Kane

36 minutes ago, carolineg said:

For the life of me I can't tell you why Damian/Scully were screwing up Deception's shipments or why that was profitable for them.  I almost want to say it was Sonny/Luke trying to distract Scully away from the earnings from Luke's club that he thought he had a right to and I think Lucy was game because she wanted to help or a distraction.  The details escape me, but it was something like that. 

I think the Damian faking his death might all be part of the same story or at least the continuation of it.  

 

If I recall correctly, Damian wasn't trying to make a profit, he was just doing it to mess with Lucy (and ELQ). I can't recall what Scully's motivation was, but afterwards Lucy was trying to get revenge against them by teaming up with Sonny and Luke against Scully, who had come into town and expected a piece of the action from everything Sonny was involved in, including the club. The story ended with Scully kidnapping Lucy, Luke and Sonny rescuing her but getting caught by Scully, and Mike coming along just in time to take a bullet meant for Sonny, who then shot and killed Scully.

54 minutes ago, j swift said:

@Kane After reading your profile of Linc Beecham I have some questions

1. What ever happened to his brother?

2. Why did Rebekah need Linc to marry into Zona's family if the Beechams were rich enough to take over AE?

3. Did you have a favorite Linc (of the two actors)?

4. Was Zona short for Arizona?  It is such an unusual name, even for a soap.  Or was she created by a writer known for odd character names (Eben, Egypt, and Staige come to mind)?

1. Judd returns to Corinth either just as, or just after, Linc and Rebekah leave. He gets involved with Ava, who sees him as her next meal ticket, but he's constantly tossing her aside to go after other women. He abruptly moves back to Wyoming at the end of 1986, leaving Ava to start a relationship with the show's second character named Tony.

2. Greed. They were rich, but she wanted them to be richer and Zona had inherited considerable land holdings from her family that Rebekah wanted to control.

3. I've only ever seen episodes with Brian Taylor, who I quite liked. I don't understand why they dropped him when they did. There was definitely more drama to mine from the Linc/Lorna relationship.

4. Yes, I believe so. I'd add Giff, Buck, Cabot, and of course Trucker to the unusual names list. I've also always thought that Cecelia, while not necessarily an unusual name in and of itself, was a strange choice for such a hardscrabble character.

26 minutes ago, DRW50 said:

Don't think this episode has been up before? Not sure. The first few minutes are AMC.

@dc11786 @victoria foxton @Paul Raven @Vee @slick jones @Sapounopera @Joseph @Kane @Soaplovers @danfling @Franko

 

Thanks!

I gather that that must be one of Laura Wright's first episodes. Interesting to see Shana in conflict with Stacey and Trisha since so much of what she gets up to in 1991 ends up getting swept under the rug later, with them all acting as though nothing has happened even though some of Shana's actions (helping Clay get custody of Tommy, paying Dinah Lee to try to break up Jack and Stacey) should have been friendship enders.

Part of a B&B breakdown - Ridge's level of arousal was apparently of vital importance:

7 hours ago, SoapAnon said:

I'm a new soap fan and I'm decades late to the party.  I didn't get to see the glory years of soaps and it sounds like I really missed out.

What was it like to be around during the glory days of soaps (or prior to the 2000's)? How many of the soaps did you watch? How did you choose between them? How did you manage working and stuff around their daytime schedule?

I became a soap watcher in the mid-90s when I was in middle school. If I was home during the day, then I watched the ABC block from beginning to end, checking in with other soaps during commercials. If I was at school, then I taped one show during the week and watched the episodes over the weekend - which soap that was usually depended on which show best hooked me during the summer. I was pretty ABC loyal, but I was a daily Guiding Light viewer for a while, and Sunset Beach was pretty big with me and my friends.

