FrenchBug82

I wouldn't put money down on it but I think one of the first characters they made that mistake with - at least in my memory - was Y&R's Victoria back in 1990. When they SoRased her her FIRST story - while still a teenager - was her getting obsessed with *marrying* Ryan. That was the first of what you describe: not just erasing the normal steps of young adulthood by giving people jobs right away (see current YR Kyle being somehow in position to be CEO of Jabot that it took decades for his father to arrive at) but also making them marry and have babies right away. There was no need to introduce marriage into the Ryan/Victoria story to make it work. Young teenage girl gets infatuated with older man is a perfectly fine story to tell and the conflicts with VICTOR being her father write themselves. B&B did the same with the first of their "legacy children" to be SoRaSed with Rick in 1997 and BOOM he dates his babysitter, gets her pregnant and marries her while still in his teens by the show's math. I can accept young characters getting more dramatic stories than real-life young people because, well, it is a soap but I agree with you that giving the same adult beat to their stories as other characters lessen the connection we have with them. American soaps rarely get to hang on to the same actors who grew up on the show (Starr and Robin being the exceptions I can think of) the way British soaps do - which is brilliant for them - but they could at least fuel the illusion we know those characters by making them go through the motions even after they recast.

That's exactly why it is maddening to see them kill off legacy characters that could fuel story for decades WITH ties to existing families.

Now that you say it it does read that way. I thought it read a bit off, even abrupt at times, but this makes more sense as an explanation. That might also explain the confusion around how Elaine and Paula "acted". The phrasing is probably a translation issue.

It is ironic that she would say that about the two actresses that, outside of Eddie Cibrian for other reasons, probably had the best career outside of Sunset Beach so that's why I was wondering. But it is also true that Harring always looked a little lost to me on the show. But if this had been a better soap that doesn't silo its stories as someone said earlier, she could have been chemistry-tested with other actors and thrown into a different more interesting direction than the third wheel of the Gabi story. 1. I mean we saw that Ricardo was indeed angry enough to turn somewhat vengeful but it would have gone against so much of what the character was supposed to be to turn him into a villain. Typical SB plot-driven writing. They couldn't possibly imagine that the triangle story would be more interesting if everyone in it had rooting value: they simply saw Gabi/Antonio as popular so the easy way was to simply turn Ricardo into a villain all of a sudden. 2. It may be because I adore her as a journalist now and she sounds like a great person but I actually liked LG. Granted, Francesca as a character... meh. But I love LG 3. Except for the baby switch that had to involve some long-term planning, I think the lack of story planning was pretty obvious all throughout the show. I guess it takes skills to manage to keep that many balls in the air by bluffing for so long but it still showed. 5. I think there was a part of the audience that liked Amy and Brad as comic relief. I just couldn't buy Sean as a center of female attention at all, Richards money or not, so this all was lost on me. 6. I am going to defend Tomlin here and simply say that we often underestimate how much BTS shenanigans explain on-screen plot changes we find at first sight crazy. Drawing a line that actors cannot come lobbying the producer for story was probably the right move in terms of cast discipline overall even if it deprived the show of some of what Noone had to offer. I won't name names but other shows should have done the same a long time ago. 7. In very related news, Y&R is indeed known for having the most toxic behind-the-scenes. And the point I make in 6. is one of the ways in which things must be complicated for writers over there.

I was just reading how Gillian Anderson was offered HALF of what producers offered David Duchovny for the revival of X-Files as recently as 2016. It is so insane that misogyny can be SO ingrained in producers still today so I can't be surprised back then either. I don't doubt HL was the best paid on ML but I wonder how her paycheck stacked up against the best paid men in primetime in the 90s.

