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.

Didn’t Meg Bennett return to SFT as a writer in the last few years. I always wondered if they tried to get her back as Liza.

The big reason Knots worked so well, separately from Dallas, is that it was not conceived as a spinoff of Dallas. So it was never a faded copy of Dallas; it had its own identity. That said, it was respectful of its ties to the parent show (at least until Bobby’s “death”) and the crossovers worked well.

Revealing Julia as the murderer was one of the best cliffhangers of the 80s primetime soaps, because it was so unexpected. The other shows never did that with main characters. But it did cause problems with the family dynamics. I agree about Richard muddying the waters of the Angela/Chase battle. I think the writers got bored with the Chase/Angela battles fairly quickly. And perhaps they wouldn’t have if they had had a more dynamic, likable Chase. Robert Foxworth was such an odd choice to play the protagonist in a nighttime serial. I think it would have been better if Chase and Angela had had a grudging respect for each other and teamed up once in a while.

Same. Ratings were off quite a bit during season 5 so they had to try something different. I don’t think it really worked, creatively, but I do give them credit for trying.

Yeah agreed. The Nazi treasure story was a little over the top but it was intriguing. Cutting it short hurt the show - I don’t think it ever recovered during the Earl Hamner era and led to the cheesefest that was Jeff Freilich’s reign on the show.

I think she was brought in very quickly, so they probably stuck her in Marie Cheatham’s spot and then later put her in the appropriate place in the crawl when they had time.

Miss Ellie is always in denial. She berates JR several times during the series for his dirty business dealings, but where did he learn that from? Jock. And Ellie had no problem accepting the money from those dealings when it saved Southfork. And the whole Lucy thing drives me nuts. Ellie was complicit in denying Lucy’s mother the opportunity to raise her or even see her. And later on, she was almost helped JR kidnap John Ross. So stop acting so holier-than-thou, you hypocritical old bag.

I wonder if something was going on behind the scenes with Lynne Moody. Pat fit in nicely and I can’t think of a logical reason why she would be de-emphasized. She was also replaced on “That’s My Mama” in the 1970s after the first season.

Her marriage to Manuel lasted three more years after leaving the show. She shoulda taken the million bucks.

I think Jeff and Nancy were expecting another baby in season 1, too. That wasn’t mentioned in season 2.