I was lucky because at the time in Canada the affiliate aired Days at 4 and Y&R at 5, so I could watch both of those daily, and so did seemingly everyone else. There was also a show called Northwest Afternoon that aired at 3 and had 15-20 segment dedicated to recapping the day's soaps, so it was easy to keep up with what was going on even when I wasn't watching a certain show, which in turn made it easy to pick up a new (to me) show.

Soap magazines were plentiful and easy to find and occasionally a publication would put out special editions (I still have special issues dedicated to soaps' "Greatest Couples" and "Greatest Moments" put out by Soap Opera Update in 97 or 98) that filled you in on the major stuff that happened before you became a viewer.

The idea that the genre could die out wasn't really on the radar because there was always talk about potential new soaps being pitched and some of them even came to fruition. I remember eagerly anticipating the debuts of Sunset Beach, Port Charles, and Passions because they were opportunities to get to watch a show from the very beginning.

I've been watching a lot of early 90s General Hospital lately, which means I've been watching a lot of Jenny and Paul. Although I haven't gotten to that point in the story yet, my recollection is that they didn't even get an exit story. Ryan crashed Mac and Felicia's wedding with a bomb and then Jenny and Paul got married in Mac and Felicia's place and that was the last we saw of them until Jenny made a cameo a couple of years later. That got me thinking about other couples who were pushed as big "it" couples, only to lift out of the canvass without even leaving a ripple behind:

In 1995 Guiding Light sometimes felt like it was built around Lucy and Alan-Michael, but once they left it was without much fanfare and despite Alan-Michael having been a major character for the better part of a decade, it would take nearly ten years after his departure for the show to bring him back.

Antonio and Andy on One Life to Live felt like a major couple when they were on, but then left without leaving much of a void behind. When Antonio came back alone a few years later he explained their split, but was that marriage ever even acknowledged as part of his history after that initial return story?

17 hours ago, Paul Raven said:

Agnes liked her young love storyline where the protaganists were the innocent girl and the well meaning good guy who were manipulated by outside forces.But she really really only used it repeatedly on AMC.

I guess Meredith and Larry on early OLTL would qualify.

On AW , Steve wasn't the type. Loving had Stacey and Jack?

On AMC,first there was Phil and Tara. Then Cliff and Nina, followed quickly by Jenny and Greg.

But there really wasn't a next couple to follow that template. At one point when she took over the writing I think Scott and Becca were given that role.

I think Trisha & Steve would be Loving's example.

Mel Hayes on OLTL. I think his run was just short of two years, but he was important enough to Dorian to make ghostly appearances even a decade later.

Also, Patrick Thornhart. He was only on for two years, but was impactful enough that Thorsten Kaye's return to daytime a few years later had him playing Patrick's brother on Port Charles.

Philip Brown (Loving/The City, Search for Tomorrow) is in a new BMW ad:

BMW commercial with Philip Brown, who looks much the same except for being frosty up top:

59 minutes ago, jcar03 said:

She played a character named Maeve Stone from August 2009 to October 2009.  I don't recall what the character's story was.

I might be thinking of someone else, but wasn't her character the wife or girlfriend of the guy who held Holden prisoner when he was presumed dead (during the period when Lily remarried Damian after about a week and a half of widowhood)?

Chip Albers (Josh) has some of the story on his youtube channel. The scene featuring the accident:

Worst: Erica's unabortion on AMC

Best: The introduction of Nikolas on GH, although maybe that doesn't count as a retcon since it just filled in the story of what happened to Laura during the period when she was absent and didn't actually re-write what played out on screen.

Worst: Luke's a philanderer who cheated on Laura left, right, and center 

5 hours ago, ironlion said:

For soap charachters that have been down the aisle more than 2x, how did you feel about some of those marriages, or how would you rank each of the spouses that charachter had. 

For example: 

AMC: Who would you say was is the best husband for Erica Kane? I'm torn between Dmitri and Jackson. 

Dimitri was always my preferred Erica pairing, but among the men she actually married my second choice would be Adam. It wasn't a love match by any means, but I always loved watching David Canary and Susan Lucci together.

