savonclassique

Thank you for posting the clips of RH when Pat Falken Smith was headwriting, saynotoursoap. I've always felt that Smith got a bum rap during her tenure as headwriter; granted, her writing style was very different than Claire Labine/Paul Avila Mayer, but I thought her espionage/adventure storylines worked well with a show whose setting is in a place ripe for such activity (New York City). The one period of RH I found very difficult to watch, or accept, was in the summer of 1986 when Millee Taggart/Tom King were headwriting. The only storyline that saved me from completely tuning out was the Vinnie Vincent storyline with Rick. Every other storyline was lackluster; what really sticks out for me was the recasting of Siobhan (Carrell Myers replacing Marg Helgenberger)--one of the worst recasting jobs I've ever seen. I don't think it was Myers' fault so much; the writers made her look like she had never set foot in Riverside before, as if she was some stranger who just happened to be related to the Ryans. The writers also made her an annoying, obnoxious bitch, completely lacking the balance of strength/passivity Helgenberger brought to the role. The writers at that time also didn't know how to write male characters with any shred of resilience or substance; they were all depicted as callous, uncaring, milquetoasty, pigheaded or just plain into outer space. This writing team did have a streak of brilliance when they transformed Jillian into Sara Jane and gave her a side we never saw before, but by the summer of 1986 she had no storyline; her relationship with Dakota was in the air and she was just "there"...

I understand how you feel as I enjoyed the generally reviled era of the Kirkland family.

Please, no one misunderstand. I enjoyed Pat Falken Smith (hereafter PFS) very much. Her work for Where the Heart Is I describe as marvelous, and she was second only to Bill Bell as the best headwriter of Days of our Lives. However, in my opinion PFS excelled at sarcastic, bitchy dialogue and strong psychosexual situations, neither of which lent themselves to the style and tone of Ryan's Hope. I think she failed at Guiding Light for the same reason. It is not that she was a bad writer, but rather, her inherent talents were not well suited for those soaps.

I agree that PFS had some very good moments at RH, if not truly memorable ones. I loved the very early part of her work, in the autumn of 1983, when Maggie and Roger schemed to make Jill believe that her wayward mother Elizabeth Hillyer was a wealthy, cultured woman sailing off to exotic climes. Bess came to Manhattan, and in order to keep an eye on Maggie, was hired as the Coleridge housekeeper with the in-joke name Betsy Traylor. Bess accidentally killed Maggie's blackmailing boyfriend, leaving Jill to defend her against a murder charge, all with no idea she was representing her mother. The fallout from that situation, particularly with a furious Faith packing her bags and leaving, was fraught with conflict and tension. The bombing of the bar was well-executed, as was a lengthy sequence in which Roger's sexual obsession for Maggie reached a boiling point. He trapped Frank and Maggie in Dave Greenburg's loft and attempting to harm them shoved a heavy scaffolding on top of them. The tense sequence reached a shocking finale when Roger fell down an out of service elevator shaft during a fistfight with Frank. I found the story highly original, exciting, and perfectly within character.

So, no, not all of PFS' tenure was bad. What bothered me the most was shifting the action away from Ryan's Bar to Dave Greenburg's deli. Many of the problems of that era were poor decisions made by Joseph Hardy, whom I did not care for as an EP. I recall him stating that the bar was blown up and would not be shown for a year because it seemed too old-fashioned and slow. So, what? He merely replaces the bar, a logical place for characters to converge, with a small Jewish delicatessen? Had he instructed the writers to blend the newer elements desired by the network with the veteran cast and familiar tone the core audience liked, they might have been more successful.

You pretty much summarized all of 1984 on RH in a nutshell!! 1983 was a pivotal year for RH, in my opinion. It had a transition of four headwriters (Mary Munistieri, Claire Labine/Paul Avila Mayer and Pat Falken Smith and saw shifting towards (Labine/Mayer) and away from (Munistieri/Smith) the Ryan's twice.

Maggie's boyfriend back home at the trailer park was Dusty. He reminded me of a character on RH the year before, Ox Knowles (Will Patton), in terms of his voice and appearance. From what I recall, he didn't die but spilled the beans to Jill about Bess/Betsy being her mother. The deterioration of Roger was brilliant. Roger rebuffed Maggie's romantic advances while at the same time scheming with her to prevent Jill from knowing where her mother was. I didn't like what Maggie did to Faith, though (setting up a trap that Faith accidentally got caught in, making her wear a cast on her ankle or leg or something). Then came Roger's obsession with Maggie that gradually developed into total paranoia and rage. That, along with the fantasy scenes of Frank and Maggie kissing each other, just made it all more juicy.

I agree with you about Smith being a master of bitchy dialogue; she did that very well with Jacqueline Dubujak and especially when Maggie and Jill had their showdown after Jill returned from France with Max. This all occured in the first half of 1984. The one big blemish on Smith's writing with RH was the recasting of Robin Mattson as Delia. I'll be honest in saying that even though Mattson gave the character her own style and apporach, what she did to her new husband, Matthew Crane, was deplorable--accidentally forgetting to give him his heart medicine while sneaking off to a rendezvous with her "other man"; Matthew then goes into cardiac arrest or something. I didn't like her "other man", who was played by Frank Luz (can't remember the character's name he played). Thankfully both were written out at the end of 1984.

