allmc2008

On 11/21/2021 at 5:45 PM, soapfave06 said:

I really wish we knew more about Head Writer Michael Schnessel because the late 80s was just so much camp and I love it, those scenes with Cord battling Titan and Tina battling Ursula in the wrestling ring and ensuing electric chair drama is just insane.. 

With that said, I really wish they had more balanced the insanity with more real family drama/diversity as it ultimately killed the show once AE left as Tina, Schnessel left (or passed?) and they had no one else to rely on 

Is this the same guy?

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/60572535/s-michael-schnessel

5 hours ago, danfling said:

Erica remained with Tom because he was the first (maybe only) true love.   She and Nick only became attracted to each other after the flop of her disco and her divorce.

No.

On 12/6/2021 at 10:18 AM, Khan said:

Well, if that casting doesn't put an end to the whole insane practice, nothing will.

 

The only thing that intrigues me is Ann Dowd as Edna.

Correction: The other casting choices DO intrigue me. But, not in a good way LOL.

3 hours ago, Khan said:

Plus, if Erica had had Tom's baby while she was out of town, she would have been only too thrilled to bring the baby back with her to Pine Valley in order to reconcile with Tom, since she knew how badly he wanted a child.

She didn't want to be a mom. Hell, she only stayed with Tom to prove to Nick she could hold a marriage. Had she been known to have a child Nick would not have taken her.

3 hours ago, SoapDope said:

Snapper was a piece of crap in a lot of ways. No wonder Stuart despised him. He would rather Chris live in squalor and keep his pride intatct, than to put his wife and child before himself. Hasselhoff even joked that when he was on Y&R " I was the jerk who refused to buy his wife new furniture". 

In real life Snapper being a doctor, would have had plenty of money rolling in and could afford to buy the big house, the Mercedes etc.... but on Y&R he was still living hand to mouth  in a low income apartment. In what world was Bill Bell living in where doctors were struggling to make ends meet ?

 

Not immediately. I now plenty of medical doctors who just started (within the last  5 years) and it really isn't that instant. Remember, the loan debt.

19 minutes ago, Khan said:

At the risk of reading a dead woman's mind, I'd say that Agnes Nixon gave her blessing to a lot of ideas that she thought were terrible, if only because, he/she was in the HW's chair, and she likely believed that a HW needed to be allowed to follow his/her vision...no matter how awful it was.

Then, you would have had Erica betraying Tom  again by having his child and concealing it from him, which would have been unforgivable.  At least, with the Unabortion, Erica didn't knowingly keep Jeff's son from him.

Not if, for example, the attending nurse stole Erica's other baby, because she so badly wanted one of her own.

 

Yup. She thought her weight gain was depression but it was really from a pregnancy. It's still a stretch but...

15 minutes ago, janea4old said:

Katherine left Chancellor Industries entirely to Victor in her will.  Jill later purchased it from Victor.  Jill owns it entirely.

Coincidentally, Victor and Jill discuss this in the episode of Mon 6 Dec CDN (Tue 7 Dec US).  [Not really a spoiler so I think it's okay for me to say that.]

Jill had hired Billy Abbott and Lily Winters to co-manage "Chance Comm" (Chancellor Communications), a media division of Chancellor Industries, which they have been doing for more than a year.  Billy recently got it into a mess. 

The bigger news is that Jill wants to retire, so, last week, she offered Lily Winters the CEO position of all of Chancellor Industries.  Jill wants to remain at C.I. but only in an advisory role.

Is Chance Com really what they call it?! C-Com would be better (but not great).

I basically agree with all of that. I always felt that her going to the fat farm would have been the perfect ruse.

3 hours ago, Khan said:

Well, that seemed pretty obvious even as I was watching the Mardi Gras explosion unfold.  Maybe "domesticating" Janet to the point of having her sit all day in the Dillon living room and fold laundry was, in retrospect, a surefire road to nowhere, but McTavish's fervent desire to turn her into some mad bomber was just as baffling.  I mean, as wacky as Janet From Another Planet was, she was an audience favorite nevertheless, so why would you want to paint her into a corner like that?  I just don't get it.

She has a memoir in her archives about her run on soaps. I read it all in one sitting and she defends random stuff. She says she did Un-abortion as a way to give Erica a son, as we all know, but that Agnes was with her and supportive.

I suspect Aggie was trying to get Meg to dig her own grave with that one.

