FrenchBug82

Soaps infamously - and logically - drop storylines all the time. Most of the time for legit reasons: - behind-the-scenes (HR issues with a performer or between performers, performer abruptly leaves, change of headwriter or producer) - creative issues (story does not work or audience rejects the story) What I was interested in bringing up were stories that were clearly either seeded or started and disappeared without us ever getting an answer as to where this was intended to go and why the direction changed abruptly. One I am thinking about what when Maura West's Diane married Victor on Y&R. They rushed the marriage, spent a LOT of time showing the terms of the prenup and started showing Victor acting bizarre and controlling (I remember a creepy scene around a necklace he wanted her to wear)... They were pretty clearly setting the stage for a story there (and maybe two stories as they really insisted she would get nothing unless the marriage lasted a year which hinted this would be a later plot point) and then... nothing. The very fact of the marriage was dropped in a hot minute and almost entirely memory-holed six months later. It was very abrupt and very weird and we never really found out what the storyline was supposed to be about. On Another World, around the time Carmen Duncan took over as Iris returned from Australia, another character with an Australian accent popped up (was her name Sheila?) in a different storyline and it seemed like too big a coincidence. But the character went nowhere and we were never explained what the initial plan might have been. On Days, there was once a phone call where Victor said Daniel must never know who his real father was - that was after we had learned he was Maggie's. Nothing ever came of that, did it? What other stories do we remember were hinted at and planted seeds for and just completely dropped and never mentioned again without the reason why ever made public?

It is funny because I have been trying to get my mom (who only started watching soaps after she retired a decade ago) to give Melrose a chance with always the caveat that S1 is a bit hard to get through before you get to the "fun" parts. She always asks me if she can skip it and just get the lowdown from me but I have realized over time that having watched S1 did impact my approach to the show later in one concrete way - besides the overall fuzzy feelings of familiarity with the OGs. While I think Allison/Billy were still clearly written as the end game all the way to Season 4 and you'd still get that you are supposed to root for them if you skipped S1, one relationship that I think would be incomprehensible to anyone who hasn't seen S1 is Jane and Michael. If all you have seen of them is everything from the Kimberly affair forward, there is no way you could wrap your head around either character or their choices regarding each other (and later reunion). But having seen them interact as the young married couple - and they had chemistry then - did make BOTH characters feel more sympathetic and make the weird way they continued to be in each other's orbit - sometimes willingly, sometimes not - more interesting IMO. Yes. That was my problem with the Parezi story, which I hated. Not Sabato Jr. But the fact it made NO sense based on the backstory we had gotten so far. And that's without even mentioning the later Eve retcon as well.

I think it is time for a confession. I didn't like Deas' attention-seeking acting style and Buzz did nothing for me. But I recently started watching the very very beginning of Ryan's Hope on YouTube and young Justin Deas... I would have.

Sorry for the typo. Would have been much funnier your way though! LOL

You are correct. She was born (and passed) during November Sweeps 1994

Nadine to Jenna at the 7 minute mark.

I have one word to settle this for you: threesome.

I love Joan Collins and all but her version of her relationships with her co-stars always seem to vary with time and goes back and forth depending om whom she is talking to. And she likes to say everyone she has ever worked with hated her. Not to say JF may not have disliked her, who knows, but considering how he reacted every time writers tried to shake up Krystle and Blake, I really feel he was very invested in making sure that relationships was never challenged. So part of me continues to think it was mostly an acting choice. But I do love your psychological explanation of Blake - which ironically buttresses up his choice to play him without any lingering affection for Alexis because she reminded him of his initial inadequacies. I don't agree with this because I think this gives too much credit to what Alexis represented - that you describe beautifully - and not enough to her real character flaws. She was a narcissist and that means I don't think she ever fell in love in a traditional romantic sense. But the idea of her looking for a partner is ironically closer to what I had in mind - almost as if she was looking for a deal. A deal that might be rooted in affection and enjoyment of each other, sure, but not the kind you find in through-thick-and-thin passion traditional soap opera love. More a community of interests. I don't think she was madly in love; she saw him as a worthy partner and pleasurable companion which is more based on her assessment of her own needs and wants - as fitting for a narcissist for whom success is more important than emotional relationships (see: her children) So I agree with your assessment of why it didn't work with Dex: because the deal she had in mind didn't fit his behavior after they got together.

"Lots of lie I can believe but enjoying Buzz in bed? No way" is hell of a line to have gotten away with in daytime in 1993 (on several different levels) but I hollered.