No. It is emphatically not the way soaps are usually written and the fact SB was is extremely unsurprising if you watched the show and explains why the writing wasn't ... good. I find a lot of her answer disingenuous (she doesn't remember anything that was rejected? Gimme a break) and stilted and sometimes unkind but there are some tidbits in there I found interesting so thanks for sharing. Is she saying this as a criticism of the actresses or of the writing? As in they didn't "act" (have any reaction) or the characters were written to be doing nothing and they realized they were superfluous? I agree. Annie was by far the most interesting central character of the show. And one reason SB failed IMO that the character they SO wanted us to root for and like and who was intended to be the lead just wasn't liked or interesting (Meg). I give them credit that they realized Annie was gold and used her in every storyline they could. That said, if we are talking lead vs supporting, Annie, Meg and Caitlin were definitely leads. I would also put Olivia in there and I actually think Olivia was more of a lead than Caitlin but that may be because I thought her character was more interesting. Gabi started as supporting but moved to lead later on.

Yep there were some really wasted opportunities in that list. Allison never gelled for me either. I would quibble with Will though. I think they did use him smartly for a while. Yeah, making him a child killer was huge risk but they did "rehabilitate" him pretty well and he grew to be an interesting layered character until the Gwen pairing dragged him to, well, nothing. But in itself that Barbara's son and Paul's brother might have a dark side wasn't a bad idea at all and if they had kept it up, there was some long-term potential. And Jesse Lee Soffer was good casting - again if we forget the awful latter years. But they just didn't know how to write good characters for the younger set. And instead of retooling to give a chance to future HW, they sacrificed and killed off many of them.

Yeah I mean it doesn't know much BTS knowledge to know Sydney was used as a supporting comic relief rather than a full integrated part of the cast in Season 4 so I think this version is a lot more plausible. And if she did ask for parity, it has to have been a gamble to either get the negotiations to fail or a Hail Mary to justify staying despite her unhappiness if it somehow succeeded Who's PSM? CPW is another can of beans. Despite not working overall, still had some nuggets of brilliance (Machen Amick's Carrie still on my top three of favorite primetime soap characters) so it was heaps away of "Titans".

I don't know. I have to be honest that while Beverley Mc was one of the best actresses on daytime I never managed to buy her too much in romances, even in Another World and Texas. That wasn't her strength and even the romance with Roger always looked like an arrangement to me more than love. She and Fletcher were kinda cute in that he wasn't taking her s**t. But I am not sure Alex ever worked as a romantic lead with either actresses anyway.

I am very confused about this. The only actresses who could have plausibly expected as much money as HL would be the OGs and of them only Sydney was killed off. And Laura Leighton was certainly one of the best things to come off of the show but I seriously doubt she would have demanded the same salary as HL expecting it to be granted, especially since she was not used very much in her last season. Kimberly/Marcia Cross also was killed off but I don't think MC would have been delusional enough to ask HL money. The only one that could have had a strong case to ask would be CTS since she had been there since the beginning and was a central character but she wasn't killed off. Neither was Josie. So I am confused about this interpretation of the cast goings.

I don't think it had nearly the same impact but it was indeed an extremely idiotic move. Don't kill off younger heritage characters, soaps. That's Soap 101. Ferrin was great but she was, what?, the third sort-of grown-up Jennifer by that time? After the parades of Paul, it wouldn't have been that hard to recast later on if she really wanted out of soaps altogether - Ferrin was not legendary enough to feel irreplaceable.

This is a pretty awesome list you gave us here and very on-target. Great memory you have! I had forgotten 90% of those. This one in particular though is indeed a forever question mark but we know why: Ashley didn't want to know. As far as she was concerned John was her dad, biological or not. And Bill Bell was not shy about memory-holing stories that he was not comfortable having written in the first place, although Ashley parentage came out again during that awful dirty battle for the chairmanship between Jack and Ashley before her last departure.

