Chris 2

Agreed. She visited a few times but that was it. Kathleen, I think her name was. Her last visit was right after Mary died. Siobhan was offscreen for the first three years and then she came home. But they never did that for Kathleen.

The problem with the Ryan cousins, Barry and EJ, is that they were cousins. Not siblings. Cousins are boring, dramatically.

More time has elapsed between original Melrose ending and this potential new reboot than there was between Dallas ending and its reboot.

7 minutes ago, Khan said:

And it's not going to be as long as they maintain the illusion that Brooke Logan is a desirable woman in her late 30's.

LOL. It’s like the later Lucy Shows, where they were trying to pretend that she was still a “young lady.”

I spoke to a contact at CBS. Doesn’t work in daytime, but has decent connections (obviously take this with a grain of salt). She hears:

• CBS wants to capitalize on the underserved Black daytime audience in a way that its current soaps don’t. They see the ratings for Jennifer Hudson and Sherri and want a bigger piece of that action.
• CBS wants to be able to realize multiple revenue streams from its soaps; they can maximize that revenue only if they have ownership in them. CBS would consider a second broadcast window in the late-night or overnight hours if it goes to series.
• Both The Talk and B&B are vulnerable. The ratings for The Talk are lagging. B&B is not seen as a strong brand but rather one that has been riding Y&R’s coattails. They also want some leverage when B&B is next up for renewal.
• Should this new show go to series, it won’t be shot in New York (too expensive). They would actively explore locations outside of LA.
• CBS is going to develop other game and talk shows as alternatives in case they want to replace The Talk and/or B&B next year.
• She also feels that this would be a half hour. That’s not based on anything she’s heard, but the realities of the business - a 30 min show would be less risky financially and easier to draw new audiences into.

I remember seeing Melody Thomas on the Waltons as Ben’s spoiled girlfriend Darlene in a few episodes. I also remember her as a boarding school girl from The Fury (with Amy Irving). 

I think she could have pulled off Lucy.

Yeah, Amazon, is just consolidating everything under the Prime brand. There will be three tiers: free Prime with ads (library titles), paid Prime with ads (new shows), and premium Prime with no ads.

Sorry to hear this. When is it leaving? I hope Dallas isn’t going too.

9 hours ago, SoapDope said:

They never really used the garage. They should have converted that into a guest house where Janet & David lived or Merle & Susan.

They did! Susan lived there with the baby during the last season while Merle was on the road.

Nice article - thanks for posting. I always liked her. She seems grounded and happy.

I also liked Dianne Kay a lot. She was a significant upgrade from Kimberly Beck, who played Nancy in the pilot and who I thought was a limited actress based on her other work in the 1970s and 80s.

I think Van Patten was truly one of the good guys. I know he tried to help Adam Rich when he got into legal trouble after the series ended. I’m guessing you read Buckley’s tribute to him when he died. It was in Variety or perhaps the LA Times. She spoke so highly of him and his wife and how they helped her adjust to life in LA when she took the job on EIE, and they became lifelong friends. 

I thought that Michele Lee did some of her best work on the show after they killed off Sid. The “Letting Go” episode was especially good.

4 hours ago, SoapDope said:

Yes as the kids got older it presented problems. They tried to keep many of them all under one roof, but it still didn't help with storylines. I have read Buckley could be difficult and a perfectionist. She would take forever to complete a scene. She also handed out a book about acting to cast members, which many took offense to especially Willie Aames. 

I read the same thing. But they made peace with her. When Adam Rich died, I saw a a pictures of him from a few years earlier with his EIE cast mates attending the LA opening of Hello, Dolly, starring Betty Buckley.

I also saw an interview with Willie Aames and perhaps some of the others (might have been a Today Show reunion) where he said that he used to argue with Betty Buckley that they weren’t making art; they were making product and that’s why they had to move faster. And it drove her crazy. But he sounded pretty good natured about it.

The challenge with EIE was that it started with most of the kids as older teens or young adults. So that really limited the stories after the show had been for a few years because there was no longer a differentiated range of ages to do stories on. ABC knew the show was out of gas and moved it to Saturday to kill it.