Meg says she was with Frons by the way. She says that Frons was the only network executive she got along with. She also loves Pratt and Guza's GH. But, she hates Phelps with a passion.

58 minutes ago, Khan said:

Take out the part about Ryan's dad, and it sounds an awful lot like Kyle Sampson and Miss Sally Gleason on GL.

Not saying it's an awful idea -- in fact, it might be the one, rare, good idea Megan McTavish ever had as a writer -- but I can see very clearly where she got it from.  (Hell, maybe she was the one who came up with it at the other show!)

She had her GL outlines (and OLTL and GH ones) too. I do know one of the GL ones was headlined "Reva's Return" but I was running out of time. When I go back I will see if that story is in there.

19 hours ago, Paul Raven said:

Never seen this photo before...is it photoshopped?

Firstly, why do you ask if it was photo shopped?

Secondly, who is the lady on the front row all the way to the right?

1 hour ago, ghfan89 said:

interesting. I just always assumed McTavish got rid of Kelsey cause she was more of a Broderick creation. They watered Kelsey a lot by the end compared to the schemer she had been. I do remember McTavish was asked in an interview why Trevor and Janet didn't have much of a story during that time, and she snapped that there wasn't a lot she could do with a 'nice' Janet. Eventually she did give them that story where Harold died.

I guess she wanted to phase out Gillian elsewhere if she wanted Kendall for Ryan. And interesting that when Agnes came on she decided to make David's brother Leo rather than Ryan if those were the original laid out plans. Leo was actual similar in a way to Ryan was in the beginning, a con artist. Also, for someone who thought Dimitri was Erica's soulmate, she didn't have them much together during her whole second run. 

Do you know who's idea it was to bring back Anton and put him in a triangle with Dimitri/Brooke? was that a Broderick idea from before she left or something else?

Interesting about Scott and Becca, I thought McTavish was phased out by the time they came along.

Thanks for the info. Interesting read.

I'll have to double check. I think it was UNDER McTavish but not her idea.

Evidently, Hal Corely pitched the idea of Brooke/Adopted Laura (all of it) during Megan's 1st run but Megan completely hated it. This was in a correspondence to Angela Shapiro and around the time she was fired.

Then that story became a thing.

In correspondence she was HIGHLY critical of Broderick.

19 hours ago, ghfan89 said:

It sounds a lot like a reiteration of the whole Dimitri/Kendall/Anton story. Kendall slept with Anton and accused Dimitri of rape. The DNA was similar enough to Dimitri's that Erica believed it and stabbed him with a letter opener. 

Megan loved borrowing from herself. As said, she was going to redo Fake-will/Janet with Maria (after her death).

I also learned that the Mardi Gras explosion was borrowed from her idea of Janet blowing up the courthouse during Laurel/Trevor's marriage (but that was scrapped due to the Oklahoma City bombings). 

Oh, she was mad that the focus groups hated Kelsey and they hated 'soft' Janet. She was going to turn Kelsey into a Janet but, evidently, that was changed. She stated that hating a character was better than indifference.

11 hours ago, DemetriKane said:

@allmc2008Hey best friend. Can you please shoot me a Dm and all those juicy Meghan info you stumbled upon.

She DID say her in outlines and letters that Dmitri is Erica's true love. She didn't allow any room for interpretation either.

@victoria foxton @Vee

Well, I'm glad we are now talking about Megan McTavish. Northwestern got her papers and, being a student, I got to go through them.

Her bible along with all the outlines for her 2nd run are amazing.

She wanted David to be Ryan's other brother and for David to have raped Kit (Jackson's sister). Ryan was convicted, if you all recall, because of the DNA match. It was supposed to have been David's they sampled. She wanted to do the rape because, and I quote, "Rape stories are juicy as hell and they are a great way to bring up the ratings."

Her idea for David's mom was that she was a the Madam of a brothel who screwed Ryan's dad.

Instead of what Jim/Brooke we WERE going to have a triangle between Dimitri/Brooke/Anton.  Megan had accepted that storyline, which was presented by others in the room, but vetoed it. She felt that Brooke and Anton would gross out viewers.

Kendall wasn't on by this point but she wanted to bring her back to pair her with Ryan.

She wanted to redo that Janet/Fake Will storyline but with Maria. Someone was going to pay a look-a-like to act as Maria's ghost.

