Capridge

On 7/9/2020 at 6:21 PM, j swift said:

I think Cassie is a flawed idea given that Minx had switched Brick and Channing at birth,  which established Minx as a serial baby concealer.  The suggestion that Minx allowed her daughter to be raised at an orphanage (with boys who made regular visits to the Capwells) while years earlier she couldn't bare the thought of her grandson being raised in the Capwell mansion, (right next door), strained logical reasoning.

But Minx didn't know that Cassie was living in the orphanage. Cassie was adopted after birth, but what Minx didn't know is that Cassie's new family didn't keep her. So she was put in the orphanage again and was raised there until the Capwells adopted her.

On 7/9/2020 at 6:21 PM, j swift said:

As for storyline potential, the Lockridge estate was always on the brink of foreclosure due to a lack of new income, so Cassie was not immediately wealthy when she came into the family.  There was no conflict with Lionel feeling betrayed by having a long lost sibling.  There was no discussion of finding Cassie's father.  The Angela/Warren coupling was not worth complicating.  Cassie and her Musketeers played with Mason as children which would have made her years older than Warren.  Finally, the exposition about her birth required the written contortions of both Minx's de-Sorasing and the retcon that Warren was not a Lockridge, (two soap tropes that are not usually appreciated by soaps fans), indicating that Laken was the only child in the family who was actually raised by her biological parents.  If the Lockridges fed their only legitimate child her pet pidgin, perhaps Cassie should have been more grateful to those nuns...

LOL! She probably should have.

Lionel did feel betrayed though. He had a whole confrontation with Minx about it. In fact, when Nicolas Coster briefly left the show in early 1991, Lionel went to Macao to dig up damaging info on Cassie. Cassie did ask Minx who her father was & it was someone Pamela knew according to the dinner party episodes. Minx wouldn't tell Cassie.

But I totally agree that Warren not being a Lockridge was a bad move.

On 7/11/2020 at 5:23 AM, redontop4 said:

 

Patrick Mulcahey once explained that he and Jerry Dobson and Chuck Pratt would gather at the Dobsons' house every few weeks to plot story, and that was the genesis of some of SB's best storylines. I  believe that's why the Dobsons' second stint didn't work. As talented as they are and as much as they deserve credit for the concept and launch of SB, they had a lot of help from some very talented people. For my money, SB was at its best circa 1987 when the Dobsons were exec-producing, Chuck Pratt was co-head writer, Patrick Mulcahey and Courtney Simon (and others) were writing scripts, and Jill Farren Phelps (who knew and loved SB and was fantastic there) was heading the production team as supervising producer. By 1990, John Conboy had run Mulcahey off and fired Pratt and Phelps. Simon left in 1992 to rejoin JFP and Mulcahey (and her husband) at GL.

Agreed!

On 7/12/2020 at 2:24 AM, amybrickwallace said:

She only wrote the show for less than a year. Does anyone exactly know how long?

March 1992-January 1993.

18 hours ago, chrisml said:

 I know Mulcahey loathes him, but I think Conboy was the last time the show worked for the most part.

ICAM about Conboy. Mulcahey had an example about Conboy wanting Cruz to play polo, which would have been OOC, but Conboy did respect the show's past. He was the one who brought back the Lockridges and when Kelly was arrested for Quinn's murder, bail was denied because her family had helped her flee the country after Dylan's death. Danny, Ted & Jade were mentioned by Laken. I really liked things like that. So I'd rather have Cruz play polo than have him not recognize the love of his life because she was wearing a bad wig.

11 hours ago, pdm1974 said:

I LOVED the character of Laura once she went crazy!  Bunny was a favorite, too. 

Another Laura fan right here!! Christopher Norris played her to perfection. She could be a villainess one moment and a grieving mother the next.

22 hours ago, chrisml said:

I don't know what happened during the Dobsons' return, but I wish they hadn't mucked it up so much. I liked what they did with Flame and Michael, but that didn't last long because of the Born/Rauch fight. I wonder what would have happened if there were a different producer.

Unfortunately I didn't like the Dobsons' return all that much either. I loved the dinner party episodes with Pamela (some of the best scenes on the show EVER), but I didn't like how they had Mason act like a spoiled brat who used video cameras to spy on people. It didn't work, and I'm not sure it would have worked with Lane Davies in the role either. Mason was so vicious and mean and his motives didn't make much sense (Why did he even hate Warren? Why did he want to torture Cassie so much when he didn't even love her?). Flame and Michael were probably his most popular pairing, but they didn't work for me either. Michael had been such a good friend to Cruz/Julia/Eden for years and to turn him into a bitter drunk that looked down on everyone did the character a great disservice.