Then there was the cringe-inducing Katie Thompson (when it was played by its originator, Lauren O'Bryan). When she was recasted in late 1984 by Julia Campbell, it was one of the best recasting jobs I had ever seen. Campbell was great in the role and her feud with Maggie throughout 1985, culminating in her falling down the stairwell in the Greenberg's loft, was great. I was never that crazy about Dave Greenberg or his deli, and yes, the focus throughout 1984 was on the deli and Maggie as a heroine just didn't work. Maggie was best when being devious, scheming and just plain bad!!

I agree. The Pat Falken Smith and early Tom King regimes were somewhat unbearable to me, but from 1986 on, RH was as good again. Claire Labine's final stint was even better than her first, as she avoided some of the clunky melodramatic plotlines that dragged down the early years. I particularly loved how she integrated the younger Ryans with the veteran cast and created so many colorful new characters such as Zena and Nancy Don Lewis. Her nods to history were good as well. I remember when Frank and Jill decided to have a mid-life baby after they imagined what great friends a deceased Edmund would have been with John Reid had Edmund lived. And when Lizzie exposed John Reid's affair on the wedding day to everyone in Ryan's Bar, Frank leapt to his son's defense, prompting a furious Delia to point out that Frank would naturally defend Johnno's infidelity since Frank had been an adulterer, too. Great stuff. I miss Claire Labine.

I am probably one of the very few RH fans who enjoyed Pat Falken Smith's tenure as headwriter. I loved Max Dubujak; his daughter, Jacqueline, and Siobhan had a very intense feud in early 1984 that was well-written because it truly exposed Siobhan's vulnerabilities and brought Jacqueline's bitchiness to the forefront (considering how she was introduced as a spoiled little rich girl). The bombing of Ryan's Bar (which wasn't seen on Freeflyur's You Tube channel) set the tone for the backburnering of Maeve and Johnny for almost the entire year (not that I really minded, since my attention was focused mostly on the Dubujaks). The aftermath of the bombing did provide Maeve with one powerful scene, where she confronts Joe Novak's cousin, Lazlo Novotny, amongst the ruins and refuses his money to help restore the bar.

If there was one period of RH post-1983 that I wasn't crazy about, it was the latter part of 1985. Jack Fenelli went through a revolving door of lovers it seemed (Betty Sherman, Gloria Tasky, some anonymous girl who made a move on him). Despite a good storyline with Jill having amnesia and assuming the name "Sara Jane Hillyer", Marg Helgenberger (Siobhan) left the show, which resulted in the backburnering of Max. Ilene Kristen's return in the latter part of 1986 definitely rejuvenated RH.

Labine/Mayer's return in 1983 had two great storylines: Charlotte Greer and the romance of Jack and Leigh Kirkland. They were also respsonsible for bringing Bess and Maggie Shelby to the canvas, which definitely set things in motion. The addition of Sydney Price (Robin Greer) to stir trouble for Jack and Leigh was a nice touch, but unfortunately Leigh's character became wasted--not good. Smith had some good moments as a headwriter for RH; as for Taggart/King, not so much. A few bright spots here and there, but I don't think they truly understood the core characters much.

I am a relative newcomer to ANOTHER LIFE as a viewer, but I have enjoyed watching some of the episodes on You Tube. Always nice to see Susan Scannell; I enjoyed her performances on RYAN'S HOPE as Gabrielle Dubujak/Chessy Blake and on DYNASTY as Niki DeVilbis. Especially the latter; she was so good playing a conceited, rude and obnoxious bitch!! Ditto to saynotoursoaps' comments about Jerry Timm--what a HUNK!! So sorry to read of his fate; he also did print advertisements for Kool cigarettes in the mid '80s (he was the man on the motorcycle). I also like Matt Williams (Ben Martin)--very handsome :-) I wish this show could be released on DVD; as fortunate as it is that these episodes are being shown on YT, I could do without the subtitles .

RYAN'S HOPE was one of the great daytime serials of all time. It may have gone through a revolving door of writers in its last few years, but the quality of the show never wavered too much. It's a shame SoapNet never went beyond 1981; 1982-89 had some very memorable characters and storylines that were as good as they were in its first few years. SoapNet viewers who got used to RH in its first five or six years never got an opportunity to know characters like Leigh Kirkland (Felicity LaFortune), Bess Shelby (Gloria DeHaven), Maggie Shelby (Cali Timmins), Max Dubujak (Daniel Pilon), Jacqueline Dubujak (Gerit Quealy), Chaz Saybrook (Brian McGovern) and many others. It's unfortunate that ABC decided to treat the show like a redheaded stepchild by moving it to 12 pm in late 1984 and putting LOVING in its original time slot (a move to solely appease LOVING's creator, Agnes Nixon, who already had her AMC and OLTL in a back-to-back block in most markets). That move alone hurt RH badly in terms of ratings. Thankfully, almost 25 years after its last show, it is remembered fondly by many people.