j swift

I read the wiki as a refresher, (I had forgotten that the reboot ever existed), and there was a consistent pattern of actresses who wanted to make as much as Heather Locklear who were quickly killed off. It is amusing that even after the production was sued, and had their business practices exposed, they continued to be petty when it came to actors wanting fair compensation. In hindsight, I always feel for actors in those situations because all too often they can be so associated for their first role, with a seven year contract signed under desperation, then the show becomes a success, and they never work again. Courtney Thorne-Smith was a singular exception to the rule.

I always assumed, although I have no evidence to back this up, that the character's name was influenced by the singularly monikered Regine, who ran a set of very exclusive discotheques back in the day. https://www.mrporter.com/en-us/journal/fashion/when-disco-had-a-dress-code-688280

Not to be a contrarian, but, I wonder if we can throw Justin a bone for being just as young and easily manipulated as Britney? He was 19 when his solo project was being produced. He didn't write Cry Me a River, nor did he direct or conceptualize the video. It is equally likely that a PR person at his record company came up with the Britney cheated narrative to promote his first solo single. JC Chasez was releasing a solo project the same year, and it is probable that Justin's team felt the need to supplant his record with some sort of drama in order to gain more press. Arguably JC was a better singer and dancer, but Justin won the charm offensive, and was more willing to use his personal life to promote his career. With regard to Janet, he is 100% at fault for the "wardrobe malfunction". However, he could not control the narrative of how the press portrayed the situation. I believe that there is no statement that he could have made at the time that would have turned the tide for Janet because a mixture of racism and sexism fueled the tabloid media.

I would argue that over the course of 9 seasons and 220 episodes, most of the characters were fleshed out enough for fans to be able to analyze their motives; which is part of the fun of re-watching a show. Also, the argument that Blake and Alexis divorced because of her assignation with Roger Grimes denies the (retconned) impact of the kidnapping of Adam on the couple.

I just read that Robert Milli, who played the second Lars Bogart, quit All My Children because he objected to his character who was going to be exposed as a WWII war criminal, with a collection of stolen German art, who later escaped to South America. Which caused a pause in the story right before November sweeps in order to hire another actor. Ironically, he was replaced by Jack Betts, who had just left the role of Louis St. George on Another World, a WWII war criminal with a stolen art collection, and was best known in daytime for playing Dr. Ivan Kipling on One Life to Live, a criminal who escaped to South America. Apparently, Mr. Betts was unconcerned about type casting. As noted in a prior thread about dropped storylines, ABC had to re-edit several storylines due to news events. GH had a terrorism storyline edited after 9/11. Janet on AMC was going to plant a bomb, but those scenes was edited out after the Oklahoma City bombing, and OLTL had to edit out a storyline about a school shooting with actor Jonathan Groff, after the Virginia Tech college shootings occurred during production. https://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/story?id=3072097&page=1

Thank you for this well researched clarification. It is a helpful reminder that you can't believe everything you read in these soap publications, especially when the journalist never takes the time to include quotes from other sources in the production.

From my recent reading of the Tumblr, PFS's writing period was concurrent with a huge turnover in the cast. Morgan Richards, and most of the cast that supported her storylines either left or were let go. Carrie Marler, Hope Bauer, and those associated with Alan Spaulding were written out when he went to jail. Dr. Kelly Nelson almost left for a musical version of The Three Musketeers, a poor out of town try-out doomed the show, and John Wesley Shipp re-signed for a few more years. So, the focus of the plots were being shifted, and critics were concerned that GL became unrecognizable. Also, The Reardons had taken over many of the plots, but once their creator left, many of the family members were backburnered. Browne was there to continue the shift to a new generation. She wrote the marriage of Quint and Nola. Then, Lisa Brown's maternity leave required a lot of unpopular plot devices including a silly kidnapping plot on their honeymoon. Fans had waited so long for Nola and Quint to get together, but once they wed their stories were sidelined to accommodate real life circumstances. So, like all soaps, the failures that were attributed to writing are hindsight reductive. Real life circumstances, contracts, and failed musicals all contributed to a fallow period. It is also important to note that the success of Y&R had an impact on the rest of the CBS lineup. P&G was rightly concerned that the success of Y&R was not being felt throughout the entire lineup and they wanted a taste of the same ratings that Y&R was achieving.