Your post was perfectly understandable as it was. And truth be told I initially thought that punctuation was a choice for emphasis so I didn't realize English wasn't your first language. Ignore whatever that unnecessary response was. Your post was fine Being victimized is a frequent trope of LGBT characters on soaps but it made sense of the son of *Lily* to have inherited the dude-in-distress genes. That said, while Van Hansis was never a mind-blowing actor or even charimastic the way Chandler Massey is, I thought he was solid and I never had any issue with his acting. Considering some of the planks of wood he has to act with, that's high praise.

Yeah. That's where I am at too. Her true love was herself. She enjoyed the company of men and their attention/adoration and even the games Dex and her played with each other but I doubt it ever resembled anything we would recognize as "love". The one thing that I think was missing for the entire run of the show IMO was a proper look at what really united those two in the past. At no point whatsoever did it seem plausible for me that Blake could have been in love with her - even if she was softer when she was younger - and it struck me that Forsythe chose never to play even a hint of lost affection or regret - probably because he was so committed to K/B that he didn't want to open a door there. The amnesia story was an attempt to go around that but even then it never quite made sense as it seemed more based on nostalgia than feelings. All in all it was a pretty massive question mark considering how much revolved around their defunct marriage.

OK I hate to be placed in a position to contest this because 1) I agree with you; things can change AND soaps are a good place to force the change even by being a bit ahead of the viewership 2) It shouldn't matter. The bigots can go to Hell. I don't think it should matter that there are some vocal racists when producers create stories and I think there would be MORE to gain in viewers watching than to lose. As often, black women are very underestimated as a powerful audience. Catering to them could give a powerful boost to ratings that more than balances out the white Karens who would decide to go pout. BUT the comparison with Bridgerton is very misplaced because the audience for a Netflix or primetime show is not the same audience as for a daytime soap. Soap producers are targeting the very narrow demographic slice that is still watching soap and it is a very different audience, more conservative on average. Yes, I agree that they are being TOO cautious by being overly scared of losing even part of that audience because they feel they can't afford to lose any at this stage BUT while it is callous, it is not ridiculous. It is a penny-pinching overly cautious short-sighted logic but it is not an absurd one. It is just tht soap producers are not known to have a great record thinking beyond the next couple of months when it comes to the interest of their show. And sometimes protecting the next couple of months hurts long-term - like, and we go back to agreeing, in this case. I wasn't obsessed with Reid but one thing you said that rings very true to me is that Reid was the rare gay character who entered the scene - gay. For narrative purposes, especially when a character is a legacy character, I understand why soaps are fond of coming out stories but it does feel having LGBT characters who are not troubled, struggled, guilty or rejected is a nice change of pace.

I think in both cases it is what the writers/producers THOUGHT the audience wanted rather than what the fanbase wanted. And my ickiness with the Paul couplings is even stupider than this: it is not the "Uncle" part; it is the fact he slept with both Will and Sonny. I know it doesn't make it incestuous but I am thinking of how I would feel sleeping with two ex-husbands and it feels... weird. But OF COURSE I have that issue with the fact everybody has slept with everybody else in those towns. It is just that back-to-back made it weird for me because as a gay man I guess I identify with their choices more.

If I was a soap producer in charge of reviving a daytime soap, one of my first steps is to can all next-episode previews, cut day-by-day spoilers and strictly limit what is leaked as spoiler to magazines. The audience knows nothing before it happens and I make sure things happen they do not see coming (a daytime soap would have dropped a gazillion hints Kimberly was alive before the reveal, thereby spoiling the shock value) and that they want to talk about once the episode is over.

I actually think we were including Reid in our conversations about Luke because his ultimate fate was because of what we discuss which is TPTB's assumption that people were rooting for Luke-Noah instead. I will be blunt about Paul: I didn't see it but I know he was popular. However the whole dating Sonny and then Will in such proximity felt very incestuous to me. It was inevitable in a cast with few gay characters but I didn't enjoy it. But I agree: they tried. And the fact they landed back on Will/Sonny and didn't even have anything for them to do once they got back together also highlights what we are talking about. That producers' assumption about "supercoupling" gay characters limits their ability to fly their wings as full-fledged character. It is not a LGBT specific thing (see Days Hope) but the truth is when you have two, at most three openly LGBT characters on a soap, producers can't break that paradigm and are not willing to invest enough in the characters to expand their universe.

