FrenchBug82

On 7/26/2020 at 7:40 AM, titan1978 said:

In her infamous exit interview, she said she had complained about how long the day had gotten twice, on behalf of herself and the cast/crew, and wasn’t shy about wishing the current story for Alexandra was over and moved on to another.

 

And they really didn't listen which kind of bears my point lol

8 hours ago, amybrickwallace said:

 

In real life, I would have Theresa committed!!

To be fair, in real life, most of Harmony would have been committed and/or in prison.

But I agree. It wasn't nearly as endearing as Reilly seemed to think it was (and Lord knows he had a thing with writing about women obsessing over a man)

18 hours ago, DaytimeFan said:

 

They sure did:

 

 

I loved me some Sarah Buxton a lot. Everything about the stories she was given was highly ridiculous and she sold it so well and felt so likeable and vulnerable - maybe it was her experience selling horrible writing with fun performances at Sunset Beach.
I will always wonder what happened behind-the-scenes that prompted them to put the kibosh on her Venice return so quickly.

15 hours ago, amybrickwallace said:

We'll probably never know the whole truth. I think MW made Sheridan a very credible heroine in the show's first 4-5 years on the air. I certainly thought she had more rooting value than Theresa, who seriously needed intensive therapy more than she needed Ethan (who was a drip character from Day One, but that's another post for another day).

Fully agree on every point.

I could write an entire book on how I believe soaps glamorize toxic relationships and have influenced generations of women to see behaviors that are extremely unhealthy as "romantic".

Theresa's notion of fate was obsessive stalking and Ethan wishy-washiness should have been read as him not being that into her. If this had been real life I would have recommended they see other people.

14 hours ago, DeliaIrisFan said:

Could Beverlee McKinsey?  

We know she hated how vindictive Alexandra had turned in the last year of her run with the Mindy storyline and that played some minor part in her deciding it was time for her to retire.
The question, though, is did she ever say something? She had interviewed many times that she was not interested in influencing the writing on any show she has been on. Her job was acting whatever is written for one and her acting was just her job, for two. 
Would it have influenced the writing if she had said something? I dunno but I doubt it. They didn't listen to her asking for a lighter schedule so I doubt they would have listened to the substance of the writing.

100% agree on Scott Holmes and 1000% on Aidan.

I have a lot of loathing towards SB so I find him instinctly objectionable because he is such a bad actor.
The other names are not bad actors per se. They're just serviceable.
As PJ said for instance, Doug Davidson can act. He can be quite good at times. He is just a nothing of a character (in the past 35 years at least)

As for ATWT's Jack, I agree that on paper, he could have been one of those. But aided by the fact MP is a good actor and very charming and by the undeniable chemistry between him and Carly, he managed to elevate himself a cut above the rest, all the while the character's personality is indeed a bit bland.

It is a bit the same for me with YR's Brad. On paper there was not much to the character other than what happened to him and the women in his life. But DD is very charismatic and charming and gave him enough substance that you almost forgot that he didn't really have a defined personality.

It is all very subjective though of course.

I think most of the names we can totally agree on. I mean Aidan is *exactly* what I had in mind so much so that I actually ... had forgotten about him even though he is exactly what I had in mind.
That kinda says it all, doesn't it? 
 

I feel some of the names mentioned are too defined to qualify if I am honest.
Of course, despite darn generously co-sharing credit for the idea with me, I am not the arbiter but I was thinking of soaps casting moderately good-looking embodiments of the shrug emoji.
So I don't think folks like John McBain qualify because, as much as I disliked him, I can describe his character. I don't *get* why he was a leading man but he was too polarizing for what I was thinking of. 
 

Meanwhile, good luck trying to explain what DOOL's Eric or YR's Paul or GL's Frank (all good choices) are about to someone who has never watched the show other than "decent guy, I guess". Neither has ever been on so much as to be grating, has ever done anything objectionable or memorable or interesting. They're there. They get stories, generally involving romance. I don't hate that they're there but there is no there, there.
I'd also add a side category: the marginally acceptable bland leading man character who is so bland that they can't nail down a performer for him because the character has nothing. The parades of OLTL Kevins, ATWT Chrises, AW's Jamie. It takes hell of an empty shell of a character for several actors to play the same role without anyone making a mark.