This. That mom story (that also wrecked the sister thing with Sydney that I thought was a key relationship) really felt like an afterthought to pad time until Josie B's exit. They knew she had only a handful of episodes to go so they gave her a throwaway story to keep her occupied until she leaves. I am of two minds on this. Her bitterness and crazier antics certainly were out of character but on the other hand, she had been such a doormat until now that I didn't think it was absurd she'd lose her marbles a bit. And since she was a fundamentally good person, she wasn't very good at being bad. But it was in service of bad stories (and the ill-conceived Allison/Jake couple) so it didn't work.

I know we were supposed to root for Ally and Casey but I always liked Cooper/Ally. And I really wish Lisa Peluso had continued acting after AW ended. I don't know if her born-again faith is why she moved on but she really was great.

Especially since by that time Blake had been completely defanged in turn.

See I didn't remember that the timing coincided and I am surprised because I would have been pissed if I remembered. Let me just say that was not a good trade-off LOL I saw recent photos of Buxton and she looks great but yeah indeed it looks like she has moved on from acting.

Chelsea is one example I think about when I am tempted to say an actor or actress sucks because their character is subpar and I bite my tongue. Because it really shows how the magic for a performer sometimes comes from finding the right role and often the writing is to blame (which is true for recasts as well when recast actors get blamed for the writing changing the character rather than their portrayal). KdP is a superb actress but Chelsea was a huge dud. Casting good actors *in the right role* is as important as casting good actors. It is also true, dare I say it, for Kim Zimmer. Reva was hers. I am not sure I was ever impressed by anything else I saw her do.

I don't know much about contracts but the way she tells the story of the extra two years sound... weird. Could be that they negotiated an extension of her contract if they let her out early of the first one to do The Princess Bride (and it would have been a fair deal for her rather than lose TPB altogether) but "They added two years because I was gone four months" is an oddly passive way to tell it as if they forced her. Is there a backstory there I am not familiar with?

Here is another one: On B&B Bell re-signed Sarah G. Buxton to a new long-term contract, brought Morgan back, set up the Venice story and... dropped it - and her altogether - after just a few weeks. Even by Bell's short-attention-span standards, the completely lack of climax and payoff to the story he had taken weeks to set up and the abrupt nature of its disappearance means this was a last-minute U-turn for... reasons we will never know* * which is too bad because I love Sarah G. Buxton and Morgan vs Brooke would have probably been more interesting than Taylor vs Morgan

Well, if you like a show you like to interpret the characters but I think you have probably the truer point: that the Shapiros had no clue what they were doing and were making things up as they went along. On the other hand trying to find a coherence to their stories may be giving them too much credit, sure, but it is still fun to try!

When investigating the above question, I found this oral history with tidbits I had never heard before: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/melrose-place-oral-history-marcia-cross-heather-locklear-grant-show-darren-star-look-back-1016500 I didn't know that Laura Leighton was older than Josie B. and that Andrew Shue wasn't the original Billy. But my favorite wtf-I-have-to-rewatch-the-show-to-spot-this detail:

No one is ever "completely" responsible for the downfall of an entire show and no doubt there was network interference/sabotage. But the fact she showed good judgement in this particular instance does not excuse all the awful calls that were on her - and that she still defends! Even a blind squirrel finds a nut from time to time and even the worst headwriter/producer has good stories and makes good decisions. The judgement on her is based on a broad look at everything she did.

Do we have a sense of who it was initially going to be?

It is indeed funny that as well-known as the story of how Heather Locklear's bitchy Amanda arrival "saved" Melrose Place is, few people remark on how this tracks exactly with how Abby's arrival's on Knots Landing marked the shift of the show - first towards more outright soapy storylines and then towards a less self-contained episodic format. I don't think it made the immediate difference in the ratings in KL than it did in MP but, creatively, the parallels between the two shows in that way are very striking.

It surprises me that they would openly acknowledge they are firing an actress - a 16yo girl! - because she gained weight! And gotta love (that's sarcasm) that spin that her weight gain causes cameramen problems somehow? Because fat people are harder to film? Stupid and offensive.