You would be surprised. Y&R was long traumatized by the vicious reaction to the Victoria/Neil pairing in the late 1990s. Kristoff St John (RIP) has talked quite a bit of the impact it had on making the show very skittish about trying anything similar (which rejoins what I was saying about producers being easily spooked by audience reaction, even when they misunderstand the reason for it). And lo and behold the trial balloon they had with Ashley/Neil in 2018, while it yielded a less intense reaction, STILL got YR a lot of hate mail. So. Yeah. Watch the news if you don't think there is still not a LOT more of that around. Enough to spook producers who don't feel like they can afford to lose any further part of their fanbase. That said, I am surprised that of all the things producers tried to revive soaps, most have tried superficial changes like changing sets or pacing of stories and not one has thought to become unabashedly "progressive" on the kind of stories they tell. I bet that would secure a really strong audience, even if it doesn't completely overlap with the current one. "Generations" was a smart idea and while it failed for various reasons, in a landscape that has fewer of those kinds of shows - and knowing how popular the Tyler Perry crappy soaps are - I think the hunger of a show with bolder tone and representation could definitely sustain at least one soap full-time.

Inversely characters like Taylor and Lexi were *more* interesting when they were not used as Amanda's foil because by that point writers were writing Amanda as the center of the show and not only would she inevitably get the upper hand but the characters going up against her had to be as unlikeable as possible on the way to it. One reason the Allison/Amanda dynamic worked is that while Allison was weaker, she was a character we were supposed to root for (even though, frankly, she didn't always deserve it) so while Amanda would win the professional bouts, things usually balanced themselves out for her in some way.

We are not going to agree at all, it seems, on OLTL gay characters because the Luke/Fish was poorly received pretty widely because of how extremely preachy it was. I am gay and even I felt talked down to. It had the subtlety of a hammer on a nail. And to be clear we are discussing the characters themselves - the mere fact of featuring them was 1) good 2) daring, I suppose, although a gay wedding in the late 2000s was not as gutsy or adventurous as it would have been in the 80s or 90s. But let's not redefine as adventurous just writing in a gay character, at least not in the context of this discussion. We are trying to determine what makes a character type and storylines for a LGBT character conservative in nature vs "adventurous". We all agree a show writing a LGBT character deserves credit and was usually a pretty adventurous endeavor in itself. The fact OLTL gave it several go over its history is to its credit. B&B never having featured a gay character is certainly ridiculous. However I will defend them on the transgender character by pointing out that they sideline EVERY character not from the core six after a heavy storyline or two so it wasn't specific to her. They actually used her and kept her and Rick married pretty long by the show's standard. But the fact Bell brings in new characters and actors to make a splash and then quickly loses interest is a pattern that has happened three dozen times in the past twenty years, regardless of gender or sexuality. As for Y&R, yes. Absolutely. Adam's bi- or pan-sexuality has been dropped altogether - despite the fact Muhney was eager to go there (even if it was probably because he would have liked the attention). It made sort of sense at first because they wanted Sharon to be the endgame but it has been a lost opportunity not to nod at it further since. Where YR deserves credit is that Greg Rikaart is still the only openly gay actor to have come out during his run and continued to be featured (both on YR and DOOL). And they brought back Thom Bierdz as an openly gay man as well (story was horrible and so is he as an actor but still credit where credit is due). In the end AMC's Bianca is still the only LGBT soap character that I consider to have been well-rounded enough with several girlfriends/wives, non-lesbian related storylines, well-woven into the cast, sympathetic but also real. And even she had to endure some atrocious writing (the rape is still a sore point for all of us I think). Will and Luke got saddled with "soulmates" almost right away and never had a chance to spread their wings into full realized characters. Will's first kiss (not with Sonny) was also strangely aggressive and there was a weird tiptoeing around Will suggesting a threesome with Paul one time. But it is true that soaps have been reluctant to show gay intimacy. We are above "Matt only hugs his boyfriends" on MP but there are ways to go.

In all fairness, and that's a big issue for me with TV awards, I do think the system that makes people win based on single scenes/episodes is fundamentally flawed. It is ESPECIALLY true of daytime soaps but it applies here. Someone creating a well-rounded layered character over time is doing just as hard a job - if not harder - than someone acting well in a single emotional scene. Acting is not just expressing feelings and emotions but creating a character in full and I wish there was more recognition of that aspect of acting. I don't think Heather had many award-friendly big emotional scenes on MP but she did manage to construct a character that was complicated, layered and that the audience took to despite her being not outwardly very sympathetic. That's a LOT harder to do than crying over a dead husband or whatever "big scenes" people like to get for their reels because it is subtle and takes a lot of skill to create an entire persona. And yes the female ensemble was clearly superior to the male cast - and the female characters were, barring Michael, collectively a lot more interesting and driving story a lot more than the male cast. Which is generally true for a lot of soaps tbh.

