JarrodMFiresofLove

6 minutes ago, slick jones said:

@DramatistDreamer  I've enjoyed your posts for years. Not only are many of them thought provoking, but you have always had a fantastic grasp of the genre.  Don't ever change, and keep posting !!!

 

 

 

That's a nice supportive post. I think her comments about characterization are very interesting, but when she goes off on those racist-related comments, I find her remarks extremely didactic. Some of it feels out of place on a soap board. It would be more appropriate in my opinion if we were talking about a storyline that was about race, like Lisa's problems with Jessica and Duncan. But to take a story about rape and label that as racist, it seems to me someone may be just trying to stir up trouble.

It seems obsessive for someone's whole approach and perhaps their whole life to be about race. Just like a gay man or lesbian making their whole life about their sexuality. No, people, there are other things that define you and there are other things that define soap characters and stories. Don't approach it so one-dimensional. Don't find hatred and persecution where there is none. Stop looking for villains where there are none. Set the individual hang-ups aside and look at the big picture more reasonably. That's what I'm saying. And I'm not going to feel wrong for saying it.

7 minutes ago, Soaplovers said:

 

I think you might be right, but I do think Dennehy had the tortured quality that Garrett had as Holly back in the 70s.  At the same time, Dennehy and Aleksander had more chemistry as a couple than Stringfield and Aleksander did as well.  Plus, Stringfield was 21/22 when she started as Blake so she looked young enough to play daughter to Garrett/Zaslow as well.

Yes, Stringfield was younger...but in my opinion seemed a little more butch in the role. I liked Dennehy but something about her didn't fit the character. I think Keifer was the best, though admittedly Keifer was better at the domestic scenes than the business-related stuff. Keifer didn't have the strong writing that Dennehy and Stringfield had under Pam Long.

3 minutes ago, Soaplovers said:

So I've been watching the 1988 videos recently reposted on Youtube.. and I actually think I know get why Blake was eventually recast with Sherry Stringfield in mid 1989.  I think once the plan was officially in place to bring Beth into the picture, the actress playing Blake had to be replaced since Elizabeth D had spent a year playing Blake as tortured and remorseful, plus she and Grant A had chemistry.  The second that Sherry Stringfield walked into the room on her first day as Blake, gone was the tortured public relations guru.  Sherry S was anything, but tortured.  She had a sarcastic wit (just like her mama Holly) and was much colder than Elizabeth D was in the part without any of the torture/angst.  You could buy her being the heavy in Phillip/Beth's love story more so than if Elizabeth D kept playing the part.. imho.

I think recasting also helped them make Blake look more like Roger & Holly. Stringfield and Keifer shared a physical resemblance to Garrett and Zaslow. Elizabeth Dennehy, who was cast before it was decided that Blake would turn out to be Chrissie Thorpe, looked like she belonged in a different family.

2 minutes ago, EricMontreal22 said:

 

Why aren't you letting black people speak for themselves, by that logic?  It was VERY clear from her post that she meant that stories about romantic relationships starting with rape are no longer tolerated the way they once were.  EJ and Sami may be a couple many people love, but there has also been pushback against them for this reason *from the start*--something that was rarely even thought about back in the 1970s (the true pushback about Luke and Laura didn't really happen until these issues started being discussed more in the 1980s).  Incidentally the same is true of romance novels--I'm not a romance reader, but reading a lot about the genre while studying and researching often denigrated popular and pulp forms of art and entertainment, particularly those that are often associated with women (ie soap operas), it was shocking to read about just how many romance stories--by some scholarly accounts surveying hundreds of titles including some that were and are extremely highly regarded like Kathleen Woodiwiss' The Flame and the Flower (which I did read, and even kinda enjoy, in an undergrad pulp fiction course), a good 80-90% of romance novels in the 1970s and early 1980s involved the "romanticized" idea of rape (ie tropes like that the hero was essentially good but he just wanted the heroine SOO much that he couldn't help himself--he later apologizes and they fall in love, etc).

 

 

*blink*  Oooh boy.  You sure you're not just a made up persona?  *wow*

 

...I rest my cast.

I think you're in attack mode again. Why can't you allow a white person to weigh in on how whites are supposedly causing blacks to be misrepresented on soaps? The poster with the geeky Sharon Case photo opened this can of worms. She's been using this forum as a pulpit for months to spout a lot of nonsense about how white people have it in for black people and I was sick of her ridiculous comments going unchallenged.

7 minutes ago, EricMontreal22 said:

Well yes--exactly the point I was making and why I think it's pretty ridiculous to consider that actors in her situation would crumple up at having to do Guiding Light (although I should point out her role on GL lasted nearly 2 years and while very much a supporting role as a nurse, was *not* an "under-five").

