On 10/22/2020 at 7:45 PM, allmc2008 said:

I was reading that Marty West's Shayne's bare butt was shown. Is that true? Any evidence, please? He's hot AF.

 

Did anyone else from that time show their butts? Evidence, please!!!

 

Well!!!

On 5/25/2020 at 1:53 PM, DramatistDreamer said:

 

Out of all the soaps that were around in the second Golden Age, Capitol seemed like it was the soap that would have been the most relevant today (provided they had the benefit of a strong "with it" writing staff) but I get the feeling as though Capitol didn't have the support from they needed from network in order to remain on-air.

Why do you call this era the "Second Golden Age"? I can't find that term anywhere else to describe 80s TV.

I was reading that Marty West's Shayne's bare butt was shown. Is that true? Any evidence, please? He's hot AF.

Did anyone else from that time show their butts? Evidence, please!!!

OMG! Gloria AND MS's Phyllis!  OMG OMG OMG OMG OM G OMG OMGskldfjsdlejw34ojfsdlkfc

WOOT WOOOT WOOOT WOOOT

I"m hearing the show has been getting better. I'm afraid to check myself. If so, why? New writers yet?

 I hope they put her in a love triangle between Paul and Victor.

9 hours ago, Franko said:

Which run are we talking about, Bev's or Carmen's? If it's the former, I've heard it said that the Iris and Alex Wheeler storyline wasn't that great (wasn't it intended as TEXAS' initial marquee storyline?). If it's the latter, @j swift was talking not too long ago about the oddity of Iris falling for everyday kinda guy Hank Kent (which I think was her last story before the mess with Carl).

It was the latter.

How was she received?

I've hears before that Irish was "ruined" towards the end of her run. Can anyone explain what happened?

19 minutes ago, j swift said:

 As the old statistical saying goes, correlation does not posit a a causative relationship, thus it is a misinterpretation to suggest that the link is foundational.

 

I am merely highlighting the relationship between productions team that re-used names and those with ill-conceived plots as evidence of regimes that devalued long term viewers in the hope of amusing my fellow soap fans.

 

If one can find evidence of a writing staff that recycled a first name from a prior team which also managed to produce a compelling plot I would be eager to read the results.  And since a binary model of gender is outdated, please feel free to refer to me as either sir or ma'am, just don't call me late for dinner.

I think you sound like Billy Clyde Tuggle.

1 hour ago, j swift said:

Perhaps I made my post too long so the point (and humor) got lost?

 

The issue is not that some names are common.  The idea is about the re-use of first names as a red flag for a period of soap history that most fans disliked.  Because production teams that weren't creative in naming characters usually weren't compelling in their storytelling. And those teams inevitably devalued long term viewers who might recall the prior use of the name.

There isn't a connection between the two, sir (or ma'am).

And you contradict yourself. The issue to you IS THAT names are reused as being reused IS a symptom of bad soap opera.

And how do you link:

A) Writers creating a character with the same name as a prior character to...

B)Lack of creativity to...

C) Characters who are not popular

Are you saying that characters who are not popular tend to have repeated names? That would mean a writer is trying to cash in on the popularity of a prior character. I honestly can't think of an example of that. Can you honestly say that Johnathan Kinder was so mega popular that Johnathan was used as Johnathan Lavery's first name to get people to warm up to him?

A stronger argument is when writers link unpopular characters to established families to get the audience to like them.

21 hours ago, j swift said:

I've been playing with this theory for awhile and I would be eager to see if anyone can help me gain more evidence. 

 

My hypothesis is that a barometer for a nadir in a soap's production is when a first name gets recycled from a previously popular character.  I believe that this lack of creativity in character naming is indicative of a production team that either does not know the history of the show, or does not value the audience's long term investment in watching the show for years at a time.  Either way, these issues inevitably predict poor ratings and terrible plots.   It would be easy to argue that some names are very common, and given that most soaps take place in the mid-west there would probably be many people in town who named their children with the same first name.  However, I would counter that this is a genre filled with well written characters named Raven, Draper, and Winter, so repetition seems unnecessary, if a writing staff is innovative. 

 

Here are some examples of characters with the same first name who were introduced at a low point in the show's history.  The second one may have been more popular, but they were usually introduced during a period that fans disliked the direction of the show.  I would welcome more, but I want to hear your rationale, not just a list of repeated names.  Also, I would not include characters who were named after each other.  OLTL's Sarah Roberts was an inferior character to Sarah Gordon, but in the plot she was named after her late great aunt.

