Planet Soap

OLTL- Starr & Cole? Based on reading YouTube comments from that era, many viewers complained that teens were taking over the show.

For the poster that said Victor and Nikki...there were a few charhters who got pummeled to facilitate their union. Namely Jack and Diane. Nikki pretty much wasted Paul's time in 2009 just to pine after Victor. Maybe Ashley in the late 2000s? Would you say the a couple pairing ate the show?

On 3/2/2023 at 9:13 PM, soapfan770 said:

LOL I mean to quote this! See above post.

There was a time we hated pre-emptions. These days it doesn't matter.

15 hours ago, Sapounopera said:

I hate the idea of every older female character on soaps becoming an alcoholic at some point.

Y&R has done it to the death with alcoholism. Nikki, Katherine, Neil, Phillip III. Drugs, pills and sex exist too. Mix it up a bit. At least they tried gambling with Billy--not that it was interesting though. 

1 hour ago, Darn said:

I didn't like Ryan and Kendall personally, Ryan was verbally abusive to every woman they paired him with. But yeah, Kendall and Zach were, to me, awful. I think Thorsten Kaye is a lazy, uninteresting actor.

I've always said that while Alicia Minshew wasn't the greatest of actresses but she had charisma, much like her onscreen mother, in spades. She made all of her pairings work because she was endearing somehow and they worked hard to give Kendall layers, layers that I feel diminished first with Ryan and were further diminished with Zach.

But most individual characters can diminished when they become just one half of The Couple.

Todd as the defacto male lead for the last 15 years of the show made me angrier the longer it went on. An immoral malcontent with a penchant for deliberately hurting the people he loved. At least Luke went after the Cassadines with maybe a friend or two as collateral damamge, but Todd regularly abused Blair and Tea and hurt Viki's children and then his own children over and over for selfish, cruel reasons.

It was never amusing to me, especially when the actors who played him became so lazy that they didn't bother hiding how much they hated doing the work.

In a contest of a-moral male leads, Todd was defintely worse than Sonny. Marty's rape and the dead baby lie alone gives Manning the edge. 

There was a stark contrast between how animated TSJ was in 2003-04 versus later in his run.  TSJ appeared checked out and non chalant in the late 2000s compared to Howarth's 1998+ animated and comical style.

Tea and Blair looked like two women who had a toxic addiction to Todd. 

Who do you all think fit better into the show dominating trio of Sonny, Carly & Jason? Courtney or Sam?

It's pretty telling that Sam, once the second female lead on the show is now nearly irrelevant given that her relationship with Jason is over. The writers stalled too much after Burton returned in 2017. By that time the pairing followed by Monaco's acting felt  dull and tired. 

9 hours ago, soapfan770 said:

Oh yes easily Nick & Phyllis, Billy & Victoria, Cane & Lily, and Kevin & Chloe on Y&R win this thread. So much destruction was wrought….

Other pairings?

ATWT: Jack & Katie and Jack & Janet

Tell me more about Jack and Katie/Janet. I only remember a little from the final years of ATWT.

B&B: Liam & Hope/Steffy. That triangle was so repetitive and dull that it sucked the life out of an already troubled soap. It doesn't help that Liam isn't a strong male lead to command years of fighting between both women. Ridge/Taylor/Brooke was overdone but they were much better television. 

OLTL- Where do you all stand on Todd & Blair's effect of the show.(both RH and TSJ versions). 

Name a couple whose relationship came at the expense of several other charachters, perhaps even the show itself. 

Easy answer: Sonny & Carly ate GH to detriment of several other charachters.

3 hours ago, Darn said:

The amount of care put into that montage of Bobbie's dream is so impressive, especially at a time when an episode of daytime was treated as ephemeral. Was that about Carly?