I think you're splitting hairs and being argumentative again. From the blurb posted by the other poster, I gather she started as an under 5 on Guiding Light. Nobody said she remained an under 5. And I don't think you understand the Hollywood star system very well. Of course 'crumple up' was just a figure of speech you seem to be attacking, but if Julia Roberts suddenly found herself out of work and was only being offered an under 5 on a soap, she'd probably want to crumple up and die. It's a massive thing for a star's ego to take that they have been reduced this low in the pecking order. Some of them flip out when they can no longer play a lead and have to go to supporting roles. Many of them feel soaps are way beneath them. So the point of our discussing Warrick is to commend the way she didn't just give up and how she totally reinvented herself on soaps. If you can't agree with that, then you are choosing to be argumentative again.

7 minutes ago, victoria foxton said:

Her name was Penelope. She appeared in flasbacks in 1984. During the Susan Piper story. Penelope killed Sharina's brother Conrad.

Thanks. I vaguely recall those scenes.

On 12/3/2018 at 9:08 AM, adrnyc said:

 

 

You might have him confused with me. I found this message board to be an incredibly negative space where people just seem to enjoy picking things apart and arguing. i.e. rather than discuss what they love about a series, they wait for someone to post what they love and then rip it apart. If they have something nice to say about one of the soaps, it won't be on that soap's thread, it will be on another soap's thread used as an example to pick apart and say something negative about that soap. That's perfect fine; I don't think those conversations shouldn't exist. I just don't have an interest in joining that type of conversation which is why I haven't posted since then. This message board has about 5 or 6 users who have a very specific narrative and they in no way like it being challenged. When someone does challenge them, they just start name calling and saying "go away". I went away - life is way too short 

 

I still check this place out though because it is a treasure trove of information. Thanks to this board, I was able to read what happens in Ryan's Hope in 1982 now that I've finished the SoapNet run. 

 

Also, although you all may not enjoy what @JarrodMFiresofLove is saying and disagree with it doesn't make him wrong. Those of us that are a part of a minority have two ways of identifying with it - with the negative aspects of it and bringing it into every topic of conversation and "oh woe is me" about it, pointing out each and every wrong OR we can recognize that, yes, injustices happen but they don't just happen to our minority. Will & Grace just did a fantastic takedown of those types with a "Which minority has it worst?" storyline. Usually, the people who don't carry it around on their backs are the ones who are actively participating in making things better. 

 

And now, I'm going to go enjoy a classic episode of ATWT from 1988 followed by one from AW from 1989 and revel in the fact that so much of this content exists for me to watch. They bring me an incredible amount of joy and fun and bring a smile to my face before I head out to face the many ways in which I might be discriminated against today.

Love your post. Well worded!

Did we ever learn the name of Alexandra and Alan's mother? That was a whole part of the backstory that went largely unexplored.

On 12/2/2018 at 7:29 PM, Soaplovers said:

Wow... why don't we just agree to disagree and move on from this topic?

They don't want to move on because they are having too much fun being unfriendly, piling on and bashing my posts.

Also I wonder if they can't handle some truths. I do think the woman with the geeky Sharon Case avatar uses the board as a platform for her racially motivated politics. When she said a black character became a rapist so a white writer could kill him off and not have a popular black couple on the show, THAT seemed bizarre. What about all the white characters who have been rapists on soaps over the years and were written out. Why wasn't anyone crying racism about that?

Then she says stories about women loving their rapists no longer occur on soaps. WRONG. In 2007 Days of Our Lives had E.J. DiMera rape Sami Brady, and he ended up marrying her twice. In an episode from just last month, Sami was going on about how E.J. was and will always be the love of her life. It's convenient for her to only state "facts" that allow her to play the race card or the feminist card...and to ignore all the other facts that expose her comments for what they really are, a flimsy attempt to play up victimization of black people. And why isn't she letting black men speak for themselves? She's the one who seems sanctimonious to me.

I feel empowered calling someone out on their racially motivated soap discussions. I got sick of it and took a stand. If she's going to keep going on about black representation, then I don't see why another person can't discuss pro-Aryan representation.

As for the others I consider myself smarter than them. So what if it's ego, I feel it's true. LOL

16 hours ago, EricMontreal22 said:

Keep in mind that virtually every actor on Citizen Kane was new to movies (including future film regulars Agnes Moorehead and Joseph Cotten).  Ten of them came from Orson Welles' own rep company, Mercury Actors.  Ruth Warrick in fact was one of the few with prior, minor, Hollywood work (Warrick thinks he cast her because she looked like his mother when she was young).  It also was a commercial *flop* big time and only a mild critical hit.  To go from Citizen Kane to GL ten years later, before Kane had really earned the reputation we now give it, would just seem like business as usual, really.

