Lex S

Marissa, all good thoughts!

Also, not sure if you've seen this but here it is:

https://youtu.be/8F-8BixM4yk

Ooh, just found out the Locher Room has an interview with her! I'll have to bookmark it and watch it later. It looks pretty long so I'm sure they talk about SB

I don't know why, but Pearl's accent really bothers me. It sounds like he is a New Englander trying to speak with a Midwestern accent. Is this how the actor speaks in real life? I guess I should YouTube some interviews with him.

So I just read Robert Thaler's interview again on the French Santa Barbara site. It struck me again that he was thankful for Jill Farren Phelps and her contribution to the show. I have read so many things about her over the years - both positive and negative, that she ruined so many shows she touched as well as was so instrumental in just as many shows. I suppose you can't please everyone, but what's the consensus on her here?

8 hours ago, Marissa Gallant said:

I just watched episode 801. In the beginning, Cc and Sophia are talikng. You can sort of hear the English under the Russian. Youtube had English subtitles, so I tried it. ROTFL! It tried to make words, and it did. But I'm certain that they weren't talking about Zulu Regalia.

What do you think about Jane? Where you're at, Jane and Brick will be leaving town shortly so they probably don't have much screen time left. I cannot help but think that I know someone in real life who is just like Jane as far as looks and demeanor and everything but I can't put my finger on it. I know this is super random but wanted to share

2 hours ago, Marissa Gallant said:

Help me keep going here.Will I get to see Cruz's sister Carmen (that ANNOYING character) eat crow when they all find out Elena is a super psycho?

So you must be in the 800s then? Wow, you're going fast! I am nearing the 500th episode and I am watching about 1 per day. So far so good. I can't comment on your storyline as I don't remember Carmen was even on the canvas.

Yes, this show has a lot of ridiculous stuff, but I am watching it for what it is. A piece of daytime history with some super good acting and some super good storytelling with very obvious flaws at times. I think Marcy Walker is a terrific actress and probably one of the best in this industry, even though I don't always like or root for her character. There was a bit too much Cruz and Eden for me, but I'm glad they changed it up a bit and focused on other characters even though they dropped them as easily as introduced them. 

I do remember from all those years ago that Cain was a bore as was Father Michael. I think their characters just dragged on for too long.

I'll be sticking around here for a quite a while and I'm slow at watching, but it is my goal to finish in a few years

I wanted to post about how I appreciate the background music in a lot of the scenes in the first few years of SB. I'm not talking about the sickly sweet Eden and Cruz theme songs but just general instrumental music that is in many scenes especially when a crime is happening. I believe Dominic Messenger is responsible for many of those. There are some really memorable tunes. I feel like nowadays music in soaps is pretty forgettable

22 hours ago, amybrickwallace said:

Yup! I wonder what the plans were for the character had Joel Crothers lived.

It seems to me - and it's still fresh in my mind as I watched this just a few months ago - that Jack Lee was supposed to have been in a triangle with Eden and Cruz but this was changed after Joel Crothers's death and they brought on his son, Kirk, instead. For a few weeks, while they weren't sure what Joel Crothers's status was gonna be, they had his assistant, whose name escapes me now, who followed Eden everywhere while she was settling into her role as Daddy's replacement at the helm of the company.

2 hours ago, Marissa Gallant said:

I take back anything kind I ever said about Tori. She is awful. Gee, Tori, maybe if you were nicer to Mason, he might be capable of loving you. But no, you are a shrew. Harping at Mason about every. Little. Thing. Ugh! Did I mention that she is awful?

I have not gotten to where she's on screen yet, but from all those years ago I do remember when she was on she was on A LOT. I do not remember how she gets to exit. Is it one of those exits where writers don't know what to do with the character anymore? 

20 minutes ago, Marissa Gallant said:

I know what scene this is

O

Of all the actors here (am I supposed to add "and actresses here?") the lady who plays Sophia is the closest match! Also, I am guessing that is Eden wearing the same dress she and Gina both wore on that Halloween night when Eden almost "killed" CC.

