Broderick

I've gotten a big kick out of these "lost episodes" from 1981. Back in 1981, I watched several episodes per week after school, but somehow I'd never seen the episodes in which Nancy Karr inadvertently barges in on Dr. Bryson's consultation with Ira Gideon (which leads to Nancy's incarceration at Rexford Clinic) or the scenes in which Beth Bryson masquerades as Nancy Karr in San Francisco. I'd also never seen the breaking of Gavin Wylie's leg by Gunther & Company in the Halloween costumes. Also, I didn't remember Raven Swift immediately running to Gavin and telling him that Schuyler Whitney was responsible for the leg-breaking. And I damn sure never saw April Scott and Bobbie Gerard in the "Roller Disco".

When Brittany Hodges first appeared on Y&R (played by Greg Evigan's daughter), John Abbott and Jill agreed she'd be a good match for Billy -- after all, "she's the daughter of our friends Fred and June Hodges of Hodges Savings & Loan!" Lauren Woodland took over the role of Brittany, and a casting call went out for her parents -- Leland & Paige Hodges, a prominent attorney & his wife. By the time the roles had been cast, they'd been transformed into Frederick & Anita Hodges. I used to call Mitzi Kapture's character "June Paige Anita".

Many thanks!

The book was also (supposedly) a "hatchet job" on the greedy Ewings. In literature, much has been written about the separation of the "sheep" (the good) from the "goats" (the bad). In astrology, the Capricorn symbol is the Goat. By changing the name of Ewing Oil to Capricorn Crude, the company was effectively changed from something "good" (a sheep, a ewe) to something "bad" (a goat, a Capricorn).

He wasn't remotely invested in typical soap opera stories. He was a mystery writer, and a VERY talented one at that. (I have several of his short stories.) In his world, a marriage, a divorce, a custody suit -- those events were merely the "mechanics" of establishing various motives for a crime. And he presented his motives in the most subtle ways. I'm sure all of us who watched in 1980 will never forget the scene in which Cliff Nelson took a sandwich off a tray at a luncheon gathering and boasted "I know who killed Eliot Dorn, and I'm going to prove it" while standing next to the wrong person. A few episodes later, Cliff Nelson was stabbed, and we all had our ideas of who stabbed him, but probably no one suspected the person standing next to him at the sandwich tray, as she barely knew him. He really perfected the "niche genre" of serialized crime. But I can't imagine that he truly cared about writing a traditional daytime soap.

There's never anything unplanned in a Slesar script. Chris Goutman's gum-smacking and Mady Kaplan's sarcasm and cigarettes made those two characters (even though their roles were fairly small) an instant part of the show's film noir fabric. And their dialogue is crisp & clever. Sharkey: "Maybe one of these days, I'll DROP BY and make you REAL HAPPY." Bobbie: "The only way you could make me REAL HAPPY is by DROPPING dead." Even the segue into the next scene provides a clue about an upcoming plot point. Bobbie tells Sharkey, "No, there have been no REPORTERS around, okay?", and immediately Mike Karr opens the front door of his house and says, "April! Come in!" .... It wasn't a REPORTER who'd been coming to the diner, asking about Sharkey -- it was April. And Slesar is clever enough here to remind us of April's interest, while at the same time previewing to us that April, masquerading as "June", and Draper, masquerading as "Richie", will soon be infiltrating the Rexford Clinic. Slesar always seemed to know exactly where he was going with his stories, and how he planned to arrive there. Henry Slesar mastered the format of serialized mystery-drama in a way no one else has ever duplicated.

Thank you! Not sure what Bill Bell was thinking with Lorie, Leslie, Lance, Lucas, Larkin, and Linda. lol.

I'm always amazed at what EDGE accomplished on so little. If they needed a one-off diner set, they set up a counter, two stools, a cash register, and a coffee pot. Instant diner. The next scene might be set in some exclusive French restaurant that we'd never see again, and it was just a booth against a wall with a blue light shining on it. A dead body might pop up in an alley that was nothing more than a garbage can and a brick wall. As mentioned above, the dialogue was tight, the camera angles were tight, and there was generally a quick cut-to-black, so it didn't matter much about the surroundings.