Also, the Cassie storyline had been pretty intriguing & mysterious (she was becoming an Elena-like character that seemed to have it in for the Capwells & the brotherhood), but when the Dobsons took over, she suddenly turned into a tortured heroine. Mason and Julia should have found out about her schemes.

Most of the Dobsons' new characters were plain boring (David, Katrina etc.), they got rid of the wrong characters/actors (Laken, Augusta, Craig, Carrington Garland's Kelly) & they focused on the wrong characters (Katrina got more screen time than Craig & Kelly for months). And the storylines they inherited from the previous team they didn't really fix and their stories pretty much ruined relationships (Augusta having fantasies about her sister's rapist, Cruz not recognizing Eden/Suzanne). I get that they wanted to do forbidden love, but Dash/Augusta and Michael/Flame did not work IMO. And they focused way too much on Jack Wagner.

And the worst part was that the show became so wordy. There were all these endless scenes at the Oasis and there was little very action.

What I did like was Rosa's return, and the dinner party, but Rosa was rarely used and Pamela was gone within a week. Angela was a great new character. I'm glad they tied her to the Capwells in 1992. She really fit in there.

On 4/16/2019 at 1:18 AM, j swift said:

Here's an odd fact: according to the French Santa Barbara Online site, they were filming in Paris exactly 30 years ago this week.

 

The shooting in the French capital took place for six days, from April 10th to 16th 1989, for a total of 55 sequences, spread on six episodes of 45 minutes. The shooting required the presence of 30 persons, actors included, and a budget of more than 500 000 dollars !

 

It was an interesting remote because it was a big splashy story that wound up having very little impact.  Kelly (now Carrington Garland) was living in Paris and Eden got the psychic premonition that her baby Adriana was in France.  So she hightailed it Paris, Kelly went undercover as Adriana's nanny (not Eden as suggested on the French website).  It turned out that Adriana was living was Cruz's con artist brother Ric (no K) Castillo and his wife Hollis.  By the end of the sequence, Hollis had jumped in the Seine and Ric decided to move to Santa Barbara.  Ric worked for Bunny and seemed to have never stolen any cash for himself while in Paris.  Then Robert Barr comes back to town and Ric winds up disappearing. 

 

Actually, the French website is right. Eden was the one who went undercover as Adriana's nanny, Kelly went undercover as a maid. Ric never worked for Bunny.

Ric's wealth in France came from Hollis and her family made sure he didn't get a cent after she died.

I really liked the Paris story though. Elizabeth Storm was great as Hollis and it was a really nice way to introduce Peter Love's Ric. I really liked Kelly and Ric and was so mad when Robert blackmailed Ric into working against the Capwells. So, even though I wound up preferring Robert and Kelly over Ric and Kelly, it's too bad that Kelly never found out why Ric had turned against her family.

On 4/10/2019 at 7:55 AM, j swift said:

 It seems unfair that Danny also went to Lyman Prep but his sister Santana had to go to public school with Keith and Cruz.  Unfortunately, a good education didn't help Danny when he became one of the many who disappeared from Santa Barbara...

Danny didn't go to Lyman Prep. He went to a public school like Santana. That's why he's never in the classroom with Jade/Ted/Laken during the school scenes.

On 4/18/2019 at 3:52 AM, pdm1974 said:

I always felt like Santana should have been a mainstay character throughout the show's run and its Latina heroine. She had such an interesting connection to the Capwells and a reason to constantly cause new tension. The last time we saw her Wanda DeJesus played her whom Jed Allan apparently hated (maybe along with the rest of the cast), so I feel that cut her last appearance short. I do feel like they had long-term plans for her.

Yeah, Santana should have been on the show during the show's entire run. One of the rare things I liked about Pam Long's writing is that she gave Santana a good exit.

On 4/18/2019 at 8:50 AM, Wendy said:

BJ and Warren never made sense. And unlike many, I thought they had zero chemistry. I hated Cassie, but she and Warren (even with the later incestuous angle) had chemistry. Ditto Warren and Angela.

 

So why the hell TIIC put Warren with BJ the drip mystified me. Well, I kind of know. To help Pam Long's pet Kim Zimmer's character's family get a foothold. Alas, the Walkers sucked. Every last one of them.