Marissa, the show in Russia initially began with episode 217 (which is the one where Cruz reenacts Channing's murder) so this scene is supposed to symbolize the start of SB over there. The earlier episodes were shown later. 

Initially, Russia's RTV channel only bought the arc that is episodes 217-247 as a tryout to see if the show would stick. It actually wasn't THAT popular in the very beginning (early 1992). It was competing against a way more popular Mexican soap Los Ricos Tambien Lloran on channel Ostankino which began a few months prior also shown in a primetime slot

Is this supposed to be Cruz opposite the sobbing Sophia? Also who is supposed to be the bald guy? Marcello? And which one is Warren then? I think he was invited along with Augusta and Lionel

On 12/7/2021 at 6:04 PM, wonderwoman1951 said:

just saw this on the nytimes website, which is behind a paywall. but nonsubscribers get several freebies/month. 

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/07/arts/design/santa-barbara-ges-2-moscow-ragnar-kjartansson.html

Whoa! Thank you for this. I have to wait until my free ration is reset again to read it but I saw the headline!

20 hours ago, janea4old said:

Here is a legal archived copy that doesn't require registration:
https://archive.md/PX2ZL

Thank you!!

6 hours ago, Marissa Gallant said:

Thank you. Something has gone wonky and I can't see the message

Still not able to see the message? It's a private message. I'm going to resend it. It is one of those "I can't believe it exists" Basically, an early Christmas present!

On 11/29/2021 at 5:42 PM, Marissa Gallant said:

So, you know how there are a dozen or so different Sophia personalities? I like the one that is confident and secure and slaps Keith across his smug face. In fact, I LOVE that one. That's the one I wish we got to see more often.

Marissa, I sent you a message

I have been watching some clips of All My Children on YouTube  from a channel called Best of Marcy Walker. There is some seriously good acting in these. The period I am watching if from the mid-90s.

Marcy Walker sure can play commandeering roles. Watch her interaction in this clip with Erica Kane. Also, Janet Green (aka Robin Mattson) makes an appearance here. This is 1995, two years after SB came to an end and Marcy is back in the role of Liza shortly after having also been on Guiding Light..

https://youtu.be/mmRFh_EMcX8

19 hours ago, amybrickwallace said:

Harley discusses her writing career in this GL reunion:

 

Thank you for this!  His channel is almost like a blessing and a curse in one. On one hand, he has very nice interviews with very good guests, on the other hand, he may be the party responsible for our beloved YouTube channel being taken down...

2 hours ago, Marissa Gallant said:

I definitely tear through episodes. I wanted to get as far as I could before I was unable to watch at all. Typing the episode number in has worked the past few days though. Pretty happy about that.  

Good to hear! I'm a YouTube premium member so I actually downloaded a bunch of playlists, but I think YouTube checks every 30 days for internet connection if I still have those episodes, so they may be deleted from my YouTube cache once the connection is established and it's confirmed that the playlists are gone, I made a copy of my YouTube cache just in case. And, like I mentioned, there's that Russian site. There are also other YouTubers who have uploaded something like 800 or 900 episodes. One of them is heavily focusing on episodes between 1000 and 2000 so I have high hopes I'll be watching for a while.

I have to say the early years of SB have a lot going for it. Even if certain writing spots are patchy and iffy, storylines move pretty quickly. Even if there was no Cruz and Eden, Kelly, Sophia and CC, Gina and Keith, Lionel and Augusta, there is always Mason and his thousands of memorable lines that could be straight from Shakespeare. I am still in the Mason and Mary period but looking forward to Mason/Julia. Grahn is such a great actress. 

Anyone know why Harley Jane Kozak stopped writing her her detective series? She wrote about 4 books with the first couple gaining significant praise. 

