BetterForgotten

Griffith has tanked this show numerous times and is always invited back. This decision makes no damn sense and one man can’t be EP, HW, and sole BDW without the show suffering tremendously. This will be way more disastrous than what happened under Mal Young.

And it’s not like Roger ever became any sort of stereotypical romantic hero (in fact he knew he wasn’t worthy to be one). Roger being branded a rapist always followed him in some way, regardless of reckless producer comments that tried to downplay it. I can overlook a lot of Roger’s return because it brought so much richness back to the show. GL needed that character (and Zaslow) and was all the better for it.

Sheffer’s ATWT was mostly smoke and mirrors - unfortunately, the soap press never saw beyond the Emmy’s and the damage he had done and would take to other shows later on. Sheffer said he picked ATWT over GL because he found ATWT the more “boring” of the two and yeah, he felt he could give the male characters their “dicks” back. 🙄

It goes back to P&G and NBC hiring mid or downright disastrous HW’s and EP’s for this show for most of the post-Lemay years. P&G made plenty of mistakes with ATWT and GL as well, but there was at least a sense they were invested in those shows and would try to salvage them (often in failure). After Allen Potter, they seemed to just hire bottom of the barrel talent to steer AW. AW desperately needed a Marland or Curlee level talent, but P&G/NBC insisted on a rotating roaster of people with shoddy track records.

By the time they got to ATWT, P&G/CBS had a lot more mandates. ATWT was seen a dated show and had recently lost its #1 winning streak as ABC daytime had ascended in a massive way. It was seen as a show that was in much trouble and that needed to be "contemporary" - something Bridger and Jerry had successfully done with GL, which is why they were shipped over to ATWT to begin with. Allen Potter was a creative inclined EP as well (hence why he and Marland clashed), so he also played an integral role in shaping that canvas at the time.

That whole sequence is so horrible and feel so against the grain of this particular show. Tony Holland and Julia Smith must be rolling in their graves

Best falling out between friends? Bet and Rita on Corrie in the lead up to Bet’s 1995 exit. This amazing scene still cuts deep as it all crumbles to the point where you know there is no return. Two legendary characters in a scene penned by one of the show’s best ever writers (Adele Rose).

Especially when you consider that much of the same writers and producers were passed around from show to show - that alone made each show seem shockingly generic and lacking in unique identity over the years. Unless the show stuck to being a pure auteur vision for an extended period of time (Bell’s Y&R or Slesar’s EON) or was totally uprooted (like Monty’s GH or Reilly’s DAYS), it became difficult over time for these shows to “stand out.”

There's this too, of course, which he later performed with Streisand on a TV special as well.

Barbra merging these two songs of his (because only she can) and the arrangement is one of my favs:

NBC had wanted to cancel the show years earlier, so they essentially just finally decided to pull the trigger in 1999. There was a week or two in 1996 when Laibson and McTavish had tanked GL so spectacularly that AW did rise above it slightly - but yeah, always stuck 9th for the most part.

It was said Lucy took the failure of ‘Life With Lucy’ quite personally and it effected her though her death at the end of that decade. Ultimately, it was her who insisted on employing the same creative team she had pretty much worked with since the 50’s and playing a variation of the same character. That failure definitely rested with her. Lucy was a strange one though - it seemed she publicly supported sitcoms that weren’t cut from the same cloth as hers (like Three’s Company and Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman) and green lit her production company producing Star Trek, but she was always afraid to step out of her comfort zone whenever she led a series. Perhaps the widespread critical and box office failure of her starring turn as Auntie Mame (played by Angela Lansbury in a Tony winning performance on Broadway) soured her from trying newer things in big projects in her latter years.

Like the Harpo/Oprah produced The Women of Brewster Place, which was a big ratings hit in 1989 - the second part even outrated the first from what I recall.

The British television ratings system and its history is quite convoluted and messy, but outside of occasional instances, that doesn’t seem factual from the data that’s available to us. There’s years from the 70’s (60’s data is a rare find) through the 00’s where Coronation Street wasn’t just the highest rated soap, but actually the highest rated program in general on British television. Though, in weekly ratings (which, historically, is like trying to find a needle in a haystack) anything is possible. Coronation Street ran just 2 weekly episodes up until 1989 when a third was added (now up to 6 episodes a week). Crossroad ran 5 episodes a week for most of its run (cut down to 2 in 1988) and ended before Corrie expanded to 3. Crossroads also ran in the daytime and Corrie didn't.

Surprisingly, the BBC has splurged on a new promo. This will probably be better than the actual show, but usually it seems like the BBC forgets the show is still on...

It really does - many of the key characters just pop off the screen. If often doesn't matter too much what the overall plot is. There's great re-watchability too as I had already seen many of the scattered episodes through the years. Also makes you wonder why these shows suck so much today and lack of budget is given as one of the primary reason why. Corrie of those days looks like it didn't have much of a budget at all, but that didn't matter. The characters and stories were so engrossing. I'd rather feel something for the characters (like for poor Bet when Mike was a total [!@#$%^&*] to her in the below clips) than watch soaps try to be spectacles or horror movies.

I didn't realize that so much of classic Corrie had made its way back on YouTube. I'm devouring as much 70's content as possible right now. It goes without saying, but Jean Alexander is probably the best actress that ever appeared on this show. She could be both funny and heartbreaking effortlessly, and the little things/quirks she infuses into her scenes are so fun to watch. Then you can watch an interview where she's being herself (which seems quite posh and reserved) and you're astounded that the same woman is playing Hilda. It's also a shame that many of the classic scriptwriters never get as much credit for their contributions. Tony Warren may have created the show and its setting, but he wasn't directly involved for large chunks of time. Adele Rose, for example, wrote so many classic episodes and seemed to contribute a lot to character development (particularly for the women, namely Bet - she wrote a lot for Bet all the through to her 1995 exit).

New DC Universe Unveils First 10 Projects: ‘Superman: Legacy’ in 2025, Batman & Robin Movie, Green Lantern Series, Wonder Woman Prequel and More

An interesting topic by itself - characters that were able to thrive for the betterment of the shows without much of a family around them, or being tired to historical/legacy families or core characters.

Edit - wrong chain

Looking past the actual goofy aspects of his return, the best I saw in my soap viewing was Roger Thorpe's on GL, which drove story for years and impacted a variety of characters on a show that had drastically changed since his previous stint.

EEAAO was the best movie I saw last year, so I am happy for that.

It always felt like something she was doing during the pandemic to kill time. The tour announcement was speculated for some time, and she probably knows she’ll make more money from that than a likely sterile (because she would write and direct it) biopic. Julia Garner is fabulous though.

Oh, DC absolutely stole that scene. She always made every damn scene she was in count - I never realized how much of a hole she left until she was gone. There’s no one like her and B&B wouldn’t have taken flight without her.