She was obsessed with demographics. She specifically stated that she wasn't going to have (I forgot all who but I do know Brooke was one of them) on the back burner for the summer because those characters (again, I can only remember Brooke) "scared away the 18-34 demographics".

Regarding correspondences I found. There were emails  between her, the network, and others of power revealed interesting things about about Agnes. Agnes was impressed with Bill Bell's shows and how they were handling the ratings corrosion. Agnes told Megan to have less scenes per episode, make them longer, and make them less eventful. She wanted Megan to focus on characters trying to follow their dreams. Megan felt that Agnes was wrong and that everything needed to be action packed and the scenes needed to be shorter and quicker. One thing specifically was that Agnes wanted Megan to write scenes in which Scott talked about his dream of being a film maker to Becca. Megan told that to the head of ABC Daytime and told the head of ABC Daytime that 'nobody in the 18-34 group wants to work in TV or Film'.

I can see why Agnes may have liked Megan McTavish. If you read her earlier outlines, I mean at the start of a run, she had a GREAT understanding of character. She even reiterates her storylines to the overall theme of AMC rather well. But she goes off the rails as the ratings move. She becomes more thrilled with the ratings movement and even says she gets a thrill from that. The thrill is was motivates her. Like, she comes off like a pro-gambler or a real estate agent or a car salesperson when it comes to hitting the correct demos. And that is when she falls.

https://youtu.be/z5Sj0pD_Ixg

Marland's typewriter is shown here.

This is a similar model on ebay

https://www.ebay.com/itm/114474714322

19 hours ago, Errol said:

Might be a little controversial, but I'd say pretty much any character on soaps. I'm of the opinion that no character/actor should have a lifelong job or storyline on soaps. It's nothing personal against anyone but a lot of times you find that the show struggles to write something new or fresh for characters that have been on forever. While you can always come up with something for them to do it's not easy to create long lost children, supposed childhood experiences, friendships or exes out of thin air when viewers have watched many of these characters on the show for decades, and still make the storyline beats believable -- if that's even the intent. 

I dont disagree but I feel it's easier than one thinks. Two things come to mind:

1:

I was reading through Megan McTavish's archive at Northwestern -- specifically 1998 when she was struggling with Brooke.

According to certain correspondences and outlines the her team wanted her to do a love triangle between Brooke and Anton and Dmitri. She felt that would gross out the audience though and so she vetoed it.

It makes me wonder on how many other older characters could have had fresh stories like that in the later years, on all shows, but wound up getting dribble.

2:

And I read an AMC projection dated Nov 1985 from Aggies archive and there was an awesome Greg idea. 

He was going to fall in love with a Morgan CHANDLER. Morgan was basically Sky (Anthea and Adam's daughter who rejected Adam and the wealth). They were to meet on a cruise ship.

A live triangle with Tad was going to form between Greg and Morgan. Jenny's recent death was going to create a conflict too.

...and yet they say Greg's last year was rough due to a lack of story.

On 10/18/2021 at 6:11 AM, amybrickwallace said:

The thing that turns most people off in the SB finale happened in the credits. The behind the scenes people were shown and credited, and the last one was Rauch. He was seen putting out his cigar with his shoe, which was and is seen as tasteless for the occasion.

And some, like me, feel that was brilliant. He tried to turn the show around but couldn't. It was very much a 'good riddance" move.

Wasn't the show basically solid until Riche left?

9 hours ago, victoria foxton said:

 

  

I don't know this story. What was it about?

3 hours ago, danfling said:

Wouldn't that be a "tailor-assumed" role rather than "taylor-made"?

 

The OP is saying that the role was so perfect that it seemed tailor-made. If you want to be picky let's not forget that Charita was a  recast too.

On 9/19/2021 at 5:06 PM, danfling said:

It was Mario who was killed, but it was not Talbot who killed him.  I cannot remember who it was who killed Mario.   Marco then posed for a while as Mario (who was actually Mario).

Mario died from a heart attack in front of Marco.

2 hours ago, Joseph said:

 

As for Karen she literally prostituted herself right?

Not exactly. She had self esteem problems and she was browsing at a department store. Talbot offered her sex in exchange for the dress. The euphoria elevated spirits and then he started to introduce her to other men. Over time, it became an addiction. Then Marco found out and blackmailed her into being his "Madam". The fitness club, I believe, was a front for a whorehouse.