KANE was still considered an important film in the 1940s. It ran into trouble because of Hearst, but to some, that would give it a distinct advantage. Warrick was in some hits in the 40s. SONG OF THE SOUTH was probably the most commercially successful film she appeared in during that time. But other films, made at Fox and Paramount were hits too. She didn't become a highly sought after lead actress, but did establish a reputation as a lead in B films, and as a supporting player in A films.

Many of them went to New York to do work on TV anthology shows. People bigger than Ruth Warrick, like Mary Astor who started in silent films and had earned an Oscar in 1941. Film roles for these women were drying up in the early 50s, but continued employment could be found on television.

16 hours ago, slick jones said:

She was on ATWT in 1989. She was Jennifer Hobart, a  widowed client of Grant Colman's from San Francisco that ended up being murdered.

Thanks for the correction. I don't remember Geraldine Court on ATWT in the late 80s. She must not have done many episodes. Does she have a credit for this on the IMDb?

On 12/3/2018 at 2:08 AM, Paul Raven said:

In her book Ruth Warrick talks about her first soap role as Janet on TGL.

After a fairly successful movie career, roles were drying up and she moved to NY and live primetime TV (various anthology shows)

She met up with an old friend who now worked for P&G who pointed out that once she had appeared on the various programs that would be it for the season, and advised her to try daytime.

She agreed and then Irna asked that she appear as an under 5 nurse .Ruth said she could do a screen test or Irna could watch her movies but Ms Phillips insisted she wanted to see Ruth on the show to gauge how she would fit in. Ruth agreed to the small role and got the role of Janet.

Interesting comment. To go from the heights of CITIZEN KANE to playing an under-five nurse on a daytime soap...other actresses would've crumpled up and died. But she rebounded in a big way and ended up reinventing herself on daytime television.

On 12/3/2018 at 12:16 PM, TimWil said:

I loved finally seeing the episodes Geri (Geraldine) Court told me about, the ones where Steffi was in the hospital sick with rheumatic fever. She would have us rolling on the floor describing how the little girl playing Steffi was not the most patient when having to lie in bed for long periods of time, pretending to be unconscious. At one point during a take the kid volunteered the line "Steffi's not feeling too good!" and the alcohol-soaked towel on her forehead slid down to her mouth. Geri said she and David O'Brien (who at that point were watching her through an observation window) thought that was a hoot and a half and cracked up laughing. God bless Retro for finally giving me the opportunity to actually see it!

 

I'm pretty sure I forgot to mention this but Doug Marland did want Geri for Tracy Quartermaine on GH but Gloria Monty nixed the idea-she wanted Jane Elliot. Doug made up for it with GL, though.

Both actresses were friends of Marland's, and both were on GL at the same time. I think maybe the reason Geraldine Court wasn't on ATWT during Marland's tenure there is because she had already played a character on that show back in the early 70s. Jennifer Ryan had been recast and then killed off. Jennifer's daughter Barbara was front and center, however. Anyway, ATWT seldom brought performers back to play different roles.

1 hour ago, DramatistDreamer said:

Feel free to ignore my posts, if they offend your sensibilities.  @JarrodMFiresofLove

 

I won't go round after round with you and others have expressed that they actually like to read my posts and engage with them.  I won't stop posting just to suit your delicate sensibilities, so feel free to avert your gaze.

 

I remember you stomping off in a temper tantrum from this thread the last time someone disagreed with you and you were unable to bully them into dropping their post, so feel to resort to whatever reaction suits you best.

I think it's easier to call you out on your pro-racism agenda than to stomp off anywhere. You keep repeating that you are offending me because you want to offend me...somehow in your mind you've convinced yourself the rest of us are racist if we don't agree with your views. It's irrelevant to me if others like your posts. I find many of your posts quite predictable and extremely one-dimensional especially when you try to play the race card so often. I also find it odd that you have used a white person's photo as your avatar which makes me wonder if you want to be white. I've never encountered that before. I'm used to black people who are proud of their heritage and do not see it as one wrapped up in victimization and bigotry at nearly every turn.

50 minutes ago, Juliajms said:

And I don't think you are a smart person or an interesting writer. I find you and everything you write alienating because you think people on this board have to cater to what you think the topics should be.  By the way, no one has to get over anything when it comes to past oppression and atrocity and you are no one to tell them they should. Check yourself if you are capable of doing so, which I doubt.

And your view on this is supposed to matter to anyone...because...? As if anyone of us needs to check ourselves because you've told us to do so. Check yourself first then we'll talk. Thanks.

17 hours ago, DramatistDreamer said:

Soaps have a very duplicitous history with writing rape.  Most just didn't do a very good job at it because they tended to romanticize the outcome. 

