Ryan Mason

Given the timing, on Ryan's Hope I imagine she'd have been up for Maggie, Katie, or Pru.

That was enjoyable! Although it's kind of funny in hindsight that you have these iconic longterm couples of Reva & Josh and Cliff & Nina...and then Gina & Scott are basically blink and you missed them. But I was still glad they were included!

One of the things that I found refreshing about Ryan's Hope when I discovered it on SoapNet was that for the most part, Delia was the only female character whose life seemed to revolve around getting and keeping a man, and it was clearly viewed as a character flaw. Because by the 2000s, I feel like fully half the female characters on the soaps at that time were obsessed with trying to snare some vacuous lunkhead. Up that to like 85% of them if we're talking Days Of Our Lives or Passions.

Yes, a few months before Wanda De Jesus, actually. Shortly after the Dobsons took over again, Rosa just magically reappeared as if she'd just been offscreen in the Capwell kitchen for the past four years. I just started watching this from the beginning again last year and I will agree with past posts that there really does seem to have been a reboot of sorts in January 1985. To me, it seemed like the four performers who really seemed to set the tone for the new wittier, more sophisticated direction were Nicolas Coster, Louise Sorel, Lane Davies and Judith McConnell.

I totally agree with this, as most of you seem to. Mary Carney was at least competent and reasonably likable; I just feel like she barely had anything of substance to do before she was abruptly given the hook. And I get the backstory of Kathleen Tolan having done a play with Helen Gallagher, but...at any point did they ever actually READ her before they greenlit her? Because...OOF. First time I saw her on SoapNet was right when this GODAWFUL actress named Charity Rahmer played Belle on Days of Our Lives for all of three weeks before she was mercifully recast; her line readings were straight out of a Charlie Brown special. I remember thinking Kathleen Tolan could have played her mother! In the Frank/Jill/Delia triangle, Delia WAS the one who was cheated on, so I got why she was upset and thought it was perfectly valid in theory at least, but of course it was blown up to Wagnerian proportions including falls involving staircases and tricycles. But with Pat/Faith/Delia I had no sympathy for her...especially because it was mainly with Catherine Hicks's Faith and I really liked her.

I had thought that there was a Tommy Biddles on there, but then I realized I was thinking of Dr. Biddles on Santa Barbara. Never mind! 😃

When I watched Ryan's Hope from the beginning for the first time on SoapNet, I really liked Faith Catlin and thought it was refreshing that they had a female character that was more of a nerd. Then I absolutely loved Catherine Hicks's take on the character; I found her really natural and likable. So then to see Faith Catlin again after that when SoapNet started from the beginning again was super jarring.

I mean, there's a kernel of truth in that in that Claire did WANT to kill her off when Kate left, but it took 3 recasts for ABC to let her!

Ron Hale has passed away. 😥 It looks like it happened in late August but is just being made public now. https://people.com/ron-hale-general-hospital-star-dies-at-78-8722466

I feel like this was talked about a little bit in one of the earlier episodes, like one that would have been in 1984, but it's not the sort of thing where I can tell which episode specifically from summaries to go back and look. So this is all going from memory, but I want to say that it was mentioned that one of the Capwells, maybe Nathaniel, was the first to settle in Santa Barbara when he moved there from back east. (And then later in 1986 it was established that the Grant/Madeline/Courtney branch of the family lived in Boston.) I'm not sure if it was ever explicitly spelled out for the Lockridges, but the impression I got was that at that time, they were already an established society family there and at that point better off than the Capwells that came there. But I could be wrong!

He was in college in 1986, at least. They didn't show him in classes that I recall, but there was that storyline about him being on the college radio station KUSB with Jane and Hayley.

Reminds me of how I've always wondered if no one realized that they had both an Ellen and an Ellie and a Lily and a Lilith on at the same time! (Although granted, the characters in question were nothing alike.)

I knew The Smurfs were going to show up eventually. Integral part of my and my friends' Saturday morning cartoon watching in grade school!

Now we're hitting the part where I remember watching a lot of this stuff while I was stranded at my grandparents' house during the summers while my mom worked! I remember the reruns of Diff'rent Strokes, The Facts of Life, Too Close For Comfort and Benson, and the game shows like Wheel of Fortune and Sale of the Century. (I even vaguely remember WATCHING Dream House, but couldn't tell you a thing about it!) Matter of fact, game shows wound up being my gateway into soaps. I also had started watching the Match Game/Hollywood Squares Hour, which Santa Barbara replaced. So I watched the first episode to see what it was like, and it ended with Santana going to the bus station with a gun to kill Joe. I had to see if she shot him or not, and the rest is history!

I feel like Chicago itself, where I grew up, was an ABC daytime town, and possibly for local news as well. I don't necessarily have data I can point to, but just about everyone I knew who watched soaps and news watched the ABC lineup and Eyewitness News, and I vaguely recall some sort of on-air Chicago ratings recap in the early 80s where episodes of All My Children would frequently be among the top shows.