FrenchBug82

Ironically Falcon Crest has my favorite last scene of a primetime soap so there you have it. Their last season was considerably worse than even KL Season 13 had been. An embarassment. The KL finale was actually decent enough. Abby being behind the takeover attempt was a fun twist and her visit was definitely the highlight. The last scene worked too with the right tone. All the things that were wrong with the finale are the things that were wrong with S13-14. Some of these side characters needed their stories wrapped too, whatever we thought of them, but I would have wrapped them up in the penultimate episode and let the last hour be fully on the "Major Cast" and give us longer scenes between them. One really stupid thing that has driven me nuts for twenty five years: the Abby/Paige interaction in the finale is great. But when Abby asks Paige if she is still sleeping with Greg, Paige responds: "Once every morning, once every night, twice on Saturday". Color me stupid but if she sarcastically says she sleeps with him every morning and night then she is already saying she is sleeping with him twice every day, not just Saturday. It is supposed to be a clever line but it makes no sense. Yes I am nitpicking.

I hate to seem to defend this nonsense, but in all fairness, if Leo is conning Craig, it would make sense he would not want to mention that he lived in Salem, lest Craig reaches out to people he knows and hears what Salem residents think of/know about Leo. Better to "suck him in" first. Now if Craig is not *bothered* and suspicious that Leo never mentioned it after he finds out, then we have a problem. But I can take the underlying lie.

Maybe I am a huge crank - I am a huge crank when it comes to this story for sunre - but why does Craig need to lust after anyone and why does Craig need to be lusting after much younger men? Did RC think there were not enough offensive stereotypes being nurtured by this story that we also had to add older gay men being predatory with much younger straight men? Not all gay men are attracted to hairless muscled twunks thirty years their junior and not all gay men are just attracted to everyone that passes them by especially if they are in a committed relationship. You don't see straight characters being constantly horny around young female characters even while dating another character. I am sure most "real" straight men might look at Gabi and think she is hot. The show does not feel the need - rightfully so - to stage them ogling her. So why is this a thing with a gay character? Weird as it is, we are supposed to believe Craig and Leo are dating. So if they are going to destroy Craig/Nancy, wouldn't it have been much easier to accept if he was replacing what he had with Nancy with a real loving relationship - even if it turns out misguided, which it would with Leo - than having walking around getting a boner for various straight twinks, some of whom could be his grandsons? I hate this so much. It is not amusing or interesting or titillating it enough to justify how offensive it is.

The numbers of offensive messaging RC can pack in one story is staggering. Among other missed opportunities, not having all gay men being attracted to hairless muscled twunks thirty years their junior would have been nice.

I liked FC because there were some great characters and fantastic actors in there and the setting was compelling. But if I am honest with myself, even at its heyday, the writing for it was always mediocre at best. Some great dialoguists but the plotting was always weak. I realized thinking about this that if you ask me what my favorite FC story is, I can't think of any plot. I can think of scenes and guest stars that were memorable and I certainly liked the concept of a battle over vineyard/land but not any specific storyline. Which is pretty telling. Even the most casual of KL watcher would be able to *at least* mention Val's babies.

FWIW I cannot find explicit factual confirmation JW and TS dated from a news source but reading through various forums and comments, I am relieved that I am not the only one who remembers that; I see other people mentioning it. So maybe it was a rumor only but at least I didn't make it up entirely lol

That probably ought to be a different thread but there is definitely a topic there for "Whatever happened to XXX's acting talent?" I always thought KKL was talented. Very green at the beginning, granted. And it didn't help she had to work a lot with Ronn Moss, who clearly didn't elevate any material he is in, on one hand and on the other Joanna Johnson and Susan Flannery who would make most actresses look lame in the most mundane of scenes.

Oh that's what is was about. I thought Vee was referring to some extra goss Wasn't that Ray actor dating TS too?

I am interested in that. What do you mean by that?

Not only him but the entire team, NONE of whom had EVER seen Knots Landing - and were not given any time to watch any of it before they started writing, let alone 12 seasons. I will never ever understand that, not for Knots or for any other show. It doesn't matter how talented you are; you can't be hired for an existing movie/series/soap and be expected to deliver good stuff if you know nothing, not just of the characters and stories and history, but of the mere tone and essence of the show you are going to be writing for. Who takes a job blindly like that? Who purporting to care about a show hires someone like that?

It is a small thing and it may turn out Allie is a nickname but a Vietnamese girl born and raised in Vietnam of Vietnamese parents, including Keemo whose only experience of America led him to think it was a den of decadence, would not be named "Allie". It would not be unheard of for Asian immigrants to choose an "English" name once they move to the US but at the risk of sounding unduly nitpicky, I hope there is a throwaway line about this.

That's a fair argument. I am just not inclined to give the benefit of the doubt to writers writing random stories with characters they don't know about based on a misunderstanding of what the show is. But it is true it helped rest the character.

I personally don't agree that the waitress subplot was a Val restoration. It was movie-of-the-week weak. Now her taking on the Greg book and not taking any of the doubts from Gary and the Mckenzies; THAT was old Val.

I agree that KN is what made her tolerable because the character was a mess. When she was a schemer it was always kind of lame except that one murder-by-cop plot which was going way overboard on the other direction. I will say that some of the Claudia/Anne scenes were entertaining high points of low seasons but that also underscores how far down the show had fallen because that rivalry was played for laughs rather than the more complex interesting female hostilities of earlier seasons.