 

The Young and the Restless tried to write a similar story and it left a rift in the audience with the character of Paul and Christine, mostly because social mores had changed significantly since the 1970s and 1980s and audiences (even soap audiences) were no longer interested in seeing a romance between a woman and her sexual assaulter. 

 

Jessica and Marshall was never going to work after that rape because it was no longer the 1980s or 70s, women just weren't going to accept romance between a woman and her rapist.

 

There are people to this day who detested William Fichtner's character Josh and were disgusted by him getting together with Meg after the rape of Iva.  As great as Marland was as a writer, it was tone deaf of him to try to make Josh some type of romantic hero (remember when he saved Lily?) after he'd raped a thirteen year old girl, who he believed was his cousin at the time.  But I can't entirely chastize Marland because he must've believed that he was doing what every other soap had done and gotten away with in the past, but even at that point, times were beginning to change. 

 

What an audience of woman would accept in the 1970s and 1980s is different from what they'd accept in the 2000s.  Also, at the risk of injecting race/ethnicity, anyone who doesn't recognize the possibility that stereotypes can play a big part in how a character is perceived just doesn't recognize reality.

 

When I was at grad school for Dramatic Writing, we were instructed that you cannot have a character remain viable once you put him/her that far out there.  You take them out to the edge but don't cross that line because you won't realistically be able to pull them back from the brink.

 

It makes me think that perhaps one (of many) reason soaps lost so much of their popularity was because they didn't adapt fast enough to the changing mores. 

You can't blame women for tuning out permanently, if you continue to write tone deaf stories where you believe they'd want to see a rapist being transitioned into a romantic lead.  It's not that hard to figure out why Marshall Travers' character was killed soon after--he became completely unviable.

 

African American people can talk about a variety of topics but America has a very clear problem with race and until people are willing to deal with race and racism in America, it will be a lingering, festering topic.  You can't expect people to shut up about it while nooses are still being hung and people are still being terrorized for the color of their skin.  Also, African American people can also be subjected to sexism and homophobia because...intersectionality. 

 

If you feel attacked, that's not my intention but if you know you're not the problem, why be so defensive about it?

 

I think you're a smart person and certainly an interesting writer but I find a lot of your posts alienating because you persist in playing the race card. It's like the one thing you have to cling on to, instead of being more proactive in your criticism of stories and characters. When you're not playing the race card, you're playing the feminist card, or trying to play both cards at once. I don't feel attacked by you and I am not defensive about anything. Though I think your ongoing view of victimization, where you cite extreme examples, could suggest you feel attacked and act defensively on behalf of your race and gender.

I don't see other people pushing the race debate as much as you do, which makes me think you are obsessed with the topic. You barely go a week without some racially loaded comment in this thread. I find it peculiar that if race was and is such a big issue for you why you wanted to watch ATWT and didn't focus on Generations or Passions, which used more African American characters.

But what's worse is how you try to justify your approach. I think it's people like you who keep racism and stereotypes alive with such a reactionary point of view. If you spent that energy playing up positive portrayals it would go so much further in advancing the cause. But you prefer to look at the negatives. And if someone intelligent like me comes along and calls you out, then you start accusing us because we either (in your mind) are part of the ongoing problem or don't identify with your outdated victimization and tactics. Just saying.

Also you have no idea if I am multiracial/multicultural. Or others on this board. We are not shoving our ethnic heritage front and center in the majority of our posts. I think you get a weird satisfaction from going round and round in circles about race. I am not against a good dialogue about race, but you have to start saying something new, something different, not beat the same old drum all the time. It alienates others who would likely be on your side because they believe in progressive issues as a whole. I feel sorry for black people who over identify with being black; I feel sorry for white people who over identify with being white; and with gay people who over identify with being gay, etc. It's only one part of who you are. Stop narrowly defining yourself and clinging to victimization. Be truly progressive and move yourself forward. The second A in NAACP stands for advancement. Advance yourself, stop pulling yourself back and allowing yourself to be defined by one part of yourself that you can't even be positive about, a part that on some level must seem like an inescapable curse.

On another note I don't think you had very adequate graduate courses in writing if you were told that characters can't cross a line. Drama comes from crossing the line, it also comes from crossing back and learning from mistakes. In the soap format characters have to do extreme things that they can grow from and bounce back from. Or else Barbara Ryan would have been killed off, and John Dixon would have been killed off, and Lisa would have been run out of town back in her early days. A good writer sees the sacredness and the evil in all his/her characters and pushes them in a way that challenges the characters and the audience. I think Hogan Sheffer did that with many of the characters. He wasn't always successful, but his stories always gave us something to ponder, even the most outlandish plots and character "deviations."