7 hours ago, DRW50 said:

Jeff Keller, or someone claiming to be him, uploaded four clips from his role on Loving. You get glimpses of other stories, but the main plot is Steve being on trial for killing Nick and being accused of raping Cecilia. 

Thanks - that's a great find. He's generous about including clips that he's not featured in.

I've been hoping that more of 1987 would show up online. It's such a strange year, with so many characters being introduced and then jettisoned without leaving any trace behind.

4 hours ago, SAPOUNOPERA said:

Janie was such a vibrant character, there was no reason to kill her off.
 

Janie/Elise Neal was a real shot in the arm for the show - she clicked with everyone they put her in a scene with and there were so many different directions they could have gone with her. The only thing I didn't like about her story was that the show had her lusting after Buck which, much like the Gilly/Griffin relationship on Guiding Light, was just too far over the ick line.

Writing her out not only wasted all that untapped potential for story, it diminished the resolutions to the stories she was already in (Angie practically disappears between getting the bone marrow transplant and Jacob showing up in early 1995; Frankie gets shoved back to the furthest edge of the backburner until he gets a new love interest, again in early 1995; and Buck finding out that she was his daughter would have been more meaningful if he actually had to deal with her as a person whose feelings about him probably would have been complicated, rather than developing an idealized picture of her and what their relationship could have been after death) and it doesn't make for a very satisfying resolution to the Ava's predictions story because Ava didn't know Janie (Ava is told twice who died - first immediately after the crash, and then later when she gets another visit from Harry to tie up the story and spell out all the resolutions, and both times she's like "Who?").

If the show felt like it had written itself into a corner with the predictions and had to kill someone off, the logical solution would have been to just kill Gilbert at the end of that story.

23 minutes ago, dc11786 said:

Ally and Cooper marrying based on Isabelle's outdated values and Cooper's manipulative tendencies also wasn't a terrible idea. It was the pacing. Ally and Cooper have the baby and marry in May/June and by August they are separating and in a custody battle. That story should have dragged on for at least a year before Ally and Casey got back together.  

To add to that, by the end of the year Cooper and Ally had started dating and were engaged all over again. The amount of story that Cooper/Ally/Casey were rushed through in 1993 would have played out for a decade on Bill Bell's Y&R.

As a slight aside, I've always thought it was odd that even before Ally became pregnant, Isabelle was pushing for her and Cooper to get together. Her not supporting Cooper's relationship with Hannah, I get (even though Isabelle wasn't always a dragon lady, she was always a snob), but socioeconomically there's not a ton of difference between Ally and Hannah, at least from the lofty vantage point of the Aldens. Isabelle should have been pushing for Cooper to get together with someone like Staige.

Johnny gets returned to Sherrie and Tug at the beginning of July/86, bringing about a swift end to Ava and Curtis' very short marriage.

If Loving had lasted longer, I would have liked to see the show bring Jack back from the dead and then bring back a teenage Johnny, who would basically be a male version of early Ava - devious, ruthless, and ambitious. The press around Jack's return from the dead would lead to Johnny finding out that he was once thought to be Jack and Ava's son and then he'd come to town with a chip on his shoulder over his parents trading him in exchange for the funds to pay for an operation for his sister as well as them taking him back and robbing him of the chance to be an Alden heir. His goal would be to regain his "rightful" place as a member of the Alden family.

Ava would be forced to contend with the sins of her past, Jack would try to have some kind of relationship with him despite his resentment towards JJ, since he would see JJ as having the life he was supposed to have (or, alternately, Jack would start to bond with him as a result of being rejected by JJ, who is so bonded with Buck that he now sees him as his father), and Stacey and Ava's feud could be reignited.

Did anyone else ever watch this half hour Canadian soap that was simultaneously short and long lived? 3 seasons aired between 2001 and 2008, each separated by several years due to funding issues. The first season aired 50 episodes and the second and third each aired 26.