I think she genuinely had feelings for him, inasmuch as she could have such feelings. But started as a scheme and even after she started caring, the schemes were always going to be a bigger priority. She would not let a man get in the way what she wanted to do. That said, while watching that scene and her spin on it, it reminded me of the tour-de-force speech she gave at the gala when she had had enough of Greg blackmailing her about the twins' kidnapping and she managed to tell Val and the others the whole story as it happened in such a way that the way she handled it all sounded almost ... innocent. It was such clever manipulation. JR was in your face about his evil. Abby was so good at convincing otber characters, but also almost us the audience, that, really, her actions were reasonable and bold rather than ruthless and immoral.

On a similar note, while I still run hot and cold with his acting to this day, I didn't really have "Eric Martsolf, Emmy Winner" on my bingo card when he first started on Passions

Which is happening again by having Lucas kidnap her. This. And you know what is weird about that story and that I can't get over? They KNEW they wanted to go with EJami the minute EJ arrived in town. They hinted at it, played with it, established the chemistry. I hated it because I am a Lumi supporter but they were heavy-handed and I couldn't deny that it could make for a good story. WHY would they intentionally choose to start what they had worked so hard to establish as the "Next Great Love" with rape is beyond me. It is bad enough when it happens with characters or couples writers didn't foresee would take off. I don't like it but they didn't see Jack becoming a fan fave or Luke/Laura on GH. But here EJami was the plan. So WHY would they poison the well for a huge part of the audience with that plot? I'll never understand what kind of misogynist short-sighted thinking led them to think this was a good idea.

My sense is that DM probably sensed it with the way the Murakame scam was written. It is hard to know what was planned all along and what was a rewrite - whether she knew oil had been found early or later can give two different interpretations of the plot - but the entire business of planting drugs was a tad more criminal than what Abby was supposed to be about. The entire beauty of the twin kidnapping was that she didn't ask for it and would never have had because her evil was about manipulating and screwing people over for money - not physical harm. She didn't mind stepping back and take advantage of what others could do but she didn't get her hands dirty in the gutter. To me the drug-planting was already taking it up a notch in the evil scale and in a less interesting more dirty-JR kind of way, not Abby as we had come to appreciate her So the seeds were already there and I can't help but think the poor writing for her that season - including on the other side of the out-of-character scale, the dreadful Michael York story - probably presaged to her what you accurately diagnose for Abby.

In all fairness, the potential for Keemo lies more in the family he could/should have started back in Vietnam with Jack having grandchildren that can be brought on to, say, study in the US. Keemo himself would be a hard character to bring back. His main characterization was his extremely strong moral compass to the point where having a mere crush on Mary Jo, who had dated his father, was enough for him to consider himself corrupted. What good can a character like that be in incestuous Genoa City? Time has passed so I guess he could be reinvented but I fail to see a semi-compatible version of him that wouldn't land roughly where Chance is. Now a Griffith thing to do would be to kill off Keemo off-screen AND leave him without children or a wife. Meaning another potential sources of core family characters just extinguished for a week's worth of Jack mourning a character he had not mentioned in twenty years and done.

Not to diverge the KL thread too much but, on the other hand, landing a lot of big names didn't help the second "season" which was also considerably less interesting on the merits.

My bad. You are right; I have seen it a gazillion times and it is well-choregraphed. I am still cringing though that one of the few examples of a well-done soap catfight - largely because it got rough and real - was one of the few that involved two African-American women. I can't help but think the willingness by TPTB to let those women get rough with each other while the well-coiffed glamorous white women are to tiptoe around each other to the point of looking ridiculous has a subtext. But you know maybe I am too woke for my own good.

Genuine question: has there ever been a soap "catfight" that was done well? Even simple slaps are so often obviously done at arm length that it is conspicuously unreal. I dislike catfights generally but I can't recall one that didn't make me cringe on the technical merits. Even the Dynasty ones - that arguably started that trend - were so obviously stunt doubled that I can't imagine anyone finding them anything other than ridiculous.

I think ultimately resurrecting Val was the right call - especially since it is my understanding it wasn't a last minute decision because the show was cancelled but that they knew this was likely the last season so they had pencilled it in all along. I think Abby was a considerably more interesting mate for Gary - toxic as they also were - but I understand why for sentimental reasons Gary/Val had to be the end game. Finally my unpopular opinion is that I don't regret the Danny Waleska story? It certainly was full of contrivances and didn't do wonder for my respect for the characters but damn if Sam Behrens wasn't so great in the role and I was interested in him getting his comeuppance. And I will never not applaud KL for the completely out-of-the-blue almost mundane way they had him get the "secret" of the twin paternity out.

Not the specific storyline obviously but this moment was the moment where Jill started to switch from the mostly nice (once the revenge SL was done) character to her slow descent into Val-crazed madness over the course of the following season and a half Until then it was not on the radar and it was mostly Abby vs Val. It is a great scene on the merits - that line is killer - but it does plan the seeds in a nice pivot point. Wasn't she also supposed to be written out because TA and TS broke up in real life? S13 was the low point. Bringing back Ann Marcus for season 14 was a great call. Considering from how low she was starting and the elements going against her - the big stars being forced to be out of episodes for budget reasons, JVA leaving - she managed something quite solid. And I have narrative quibbles with how things tied up at the end, a show that manages to end with an umbrella story gets kudos from me, always.

I love JVA and she was obviously one of the leads of the show but I often feel Teri Austin does not get nearly enough credit for how good she was in all of this and more broadly really selling this complete shift in Jill's personality over that season. And the fact they first planted the seeds so slowly with this scene a full year prior is one of the many reasons why KL was the best-written primetime soap of the 80s.