Finally I find it odd that you are trying to lecture about the changing mores of women in society. I would say most of us are aware of those changes, regarding the roles of women AND men in American society. But there are still women in the 2010s who stay with their rapists, and there are still rapists who are trying to atone for what they've done. To borrow that ironic phrase, nothing is entirely black and white.

2 hours ago, DramatistDreamer said:

Be careful, so as not to engage in ticking off of those boxes though.

 

I agree that distilling ethnicity (I don't even like using the word race, which is pretty much a social construct that was handed down by eugenicists and white supremacist theory) down to black and white seems reductive but you have to remember that U.S. network TV is like several decades behind other media and daytime is even farther behind U.S. primetime.

 

 

What was done to T. Marshall Travers character makes me especially angry and disgusted with Sheffer. 

 

He took the character from an arrogrant, know it all blowhard with some charisma to a flat-out rapist.  I'm not the type who expects every character of color to be a paragon of virtue (I was engaged with Rucker's portrayal of the character as something of a jerk in the vein of a Kirk Anderson) but considering the fact that Tunie and Rucker had such fiery romantic and adversarial chemistry (something Tunie's Jessica had never had on the show before), I thought the potential was there for Jessica and Marshall to be a very hot couple and it was all dashed to hell when Sheffer decided to make Travers rape Jessica. 

It extinguished all possibility for that.  It also made me wonder whether this was done deliberately to diminish any possibility of a non-white couple taking too much of the focus off the show's favored couples.

I doubt it was deliberate. I think it was more objectionable that a self-confident professional woman like Jessica was reduced to a target, to victimization. Yes, I know that happens in real life. But Jessica seemed a lot smarter, like she would have extricated herself from any situation where it ever seemed as if it would go in that direction. The storyline harmed her character more than it did them as a couple.

Other soap couples dealt with rape, where the two still managed to love each other and remain connected in meaningful ways (GH's Luke & Laura and GL's Roger & Holly). So if they were truly popular or driving up the ratings, then his character would have atoned and they would have stayed together. Trying to imply the producers or writers were racist is a conspiracy theory in my opinion that makes things too black and white again, and seems like a narrow minded political agenda.

If anything, I'd say they designed the story to give Tamara Tunie some Emmy-worthy material to play because they trusted in her abilities as an actress to deliver the goods. They also knew Rucker was strong enough to convey the volatility that was required for the story to work. If they didn't have confidence in the actors, they wouldn't have given them a frontburner story and Marshall would have left quietly like so many others before him.

Almost anything on a soap can be undone....rape, murder, various other crimes. The audience will forgive a transgression if they still manage to like the character, regardless of what a storyline is having them do. Barbara Ryan remained popular and she did a lot of heinous things under Sheffer. Nobody said, "he's destroying her character because she's white and he's trying to make powerful white women look evil." He was devising dramatic scenarios that he believed the performers could handle, and usually they met the challenge.

Incidentally I don't agree with the comment that daytime is necessarily behind other forms of television in the handling of ethnic characters. It becomes box-ticking if someone is shoved on to the front burner in a story devised to raise social awareness. But if there was a reboot and we saw Andy's daughter Hope, it wouldn't be box-ticking to include her if the idea was to have her reconnecting with her grandmother Kim, and reconnecting with her father, because she's part of the family. But of course she'd be different from Kim's other grandkids (if Chris or Sabrina had children for example). So she'd be included not to tick a box but to remind viewers that she's Kim's granddaughter, and a side benefit would be that Oakdale is place where there is diversity and race is no longer an issue people need to obsess over.

I sometimes think African American people are so unable to break away from a discussion of race because it was thrust on them by society but also because they refuse to let some of it go, so they let that part of society get the better of them. I think LGBT people also have the same struggle, they are over-defined by their orientation to where it consumes them and becomes a lens that distorts how they see the world. If I wanted my enemies to suffer forever, I'd throw some phobia or weird construct on them, then make them go their whole life dealing with it. But my enemies should be smarter than me and see the construct for something phony, to disengage from it and create more meaningful proactive discussions that have nothing to do with those old views and labels.

1 hour ago, Mitch said:

 

Yea, I am thinking dark haired, exotic young latin looking guy...someone some acting chops and who could challenge Zimmer, but not in the loud way TP did, but more subtle. I did like TP at first, he was one of the first "bad boys" on soaps who looked both physically threatening and sexual. (sorry Jessie, you were a fail) But we all know he jumped into over the top land and the critical acclaim must have kept the GL directors from reigning him in.  I think outside of Zimmer's orbit he would have been great, and I think maybe as Peter...(imagine Van dealing with TP/Peter..."I should have never let NOLA get her hands on him all these years!" )

 

I think Alex would have been a good character to point out that Reva put the zest in quasi incest...Marj was a fail as Alex but she never let Zimmer step over her lines and gave as good as she got in scenes like this.