I am on the fence whether I would list B&B's Liam in the same category. Hear me out, the character itself doesn't have much meat BUT he does serve a purpose as a plot device. Generally bad repetitive plot devices, mind you, and inexplicable indeed, but can't deny the character has made a mark on the show (too much of a mark).
I can't tell you much about his personality, which brings me close to what we are talking about here, but I can tell you plenty of tales of things he did that annoyed or pissed me off. He has the bland part down but he is somewhat objectionable.
Zende would be more what I have in mind or even Pierson Fode's Thomas before they switched the writing after the recast.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯

On 7/23/2020 at 5:34 PM, amybrickwallace said:

I have heard rumors that Galen's wife didn't want him and McKenzie paired up onscreen anymore because she was suspicious and/or jealous. Who knows? 

It could be that his wife had him ask for a breakup in his new contract, sure, but still I can't help but think that even if they wanted to break them up, there was no need to so thoroughly trash the character of Sheridan in the process.
They could have come up with a magical storyline like a "Pushing Daisies" (the TV show) type curse where if they touch each other, they die or something. It would have forced them away from each other, would have provided a compelling romantic way to break them up while leaving them to go do other storylines and pairings (while keeping a sense of longing in the background which would have been interesting) and kept the door open for them to be the end game at the very end.
I know enough about the soap business that the way they wrote Sheridan the last year HAS to have included some personal beef against McKW IMO

And of course one of most poorly-thought-out stunt casting of modern times would be Beth Ehlers' move to AMC. Granted she made it worse for herself but it was obvious almost immediately they had signed her without any real idea on what to do with her - since they didn't want to do the obvious and pair her with RPG which I always thought was... interesting.

6 hours ago, Soapsuds said:

 

And yet he has such a hot boyfriend/husband. Go figure.

Of course for all we know the hot partner might be a dull idiot! It is not like Alan is unattractive.
Or more charitably Alan could have plenty of qualities or even be very interesting in real life. He is just not good at moderating those.

2 hours ago, Vee said:

Barbara Crampton is a goddess mostly known for her brilliant work in genre film these days, where she's having a huge career resurgence these last ten years. But she was a genre legend in the 80s too, before and during her soap years. I don't know why she didn't work on GL but any show that could fumble her versatility and extreme engagement is beyond me. That woman can play anything.

Absolutely and it is a reminder that people forget sometimes there is a LOT that goes into why a recast or even a character fails.
Sure, sometimes, the actor is bad. But sometimes the actor is great but the writing sucks. Or the actor is great and the writing is great but it is just a bad fit - it is casting director's mistake.

In this case, I think the writing was weak by then but she was just very very wrong for the role. Being blonde and a kick-ass actress does not automatically make one Mindy and whoever made that call - either casting director or producers who wanted to land a name made a mistake.
 

Also this:

Justin Deas does. He flies by the seat of his pants, and has his ass on fire every day of the week and it doesn't matter if everyone is along for the ride.

Yeah, but that can also come off as self-indulgence.

God bless her.

I find it surprising he would choose to bring this up again indeed but worth pointing out that in this very thread people are taking that one rumor as a given fact and call him a predator despite the fact there was never any accusation publicly made or even hinted at, that it was specifically denied by those who were supposed to be involved and that there is extensive interviews of other actors (not just EB but Jerry Douglas as well) who are quite harsh on him but explain his firing by his generally arrogant assholery on-set, which can't be accused to be favorable spin.
So considering he has done zero since he was fired, can't entirely blame him for being a bit bitter he can't shake that rumor off.

4 minutes ago, vetsoapfan said:

 

But if another youtuber has his very own copy of the same episode, and shares that on-line, it has nothing to do with the original uploader at all.

 Agreed.

I am speculating as to why people may take it personally and I imagine they may *assume* it is their copy that is being reshared.

I'd prefer if everybody worked together - the fandom is shrinking enough as it is - but what can you do? The Internet brings out weird things in people.

On 7/18/2020 at 8:13 AM, carolineg said:

And Bryan Dattilo clearly wants to work and be there full time.

Count me as another Lumi fan who was not just disappointed they quickly gave up on that relationship after YEARS of rooting for them when they were friends but did it so callously to boost that awful character that was EJ.
Sorry but I will never understand what everyone saw in EJ and JS - that acting style was not for me, sorry - for so long. 

I realize that there have been some BTS reasons for which BD was not always in the producers' favor but Lucas is a likeable character from main families and would seem like a catch in any normal town so it has always been bizarre to me they always played him, at best, with B-list stories and as a third wheel in other's stories.
Seriously, has he ever been in a relationship where he wasn't the second choice of the couple producers wanted us to root for?

