applcin

I'm probably alone in saying the only time I liked Max Holden on OLTL was when Nicholas Walker played him.

RH
Malcolm Groome sandwiched the role of Pat. The first and the last, with several others in between.
Ditto Ilene Kristen with Delia.
And while Mary Ryan was killed off with another actress in the role, it was originator Kate Mulgrew who returned as Mary's ghost.

GH
Anna Devane - Finola Hughes, Camilla More

The Doctors
Althea Davis - Elizabeth Hubbard, Virginia Vestoff
 

He also was Sulu in the online Star Trek Continues series.
 

I would've rated Mystery Man higher and The First lower. I just couldn't take puny-Hulk seriously.  I would've also added Married. Nice chemistry between BB and Mariette Hartley, plus there's all those hypnosis sessions where Bill and Lou are together on screen. 

Yeah, I also thought that blog seemed kind of out there but people were replying to it as if it is factual. Plus, some of those people are still alive, particularly the "victims." Wouldn't the blogger fear a lawsuit, or several?

17 hours ago, DRW50 said:

Does anyone know why the first Sam Evans was replaced? I found David Ford likeable (even if he never seemed to do well with his lines), but this Sam makes a lot of sense for the character's background. 

I've recently begun watching it for the first time myself, up to Barnabas about to debut. I had done some googling a while back, curious  about the Sam change myself and came across a site blog that has a rather lengthy, descriptive explanation. The original actor, apart from just plain sucking in the role, was a creep who made vulgar advances to Moltke and Scott, and hit David Henesy when the kid wrote a nasty note on his dressing room door. It's here if you want to read it:
https://darkshadowsfromthebeginning.com/2017/12/09/episode-20-out-of-his-mind-the-perils-of-mark-allen-continues/#more-4484

Seems like some of the behind-the-scenes stuff was crazier than the show.

Taye Diggs' (Sugar Hill, GL) episode of Celebrity Ghost Stories with psychic medium Kim Russo aired last week.

On 1/20/2020 at 2:40 PM, All My Shadows said:

I could live off of DPP, Hoarders, and 600-lb Life every day for the rest of my life.

600-lb Life had a disappointing season, I think. Most of the participants weren't really committed and either ungrateful or outright rude. I think the best one was at the start of the season, with the 2 brothers, one was a hairdresser. They were basically nice guys who were trying. Now they're doing the "where are they now" episodes and those, overall, haven't been too great either. I originally liked Erica, though I questioned her looking up the long-lost boyfriend that early in the process...now he's gone and everything is "Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy." People thinking the scales are wrong. Lot of delusion out there.

On 5/13/2020 at 7:26 PM, Hunnibunni1025004 said:

Hello,

 

I am new to the Doctors and have recently found this thread. I just binged the episodes of the Doctors on YouTube, so I am interested I  finding episodes before December 1967. So, my question is who is supposed to be airing episodes from 1963, and where can I find them.

I think the pandemic put the brakes on a lot of things for the company Reach High Media, like being able to digitize the rest of the episodes from 1979-onward. For instance, they mentioned all this extra content (earlier episodes, trivia contests, message board, I think) that the website and/or apps were supposed to have and that's not there yet. I also get the impression that there's still trial and error as they're building these platforms, that things don't always happen smoothly on the first try, like when they tried to show the "Where Are They Now?" show as a Facebook watch party and it didn't work.
 

I don't know that Sammy Davis, Jr. "found a home" on soaps, but he was definitely at home on them....but then again, he was the man who could do anything. Among other things, he played Bryan Phillips' father on GH in the early 80s.

 

On 5/2/2020 at 10:26 PM, All My Shadows said:

Yay, they added episodes that they actually already have uploaded and ready to go on the website (along with the rest of the 70s). I just really need them to get on my smart TV so that I can avoid wiring or casting from my laptop.

Have you thought about getting a Roku? They have the channel on there. 

GH - Ryan Chamberlin and Felicia. At the very beginning, she had amnesia and they were starting a romance.Turns out, he was actually an obsessive killer. But they had more chemistry than her and Mac ever had and I wish they hadn't taken Ryan down the route they did.