That's actually a very interesting angle. As anyone who has watched RPDR, has heard of the funü phenomenon in China or been to a gay bar in the past ten years, knows, there is a huge market for women-who-are-into-gay-men. We can debate the merits, drawbacks and psychology of that but come to think of it based on your comment, it does seem to me that the dynamic between Luke/Noah or Will/Sonny on Days seem more directed at the image a female audience has of a gay relationship and that gay characters on soaps seem to fit the expectation of women rather than what gays would recognize as each other. I think it is important to note I am NOT endorsing the Daniel story whatsoever. But placing yourself from the perspective of writers and producers, it is not hard to see how they could read the audience's reaction, justified or not, as being partly about blowback from creating an unsympathetic gay storyline. We will disagree on the extent to which that was grounded in reality but it seems pretty clear it wouldn't have helped writers feel adventurous about how to write such characters going forward. And the best proof of that for me is that they ended up overcompensation wildly in the other direction with how preachy the early times of Fish as a character, not too long after, were. And to be fair, *that* was about as poorly-received by fans. Perception of what they can get away with is often a huge factor and if they misunderstand the audience's reaction one time, overcoming the bad memory can take a long long time, even if the reaction was simply to the quality of the underlying story or the actor. Soap execs are pretty temperamentally conservative: not risk takers by nature. "Once bitten, twice shy". Or as we say in French, "A scalded cat won't get anywhere near even cold water"

There is not much I can add to this. 100% agree. Saying her first year was decent is not much to say. Most headwriters start off OK when they are fresh and we are relieved they are cleaning up the mess that got the previous team fired. What is particularly galling about her tenure is how much long-term damage was done. Killing a legacy character like Colleen is appalling. And how it is not just the writing that was bad: it is how many behind-the-scenes decision were mishandled from start to finish, The way she messed up bringing in a giant of soaps like Maura West and f***ed it up from beginning to end from miscasting her as Diane rather than creating a character to writing weird non-sustaining stuff for her to the insulting way she was written out. And that's the most glaring example: Genie Francis, Debbi Morgan, Darnell Williams. The number of great actors she mishandled and miscast is long. Bringing Ricky in... Casting a good actor (I will grant her the casting team did a lot of good in her years)... And then turning him into a cheap psycho that was quickly written out. On the other hand, we got MANY rounds of Daisy. Hum, what? Goddard being fired... then rehired. And Phillip... Unwriting Phillip's death was bad enough. Making him gay just because Thom B. is gay (I am gay for the record) was just such an insult to the intelligence of viewers. I will give OP that, yes, bringing back Tricia Cast even for this dreck of a story was a highlight and boy did she knock those scenes out of the park but this was still unforgivable lazy and insulting writing. Putting Sharon and Victor together was just horrendous and the overall treatment of the Sharon character just reeked of behind-the-scenes shenanigans. PS: Oh and it is a small thing and I am sure few remember it but it still sticks in my craw all these years later: writing Victor pushing Diane out of a moving vehicle - domestic abuse AND attempted murder - and playing it for *laughs* should never ever have made it past the draft stage. That was a huge low for the show because it went beyond bad writing to an actually offensive and morally bankrupt plot point that, for all its flaws, Y&R had been better at avoiding than other shows.

I stand by my observation. Back to ATWT matters.

I don't either! I just don't think it should have been Billy and Allison's fate though who, as caroline said, were the end game when the show started. I do agree having Amanda keeping that bond off-screen was a nice little detail but nowhere near the amount of satisfaction fans-from-the-entire-run deserved I also think they too easily picked death as their unhappy ending of choice - Sydney's exit should have been cleverer considering her track record for instance. They had already used the institutionalized thing with her but something along those lines might have been more twisted and "fun". The one exit I absolutely loved was Craig's. Didn't care for the character but I got to say suicide was an extremely ballsy to write off a character and it very very very rarely happens on TV. It worked for what the character had been and actually made him more sympathetic in death than he was while he was on the show. So I give them credit for this "unhappy ending". But otherwise killing them off or seeing them off at an airport were the go-to write-offs and ... meh.

B&B has gone there and trust me: no, you don't lol

I don't want to belabor this OLTL story on the ATWT board but my point is: those were gay characters that were different from cookie-cutter boring gays and people reacted badly to it like you are here. You can criticize bad writing but that was equally true of straight characters around that time. Sometimes gay men manipulate and are manipulated just like straight men/women are and reacting to this to gay characters, while understanding because of limited representation, is why characters like ATWT's Luke end up being vanilla and boring because soaps didn't dare create more layered characters lest the reaction be this.