I've been watching episodes from 1992 and pretty every cliffhanger before every commercial break is about B.J. It's really annoying. I really hate the last year.

10 hours ago, Soaplovers said:

I've always given Pam Long slack when it came to her 10 month stint on the show.  She inherited a critically ill show that had stupidly relied on just one couple at the expense of everyone else. So I think she did the best she could.  

Probably, but she introduced way too many new characters IMO and didn't get the characters that were already on the show. Cruz's exit was totally out of character, Lily's backstory was rewritten (she slept with Mason in 1986 but was now somehow a virgin again), Brandon was totally forgotten once baby Channing arrived, Gina was dumbed down considerably and Julia became totally obsessed with the haunted mansion and wanted to stay there even though both her husband and daughter were getting hurt. And then Mason, who loved Julia and became self-destructive whenever he lost her, suddenly implied that their marriage could not work out because Julia had won the judgeship and not him? That was totally out of character, too.

10 hours ago, chrisml said:

Pamela Long was just the wrong writer for the show. SB needed a hw who could play up the show's wit and Long is too earnest for that. I felt that the SB characters lost their individuality and became flattened during her tenure (Mason and Julia were neutered beyond belief for ex.). SB's demise was certainly not Long's fault as it has been on life support for a while. I know people talk about losing Marcy Walker as the death knell, but I think it was firing Carrington Garland. You also had Justin Gocke, Roberta Bizeau, Frank Runyeon, Louise Sorel, John Callahan and Roscoe Born leaving or fired. In my mind, The Dobsons and Rauch are the ones really responsible. 

ICA! Although Eden was probably the heart of the show, the death knell wasn't just Marcy leaving, it was all of those factors, many of which could have been prevented because a lot of these actors were fired.

John Conboy is underrated IMO. He respected the show's history enough to bring back characters like the Lockridges, Robert Barr and Keith (unfortunately Justin Deas didn't want to come back but Conboy did try).

On 5/19/2020 at 7:16 PM, Soapsuds said:

I always thought it won Emmys to keep it on the air.

Interesting theory but I really doubt that

On 5/19/2020 at 7:20 PM, pdm1974 said:

I wasn't the biggest Pam Long fan, either. I did think she utilized the Lockridges much better than the writers before her. She also expanded Minx's role on the canvas.

That's true. It was lovely to see Minx a bit more involved in the storylines and Janis Paige player her well (even though she was far too young to be playing Nicolas Coster's son, but I didn't mind that).

Since the Loving murders have appeared online, a storyline that I'd always been curious about, I'm surprised at how good the show was. And I find the storyline fascinating but wow, if I had watched for twelve years, I probably would not have been happy with the storyline at all. The first, fourth and fifth murders were especially hard to watch because those characters & performers were extremely likable.

Ironically, I think the characters that survived are pretty much all uninteresting and their individual stories don't draw me in at all, not even Angie (who I expected to love). And I'm amazed at the choice of the first murder victim, she was easily one of the most recognizable faces of the show and IMO one of the stronger performers. Why she had to go and some so-so characters made the transfer to the city, is really weird. Trisha's fate is pretty sad too, if you think about it. She didn't even get the chance of mourning the people she once loved because she simply did not remember them. But all in all, I'm more interested in the earlier years of the show than ever.

The performance of the killer, wow. Thumbs up!

On 4/26/2020 at 1:10 AM, Soaplovers said:

I often think Pam Long would have done better writing the Lockridges..especially Augusta/lionel...than the Capwells.

You know, you may be right about that. I did not enjoy Pam Long's writing at all but I think she might have done well with Augusta & Lionel. Though she might have only used them for silly mini-stories like she did with Lionel & Gina.

On 10/27/2019 at 11:50 PM, Wendy said:

I think - against Cruz and Eden - that Mason/Julia, all three versions - were underrated. They were a very different animal from the fantasy ideal of Cruz/Eden, being more cerebral and with a lot more warts, yet they managed to be almost as popular, even with two Mason recasts.

 

And I agree, as far as Gina/JD's Keith are concerned, that a somewhat villainous, yet humorous pairing, also brought an important element to the show. Of course, it was Justin Deas' choice to leave, just as it was Marcy Walker's later, and John Novak's version of Keith didn't work. So I think the show was very hit/miss in terms of what worked outsode of Cruz/Eden. Once C/E were done, I think the familiarity and the stability of Mason/Julia - again, even recast - allowed them to take up the slack, if just a little.

