Chris 2

Humiliating your employees, particularly in front of each other, is awful.

Agreed that cutting the Nazi treasure storyline short ultimately wrecked it. Yeah it was farfetched but it was fun and better than the stuff that came after.

I wouldn’t call her a regular. She wasn’t listed in the opening credits or even after the episode title at the beginning of the episode. She was listed with the guest stars in the closing credits.

Go watch Beck’s episode of “Fantasy Island” when they were testing it out as a Sunday show aimed at younger viewers, airing in an earlier time period. Beck played Cindy, Rourke’s assistant. She was so artificial it was painful to watch her scenes. And she didn’t appear in the second Sunday special, not surprisingly.

It was a big deal for WCVB to air the show at 11:30. This was after Loving took the 1230 slot and ABC moved RH to noon. WCVB hadn’t cleared any ABC daytime program during the 11-noon slot for years. And WCVB did not air it on a one-day tape delay as was standard at the time. Instead, ABC fed RH to WCVB 30 minutes ahead of the rest of the affiliates.

Interesting that the unaired pilot dove right into the action, rather than setting up the series with the Giobertis coming to the valley. And Clu Gulager is somehow as unlikeable as Chase as Robert Foxworth was.

Agreed on Tina Louise. She’s actual a fine character actor and they could have used Julie on a recurring basis. Marc Singer (Matt) was definitely a dud. Bobby’s old friend, properly cast, could have been a love interest for Pam. But they didn’t want her to be single for more than 30 second - hence the return of The Pornstache. Barbara Eden would have made a greater impact in an earlier season.

Uncle Lenny helped conceive the Angelica Nero arc because he was still consulting with the show. But he said later he only wanted it to be 8 episodes long. And there was talk in the trades at the time that they offered the part to Diana Ross (“Call me Miss Nero!”)

Hamner loved the concept of a family escaping the big bad city to return to their small town roots. Before he passed away, he pitched a show called “Foundations” where a man moves his family from the city back to his hometown to take over the family apple orchard business. Sound familiar?

100%. I think Louise Shaffer had limited range, from what I can see of her work on RH and SFT. She didn’t need to be around as long as she was.

Family Matters was a Lorimar show, too. I’m sure Lorimar was OK with it - they knew the 80s nightttime serial trend was ending, which is why they got into sitcoms, like Family Matters, Full House, Perfect Strangers, and Valerie.

Is that recent? She looks good. I like her social media posts about her animals and things. Someone was trying to give her crap about her relationship with Andy Gibb and the drug issues. And she replied, “You didn’t know us. You didn’t know what was in our hearts. Tread lightly on broken dreams.” Classy way to shut someone down.

I don’t think they had to recast Charley. My impression at the time was that they didn’t feel Jo Anderson didn’t fit the perky/cute persona that they wanted/needed when Julianne Phillips left the show.

These are still awful numbers for scripted series overall.

This is the only clip I’ve been able to find of Denise as Susan on Youtube (a previous post mentioned it above). Bill and Susan Hayes appear, along with Mike Farrell. Way too brief.