terrible. And although Monty deserves plenty of blame for marginalizing those characters, she inherited people that TPTB before her ran through the wringer and didn’t set up for futures. It’s not her fault Lesley couldn’t have more kids, that Scotty didn’t have a sibling, that Jessie had no surviving children, and that Steve and Audrey didn’t get to have more kids beyond Steve adopting Tommy. When you take that all together they really didn’t prepare their leads for aging and a future like other shows did. And nobody had the Eileen Fulton clause to not make them grandparents for a long time as an excuse. If anything she clearly did try to set Lesley up with more family with Amy, Blackie and Mike. She could have recast Jeff, but by that point she didn’t really do that anymore in her first run. Heather was only recast because Mary O’Brien wouldn’t return to wrap up the Steven Lars story. Robin Mattson was there to kill Diana and wrap that story up. But Monty liked her and they decided to change course.

I know JVA loves the scene when Val essentially becomes Verna. But to me that is a very actor scene. Her idea, to put on too much makeup at first and then decide that’s not right is a great choice. But I can see the acting from a mile away. It’s supposed to be subtle but it’s not. Her slipping in and out of Verna’s accent when Abby is taking her to the babies is better later on though. When they first tell her the babies have died though, her immediate shift from hope to devastation is believable, even though she is justifiably bordering on hysterical. She keeps it squarely in the lane of devastating heartbreak there and it’s very effective. Laura would have been a much better antagonist in the Sumner Group years than Claudia. One messy divorce from Greg and a fight for what’s hers and you have natural story for years. And we avoid the Meg issues with Karen and Mack. And while I am critiquing the acting, William Devane can also be mannered and like a lot of men in daytime, when he’s bored it’s written all over his face.

Along those lines though I cannot imagine the later seasons without Karen. Val becomes such a shell of herself that her being gone is easier to swallow. Although the less said of Gary’s younger pairing the better. It’s funny that Valene is one of the few characters that did have good material in that not very good season before the final year. That Greg book had legs and should have been made more of a priority. But yes, Karen does get very strident and shrill. But the truth is if you go all the way back to the beginnings that person was there all along. Don Murray just has a more grounded style to help her from flying off into space. And that’s not Kevin Dobson at all. Mack is volatile by design. Again, I love Karen and Mack, and the show as a whole is one of my favorites. But it’s hard to ignore, especially when you see them decide someone like Laura has no value when she clearly does. I love Gary too, but Joan is so much more at ease when they pair her with Ben because Sheehan is a playful actor. It comes across on Knots and General Hospital. When it’s all about Gary in those early years she’s a walking nervous tick.

It’s kind of fascinating that of the major characters left from earlier times- Steve, Audrey, Jessie, Lee, and maybe squeeze in Lesley- they had so much turmoil and trauma in their heyday that there wasn’t much of a next generation to help keep them viable. Laura is gone by the mid 80’s, and Lesley has become a surrogate mother to several characters, none of them lasting much past her death except perennial supporting player Amy. Steve and Audrey have Tom, and Monty stopped recasting so no Jeff to help out. Jessie has no children and also has professional surrogates like Bobbie and Amy, but that’s not the same. And Scotty coming and going several times ends up hurting Lee. Compare all of them to the vitality of Edward and Lila around the same time with family drama and Edward’s scheming to keep them occupied. While I liked the first adult Tom Hardy, but he was never leading man material, and his stories suffered from that and several Simones in a relatively short amount of time. Even Tom’s adult return was late 80’s, no teen stories for him. Audrey’s surrogate Anne and that kid were long gone (and also not successful). It was poor planning on the earlier writers for the future of those characters and the show.

There is something to Donna Mills in the same regard. Especially as Abby got more and more power for herself, she played her calmer and calmer as the years progressed. Abby is still calculating, but I can’t think of many times any of the three of them went full Valene or Karen. And I love those ladies, don’t get me wrong. But Joan Van Ark can be very histrionic and mannered, and Michele Lee is very soapy in the traditional sense. The year after Sid died, before Mac arrived, Lee does a lot of quiet, beautiful acting in several episodes. But she can go balls out and did quite often. The whole Chip/Diana story is when it gets really noticeable to me. That run she does to find Diana has left at the end of season 4 is almost comical in her mannerisms and she doesn’t say a word.

It is interesting how much the stories we consume can exacerbate these issues when you are in the thick of it. I am sorry to see you had to face them, but good for you for getting the tools to face it better. It’s not easy.

It would have been a great angle to play, especially since Lee and Scotty were often at odds then. Would have been a good story to play out with an older Serena too, only now the medicine and public stigma is less so she would get help successfully.