 

I still believe firing Carrington Garland was a huge mistake and one the show never came back from. Because, without Eden, I think CG's Kelly would/could have easily helped fill the void, since she had sparks with practically everyone. Too bad the Robert/Quinn story devolved into a massive mess and killed Robert.

 

Because IMO? I think CG's Kelly and Robert proved to be just as popular as Eden/Robert, to TPTB's surprise, and with Cruz/Eden no more, I think Kelly/Robert and Mason/Julia (along with CC/Sophia, etc.) could have weathered that loss much better. And, as much as I hated that Karen Moncrieff's Cassie never really paid for sabotaging Mason/Julia, I think she could have worked with Warren had the dumb writers not made her a long-lost kid of too-young Minx. Or hey, if not them, keep Warren with Angela. They also sparked.

 

Instead, we got Warren and drippy BJ.

 

In other words, there were many opportunities the show could have used to weather the loss of Cruz/Eden, but TPTB - and I include the Dobsons - sabotaged those very chances/opportunities at every turn, to the point where cancellation became inevitable.

ICAM!

Carrington Garland was extremely fun to watch and she had chemistry with just about everyone. Losing Marcy Walker, Louise Sorel, Carrington Garland, Roscoe Born and even Frank Runyeon (who had been there for four years) really hurt the show. Marcy and Roscoe wanted to leave the show and Frank was also ready to get out of there, but Carrington seemed happy to be there & Louise Sorel, well, her firing should never have happened either. It was so unnecessary. I guess they counted on Jack Wagner to save the show, but the stability of having Carrington Garland & Louise Sorel there would have really helped.

18 hours ago, j swift said:

Also, Sofia's motivation was never sufficiently explained.  I know that she thought that Lionel did it, she wanted to exonerate Joe Perkins, and she didn't remember shooting Channing.  But why did she wait five years until Joe was released from prison to return to Santa Barbara?  Why go through the bother of putting on a disguise if both Joe and Cruz and had never met her? And why was her fragile mental state completely ignored once she stop using her drag king persona?   

 

I wonder if there was a re-write along the way, or if the Dobson's hadn't properly planned a solution to the mystery at the beginning of the story because so much of Pamela's backstory was a repeat of Sophia's past (including marrying European nobility, devoted stepchildren, returning to town in disguise, and emotional instability).

I'm watching this period on YouTube, but it kinda makes sense.

-Sophia "died" in May 1969 because she fell overboard. She didn't remember who she was for many years and was in a mental hospital. She eventually got out, remarried & thus Marcello became her stepson.
-In 1979, Sophia saw a photo of CC in the newspaper, which caused her to remember everything. She believed that Lionel had pushed her overboard all those years ago & was still afraid of him. So she set out to confront him at Channing's party before exposing herself to the family.

-Sophia disguised herself as Dominic, planned to threaten Lionel with an unloaded gun and accidentally shot and killed Channing instead. The horror of what she had done was too much for Sophia so Marcello hypnotized her into forgetting the trauma and made her think that Lionel was the killer. This made sense to Sophia since she already believed that Lionel had tried to kill her that day on the boat.

-Marcello took Sophia away from the scene of the crime, but the horror of her beloved son's death caused her to have mental problems again. She was committed to a mental hospital in Alaska this time, and she stayed there until about 1984. This is why she didn't try to exonerate Joe before.

-I guess she disguised herself because a) she was an actress and kinda enjoyed that sort of thing and b) it's not impossible that Joe would recognize her since he had been involved with Kelly and might have seen a photo of her "dead" mother at one point. (Cruz and Dominic never had scenes together, except for one where Cruz interrupted a meeting between Joe/Dominic on Cruz's houseboat and Dominic fled the scene immediately).

18 hours ago, j swift said:

The tux is a rather convoluted red herring of the Channing murder mystery.  Warren wore Lionel's tux to Channing's party in order to convince Channing not to follow through on his plan for revenge against Lionel.  Channing knew that Warren had stolen coins from CC's office that were recovered from the sunken treasure of the yacht named The Amanda Lockridge and he threatened to expose Lionel and Sophia's affair at his party if Warren didn't return the coins.  Warren threw on his father's tux, climbed over the fence that divided their homes, and went to the party.  But, when he attempted to return the coins, the door to CC's study was locked from the inside.  Unbeknownst to Warren, Channing was already dead inside the room (we learn this detail during Cruz's reenactment of Channing's party).  