 

Andrew got an Emmy nom during his brief tenure. Ironic, not in the sense of skill because he's a talented actor but because he was let go for other reasons. DId any of the other Franks get Emmy noms?
 

Another thing I thought was kind of funny was that Frank was basically supposed to be, I think, in the mold of JFK and Andrew later played JFK in a tv show.
 

I liked AR more so in relation to being a Ryan than in being Frank, if that makes any sense. In other words, I liked his camaraderie with the other family members and thought his chemistry with Kate as brother/sister was terrific. (From what I read they have remained friends. He's also godfather to one of Nana Visitor's sons, although I think that's more from the DS9 friendship than RH.) The relationships with Jill and Delia, on the other hand, didn't have that chemistry. No fault of Andrew's, really. I just enjoyed him more as Frank, the brother, or Frank, the lawyer than as Frank, the lover or triangle focal point.

I know DHK is the definitive Frank but my first impressions of him from my school-age intermittent viewing was as Rae's boy-toy and that kind of put me off him and the character. At the time I hadn't experienced AR and MH.

It's hard to believe Kate was on so short a time...they crammed in a lot of story for her that makes it seem considerably longer.

I stopped watching GL the last few years it was on but had seen BE since she had started and she had become my favorite. I went to one of the fan events at the height of the Gus & Harley popularity. I had a couple of pictures taken with both of them and I told Beth I had enjoyed watching her for years and thank you. She was touched and gave me a big bear hug. I thought that was very sweet of her.

I think I agree with the assessment that she was getting burned out. CBS/Les Moonves didn't give her flexibility to do other projects. I can understand frustration over her AMC experience. She wouldn't be the first actor who took a job thinking, or being told, the job would be a certain way and having it turn out otherwise. Think Marcy Walker on GL...did she not catch on with viewers because of herself or because the writing did her no favors? Also not the first actor who experienced a certain longevity and popularity and probably expected to at least be paired with other experienced actors. I mean, AMC wanted her because of who she was, not because she was some unknown ingenue.

Anyway, I was curious what she had been up to as I hadn't seen anything new for years. Glad to see she's doing something she's really happy and proud about.

29 minutes ago, All My Shadows said:

I get your argument, but I feel is more of effective in discussing 60-minute soaps than it is in discussing 30-minute soaps. The characteristics of 30-minute soaps that you've described are due more to the period in which 30-minute soaps reigned (1960s and 1970s) than they are to the 30-minute format. This was before the VCR age, before the turn to action/adventure storylines, before the desperate pursuit of younger audiences, etc. Even Ryan's Hope, as a half-hour soap, was affected by these and became less dialogue-heavy as time went on.

That's why I asked the questions about B&B, since it has the distinction of being not only the sole 30-minute soap today but also one that's been on since the 1980s, offering up a comparison of their old vs. modern storytelling styles and viewership. Could that serve as a barometer for measuring how a new 30-minute soap might do? 

1 hour ago, Aback said:

 

I get what you're saying but I loved those scenes! Back when I was not used to primetime drama, I was always annoyed at being deprived of the characters' reactions to things.

Oh, I enjoyed them up to a point, too. I just think people nowadays have a mix of shorter attention spans, more options, less time or patience, desire for "shock and awe", etc. Back then, that's what we knew and choices were limited so, of course, we watched. Using the 2 soaps I mentioned before...in the case of RH, I think it worked well in the sense that you really got familiar with the characters, their frustrations, flaws, family interactions, motivations, etc. Very realistic to have people repeat conversations and stories, just like people do in real life...and those conversations often colored the characters' interactions with one another. How many people heard about the Ryans or Delia's shenanigans before getting to know either well enough on their own? I've recently started binging DS on Amazon (up to where Barnabas is about to debut) and I made mention in another post of how that early period seemed very slow-moving and repetitive, talking about the same incidents and with not much in the way of action. Even in binging mode, it seemed to drag on. For someone to watch that in real time now, I wonder if they wouldn't give up pretty quickly. That being said, I have never watched the current 30-minute soap "The Bold and The Beautiful" (not sure what the acronym is, BB??) so I'm not familiar with its storytelling pacing. Has it changed in the years it's been on? If someone were to be introduced to it now, how would it seem?