12 hours ago, Marissa Gallant said:

Lex, your posts the past few days have been so interesting. I did try typing Santa Barbara with my number and it did work. I also just discovered several Another World episodes that are very interesting. It'll keep me going through my boring days. 

I'm watching Mason and his pornstache accuse everyone of killing Gina, even though she can't die...

I want to add how funny Keith is when Mason is confronting them all. "Of course I hated Gina. I hate everyone. I hate CC, I hate Cruz, I even hate you Haley. I'd have to be Rambo to kill every in this town that I hate." ROTFL

You must have been closing in on episode 600 when the playlists were taken down? You were pretty much on the Orient Express and I was on a slow boat to China (can I still say that today? Oh well, I just did). Were you watching from episode 1? (I mean, this go around, not in the 80s). If yes, I also started watching from episode 1 sometime right before corona struck, so, roughly, a year-and-a-half later I got to episode 400. 

Imagine if the powers-that-be launched a streaming service. Many of us would pay 10 or 15 bucks a month just to have access to all those thousands of episodes of all these shows that we can watch in any order, selected episode arcs or from the very beginning. Soapnet tried tried really hard to please soap fand, but they weren't a streaming service and you could only watch as fast as the channel was showing episodes. I probably watched about a year's worth of Ryan's Hope, but it wasn't that great and I can see why it was canceled. I believe Soapnet also showed Knot's Landing which I found pretty decent. I remember they only had ABC soaps for a while, but then it was a big deal when they landed a deal with YnR to show it late at night. They also had that interview talk show early in the morning with Lisa Rinna and Ty what's his name

45 minutes ago, FrenchBug82 said:

I have to say I disagree with you on this.

Killing Colleen was a HUGE waste. Besides the immediate plot point of giving her heart to Victor, this had literally no follow-up, no impact and the story itself sucked.

On the other hand, killing off Cassie is what allowed them to break up Nick and Sharon. We take Phick as a viable option as granted now but Sharon/Nick were the supercouple then and there was no way the audience would have been ready to accept anything else other than them as the endgame.
The slow deterioration of their relationship after her death in parallel to his chemistry with MS (with whom Nick only started to only interact because of Daniel's involvement in Cassie's death) is what allowed them to open up a whole range of stories for both characters .
For younger characters they had already been in a deadend of repetitive stories when stuck to each other. This really opened a lot of doors; a lot of those doors ended up sucking but that's another problem.
Those two were important figures of the next generation at Y&R and they were already tired. Revitalizing them as individuals has had a huge story-driving impact.

I am not saying *I* would have killed her off. I still think killing any legacy child is a short-sighted move that soaps often regret and try to undo (and indeed the idiotic Mariah retcon shows why it is stupid no matter how good the story) but Cassie's death is one of the few child deaths that had an impact that lasted beyond the immediate aftermath.

That doesn't mean not having taken the risk and going in a different direction wouldn't have been better. Cassie's death is such a case imho: it worked but it would have been not to have done it. I think Cassie would still have an even bigger impact had she stayed alive and that they could have figured another organic way to split Shick. But it did "pay off" and we will never know what the payoff for the alternative scenario would have been.

Colleen's death on the other hand was and is and forever will be a wasteful idiotic travesty. 

Wow. you brought back a lot of memories and put so many things in such a good perspective! Cassie's death really did shake the whole canvas of the show for that entire year and did bring Nick and Phyllis together due to their originally antagonistic attitude towards each other when Nick was after Daniel. It also gave Sharon legitimate reasons to spiral later on. I can totally buy going off the rails due to the death of a child.

I was starting to tune out due to work commitments by the time Colleen's heart was given to Victor and I was gone shortly after

Did Cassie's death on Y&R pay off in 2005? I thought it was fantastic acting on everyone's part, but they sacrificed the actress who was there from an early age. I haven't seen her back on the show as Mariah but I guess she's in a lot of storylines now?