What I learned from this episode: Today's soaps have no imaginations. They claim their budget cuts prevent them from having multiple sets, so everyone now congregates in empty restaurants. At the 8:30 mark, we see an apartment for Mady Kaplan's (recurring) character. The "set" is created with a table, a lamp, a telephone, a chair, and a backdrop of a window. Total cost -- about $2. At 8:40, we see Chris Goutman's (recurring) character calling from a supply room at the Rexford Clinic. That set consists of a bulletin board and a white medical coat hanging from a metal locker. Total cost -- about $2. I find it difficult to believe today's shows can't slap together a workable set like this for a quick interaction or a phone call. "The Edge of Night" had probably the lowest budget in daytime, but they created sets that worked, using minimal materials.

Oh, yeah. Peggy showed up for Liz & Stuart's wedding and stayed around. That fiasco with Leslie was still at full throttle during the wedding.

Crazy how close together Edge of Night & Days of Our Lives were in 1981 in the ratings. A few years later, Edge was cancelled, and by the late 1990s (?) Days was hovering around right behind Y&R and B&B near the top.

There was a TON of suspense in the Leslie/Jonas storyline! (1) The Fish in the Newspaper -- Stuart Brooks ran a story in The Chronicle about the missing Leslie, complete with a photograph of Leslie. A copy of the newspaper arrived at Jonas's club, but Jonas never saw it because his concubine (Gloria?) wrapped-up some fish in the newspaper. I was dying to know if she planned to freeze the fish or to refrigerate the fish, and whether the fish would be cooked at home or in the club. Also, I was curious what TYPE of fish she wrapped in the paper. (2) The Club Itself -- You'd think Jonas's club was in or near Genoa City, because Leslie managed to arrive there with no purse, no money, and no form of identity. But no one working there or any of the customers recognized Leslie or appeared to have ever heard of her. Gradually it became evident the club was somewhere faraway. But then the newspaper (see above) arrived, indicating Jonas subscribed to the Genoa City Chronicle, so maybe the club was in GC after all. But then Lucas and Jonas reconnected through Sebastian Crowne, involving a scheme to free refugees on an island in San Leandro (or somewhere), and there was a lot of flying around in the Prentiss jet, with stops to pick up Jonas, which made it seem he was in some distant land. Then Stuart, Lorie, Lucas, and Lance started popping into the club regularly, as though it was in Genoa City. But then Jonas moved his business to the Allegro, which didn't make much sense if he already had a club in town. I never figured out where Jonas and Leslie were supposed to be. (3) Chris and Peggy -- Whenever a story involved Lorie or Leslie (Bill Bell favorites), you always wondered if he would permit the Two Lesser Sisters (Chris and Peggy) to stray into the storyline and deliver a few lines of dialogue to the More Important Sisters. Once again, in this case, they were deprived of the opportunity.

I blame Gloria Monty for 90% of what's wrong with the soaps today (and John Conboy for the other 10%). Long, introspective scenes were one of the few things soaps tended to do especially well, as opposed to film or primetime TV. When I was a kid in the 1970s, it wasn't unusual for a soap to have a scene that lasted six or seven minutes, examining every aspect of a situation. And then along came Gloria Monty with her short, choppy scenes that featured someone making a quick phone call or delivering two lines of dialogue before an elevator door slammed shut in their face, and all of that went out the window. She (and her inevitable copycats) thought if a scene lasted more than a minute, the audience would die of boredom. Now we're stuck with "vignettes" -- choppy, disjointed scenes that serve no purpose whatsoever. It all goes back to her. (John Conboy's 10% is attributable to his emphasis on physical appearance. When he was casting Y&R, he deliberately chose extremely attractive performers, but he also made sure they could act. His copycats said, "Oh, look! Y&R has a bunch of hotties on it! Let's run hire some of them too! Who cares if they can act!") Now we get nonsensical short Gloria Monty scenes that serve no real purpose, with three choppy lines of dialogue delivered by someone from the John Conboy model line-up.

His only "evil deed" that I remembered vividly was taking Chancellor Industries away from Kay Chancellor, and threatening to sell it piece-by-piece, but it seems like he returned it to her about 3 days later, lol.

I could always buy the concept that Cliff didn't know Rebecca Wentworth. He was only 4 or 5 when she flew the coop, so he likely wouldn't have recognized her, had he crossed paths with her twenty or thirty years later. Any business dealings Cliff might've had with the Wentworth family (as an adult) would've likely been with Herbert Wentworth, who'd only been dead a little while when Pam found Rebecca in Houston.