Set in Ontario cottage country, the show starts with a murder mystery and features a lot of sex and gratuitous nudity. I recently discovered that the production company put the first two seasons up on youtube and have been enjoying a rewatch.

For anyone interested, the first episode is here:

The use of "Smooth Operator" was perfect. It reminded me of a scene from late '91, when Gwyneth overhears that Dinah Lee is seeing a married man and "I'll Be Watching You" is playing in the background. It's almost too on the nose, but it works.

I'm really hoping some more 1985 gets posted. In particular I really want to see an episode with Rebecca Staab as Cecelia; I'm curious about her take on the character.

On 8/20/2022 at 10:48 PM, slick jones said:

@Kane I hope you don't mind, but I posted a link in my Facebook group.  It's a great blog.

I don't mind at all - thanks for the plug!

@j swiftThank you, that's very nice of you to say. I enjoy writing about the sets, but it can be hard to find good shots that really show them off because obviously the characters are often in the way.

As an aside, if anyone knows how and when Rocky and Rio were written out, it would really help me out for an upcoming character profile. I gather that it happened sometime in September of 1991, but they disappear from SOD's recaps after a mini buried treasure adventure with Trisha and Trucker that happened in August.

32 minutes ago, dc11786 said:

I find the fact that Rick was introduced when they had Curtis fascinating. Despite the class difference, I feel like Rick was a similar character to Curtis in that he was a scheming Alden male. I've always assumed that Rick's position came about because they had dulled Curtis so much over the years. Also, the overlap between Rick and Curtis wasn't very long (about six months? from February - August 1987?) at the start of Rick's run. While I'd always considered how Curtis impacted Rick, it's now dawning on me that Rick also may have impacted Curtis. I wonder if one of the reasons TPTB decided to play Curtis younger in the Stan Albers run was because Nummi needed to appear the eldest based on the timeline. 

I think Rick was mentioned once during at least once during the Alden murders though he was definitely missed once. Clay's son Tommy, on the otherhand, I don't think was ever mentioned after 1991. 

Rick's original purpose was to move the two Clays plot along. When the truth about Rick's parentage came out, Ava wanted Clay to get a blood test, but Clay said he was going to take Gwyneth at her word and considered the matter closed. Ava, in typical fashion, decided to go behind his back and have a blood test performed in secret and in the process discovered that her Clay and the real Clay had different blood types.

I think you're on to something about Albers' Curtis becoming younger to make room for Rick. Unfortunately they over did it and made it seem like Curtis was younger than Trisha (even though Albers is older than Beck).

4 minutes ago, DRW50 said:

 

Thanks for that promo. It's too bad how they wasted Rick in the long run. Was he even mentioned in the Loving Murders? I knew that Gwyneth's father was a reverend  but I didn't know he was so old. That makes a lot of sense, somehow. 

I agree about Rick. Although I haven't seen very much of his run, I really like Ron Nummi's performance before the show starts taking Rick off the rails. He and Lauren-Marie Taylor had good chemistry and I like the early dynamic between the characters when he's encouraging her writing ambitions. 

At the 9:12 mark is a promo for the Gwyneth secretly had a baby in high school story (with a dash of brother and sister start dating not knowing that they're siblings, courtesy of Rick and Trisha). A modified version of the promo is repeated at 38:23.

18 minutes ago, ironlion said:

What were some of your favorite or least favorite teen/young people groups on soaps?

GH: Robin, Brenda, Karen, Jagger, AJ, Jason

I'll second that and add Lucky, Emily, Nikolas, and Elizabeth as another favorite, as well as Y&R's Billy, Mac, Brittany, Raul, and JT cohort.

Didn't care for the Scott, Laura, Bobby, Anita, Kelsey, and Kevin group on AMC. Other than Kevin, they were all kind of unpleasant and grating (although Scott became less so when he was recast with Daniel Cosgrove).