The only reason I tuned in to Guiding Light in the mid-2000s is because all the soap mags were raving about Tom Pelphrey and how he's a godsend to the show. I did find his acting compelling but what was the actual story line to him being front and center at the time? Was he Reva's long lost son? I guess his movie career didn't go anywhere once he left the show which is a shame cuz he was good

About YouTube and how to view the show in general. YouTube has a thing called YouTube TV that it desperately wants me to sign up for.

I currently subscribe to YouTube premium only because I hate commercials and I watch a lot of YouTube. Granted, Santa Barbara didn't have commercials anyway because the shows were unlisted. Also, I believe the channel has to have something like 5000 subscribers in order to show commercials. But, anyway, I wish YouTube TV or YouTube originals or whatever was worth its price. I just wish there was a soap streaming service kind of like Netflix or whatever. I'm sure it would get a lot of subscribers and generate some revenue. Think of all those decades of shows of all those soaps just sitting there in an archive room somewhere collecting dust. If it wasn't for the dedicated soap aficionados on YouTube, we would not be able to see any of those clips or full shows from all those years ago. I remember watching Soapnet back in the day. Granted, they only had ABC soaps and a few other networks shows, but I got to see a bit of Ryan's Hope and what not.  That's how I got into GH and other shows because I could watch reruns later in the day. 

18 minutes ago, Keri said:

Thanks, that's really interesting context. I didn't really know when it aired or what was going on at the time. It maybe helps to explain why it got so popular.

Yeah, no problem. Russia was in a dire crisis at the time with its economy literally changing almost overnight. The period of January through June of 1992 is known as economic shock therapy and was used in a few other countries at the time, very successfully in Poland. Basically, what happened was severe economic measures were put in place to jumpstart the economy and prices and inflation skyrocketed while budget restraints were put in place. If you saw news reports about empty shelves in Russian grocery stores, it was true. Basically, it was like another supply chain crisis where a lot of plants and factories were unable to ship products to actual consumers because of the breakdown of so many economic mechanisms. The closest to that would be like before a snowstorm or at the start of the corona when grocery stores in the US were emptying of toilet paper et cetera. 

When the quick economic reforms were introduced, 1992-1993 saw a huge influx of foreign investment and foreign goods. Basically everyone and their momma wanted to come to Russia and sell their wares there. 

In the middle of it all, enter SB -- and in primetime no less! Some SB onscreen talent began having their phone lines jammed inviting them to drop everything they're doing and quickly come to Russia to see all their adoring fans. So if you ever saw those clips of SB stars in Russia being greeted with flowers and such and being shown all those cities and museums and what not and basically treated like Royalty or the Beatles, it's all true. They could literally fill concert arenas in any Russian city at the time. 

What a cash cow! Unfortunately, it was too late. 1992 writing was awful and the show was all but cancelled. I just keep thinking what could have been if all that money was put to good use and good writing..

10 hours ago, Keri said:

Actually- she is apparently starting again. I must say I would've found a different platform after they were deleted the second time, seems like an exercise in futility.

Lex S that is interesting, thanks for sharing. I'm very appreciative of the Russian fans - I have some eps I got from someone and the amount of work they put into it was amazing .

Interesting how popular it is in Russia. I think there was even an art installation in a museum or something a few years ago. Can't remember the details.

Keri, Santa Barbara was bought to be shown during PRIMETIME on Russian TV literally a month after the Soviet Union ceased to exist (Dec 1991) in the middle of a Russian economic crisis. It was on at like 8 pm as about the only American TV show at the time. Most Russians had no idea it was actually always in the ratings' basement for much of its US run just a few years prior and not even that widely known among average Americans, and it was officially cancelled in the US a year later while it was heating up Russian TV screens. Many Americans visiting Eastern Europe were dumbfounded as to why they get asked so many questions about an obscure US daytime soap and most of them had "maybe" seen photos of Marcy Walker and A Martinez on the covers of magazines at checkout stands in the second half of the 80s

I believe concurrently the rights to SB were sold to many other countries in the late 80s and much of the 90s. I want to say that only BnB was sold to more countries?