Her mother, Elizabeth Harrower, not only wrote for the show, but played the old lady (Charlotte Ramsey) who pretended to be Jill's mother.

I believe Miss Dickson's problem was that she began "living her role" in the outside world, which made her more of a headache than she was worth. (I flipped through a Soap Opera Digest in the 1984-era, where they mentioned she had recently purchased a new Mercedes with "Jill" as her personalized license plate. That probably says a lot about where her mind was.) Even when her performances were at their strangest and most bizarre, she was -- something to behold.

Everything Danny did in that episode was fairly dumb. Traci tells him, "I'm going to visit Serial Cheater Tim and see if there's a 2% chance he still wants me!", and Danny immediately goes running to Faux Patty and gets her hopes up that she can become Mrs. Rock On, without even waiting to see how it went with Tim, while Lauren serves as Head Cheerleader with another "sizzling" cover from her Sergio Mendes repertoire.

Five minutes in, and Danny's already "fragmented" Traci -- "There's a part of you that still loves Tim Sullivan!", and Jill has already launched into the famous "making INROADS with my husband" spiel. (We used to call Dina Mergeron "Ole Inroad Dina".) I swear, they wrote this dialogue in their sleep 😂

Patty Williams (back in the Lilibet Stern days) was always saying, "A part of me ..." "A part of me died when Jack hurt me." "A part of me wants to believe you." "A part of me knows you're being honest right now." We've always said that a LOT. "A part of me is starving right now, and I believe it's my stomach!"

I'm sure y'all do. When the doorbell rings, doesn't everyone in the house simultaneously yell, "I'll get it, Miguel!"

Oh, I don't remember if it was really Vanessa, but Nikki would be selling flowers to some lead character in one storyline, while Paul would be selling to lead characters in another storyline. Seems like there was a scene in the park where perhaps Nikki sold flowers to Suzanne Lynch and Derek Thurston, and Paul sold flowers in the restaurant to Vanessa and Lucas. Cindy Fisher's character and Matthew might pop-up and sell a flower to Lorie Brooks. It was just a jumbled-up mess of people who'd never seen one another before, but who were all lead characters in various storylines, colliding over Cult Flowers.

Ha, as a kid, I thought it was thrilling, but as I aged I found it sort of absurd. When Peggy was in the Rat House, she looked at her captors and said, "You'll never conquer ME!" (In later years, my siblings and I would recite Peggy's line to one another while winning in Monopoly or Scrabble or tennis -- "You'll never conquer ME!" lol.) That Asian lady -- Sumeko or whatever -- felt Paul was "sexually alive" and offered to "quench his sexual urges". She looked him dead in the face and said, "Come to me, for I am your Spiritual Mother." That line got quoted around my house a lot too. If I needed my brother to come help me haul out the trash, I'd say, "Come to me, for I am your Spiritual Mother." The constant singing of "there's a New World coming and it's just around the bend, coming in peace, coming in joy, coming in love" was annoying as hell. And it was practically a daily occurrence. Also, the show was very disjointed in 1980, which enabled a lot of bizarre crossovers. The New World Kidz sold flowers to raise money for the commune. That mean Paul and Nikki might be dispatched to the Allegro or Jonas's or whatever it was called at the time to sell flowers. Mister Bell would have Nikki walk up to someone like Vanessa Prentiss and sell her a flower. Meanwhile, Paul might be selling a flower to Lucas Prentiss or Derek Thurston or someone. It just highlighted the show was comprised of various "pools" of characters who'd never even SEEN one another before. You don't wanna watch it 😂

Yeah, Traci was singing solo at the Torchlight Club (I think it was called) which was owned by the blind husband of Mary Ingalls on "Little House on the Prairie". Lauren Fenmore & Shawn Garrett sabotaged her solo career by telling customers the show was cancelled, etc., confusing the nights she was performing, and so forth. It was mainly a storyline about how low Lauren and Shawn would stoop to keep her from having a successful career. Seems like Ashley had watched Traci perform the night Brent Davis accosted Ashley in the garage.

After Cricket's awkward dance, Danny said, "Wow! I've never seen moves like that in my life!" (I don't think ANY of us had seen anything quite like that before, lol.)