 

Another World: 

Mary Matthews and Mary McKinnon - McKinnon was a nice character played by well liked actor, but her introduction was universally panned, it involved retconning the history of two different families and lacked logical cohesion

 

John Randolph and John Hudson - Hudson was another perfectly nice guy, but the character's last name made no sense because a few years earlier we learned that his brother was born Michael Garrison and changed his surname for business purposes, thus clearly written by someone who had not been watching the show

 

Vic Hastings and Vic Strang - honestly a tossup between the two characters, but Strang was written by Corrine Jacker, a writer who is widely disliked on these boards for good reason

 

General Hospital:

Kevin Collins and Kevin O'Connor - most fans probably prefer Collins, even though his introductory storyline as a twin stalking psychiatrist was offensively bad.  However, O'Connor was launched during the horribly long and ill-plotted Laurelton murders.  During quarantine I re-watched the edit of the storyline on YouTube, the major plot point of having a bride go crazy on her wedding day as indicated by her singing Amazing Grace through the center of town was cringe inducing

 

David Hamilton and David Grey - pity Laura Spencer who had the misfortune of killing Hamilton and then disappearing because of the some forsaken story about Grey's eyes being hypnotic - a very poorly written exit for a legacy character that was never referenced upon her return

 

All My Children

Jonathan Kinder and Jonathan Lavery - regardless of the character of Kinder, there was the inspired triumvirate of Skye, Erica, and Janet that brought new life to those characters, whereas Lavery's head injury was an egregious use of over-acting and misinformation

 

One Life to Live

Lee Halperin and Lee Ramsey - a rare cross-gender case of renaming, Halperin's introductory storyline as a video dating pimp was nothing to write home about, and while we never found out if her return was planned or a production mishap of rehiring the same actress almost twenty years later, the soap was forced to changed the character's name when she was reintroduced because they were knee deep in the same-first-named Ramsey storyline which lead to the much hated "rapemance" of Marty and Todd.  

 

Megan Craig-Riley and Megan Gordon-Harrison - Craig-Riley was a baby when she died in Vicky's car on the way to the hospital causing her mother Cathy to go insane and later kidnap Vicky's son Joey, and while many will remember Gordon-Harrison more fondly, I would remind you that she was introduced to the Lord family through the Eterna storyline, which was not only criticized for its weird costumes and over the top climax, but also changed the tone of the show that a decade earlier had been filled with stories about social issues like drug addiction and racial inequality

 

Maggie Ashley and Maggie Carpenter - as much as fans like to make fun of evil twins kidnapping and taking over their sibling's lives like Maggie did to Pat, I have two words that prove the second same-named character is always more poorly conceived - circus nun  

 

Guiding Light

Ben McFarren and Ben Warren and Ben Reade - McFarren was introduced during a critical resurgence of the show's popularity whereas Warren was an example of two kinds of plots that fans dislike; a retcon and a rapist.  Reade was a poorly conceptualized SORAS of a well liked character, Reade had been a wise beyond his years comic relief but then he returned to Springfield as a tighty-whitey wearing, psychotic, gigolo.  Warren and Reade were both examples of a revolving door of head writers that did not excite fans.

 

Eve Stapleton and Eve Guthrie - Stapleton and her sister Rita were also part of GL during a well regarded period of its history, Guthrie was an ill-planned spanner in the already unpopular Mindy/Nick romance, she flip-flopped between being evil and being misunderstood, and no one seemed to be able to explain either her motives or mental stability

 

Michael (Mike) Bauer and Michael Burke - it takes a lot of chutzpah to not only create a doctor with the same name as one of the legacy characters on the show, but also to have that doctor be responsible for cloning the lead actress.  For those in need of translation, chutzpah is not always a good quality

 

As The World Turns

Kirk McCall and Kirk Anderson - few would argue that McCall's time on the show was necessarily a high point for ATWT, however Anderson literally disappeared without an explanation, that is what I consider bad writing in a genre that relies on exposition to try to make sense of usually very complex plots.  It was as if they were caught off guard and just dropped the ball on exiting a character from a central family tree  

 

Young and the Restless

Brad Elliott and Brad Carlton - this may be the exception that still fits the rule because it turned out that neither of them was actually named Brad.  However, while Elliott was an amnesiac who almost boffed his half-sister, Carlton's convoluted backstory proves the second-first-name rule.  Brad started as a gardener with a history of dating his client's daughters, one of whom was driven to such jealousy that she locked him a cage for six months, but two decades later (during a true low point in the show's history) we found out that he was actually a holocaust relic hunter named George (not to be confused with George Rawlins, the late husband of Brad Carlton's third wife Cassandra)

 

Summation

I think the lesson learned from exploring all of these reiterations is that if a production team can't plan a new character with a unique name, then you cannot trust them to plan a plot that will hold a fan's interest.

 

I hate breaking it to you but names like "Mary", "John", "Kevin", "David", "Michael" and a few others you mentioned are hardly unique. Now, suppose GL brought in a new character named Reva in 1995, instead of bringing back Kim Zimmer's Reva, that's a different story. Or if GH decided to introduce a new character named Luke? Yeah. THEN I can buy your argument. But when you are talking about names like Mary? That's a total miss!