Nicole/Eric then Austin/Carrie, Sami/EJ, Chloe/Daniel, Adrienne/Justin

It is worth pointing out that a lot of what we complain here has to do with the writing as much if not more as the performer themselves.

For instance, Greg V can act - when he is given sad material he pulls it off - but he suffers from bland-and decent-guy-leading-man syndrome. Soaps specifically cast him for that; they are the ones defanging the characters and hiring him because he seems like a good fit for it, rather than his active interpretation of the roles. Same thing happened in his other roles. He has expressed before that he was expecting to play Lucky as he had been and was disappointed the writing wasn't there.

And since I complained about MS, I should be honest and point out that she hasn't changed THAT much since her beginnings. She was a ham from the get-go but Phyllis was given fresh and fun material in her first run and the first part of her return where her over-the-topness somewhat worked. The fact her latest return has been a disaster is because frankly the writing has been dreadful and they don't know what to do with her. And the decline in the quality of her work since the mid aughts is also because the overall show has declined since then. 

Finally, she started off mainly with Cricket and Danny, next to whom anyone would look like a thespian. Then she played off mainly against Jack, which would elevate anyone.
Putting her in Joshua M.'s orbit was an invitation for her to become as lazy as he is about her acting and rely on her tricks.

I could go on with dozens of examples of recasts where I blame the writing more than the actor but the reason the phenomenon discussed in this thread is particularly interesting is that because the fact so many of these returnees end up being disappointing illustrates how much the success and failure of performers and characters sometimes have to do with factors completely unrelated to the actor themselves. If they worked well the first time and didn't when they returned, then there was something else than the actor to the initial magic.

And I blame the meh-ness of Andrea Evans' return as Tina on the wigs. Those wigs, man. 

2 hours ago, dc11786 said:

Steffi does evolve when Agnes Nixon takes over so I can see why you would say Deborah is introduced as a way to make Steffi sympathetic. I guess I didn't find the early version of Steffi unsympathetic.

To clarify my point about Steffi, she was introduced as an antagonist for Ally, the center girl of the younger set and a spoiler for the "it couple". A bit scheming, a bit spoiled. 
Amelia Heinle played her very convincingly and is very good at exuding vulnerability even when the actions of her characters don't necessarily betray it (which made her a good choice for YR Victoria on paper and why it boggles my mind they have failed to use her talents and watered down the character instead but that's another story) so she quickly became more sympathetic than the initial writing was intending her to be.
You see her early storylines and you can easiy imagine Steffy becoming the soap trope of the scheming bitch trying to steal the heroine's man. Instead, AH gave her layers, had chemistry with her costars and so they developed her backstory and brought her mom on.

Your recap underscores how much interesting dramatic material there potentially was in the character - especially if they had kept the mental illness aspect as initially written and let NAA do her thing with the heavier material. But indeed, as you point out, whenever they would give her a serious beat, it wouldn't last and would be immediately undermined by hijincks and caricatural writing.

And it is clear that NAA was getting directions to play the character a certain way that I think was detrimental. I don't know what the show directors were thinking and what the producers were trying to do but it was a missed opportunity IMO.

And, to tie it back together, that is exemplified by the choice of involving her in that comedic modeling storyline in the last few months rather than give her a serious part in the overall murder mystery.
 

On 7/18/2020 at 2:29 PM, DeliaIrisFan said:

 

Oh, for sure.  But I would have traded the whole subplot—if you can call it that—of Debra blackmailing her way into a modeling job and everyone making fun of her during her photo shoot for just a few scenes in which she was considered a bona fide suspect.

I had forgotten that and ... yeah. Definitely.
I honestly never gelled with Debra. She was introduced as a plot device to make Steffy more sympathetic but they were writing her as a charmless bargain basement version of AW's Donna Love and directed her as comic relief most of the time.
Even when some of her storylines might have worked had they been played more straight. Anne Matheson's fall from spoiled rich woman to homeless on Knots Landing was beautifully done and there was potential to play it like that - which in turn would have made her scheming more tolerable if it was a story of survival rather than greed. But they chose to make her a caricature and it didn't work for me.
Watching back NAA on Ryan's Hope has been a revelation of how much of a waste that turned out to have been

20 hours ago, vetsoapfan said:

 

Apparently, some folks feel that if they upload an episode first and put their personal watermark on it, the episode become theirs.

