Vee

Oh dammit. Norman Lear. I'd begun to think he'd never die. I'll always be so grateful for not only his classic shows but his wonderful resurgence in recent years. If the OLTL death mentioned in its thread is accurate, it's already a hard week. A thread:

GL couldn't have afforded it. (But in hindsight, neither could Prospect Park whose coked-up venture capitalist owners paid almost no one in full after splashing out on the shows and their amenities like the locations, leaving Erika Slezak to stare down the payroll attendee on site for her last paycheck - and they still owe her money today.)

We'll agree to disagree. I was very impressed with the Prospect Park location work, in part because it was used sparingly and looked atmospheric and very much (to me, anyway) like I'd imagined Pine Valley. Whereas GL managed to make Peapack/Springfield look like Ozark.

I'm not faulting you for talking about it, you know how much I can bang on about this topic or what I'd do with the show. I just didn't want to derail the thread myself.

We've all said this before, but Diane and Robert are being pushed together only because they are roughly the same age. That's it. And as I've said before I would re-pair Robert and Anna tomorrow, but I am apparently the minority on that one both in the audience and BTS. Oh well. Back to the classics!

I liked Blaze in doses in the incredibly cheesy/retro '80s silly storyline with Chase (I talked in the past about how it was a unique mix of topical material - Kesha/Dr. Luke, etc. - with incredibly hokey soapy 'music business' drama where a non-musician character becomes a rock star for no good reason). Do I think she is a great choice for a lead partner for Kristina? Nope. I just don't care.

It's that time, @Faulkner And of course:

He seemed to adore KL in most interviews. Dallas, less so.

I'm pretty sure it was real. I doubt even PP at their wildest would've teased Tad's return if they hadn't secured some agreement from MEK to return.

Impressive.

I think the British/Euro/Australian, etc. soaps do well with filming both outdoors and on location. I've always coveted Eastenders' use of exterior work. But those soaps also have a lot more money to work with, and frankly a lot more investment BTS. It's telling that the PP soaps' location work, not that far removed from Peapack geographically, looked a lot better because time and money were used to light and shoot properly.

I agree it's hard to imagine the Scorpios fitting into the canvas Riche and Labine created. I still think it was a terrible loss for the show and shouldn't have happened.

Kim talked about them having to change in the back of cars on the side of the road.

The other thing that didn't help about the Peapack shooting style/minicams is they kept using certain preexisting sets, like Company I believe, or some of the hotel/town square. On those handheld cameras and in that lighting the sets and their surfaces looked completely fake and plastic. When photographed by those cameras the town square was clearly not actually outside, and at times you thought you were going to catch sight of the overhead lights or rafters.

Not really, no. Tad was supposedly constantly away on various P.I. investigations, straining his marriage to Dixie who the show began testing with the widowed Dr. Anders. But Tad has a voice cameo in the season finale as Jesse calls him to come home and help with a situation - I think hunting down Cassandra's Russian traffickers - and says 'I'm on my way' or something, which I think is the last line of the series. I believe Tad appears in shadow onscreen in that sequence while on the phone, but it's anyone's guess if that was MEK.

Everyone going into that gas station Kwik-E-Mart/office was mortifying.

The folk muzak often drowned out dialogue. Then there was the fact that both Harley and Cassie's houses looked condemned like something out of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and I'm pretty sure the church/'convenience store' was just a production office. Characters would often just wander along the side of the road at all hours of the day before coming across others, like drifters. It seemed like a lot of stuff had zero blocking or rehearsal. I still remember Zimmer's story from her book about how they had no workable footage of Jeffrey's proposal to Reva, so instead they did what they often did in Peapack with failed footage - shot a bunch of 'atmosphere' shots of leaves, trees, lakes, animals etc. and just put a shot of a waving American flag over Jeffrey's tinny voice-over for the bulk of the scene.

WBY was a very solid, spooky episode (and a great tech demo for the show's new budget). Not the match of Midnight, but solid, creepy work. I still hope Susan appears in the final special.

I am still over 30 eps behind lol, but the show is really picking up. The Rodwell/Varga-Murphy feud leading back to their criminal pursuers and the school drama is really hooking me in after a cheery but slow start. I'm hoping to mainline most of the backlog over the next week or so, right in time to dive back into Knots Landing S7 (sorry, Knots fans!). And the nice use of Harold as a recap device for new fans (like me) while also giving his troubling subplot a happy end was lovely. I often find looking at soaps from a starting point (or, well, soft reboot start) to be instructive, both here and with the PP soaps in 2013, or looking at early The City, Ryan's Hope, etc. online. (Even the early AMC episodes we have from 1970 are good for this.) Nothing has changed over the decades - it's refreshing to watch a new or semi-new build from the ground up. It teaches you a lot about the fundamentals of soap. (Doctor Who may be doing this soon in a different genre, though it is not rebooting its continuity.)

Beecroft has always annoyed me watching old GL. Him being chosen as a Duke recast on GH (which I've also seen - his one note in the role appears to be 'effete') is truly bizarre.

KMH always seemed like a B or C-player to me. They parked her with people when they weren't that invested in them (or were desperate, like with Roger Howarth). She's not at all untalented but it is a world of difference from what I've seen of Melanie Smith. I do think the Hal/Emily pairing really worked, I liked them together because she was so different from him. It was that screwball comedy energy.

Yes, it's September of '86.

I wonder when. Because Holden and Lily have been the driving interest through the whole year from what I can see - it seems they realized quickly the new Emily wasn't going to work or be that serious.