To be fair, Sophia Capwell was in the same potion, and even though she shot her son and blew up an oil rig, she was not a wicked stepmother. I think it is remarkable that despite being Chuck's ex-step-grandmother, Phoebe was still so loyal to him and his love life.

I'm reading the Soaps of Yesterday Tumblr and Jon-Michael Reed's tone is brutal! Poor Susan Hayes was the brunt of this joke.

Can I nominate L. Virginia Browne for the person I most want to see interviewed? These back to back stories from @will81's Tumblr are, in her own words, stunning.

I'm reading @will81 's Tumblr The Soaps of Yesterday and it is filled with facts I did not know heretofore. The timing on this is interesting because a few weeks later they announced the casting of Michael Zaslow as David Rinaldi, Cassie's father. So, either they didn't think Cusi was up for the challenge of that plot, or they needed to age the character to pair her with Rob, or (tragically) she was the wrong size for the part...

As the kids say, "I was today-years-old" when I realized that Phoebe was Dr. Tyler's second wife. Although, this convoluted sentence by Lynda Hirsch didn't make it any easier to understand because if Dr. Tyler was Charles I, then wouldn't Chuck's father be Charles Barton Tyler II, Chuck would be Charles the III, and (if he were actually the father, and the kid's first name wasn't Phillip) Charlie would have been Charles the IVth?

If you are looking for guilty pleasures I recommend following the Carrington_Colby account on Instagram, they repost classic lines and outfits from the show. I think Blake's pathology is evident in his relationship with Krystal; he wanted to be admired. Young Alexis probably enjoyed his assent to power, but Young Blake needed her to educate him on the finer things in life. He didn't know how to staff a mansion or when the champagne was burnt. She reminded him of everything he had yet to understand, so he tried to erase her from his life the first time she did anything to go against his wishes. That's why his secretary became the love of his life, she already knew how to service his needs (so to speak). It is also why he was closer to Fallon, who lived for Blake's approval, than Steven, who wanted an identity that was different from Blake. Alexis versus Krystal really played on the feminist ideals of the time about women not being satisfied with only serving as objects of desire. Krystal, like her namesake, was a pretty thing to be observed, polished, and put away. Whereas Alexis, like the origin of her name, was a defender, a fighter, not content to just be looked at in a pretty dress, she wanted to own the dress factory and design it herself. I don't think that makes her incapable of love, it just makes her less of a romantic heroine than soaps usually exalt. I would further argue that guys like Dex seduced her with the promise of being partners and then tried to control her which ended the relationship. With regard to how Forsythe chose to play the part, Joan Collins mentioned their animosity on Watch What Happens Live. Perhaps they were both too limited as actors to be able to play subtext beyond how they felt about each other in real life?

So, I just saw this image on Instagram, and while I can't name every character off the top of my head, it begs the question: Was Alexis's true love Dex Dexter? I would argue that his betrayal of Alexis by sleeping with her daughter Amanda and cousin Sable disqualified him. But, maybe his independence made him more appealing to her? Furthermore, I would argue that Blake was far more into Alexis than she was into him. Why else would he have kept the mansion exactly as she decorated it with all of her belongings and her art studio intact? I believe Alexis flirted with the idea of loving Blake when he had amnesia, but ultimately decided that he never appreciated her intelligence, so she moved on to other lovers. I think we can all agree that creepy Cecil was never in contention.

This may be too obvious of an answer, but wouldn't they only want to syndicate to those countries that sold P&G products? Bell didn't have a product to sell, but P&G created soaps in order to literally sell soap, so if you couldn't buy Prel in France, why would they want their shows to be syndicated in that market?

Capwell Industries was a very diversified company. They were heavily involved in property development from the Capwell Hotel, to the offshore casino, and the Country Club. They were also involved in oil production, as evidenced by John Perkins job, and later the oil rig that was inadvertently blown up by Sophia, as well as medical science. It seems odd that a company with industry in the title did not actually doing anything industrial, and property development and oil don't seem to mix. Amusingly, if you google Capwell Industries, there is a real company that produces flour, rice, and porridge. I cannot imagine a soap about making porridge.