Da Fu*ck?

17 hours ago, slick jones said:

Y&R had John Abbott and John Silva at the same time. I don't see the big deal.  

 

 

 

And yep, most writers in daytime just don't look at the continuity department's memos that tell them Don't use that name in big red ink. 

 

 

Do writers actually have that?

Are there any full 90 minute episodes?

On 9/19/2020 at 2:29 AM, Paul Raven said:

Irna wasn't afraid to head to court November 1940

 

Irna Phillips Loses Suit on Strip Show

CHICAGO, Irna Phillips. writer of soap operas, lost her appeal of a Superior Court ruling In her suit against WGN. Inc.. and The Tribune over property rights in the strip show Painted Dreams. The Appellate Court upheld the decision of the lower tribunal that the show belonged to WGN. Miss Phillips claimed that she was the creator and Independent owner of the drama and owned It by copyright She had, however written the script in September. 1930 while employed by WGN, following a general outline supplied by the station. The court brought out that, after a sponsor was found, she Copyrighted the first 10 scripts without advisng her employer. Justice John N. O'Connor stated: -She did the work, was paid for It. and In such situation under the law the ownership In the result of what was done belongs to the defendants.

Jesus, in my almost 15 years of studying this genre I never heard the term "Strip Show" to describe radio serials. It makes sense (shortened from comic strip, I assume). This is fun.

On 9/15/2020 at 10:32 AM, victoria foxton said:

May 29, 1980

November 1980 - Mario is really Marco

How long between the trial and this? And how long did the viewers know?

When did the "The Chief" story start and who did it? Was it actually Lemay?

Regarding the vault,

A) Is the Ashley/Victor moment in the rain up? I think this was when he found out about the abortion.

B ) Any Rose Deville episodes included yet?

What was the last good era for the show? I tried watching a few episodes from, I think, 1984. The dialogue was DREADFUL.

Does anyone know the air-date for when Luke raped Laura?

9 hours ago, ChickenNuggetz92 said:

 

Email login access will only work with emails that have been added by me. If you want, you can send me a DM with your email address. Otherwise, try using your browser in Private Browsing/incognito mode/try clicking the links in my signature.

 

Awesome!!! 

I emailed! Let me know

12 hours ago, YRfan23 said:

https://futurpln-my.sharepoint.com/personal/garciab_futurpln_onmicrosoft_com/_layouts/15/onedrive.aspx?originalPath=aHR0cHM6Ly9mdXR1cnBsbi1teS5zaGFyZXBvaW50LmNvbS86ZjovZy9wZXJzb25hbC9nYXJjaWFiX2Z1dHVycGxuX29ubWljcm9zb2Z0X2NvbS9FcGtPcENIZlRwcEpwMnpjMDRkQm1Sb0JZaHhicmlGdWZ5eHhyeUwzNDhyeVdRP3J0aW1lPU15Z1hobVlFMkVn&id=%2Fpersonal%2Fgarciab_futurpln_onmicrosoft_com%2FDocuments%2FSoap Vault

I tried to log in 3 times. Each time this is the prompt:

We're sorry, but [My email] can't be found in the futurpln-my.sharepoint.com directory. Please try again later, while we try to automatically fix this for you.

Do you have an idea why this is occuring?

28 minutes ago, SoapDope said:

Loving the vault. Just saw Brenda's return as Jill and her confrontation with Dina. 

 

The Eve Howard drama is getting good with crazy cross eyed Max. Victor and Julia teaming up sneaking into the house like super sleuths was great. I don't see current Victor doing something like that. He tells Julia he needs to get the door hinges oiled and Julia tells him to watch out for the kitchen table. He asks table ? And Julia was like " have you ever been in your own kitchen?......LOL 

What vault? Link?

On 8/4/2020 at 8:12 AM, DRW50 said:

 

He was a competent writer for about a year.

 

I'm not going to say anything about his husband or his looks, but a gay writer who tells viewers that gay men fake hate crimes for sympathy and try to rape straight men will never get any "atta boy" reaction from me. He stabbed us in the back. 

What show was that and who were the characters?

I hated JHC like everyone. The show was just trash. Uneven. Like others said, at least the show felt like AMC directly before her. It is clear that ABC wanted to remodel AMC. I'd even say that OLTL, in terms of feel, was the same as it was in the 90s. An abbrivated version, of course.

People tend to talk a lot about Y&R's struggles. Specically, how the hour show killed the original major families. And CBS/SONY [!@#$%^&*] it up after 2007. People forget that AMC suffered the same fates and for the same reason. It's almost like they were 3 years apart of everything.