In regards to directing and lighting for a soap opera nothing will impress me as much as Y&R in its heyday but this is pretty damn good. Plus the characters are well-defined and individualistic, you'd never hear someone other than Lucy speak the way she does, whereas on Y&R at a certain point everyone started to sound the same

 GH had fantastic warm lighting and soft focus effects like nightime scenes by the docks back in the 90s! Just like AMC and OLTL the show really looked washed out and grainy by the mid 2000s. At least AMC improved aesthetically after switiching to HD and moving to LA. Today's GH has the best sets in daytime but suffers from harshly bright lighting which further cheapens it's visuals. 

Agreed. Almost every 90s Y&R charachter spoke in proper diction with no variation in speech. Whenever the (most likely white) writers tried to pen slang for the Winters crew, it sounded awkward.

Critical clips from OG Matt Clark story are back up on YT again. Cool to see Nick interact with Hope and late era Douglas! Douglas never got a proper send off. No call from abroad even to say that the charachter died. Y&R was alwas so strange in that way. A constatt feature in the shows just fades away never to be heard from again (Mamie, Douglas, John Silva, Lynn, Carroll, Paul's parents). Good to see when Victor was a quasi good father and Nick looked up to him. Matt Clark & Victor's shootings were probably the strongest stories during the 94-96 slump.

On 3/3/2023 at 6:37 AM, DRW50 said:

You could really see Guza's contempt for that character (and likely the women who had helped write the rape story) when he had Lucky tell Liz the only time she was of worth to him was when she was bleeding in the snow after being raped. 

I never really liked JJ Lucky, honestly, or the punishing, misogynist nostalgia that surrounded his take on the character, and that moment will always cement why.

On 3/3/2023 at 6:57 AM, Vee said:

Which is why JJ quit again. According to his own interviews, he had expected a romance for Lucky and Elizabeth and got them broken up and him paired with a newbie, and found the rest of his material unrelentingly dark and bleak.

On 3/3/2023 at 7:17 AM, Darn said:

They certainly put in the work to make Lucky his father’s son.

Agreed. They tried t make him Luke. It's clear the the writers hated the Quartermaines for no reason but they had something against the Spencers too. The destruction of Luke & Laura, followed by the distruction of Lucky and Liz, Jake's death, Lucky's pill addiction, coupled with the nihlistic attitudes of Luke and Lucky were all nails in the coffin. Add the Fluke/Bill mess under Frank and the Spencers were broken. The only long running non Cornithos family to survived the last two regimes seems to be the Cassedines. 

SB: If only Cameron read Joss for filth the way Lucky did to Liz!

OLTL closing 1972

4 hours ago, Paul Raven said:

For Jessie, I would say 1975 after Phil's murder.

Steve and Audrey after their remarriage 1977.

Wow that's relatively early in the show's run. I can only imagine what kind of stories or scenes Emily McLaughlin could have gotten under the Riche era had she lived loger. I liked some of the humanist material she gave the older actors like Edward, Lila, Steve and Audrey.

On 2/21/2023 at 12:45 PM, titan1978 said:

For me the subtext of that scene, especially at the time, was that Bobbie is actually more upset with Luke.  He’s been making digs about boring domesticity to/about her. He’s been getting under her skin, which leads to the Damian affair.  That and the fact that Tony was so taken with and had an almost instant bond with Laura.  She’s just taking all that frustration out on Laura.  And Laura absolutely is pushing her buttons by letting Lucky do whatever he wants in Bobbie’s house.  But I think the anger is truly about Luke’s needling.

I have always liked that Bobbie and Laura have a tenuous relationship after the ‘93 return.  Sometimes good, and sometimes it can be nasty.  Which is fitting for their history and characterizations.

Definately alot of history there!

At what point did Steve, Audrey and Jessie stop getting consistent stories?

3 hours ago, Faulkner said:

I just went with what I personally thought was the ideal tone of the shows I watched (or the tone of the time that best represented those soaps to me). In GH’s case, it’s what came to represent the “brand” in the popular imagination during the Monty era and persisted even through the relatively more grounded Riche/Labine era.

I agree with you.