 

Yes, Josh's son would have been a Venezuelan version of him, with charisma and a libido to match. I agree that Alex would have found Reva's relationship with Josh's son a fascinating one. She would have been grateful that Reva never lusted after her sons.

28 minutes ago, Mitch said:

 

I would have watched the hell out of that and Zimmer would have eaten that up with a spoon (a younger man in bed with Reva..)  What a savy head writer you would make..doing a good storyline AND feeding Kimmer's ego!! I don't know if I would want Sonni after Jarsh again..too Annie Dutton..I think a fully inegrated Sonni, not good or bad, but savy and smart coming in to try to stop her kid late in the game...(would YOU want Reva for a daughter in law...) Have Cassie be the typical selfrighteous prig about it,  saying Reva is breaking the family apart, leading to a natural gulf between them,,maybe then do the Cassie-Josh thing....

Thanks. I agree that Sonni wouldn't want Reva shagging her son, but I think Solita would have gotten off on it, and then Solita would have had Josh, under the guise of pretending to be Sonni. So there are a lot of ways the triangle between Josh, Reva and Josh's son could have rippled across the canvas. Also, since Marah and Shayne are blond and very American looking, Josh's son with Sonni would have to be a bit more ethnic looking, black hair, dark eyes, where he looks a bit more exotic and sexy in a way that differs from Josh. A character like Josh's brother Billy could be used as a Greek chorus, commenting on how Reva had H.B., had Billy himself, had Kyle, and of course had Josh and now Josh's son. The fact she worked her way through the men in one whole family would not be lost on Billy.

3 hours ago, P.J. said:

Sheffer also created T. Marshall Travers, who I thought had a lot of potential. Shamefully, ATWT probably had more black characters simultaneously from like 96-02 than they'd probably had the rest of their run. Ben, Camille, Camille's mom, Lew, Jess (was Jess ever gone, or do people just not remember JoAnna Rhinehart?), Issac, Bonnie, Curtis, Sarah and Denise  (who gave birth to Kim's only known bio-grandkid)

 

Granted, you can argue the strength of story lacked, but Sheff really worked at integrating their characters. 

I think the best way to evaluate them, in hindsight, is to see how integral some of them became. A lot of AA characters were not integral, just like a lot of Caucasian American characters did not become integral and were written out. This applies to any ethnicity on the show, or any category.

Yes, some groups had more opportunities, but ultimately it came down to how the audience bonded with the character and performer, which meant in that regard, they all had an equal opportunity the minute they showed up in a scene. And of course race is much more than black and white, because Hispanics, Asians, Native Americans, and other groups count too.

Sometimes I shudder when black people AND when white people engage in a talk about race and make it all about black people and white people; it seems incredibly narcissistic, as if other races count less. I also don't like it when all blacks are lumped together when someone tries to make a point in a discussion, or all whites are lumped together. There are many variations among the sub-cultures of Caucasian Americans. Whites of British background or Australian background have different issues than whites of German background or Scandinavian background. Just as a black from the ghetto of south central L.A. would have a different background and different issues from someone descended from royalty in Ethiopia who now lives in America. So the issue is much wider than the shades of skin color.

If someone were to do a reboot of ATWT, they'd have to decide which characters from each group were integral to a modern version of the show. To me a character like Bonnie McKechnie would be one of the first I'd include. She'd be a new version of Lisa, running various businesses, maybe having been given one from Lisa, who was her godmother. That would build on the history of when Lisa had initially rejected Jessica's relationship with Duncan. Now the child from that union has ironically become the one to carry forward Lisa's business goals and ambitions. I would also bring on a young adult version of Andy's daughter, Hope Maynard, though I'd call her Hope Dixon to reinforce the fact she is descended from John Dixon. She would be integral, because of her family ties, and also I think her relationship with Andy was largely unexplored, since Andy wasn't on the show much in the 2000s.

I'd have Lien, now middle aged, basically in Tom's old job, with Tom being retired. Lien would have a husband and teenage kids with problems. But Lien's career would take priority over domestic crises, giving her added dimension. I would even bring in some Vietnamese cousins of Lien's to show that although she's now living this integrated American life, she still has ongoing ties to her Asian family and culture.

Of course some other people would need to be added to inject new blood on to the show. And in terms of the white characters, only the ones who were most integral would be used. Paul Ryan would be an essential Caucasian character, carrying on in the tradition of James and Barbara. Lily Snyder would be essential-- she'd have to be a new version of Lucinda, and her brother M.J. is one I'd use, because it would re-insert Iva, who would be a voice of reason when Lily gets to acting too much like Lucinda did. You get the idea. It has to be about characters that can carry the show into a new age, but also link up to its past, while at the same time demonstrating a plethora of multi-cultural (not just multi-racial) diversity.