The 1987 reunion movie came about because the show never had an official final episode. When Betty Buckley didn’t participate, the official reason was that she was filming the movie “Frantic.” In reality, she and her representatives were in negotiation to do the reunion. But negotiations dragged on and on over salary and billing and finally Lorimar walked away from the table and hired Mary Frann. Lorimar management had never been overly fond of Buckley, who liked to “color outside of the lines.”

The 1987 reunion rated very well, so NBC ordered a follow-up. For that second movie, they didn’t even offer Buckley the job.

2 hours ago, Soapsuds said:

I wonder if he ever regretted leaving. Especially when it became a huge hit.

Yes, he did. I saw an interview where he said he regretted missing out on over 10 years of steady work. He thought KL was on its last legs when he left.

I liked Diana Hyland and thought she was warm and believable in the role. But Joan’s death did open up story possibility. I liked how they frequently referred to her and mentions came up naturally, like when Mary visited her old teacher to ask for advice, and the teacher began with how sorry she had been to hear about her mother.

Tom as a single father could have been milked for longer. But ABC as you mentioned was insistent on a two-parent family. So Tom was remarried by November sweeps. Too bad.

The issue with Joan Bradford disappearing in mid-season without explanation is interesting. Season 1 consisted of nine episodes. Joan was physically in four. And then she was heard on the phone in two additional episodes (she was said to be visiting a family member who had had a baby). Diana Hyland was not well enough to appear in those two episodes, but recorded voiceovers for them.

When ABC reran the series in the summer of 1977, they only showed episodes in which Hyland did not appear, in order to transition audiences to a new season without Joan. They edited her voiceovers out of those two episodes (for example, in the “Quarantine” episode, Tom’s phone call with Joan is replaced with a phone call to his friend Greg Maxwell). And those episodes got a new opening and closing that eliminated Joan/Hyland.

It’s these summer of 1977 edits that are shown in syndication and streaming used in the DVDs. So it gives the impression that Joan is gone without explanation.

LOL I don’t disagree re: Perfect Strangers.

I worked in the business at the time of the acquisition and the Lorimar was a big get for WB. The studios and TV networks were becoming vertically integrated and since Lorimar wasn’t going to grow into a giant, it was going to get acquired. It had a number of suitors due to its slate of hits as well as its library titles. But Warner got it and ousted its TV executive team in favor of the Lorimar folks because pre-Lorimar, Warner’s TV production had declined to the point to the lowest point since the 1950s.

I really miss the days before all the consolidation, because I think there was a lot more creative freedom back then, particularly at the independent production companies. I’d argue that a Falcon Crest season 9 wouldn’t have happened at one of the major TV studios - they just would have cancelled it.

19 hours ago, soapfan770 said:

I know Lorimar was collapsing at the time but I wish the show could have at least given Sullivan and Ladd their set number of episodes throughout the season, sort of like Joan Collins during Season 9 of Dynasty. But alas. 

I don’t know where you got the idea that Lorimar was collapsing, but that’s just not true. Nighttime soaps were collapsing, but Lorimar had had the foresight to begin a transition to producing sitcoms, and it had a number of hits under its belt already (“Full House”, “Perfect Strangers”, “Valerie/The Hogan Family”) with more to come. Within five years, Warner Bros - whose TV division had collapsed - acquired Lorimar and turned it into Warner Bros TV, with the Lorimar executive team taking charge.

Every time I see a 1990s-era Guiding Light clip, I’m struck by what a one-note actor Mark Derwin is, with his clenched-mouth, constipated portrayal of Mallet.

Lucy the character and the actress were poor. KL didn’t need her stinking the place up. What they should have done was kill her off, cremate the remains and then send them to the moon. So she could never, ever come back.

I would like a Fallon doll with two different snap-on faces.

Ben and Blake being brothers was ridiculous. John Forsythe was old enough to be his father. And the actor who played him was British as opposed to Australian so there were multiple accent issues.

I never bought Frankie and Sable as siblings either. Raised across the pond from each other? Were the writers watching The Parent Trap?

That plot twist would have been too daytime for my tastes.

JR being obsessed with who was a real Ewing was interesting. The NY Times, I think, did a story on Dallas when the revival first started. And they mentioned how weird the Ewings were in the original series - so worried about those who were “outsiders” or “not our kind of people” - like anyone would want to hang out in the dark ranch house and be stuck living with the Ewings.