On 2/15/2023 at 7:52 PM, DramatistDreamer said:

Depends on the era. The tone of these shows could shift and change depending on who is at the helm. I don’t think the tone was ever consistently the same for any of my favorite shows

This! 90s Guiding Light felt like a big/medium city more .than small town It reverted to even smaller town with the new production model.

One category I'd like to meditate on is the multi faceted soap. Dramas with a wide variety of plot themes. GH, DAYS, OLTL, ATWT and somewhat GL. Those shows had a consistent mix of action adventure, romance, business, medical, crime, mystery, sci fi and occasionally supernatural stories. Other soaps like Y&R, B&B and AMC all dabbled in different kinds of stories over the years but largely stuck to romance and business. 

How did you all feel about the Lucky, Liz, Nick, Aiden paternity drama? I dislike the destruction that it caused to the Lucky and Liz that was built up so much in the late 90s.

GOOD-GH: AJ is Alan's son not Rick's, a confusion caused by "Bombay Phenotype Syndrome". The reveal at the party and the satisfaction that came from Lesley slapping Monica was an epic climax. 1979-1983 Alan and Monica were on fire. At their most toxic, vicious and comically entertaining. The story also displayed Leslie's sheer class and dignity, a trait passed down to Laura. 

Josh Griffith think's he's Tyler Perry, writing everything solo. 

Y&R for better and worse is a show that could only function under one vision: Bill Bell. I have not seen another soap completely collapse without a single period of recovery once it's brain left. Y&R has not had once uptick in quality since WJB's death, it's been a straight decline.

No matter how many EP'S and HW'S have passed through the revolving door the show remains in a crap state.

So longs as the show holds onto the #1 spot, CBS will assume the show is doing something right. You know it's bad when GH is now the best produced soap on the air. 

3 hours ago, janea4old said:

Griffith is now the sole EP, HW, and breakdown writer?  What a disaster!

I meeeean the writers weren't doing a good job, but Griffith is pretty incabale so he needed to go too. 

Dare I say it but what is Ron Carlivati up to. Not the best but that dead show needs something to shake things up.

Just remembered this scene. Luke, Laura and Lucky are staying at Bobbie's house due to broken heating. Bobbie tells Lucas and Lucky to stop eating under the table to which Laura interjects that Lucky isn't hurting anyone so what he's doing is fine. Such a great scene because it takes an average domestic moment like disciplining children and turns it into a conversation analyzing the historic tensions between Laura and Bobbie, and L&L's undomesticated lifestyle.

To me, Laura & Luke are completely wrong.  Laura should allow Lucky's aunt to render some discipline and be able to set boundaries in her own house--especially if her son is following Lucky's behavior.

This is what the 90s GH had, deep charachter driven conversation even when nothing plot significant was occurring. You also have characters with layers to the relationship. Bobbie and Laura get along more now, but still have some underlying tension from the 70s.

One way to avoid these dense offscreen backstories for every new charachter is to stop trying to tie them to the existing canvas. 

Sometimes making them related to someone works. Best example: Carly. However her backstory was relatively simple: Bobbie is my mother who gave me up for adoption, I'm hiding my identity by using my best friend's name. Everything else that made today's charachter played out onscreen.

I don't mind tying Trina to Taggert especially because GH lacks a black family let alone any family of color. In other cases like Franco, it becomes confusing.

I know this is a soap but GH has had way too many paternity/maternity reveals and switches going on in the Frank era. We have Esme and Willow's parental histories playing out simultaneously. Sometimes the confusion further compounds when writers RETCON what happened offscreen.

Again, a huge issue with today's GH are charachters with loaded backstories that didn't play out on screen.

21 hours ago, j swift said:

I'm actually on Portia's side in this whole thing.  BTW - this is not a comment on the acting which was good enough to move me to this reaction.

First of all, logistically, twenty years ago, DNA testing was not as easily available.  Second of all, if Taggert wasn't questioning if he was the father, then how would Portia get him to agree to a paternity test without damaging her marriage.  And, third, she didn't know until recently that Curtis's family had any genetic conditions that would have effected Trina's health.  So, without Curtis around while Trina was growing up, there was no reason for her to explore the paternity issue on her own.