17 hours ago, DramatistDreamer said:

 

From working in theater, I can tell you without hesitation that those types of scenes require blocking and rehearsal, also an active, knowledgeable director,  things which soaps dispensed with in later decades and can't be bothered to do now.

 

I KNEW it was you who complained about Lyla and Casey.  I'll agree to disagree with you on that one but I always enjoy reading your posts. 

 

 

Luke's coming out story would've been done a helluva lot better and with more detail and sensitivity had Marland written it.  He wouldn't have been as bogged down by network standards as he was in the 1980s.  I bet he might have even convinced the actor who played Hank to drop in for a visit. 

 

I thought Marland was a top notch soap headwriter but he was not perfect and I do think that almost all daytime soaps had/have a blindspot when it came to minority characters.  Tucker's exit was not on Marland but Heather Dalton's exit, Roy's exit, both left a bad taste in my mouth.  Especially as both characters were portrayed by terrific actors whose talents seemed largely wasted on the show.

I think the ABC soaps were better at writing for African American characters in the 80s, especially AMC, which is where the actress who played Heather Dalton wound up a bit later. I liked Roy and Heather, but have to admit I enjoyed Jessica and Duncan much more. Jessica was one of my favorite Marland creations. So losing Heather didn't exactly bother me.

With all soaps, some scribes write certain ethnic characters better than others. I thought Marland did fine introducing Lien and assimilating her into the Hughes family. Simone, as we already mentioned, had potential but was cut short by Marland's untimely death.

For all his faults Hogan Sheffer brought Jessica, Bonnie and Lien back in the early 2000s. Plus he put Ben, the African American doctor, into a few storylines. What I liked about Sheffer's version of Lien was that almost no reference was made with regards to her race, or if it was ever mentioned, I don't remember it. She was just brought back mostly as Tom's now adult daughter, a woman who had a successful career. She was quite integrated, which is how it should have been.

I really tend to dislike talking about race on soaps, or talking about LGBT representation on soaps, since it sometimes becomes a box-ticking exercise. It becomes more about the number of these portrayals rather than the quality of them. To me, a community like Oakdale was a place where they could all find a home, maybe not blend in completely, but still fit in for the most part and be productive.

6 hours ago, SFK said:

Would someone remind me the name of the character who had throat cancer in the mid-'80s? My grandmother had cancer of the larynx and had a laryngectomy and I have a vivid memory of sitting on the edge of her bed next to her as she grinned and nodded in approval as the fictional doctors explained to this man the operation he'd endure just as it had been explained to my grandmother years before. I will never forget that moment with my grandmother, she was so moved.

Johnny Bauer had cancer in late 1987.

46 minutes ago, InLoveWithSoaps said:

In Italy no less. Did Reva have amnesia twice is what I don't get. When they brought her back in the mid-90's, were the Amish years established as all that had happened to her? How could they introduce the San Cristobel backstory years later and make it fit. It's just weird.
I thought it was such a missed opportunity never to bring on Marissa, Olivia's sister and Jon's adoptive mom, in the mid-00's. Instead they killed her off. There could have been a good rivalry with Reva over their son and an interesting relationship with Olivia, maybe an affair with Josh down the line.
I always thought anyway Olivia could have become Roxie before she appeared on air, with a mystery as to how she ended up in SC. And I thought Crystal C. would have fit the role well. Then again I also felt the looking for Reva's long-lost sister could easily have been reworked into looking for Roxie who would have escaped the mental institution. And if Reva just had to have a surprise sibling, wouldn't it have made far more sense for it to be deserter Hawk's kid rather than Sarah's?

Yeah, I think Cassie should have been Hawk's daughter, not Sarah's. It fit the idea that Hawk was a drifter and probably had been with many women during the times he strayed from Sarah and the family. Plus Cassie could have been a Shayne, there didn't need to be a new last name (Layne). If there was never a desire to bring Roxy back, then she should have died in the institution. And that would've happened right before Reva learned about the existence of another sister, thus compelling her to reach out and "save" the new sister, to make up for how she had lost Roxy and couldn't save her.

Were there ever any scenes between Rusty and Cassie? He did make guest appearances a few times-- in 1998 and in 2006, according to Terrell Anthony's IMDb credits. The first time would have been when Laura Wright was in the role, and the second time would have been during Nicole Forrester's stint. 

38 minutes ago, Paul Raven said:

something about the role of Nola seemed to be a lucky charm for the actresses involved. 