 

I know. 

 

I makes no sense to me, either.

I guess they figure, understandably, that the work they put in transferring it and uploading it makes it really annoying when someone reuses it.

I can see both sides of the argument.

Not sure whether it entirely belongs in this thread since I don't have a specific partner in mind but it seems to me that since they have established that Y&R's Adam is at least willing to sleep with guys, there is a missed opportunity to add yet another layer to the character by having him actually be overtly bisexual and attracted to someone on the canvas.
Additionally, I have never cared much for any of the Noahs but such a waste opportunity not to make Victor's grandson gay - lots of interesting potential stories there as Nick feels like a character for whom discomfort-with-gay-son would feel in character enough that it could be played through without backlash (unlike the way ATWT's Lily's reaction to Luke being gay felt bizarre and hurt the character)

15 hours ago, titan1978 said:

About Stafford- I agree with @Vee.

 

In their prime and for the most part- people like Tristan Rogers, Tony Geary, Jane Elliot, Nancy Grahn (and many others)often interpreted the material instead of saying it word for word, but did so from a place of character and brought their scene partners along for the ride.  Stafford often eats everyone else alive- and it seems selfish.  Her tics distract from others and her own performance.

I have been thinking often of the story Victoria Rowell tells about why she fell out with MS. That scene where Stafford did a spittake on her with a glass of water without warning her and getting her OK first.
When I first heard her tell the story many eons ago, conditioned that I was to consider VR "difficult", I thought "Doesn't seem so bad. VR sounds like she overreacted".
But thinking back on it now, first with the benefit of understanding more my underlying racial biases for one, and knowing more about the behind-the-scenes for two, I can now totally see how that anecdote sums up MS.
She can't let the scene be the scene: she has to ad-lib, make it more at the risk of making it too much, draw attention to herself at the risk of disrespecting her costars. It is about her and not about her character or the story. She plays her scenes like it is a wrestling match with the other actors for who is going to "win" the scene rather than a partnership to elevate the material.
That's why I liked GT better. MS is Phyllis, granted, but Phyllis was more interesting played by an actress who acts with her costars rather than at them. I dread thinking what the Jack-lookalike-rape story would have been like if MS had played it.

Count me in as one of those unimpressed with that twin thing. Soooo overdone in soaps.
I mean, anyone could have told them that BB was popular and worth keeping when they killed him off in the first place. Couldn't they have found a way to keep the door open then, like they had done with Patch back in the day? Just in case? I hate when soaps don't think beyond the tip of their nose and have to rely on incredibly tedious soap cliches to keep bringing characters back they didn't to get rid of in the first place. 

CM and FS had mentioned the writing was pretty awful for them in the leadup to their surprise dismissal and we can clearly see the writers just don't know what to do with them. As much as I think they belong on the show broadly speaking, maybe writing them out is best for everyone because yeesh this is bad.
A bit like how I feel about Carrie. I like Carrie very much, she *should* be in Salem in theory but every time she is on the show the writers don't seem to know what to write for her and how to make her interesting. Makes me sad that the same thing is happening with a talent like CM but maybe he is better off in other projects.

8 hours ago, DeliaIrisFan said:

Nancy Addison Altman's Debra was one character I don't understand why she wasn't a bigger part of the story.  Nearly everyone else in town was a suspect at one point—including, literally, the butler—whereas one of the victims was her ex and two of the others were her in-laws, and nobody ever even questioned her, I don't think.  Even after that amazing scene with Clay's corpse falling on her, thereby revealing to a cop that she was hiding behind his coffin for some reason, there was no follow-up.  To my point earlier, though, I can see the (cynical) logic in not giving someone like NAA more to do at that time.  I am (now) definitely not the age they were clearly targeting and, even with what little she had to do in these months, the idea of Debra enjoying her newfound wealth at the Alden mansion with the ghosts of her recently murdered former in-laws seemed way more entertaining to me than the stories they were foreshadowing on The City...

That would have been fun and I certainly think you have a point but here is my "defense" of their choice: as big a name and wonderful an actress as NAA was, Debra was a new arrival for the show. Less than two years by the time the show ended if my memory is correct.
When pressed for time and eager to offer closure, I understand why TPTB, if my reading of the Loving murders was that it was largely directed at the faithful fans who had stuck out the show throughout, would want to play the longterm characters that made the backbone of the show and maybe give less to a character that was fairly recent.
Half an hour is not a lot of time to play all the possible threads if they have a game plan. There were definitely weird choices and missed opportunities but that's inevitable when you try to wrap up an entire universe in a few months.