Portia is getting all the blame.  Meanwhile, nobody is blaming Curtis for not being able to do the math to figure out when Trina was conceived.  Portia worked hard to provide for Trina.  Curtis did not step up to provide financial support, or try to abstain from wrong doing so that he could be available for child care while Portia was working as a doctor. It's easy for all of those Ashfords to say that they missed the opportunity to bond to Trina as a child, but was Portia really expected to allow her daughter to form a relationship with a guy who had a troubled legal background?  I mean Curtis is everyone's best friend today, but it wasn't that long ago that he was a coke fiend.

It takes nerve to drag Portia, on her wedding day, when she was just making choices that she thought was best for her child, and there have never been any negative consequences for those choices until today.

Both Portia and Curtis are at fault for carrying on an extra marrital affair, but moreso Portia because she was the one married. Yes, Curtis should have did the conception math but Portia should've obtained a DNA test given her suspicions to avoid this 20 year blow up. Curits did have a right to get to know a child that was his (if it's his). Plus, did Portia know about Curtis' troubled background before messing around with him? If so, it was crazy not using potection (both of them are at fault for this) while cheating with someone caughtup with drugs/illegal actvities. 

As for the evolution of the show: Regis & Kathy Lee had a good friends/mature married couple rapport. Regis & Kelly had an older man hot young trophy wife vibe. Kelly & Michael had a burly footballer petite wife chemistry going. Ryan & Kelly had a more goofy brother sister energy. We can already tell what the dynamic with Mark & Kelly will be, let's see if the audience responds well to Mark full time. 

3 hours ago, j swift said:

One of the most interesting things from her book and her press tour was about her getting the job and then the co-host searches.

She co-hosted on a fluke, the guest Char the Psychic predicted she was pregnant, she really hadn't told anyone that she was actually pregnant, and it went viral.  So, she gets called back, but they kept saying she wouldn't get the job, and it seemed like Regis didn't like her.  But, then six months into her pregnancy they offered her the job, with no money for wardrobe, no paid pregnancy leave, she had to use Regis's hair and makeup team, and AMC wouldn't release her from her contract.

Then, Regis leaves, without telling her first.  She sits through rounds of co-hosts, and nobody ever asked her who they should hire (despite Regis obviously having a say in hiring her). They hire Strahan and she learns from Page Six that he makes more money than her.

Then Strahan leaves, again without telling her, and after six months, they asked her to call Ryan to get him to take the job.  She still doesn't know if they make the same money.  And, only got an office when Strahan left.

Now, I'm sure she makes plenty of money, but the gender gap is remarkable given that the show has relied on her for more than twenty years, eight years longer than Regis was with the show originally.

If her POV is the whole story, she should vocalize this more because Regis and the narrative around Michael present Kelly as being bitter that they left her. 

I like Ripa, I just find her to be too overly worshiping of some celebrity guests some of which feels fake. 

Unexected but not surpsing given how busy Seacrest is. Mark is a solid choice. I suppose Kelly didn't want to go through months of guest hosts and the audience is already used Consuelos. Hopefully the saying about working with your spouce doesn't happen here -- but they all ready worked together on All My Children.

I expected Kelly to leave before Ryan, in that case Maria Menunos would have been a solid replacement. 

As for the future of the show, (this was tried already) but Michael Strahan, Sarah Haines and Keke Palmer were good together. I believe their show didn't work out because GMA 3 was an unkown show duplicating a saturated format. LIVE on the other hand has an established brand and maybe the trio --or Michael and one of the two ladies-- would work. But please keep LIVE going rather than replacing it with GMA 3. 

On 2/11/2023 at 2:38 AM, Vee said:

The full stream.

Interesting answer she gave regarding Eric Braden (at 54:40). Speaking of Robin and Dorian,  how lovingly she spoke of Victor in the 1977 episode, makes it hard to believe she covered up Victor being a child molester for all those years.