Conversely, if they were to write without a lot of that exposition now, that might cause a certain disconnect or disinterest with a viewer who's interested in character building. I just think, with anything less than 60 minutes, they're having to make decisions of how much do they show and tell in an episode, drawing and maintaining viewer interest over a longer period of time to tell a story. Do they spread it out over time and risk viewer impatience or sacrifice more in-depth character study for the action?

It just came to my mind the 30-minute soap that probably depicted these differences in storytelling the best: Port Charles. We started out with a conventional soap with conventional characters, much like any other soap. Somewhere it was decided that wasn't working and the whole format was changed. The hospital setting was now an accessory rather than a focus. A continuous throughline became 13-week arcs that were told independently of each other. Character buildup and personalities were tossed aside to accommodate the plots that were now supernatural. How many new viewers took notice? How many current viewers liked it or hated it? In the new arc format, it was already a given that, for better or worse, a particular story was going to be told in that amount of time. They did what they had to do to make the story work...turned heroes into villains, destroyed long-term relationships, etc. By the next arc, that could get changed again. It all comes back to the writing and pacing.
 

For me, it would depend on the writing, but I would lean more towards 60 minutes. Looking at some old 30-minute soaps, they did a lot of exposition scenes. Two people have a conversation or interaction and the particulars of that event are then retold at least one other time, if not more, to other people, who then continue to talk about it amongst themselves. Some of it was necessary to make other people aware of the event for story purposes but, beyond that, it got repetitive.  Granted, it likely resembled real daily life in that sense, plus it probably also made people feel so familiar with the characters. In the 60s and 70s, with fewer options, the audience was probably used to that and the resulting longer play-out of storylines. Write like that now and it would probably bore people who want to see more action-driven stories, or something more than characters having repeated conversations about the same incident. In this case, 30-minute soaps would take too long for most people's tastes at this time to tell a story. If I were having to watch Ryan's Hope and Dark Shadows now in real time (an episode a day, no fast forwarding option), I would probably fall away from them from getting tired of the repetitiveness of dialogue.

For years now, I've tended to watch dramas rather than sitcoms...some serialized, some stand-alone, some sci-fi, some real-life based. I like being told a story that builds up in that episode, has conflict and may or may not get resolved in the same hour. It's hard to do that in 30 minutes with any real depth. 
 

Matt Ashford (DOOL) was on a recent NCIS, playing the father of Sloan's daughter, resulting from when he raped Sloan.

EON - pretty much anything pre 1979.
TD - Buddy's accident while Nick & Althea were together; actually, anything within a couple of years preceding the 1968 episodes.

AMC - Charles Tyler & Mona first falling in love
(was surprised to see Hugh Franklin pop up on Dark Shadows as the Collins family lawyer (currently watching it for the first time)...funny how Phoebe's 2 husbands worked together before);
OLTL - more of Viki & Joe Riley's relationship...she was a widow when I started watching and the only clips they ever really showed was when he brought Clint around


 

Rachel Miner (Michelle Bauer, GL) appeared in both Supernatural and Chicago Fire a couple of weeks ago. 

I have it on the Roku but haven't seen it in the playstore on my Android yet.

David Selby (Dark Shadows, Falcon Crest) turned up on NCIS: New Orleans this past Sunday.

12 hours ago, Vizion said:

Does anyone know where I can find the February 2, 1987 episode? 

 

It's the episode where Jake and Lucy have an ONS. I have been looking for the actual scene everywhere, I'm still very confused as to how it happened. I know he was defending her when everyone felt she was a murderer but still the ONS seemed to come out of absolutely nowhere. 

I had saved that scene on tape at the time but I don't know if I still have it. What I remember is they were in a house together, she started to have a meltdown and he was grabbing her arms trying to calm her down. The panic turned into kissing and boom, they did it on the floor. Afterwards, the two of them are sitting/lying on the floor, with Lucy all happy and grateful and Jake guiltily toying with his wedding ring.

Catching up on some shows and saw Brynn Thayer (Jenny Renaldi, OLTL) playing a sheriff on February 11's NCIS .