17 hours ago, Faulkner said:

Can you imagine that Brent/Marion story flying today? It would be considered so transphobic, even though the character wasn’t technically trans.

I don't know if it would be considered transphobic since nothing in the story was about trans folks and Brent never IDed as a woman (he was a tranvestite and only for his nefarious purposes) but it probably wouldn't be done today since it harkens to the fantasies surrounding TS and bathrooms and that awful canards that there are lines of male predators supposedly eager to pretend they are women to... pee in the same bathroom as women? I dunno.

I can only think of three stories in US daytime explicitly about a trans character - The City, Passions and B&B - but I might be missing one.

2 hours ago, DeliaIrisFan said:

Angie/Jacob/Lorraine/Charles were the only really interesting part, and of course Angie and Jacob were the last two to leave town for The City.  In a way I would have rather seen Kate and/or Debra snap and kill their progeny (who were effectively abandoning them) than the contrived closure they got.

Yeah the downside of the Loving murders is that folks who were not involved in the umbrella story or could not be shoehorned into it got shafted a bit.
I mean, Ava's exit earlier was so nonsensical. It could have been because LP chose not to stay until the end but as a fan of the character it was just a letdown.

So I hear you.
One great story does not erase the fact Loving was often very sloppy with its characters and follow-through.
In the end though the wrap-up wasn't perfect but at least there was an effort made when other showrunners just gave up once their show was cancelled and went through the motions.

2 hours ago, DeliaIrisFan said:

I agree it would be a delicate balance not to alienate Loving fans, but I'm not sure TPTB were expecting those viewers to keep watching...or cared if they did.

It would seem weird for TPTB to create The City explicitly as a spinoff of Loving, despite the fact it was completely different in tone, look  and story, if they didn't hope some of the audience would carry over.
As a matter of fact, I would argue The City would actually have worked better as a completely independent show and, this is where we join, I can't imagine the "younger audience" of Loving to have been significant enough for them to think they could use that to boost The City.
But that must have been part of the plan, dumb as it may seem to us now.

On 5/19/2020 at 10:37 PM, amybrickwallace said:

 

Yup, she's also stated that on social media over the years. I'd love to know exactly what happened behind the scenes that led to the demise of Luis and Sheridan.

Yeah.
And more broadly why they turned Sheridan into ... what she became the last year which was an entire 180 from the way she was initially written.
Fans at the time thought they were destroying her character to prop up Fancy but it always struck me as backwards: they were trying to sell us Fancy to mitigate what they were doing to Sheridan's character (and by extension Luis/Sheridan)

Never ever ever understood it and you are right: there has to be a BTS story we don't know. Whoever McKW p.o.ed, she must have seriously angered them.

My personal take on the Gwyn as a DID murderer is that it doesn't really make sense in the context of the history of the show: rewatching the episodes knowing she'd end up murdering many of those people is a jarring experience.

The reason I accepted it was because it was out of the door, it was quite a shocking (in a good way) reveal and boy did CT sold it with everything she had. And it was so good that I appreciated it very much - as an end to the show and the character. If this had been a plot during the course of the show, I would have reviled it as a plot contrivance that ruined a good character.

Also, I think the reason the Loving murders are so fondly remembered was because, of all the soaps that went off the air and I include primetime soap, this is undeniably the most coherent long story arc that has been written to wrap a soap. It was an incredibly bold choice and it was a story from beginning to end that did provide a proper end to the characters the show wanted to drop before the reboot.

Was it always well-written? No. But Loving was a low-rated cheap show. That it allowed itself to be creatively ambitious and memorable for its end is something to celebrate and considering how it often did during its run, this was actually a step up.
Thinking how so many other soaps ended a rushed damp noodle, I still think the Loving murders hold up fine.
The City, however, was a good concept on paper (changing the stilted look of a soap would certainly be at the top of what I'd try if I were to create one today) and had some ballsy ideas for the times (trans character for instance) but was ultimately, well, not very good. But the fact the spotlight on Loving at the end was on closure for the characters that would not make it over makes sense to me; as a fan I would have resented if they had used the end of Loving more as a springboard for the City. They actually made the end of Loving about Loving and, for that too, I give them credit