chrisml

I never cared for Jake after Marley's rape. Soaps will go out of their way to rehab rapists, but won't put in the same amount of effort for other characters and storylines. It's so bizarre to me. I don't think I ever bought Evans as Paulina. It was more of a "this is another character named Paulina" situation. Evans should have been cast as Nancy. For the life of me, I never understood why they didn't recast or try to lure Jane Cameron back.

He should have won the Emmy as well. As much as I liked Henry Darrow, it baffles me that he has an Emmy when other, better performances were snubbed or didn't win.

Thank you for this. This makes me wonder if she quit or the execs replaced her because she was unhappy. Either way, I think she was perfect in the role, and I wish we had more time with her. Her experience echoes what Sharon Gabet has said about working on AW.

I've been reading about the new Ryan's Hope, and it reminded me how annoyed I was when they fired Cali Timmins and hired Judi Evans on AW. It's not that I don't like Judi Evans, but she didn't fit the part. Paulina was a completely different character after Evans took over. I much preferred Timmins's portrayal.

I believe that most people have to already have interest in an actor or a storyline for a promo to work so the promo is superfluous. I seriously doubt (for ex.) that an OLTL or an ATWT viewer suddenly decided to watch AW because they saw a Moments to Love promo for the show. Some promos worked for you, but I don't think promos overall had much impact on ratings most of the time when it comes to soaps. I'm not sure there would be a way to measure this either way.

Do people really watch shows because of a good promo? I can't think of any promo that made me want to watch a new soap or go back to an old one. If a storyline grabbed me, the promo for the storyline was not going to have an effect because I was going to watch anyway. In most ways, a promo would simply confirm that I didn't want to watch.

Liz Keifer is a good actress, but I didn't find her a good Blake. So much momentum was lost with that recast. Keifer should have been brought on as another character. Kimbeley Simms is an example of a recast done right and then they couldn't find a good replacement for her even though Barbara Cramption is a first actress (just not as Mindy).

Considering JFP's track record of firing ill or pregnant performers, I do wonder if the good press was why it was done. I suppose we will never know, but I'm glad it was done. Zaslow deserved much better than he got in life and on GL.

PEople tend to be scared of any kind of visual representation of illness. MADD's heartless comments confirm that. Doesn't make the attitude any better, but were soap execs known for their empathy? I think the reaction to Zaslow is emblematic of how soap execs treated the actors. I think if MADD hadn't made those public remarks that OLTL wouldn't have come to the rescue but maybe I'm being too cynical.

I think we can all agree that the dinner party scenes are phenomenal, but they also spell out what's wrong with Santa Barbara and the Dobsons' writing in general. They are fantastic at creating episodes, but they fall apart it when it comes to longterm story. I get that they wanted to reactivate the CC/Mason feud, but what was the end game? Was it just more fighting? I have read with the Dobsons where they seem personally invested in keeping Mason and C.C. at odds.

I can't speak to their work on other shows, but their work on SB feels as if they were making it up as they were going along in their first tenure. I can understand why they wouldn't trust anyone on their return to the show. I just wish they had put the viewers first. That's not to say I don't like some of their material on their return, but it felt insulting to viewers who had been watching during their time off the show.

Exactly. The Dobsons could craft an exciting episode, but they had no feel for longterm plotting. They had very short attention spans. Their bitterness at New World, AHB and JFP meant they wanted to throw out everything that happened after they were locked out. it did a disservice to the actors and especially to the fans. If they had someone who cared about the show as an EP, it might have balanced out, but they had Paul Rauch who made it worse.

I think the Dobsons are responsible for the problems with Thomson's Mason. The writing was so inconsistent and didn't take into account what happened during their absence. They also seemed to lose interest in Mason and try to push Warren. By the time Pamela Long was through, Mason ended up being a shell of what he once was.

I think Ilene Kristen is a wonderful actress. She deserved to win for her work on OLTL when she was nominated. IF others don't like her, that's their right. There are beloved actors and storylines I don't care for. Is there a way to watch the show from the beginning, or is it just random episodes that are available to watch?

It's interesting how viewers can watch the same material and have a different reaction. Carrington Garland is my Kelly. Not taking away from Robin Wright, but I gravitated more towards Garland. I never had a favourite Mason. They were all good actors, and at one point, they all had nonsense storylines to get through.

re: Zaslow firing. This is one of the good things about social media. If a current producer and head of daytime said and did what MADD and Rauch did, the blowback would be ferocious today. They would not get work again for a very long time. It would make national news. I would not give JFP too much credit as she cruelly fired Laura Koffman during her pregnancy (something she would also do on GH to Kari Wuhrer). She was of the MADD "Wizened old man" ilk even if she gave Zaslow a job.

I don't mind psychics as characters because so much on soaps stretches credibility. As Neil writes, so many of the psychic characters are never consistent with their talents. Their talents come and go depending on what the storyline needs. Frankie's introduction didn't bother me. What bothered me is that Swajeski had undone the storyline with Cass/Nicole. Anne Howard deserved better than dismantling the relationship and writing off Nicole. Frankie and Cass ended up being a great couple (although I always thought a Ryan/Frankie coupling would have worked too).

Soaps seemed to like the new age/psychic thing. The character of Sandra Mills on Santa Barbara appeared a few months before Frankie Frame. Sandra could be the original for all of this. Someone at NBC obviously liked psychics because yrs later Celeste would show up on DAYS.

Frankie was before Luna Moody on OLTL. If anyone copied a character, it was Michael Malone on OLTL--who would yrs later be an AW headwriter.

This made me laugh because the writers never knew what to do with Ted. Todd McKee was so attractive and charismatic, but pretty much an afterthought in terms of storylines. Re: social issues. I don't remember SB doing social issue stories. Perhaps, they did a few and I'm just not remembering them. My first thought was Eden's rape with the PSAs, but that was muddied by the identity of the rapist as that scared some female viewers.

TPTB on soaps had such icky views on women and sexual assault. In the eighties and nineties, it seemed like rape was happening on all the soaps. I wonder if the writing of Laura's rape on GH was the catalyst for all these rape stories/glorification of the rapist idiocy. I would like to think attitudes have changed, but I'm not sure they have on the soaps, but I don't watch any of the current ones so I'm not sure.

Vincent Irizarry was good looking so I can see why we were meant to see him as irresistible. The writing just wasn't there. I watched during his time on the show, and I can't remember anything significant he did on the show. SB had a lot of male characters like that: "attractive" men who just existed on the show but never did much of interest.

It always amuses me when networks say they're firing an actor for budgetary reasons, but then hire actors (Robert Kelker-Kelly and Lisa Peluso) who don't come cheap. It's like Warner Brothers saying they need to cut debt so they gut the profitable TCM, but then they have enough money to spend massive amounts of money to promote BARBIE.

Did the producers and writers have much say with the show the last few years? It just seemed to be that that decisions were constantly made that would hurt the show. If a bad decision could be made, TPTB would make an even worse one. It feels the way P&G destroyed GL the last few years.

I think Todd ruined OLTL. They had to write themselves into pretzels to try to redeem Todd, and then he overtook the show for the rest of the series as @soapfave06 pointed out. It's one of the reasons I bailed on the show for periods because I grew tired of it. I don't think Todd was worth all the trouble except that we wouldn't have Starr, but that's a sacrifice I'd be willing to make.