 

At the start of the series, Warren has the coins in his locker at the beach where he was working as a lifeguard.  Then, Warren threw the coins into the fireplace of the Lockridge living room but someone (later revealed to be Dominic) mysteriously retrieved them from the fire.  Once Lionel returned he told him about the coins and they decided to dive for the sunken treasure from the Amanda Lockridge.  Warren taught Summer how to dive, at the same time Eden was trying to get Cruz to teach her how to dive, and Lionel struck up a friendship with Elizabeth Peale, whose father Sir Richard Peale had studied the treasures of the Amanda Lockridge.  Lionel winds up diving for the treasure.  They set up a party at the museum to uncover the results of the dive.  Lionel wears the tux to the party and Sofia/Dominic tips off Cruz that the stolen coins are in Lionel's jacket.  Cruz arrests Lionel which is why the Lockridges celebrate Xmas in the Santa Barbara jail.  But, Lionel was later freed when Warren admits to the Cruz that he borrowed the tux that night.

This is only partly correct but those episodes aired so long ago I can't say I blame you

Channing knew that Warren had stolen the coins, but was going to expose him no matter what he did with the coins. So returning the coins was never a plot point. He didn't go back to return the coins, but to kill Channing (flashbacks of this were shown in episode 110 & 217). The door wasn't locked; he went in and saw that Channing had been shot. Before Channing died, Warren heard him whisper a word (which was connected to Lionel/Sophia but unknown to Warren).

Dominic retrieved the coins from the cemetery (where Lionel had hidden them), not the fireplace. But the Lockridges did burn the tux in the fireplace (episode 110) so maybe you got that mixed up.

On 4/7/2020 at 10:51 PM, j swift said:

I'm endlessly fascinated by the Lockridge family.  In my experience, they benefit from not having as much screen time because it was always a treat when they were the focus of an episode.  Whenever a SB writer or producer vowed to get back to basics in SOD, it always meant a return to the Lockridge household.

 

Today I was thinking about Lionel's relationships with his kids.  Lionel and Warren were close from the beginning.  Warren had his odd/Oedipal relationship with Augusta.  In the early episodes, he was always "c"-blocking her from sleeping with Joe Perkins and Peter Flint.  Then, once Lionel returned, he idealized his father and tried to emulate his swagger and demeanor.  Heck, he even borrowed Lionel's tux to wear to Channing's murder party.  Even when Warren was recast, (first with Scott Jenkins during the horrid period of Lionel's marriage to Caroline and later with Jack Wagner), his story always involved interactions with Lionel.

 

However, I struggle to remember a single scene between Laken and Lionel.  There are the infamous episodes where Augusta cooks Laken's bird and her mother was a constant distraction in her love life with TJ.  Yet, Laken wasn't even present on the day that Lionel returned to Santa Barbara in the early episodes.  CC and his daughter's relationships were explored throughout the series.  But, I have no idea of the dynamics between Lionel and Laken.  Did she resent his time away from home?  Were they not close because he was not around a lot during her childhood?  Did Ted or TJ remind her of Lionel in anyway?  We'll never know.

 

Those who portrayed Laken were never gifted actresses which may have limited her storylines.  But, I just thought it was intriguing that Laken and her father never had any significant interactions.

Yeah, the Lockridges were very fascinating. Laken might have been the least interesting of that all, but I liked her a lot. The actresses were good too, but were never given a real chance to shine.

But actually, there were many, many scenes between Lionel and Laken over the years. There were scenes after the pigeon incident where Lionel is trying to keep Laken from running away from home and the subject of his many travels comes up & she made it clear that she didn't understand why he had to go away so much & she didn't like it. There just wasn't much tension between them, because Laken always had a good relationship with him whereas her relationship with Augusta was a lot more complicated. Which is probably why Laken/Lionel scenes were less memorable.

But it was always made clear that they were close. When Lionel was suspected of killing Channing, Laken always believed he was innocent. Their relationship briefly changed when Laken returned in 1987 and started disapproving of Lionel's new relationship with Caroline Wilson. Also, Lionel didn't approve of Laken meddling in Ted and Hayley's marriage. But even then, they remained close. And in 1990, Lionel was pretty much the peacemaker when Laken & Augusta would get into fights.

I'm not sure if Warren borrowed Lionel's tux though. I'm pretty sure that Sophia/Dominic tried to frame Lionel by planting evidence in his tux not knowing that it was Warren's tux.

Yes it's really terrible.

The Craig/Kelly/Robert triangle was really fun and it's sad to think that both men have died so young. And so soon after each other, too.