How do we discuss so much and neglect the most iconic image of 90s tv?

I agree that Melrose was always superior to 90210, and much less preachy to the audience. And while their seasons were long, sometimes those summer breaks can be brutal to try to maintain the energy from the cliffhanger to the resolve. The movement away from the apartment felt inevitable because once the characters obtained enough success to show the type of glamour that Spelling shows likes to portray, it made no sense that they would still be living in their starter apartments in mid-city. At one point, Amanda was the head of an ad agency, Jo was a major fashion photographer, while Jane ran a design firm, and even though Amanda owned the building, it defied logic that they would stay there. On the other hand, a show about people struggling financially into their 30s would probably not attract many advertisers. So, the writers were between a rock and a hard place (or reality and a Melrose Place, if you'll excuse the pun).

Perhaps what we learned from Melrose Place is that there is a natural cycle to primetime soaps. (1) Season 2 is always better than Season 1, because it takes time for the show to find the right tone (i.e. Dynasty, Falcon Crest, Dallas). (2) They are hard to maintain in quality for more than four seasons, especially after an excellent cliffhanger is poorly resolved (i.e. Dynasty). (3) The magic of the original cast is hard to replace, unlike daytime it is difficult to get an audience to accept new faces after watching for awhile. (i.e. Falcon Crest, Dynasty).

Obviously Wendy was allowed to spin her own narrative, that is why it is a memoir and an interview, but not a documentary. However, I feel like she glossed over much of her radio career. Perhaps the Lifetime audience is not familiar with her radio stories, but most of the juice was left undisclosed. She notes that she was fired from two NYC stations, but she did not mention her alleged off-air fight with Angie Martinez, or the dismissal of her sidekick Charlemagne (aka Charlemagne tha God). I also felt it was unwise for her to state that she was not an addict. I get that she did not enter rehab or sober living by choice, and clearly she is not practicing recovery. However, alcohol and cocaine probably played a role in her miscarriages, and she portrayed herself in the movie as abusing both substances. She received so much support from her audience by admitting that she was living in a sober living house that to go back and correct the narrative at this point makes her seem more suspect, to me.

Was Nina the same age as Jenny, Liza and Greg?

Help jog my memory on Nina. As I recall she was introduced with either an illness (diabetes?) or an injury that was causing her to go blind and required medical intervention, which is how she met Dr. Cliff Warner. I recall a bit of manipulation by Palmer to either lengthen Nina's illness, or maybe he just suggested that she was too ill to begin a love affair. However, once Nina and Cliff finally married, I don't recall that there were any lingering effects of her illness. Did Cliff cure Nina, or was that part of the story forgotten over time? Also, I remember that Nina got married in the Hamptons. But, were the exterior scenes supposed to be Palmer's mansion in Pine Valley, or did fictional wedding party travel to the Hamptons for the event? Finally, when did those terrifying scenes with Palmer, Daisy and the dogs occur? Was it Nina's birthday, her engagement, or just a formal party at Courtland Manor. It had to be before Sybil's murder trial when Nina found out that Daisy was her mother, because didn't Daisy go to the wedding under her guise as Monique (was the last name Gauntiel?).

With all of the recastings it was difficult to keep everyone straight. It was one time that I was grateful for the ol' soap writing chestnut of characters using the full name of the person to which they are speaking (e.g. Dr. Lord what brings you to the hospital?) Given that Dorian and Karen are friendly enough to share a decorator, are we to assume that she wasn't invited to the wedding because of her history with the Wolecks, the Craigs, or Viki (or all of the above)?

I was just thinking about what an odd Kardashian-like coincidence it was that all of Victor Lord's illegitimate children's names began with T; Tony, Tina, and Todd.

I'd never seen the prior Dorians, but my impression was that she was de-SORASed by the time she was played by Robin Strasser to be the same age as Viki. The earliest Dorian seemed older and more mature than Viki and would not have be suitable as a romantic rival. The scenes with the accountant in 1977 begs the question why Dorian was solely responsible for paying for her sister's care, when Melinda's husband Peter was still a working doctor?