 

I think both Kathleen Turner and Kim Zimmer also got a lot of positive reaction to their portrayals.

I like Turner from the movies I have seen her do...but I am almost afraid she's going to be too dominant, too witchy...I just love Harrold's delivery style, it's a very nuanced, finely balanced performance she gives with each episode in which she appears. I am definitely interested in seeing how Zimmer does, since i'm so used to her as Reva and Echo.

11 minutes ago, DramatistDreamer said:

 

Well, Casey was a little bit arrogant, in the beginning anyway.  Remember when he used to jump on Bob's last nerve with his growing list of improvements for the hospital?  Don Hastings expressive reactions were so hilarious to me.  Of course, Casey's character had room to evolve, which was great because it was character development that focused on the character alone. 

 

Someone in some other thread said that ATWT didn't seem to do super couples.  To a certain extent, I could see what they meant in that, until Lily and Holden, the stereotypical Luke and Laura "we're gonna save the world while holding hands" type of super couple wasn't really a part of ATWT's DNA. ATWT was more known for individuals who happened to come together because they eventually fell in love.  Tom and Margo certainly had their own storylines and sagas before they got together.  So did Bob and Kim for that matter.

 

To me, in terms of the big 1980s supercouple, the closest thing that came to that prototype were Betsy and Steve.  And even then, I sometimes think that the big splashy Greek wedding (as wonderful as it was and it was a fantastic spectacle!) was more of a reaction to the Luke and Laura phenomenon.

 

Then there were popular characters like Craig and Sierra and Lyla and Casey who became highly popular couples and unfortunately ended all too abruptly for various reasons (Scott and Finn just got other offers to do a great many other projects, unfortunate for the show). I really think P&G should've given their most popular actors more flexibility to do other projects and just rotate the characters and storylines in and out-- the mini-version of the way a Netflix series shoots scenes.

 

The character of Simone-

Wasn't the conflict because Cal (you're right, he was engaged to Lyla) wanted to drill for oil on her ancestral tribal land or something? The nation (I feel weird calling it a tribe) Simone was a part of was fighting the big oil company from encroaching on their land.  From what I remember.    It's too bad, they couldn't seem to integrate the character into regular life in Oakdale.  It seemed as if once the cause was fought/won, the character was finished with no effort made toward her doing much of anything else.

The story with Simone was an example of how progressive Marland was as a writer, since this involved environmentalism and tribal rights. Things other soaps just were not covering. I think there must have been more planned for Simone, but she was axed when Marland died and the next head writers didn't know what to do with her. She could have turned into an important long-range character. But she didn't have enough time to interact with the other families or develop a substantial romance with anyone in town. I sincerely doubt Marland was only going to use her for this oil drilling stuff then forget about her. She could've turned into a good friend for Lien Hughes, two gals with highly unique cultural backgrounds who started as outsiders and found their rightful place within the Oakdale community.

Sometimes I wonder what Marland would've thought about Lily & Holden's son being gay. Luke's coming out would have been a story I'm sure he would like to have told. Would Marland still have been head writer in the 2000s? Fun to speculate about that.

3 minutes ago, Mitch said:

I remember that at the time, TPTB told them to "Make GL..GL again" for the anniversary. I think Taggert really went to town bringing back Ed, Alex, and having Eddie be pissed off at the Bauers...and I don't think the heart transplant story line was ironic, I think Taggert was saying, "Were putting the heart of GL back where it belongs..." Too bad that great year went to [!@#$%^&*] and its all because of MADD as usual.

 

Josh having a kid would be great and I would have ignored Jonathon..because her missing years and San Crud were all really stupid and totally took the earthy character of Reva and made her..something else.  Josh having a hellion from Soni....(when she fell of the cliff she was preggers, left the baby at the convent as she didn't know it it was Josh or Will's ) and her really giving Reva hell. I know the focus was always to give Zimmer the scenes but she was best when she pulled it in and seeing Josh have a kid that had "nothing to do with her" for once, and the kid was the offspring of her old enemy could have given Zimmer good stuff to chew on.  The male hellion would have been Peter Reardon to take Jonathon's place.

Yes, it would have worked best if it was a child Josh had with Sonni, a boy. He could have come to Springfield in the 2000s with a huge chip on his shoulder against Josh. To get revenge, he could have seduced Reva. Then there would have been this great new triangle of Reva with two Lewis men again (father and son) which could have referenced the earlier stuff with H.B. and Josh. So she would have slept with grandfather, son and grandson. That would've been wild. If they could have brought Sonni back, even better-- with her pushing her son to seduce Reva, so she (Sonni) could get her hooks into Josh again. Then you get the other two, Marah and Shayne, reacting and playing off all this.