I got to thinking and was wondering why exactly it happened to be SB that was sold to Russian TV. Perhaps, knowing that the show was in its last legs, the producers or maybe Sony or New World or whoever at the time pitched the idea of gaining additional revenue by selling it to markets like Russia. I don't know how much money they got out of it, but apparently not enough to keep the show afloat. I do believe that starting closer to the mid-90s SB started having lots of competition from actual established primetime US shows, and Russian TV was quickly flooded with other shows like Beverly Hills 90210 etc.

Hi guys! So, I have had a backup plan all along, but it is not for the faint of heart, as it is in Russian. There has been a dedicated Russian website that has uploaded the entire show, but the episodes have been linked in various versions in each post. The episodes have stayed for many years now, I believe the first upload was around 2008 or so, so it makes me feel like it will continue being there for a while since it's sort of obscure and very hard to find unless you speak Russian. I am now at around the 400th episode when YouTube took it down and will continue watching from that site. If anybody is willing to do some work to register I may be able to guide you how to register there and continue watching

On 10/27/2021 at 7:41 AM, amybrickwallace said:

I wanted to add that I was hesitating with my post because I'm not sure if an influx of new users will put the website I mentioned in jeopardy. I doubt it, though. It has been up, like I mentioned, for many many years, but 99% of users are speakers of Russian. You cannot even see the video archive there unless you are a registered member, and registration is approved by the moderator, and in my case, it took about two weeks for me to get my registration approved. I didn't have to do anything, I was just being patient. I almost wanted to write to the message board administrator why my registration was pending and then I saw that I was approved and became a registered member. Everything there is organized neatly and a lot of work was put into it. It looks like a regular message board and each post contains a link/links to each episode. There are multiple versions of each episodes posted. The episodes themselves are in English, but there are also links to versions in Russian, French, and German. I believe these are the most common languages there. The episodes themselves are not on that message board but linked to cloud storage sites. Most episodes have stayed up for years. If an episode is deleted, a regular user  can just message the administrator with a notification, and then that episode is re-uploaded within a couple of days.

Yes, it is a more obscure way to watch chronologically. The YouTube way was just neatly stacked into playlists by our dedicated YouTuber. Somehow I knew that this YouTube thing wasn't going to last too long. 

If you would like to continue watching the YouTube way though, I suggest you just put in something like "Santa Barbara 401" and there will be a 50 to 75% chance you will still find your episode. I know of at least one more playlist that has been up and it contains over 900 episodes in English. If you can't find it, DM me. Good luck, everyone and see you around.

PS not sure why I have a quote from amybrickwallace in the middle of my post. I think I had edited something in my previous posting and somehow it carried over to this post. But anyway, I think it's glitching and it won't let me delete it

1 hour ago, amybrickwallace said:

Second CC and first Santana were just creep city

21 hours ago, Marissa Gallant said:

This is funny because it's true. Meryl Streep couldn't  have saved that storyline. Zzzzzzzzzz Sorry, I fell asleep remembering it.

At least they realized it wasn't working and made it go away. 

This storyline was trying to be not only about the Maggie/Warren/Maggie's handicapped husband but also about them getting CC and his company to acknowedge the injustice that was done and compensate appropriately. But, I guess, they danced around the exact appropriate justice and never really got the resolution out of it. Or did Maggie and husband agree to a certain amount in the end? I am already forgetting even though I just watched this a few months ago.

Is the Dylan and casino story going to be the exact same where Capwell Enterprises get off fairly easily for rigging the casinos?

10 hours ago, amybrickwallace said:

In five years on SB, Todd McKee never had a good story to call his own. Still, he brought so much charm to the role and was so likable that he always made Ted a character worth watching.

I mean, his trying to help Christie out of her troubles and his platonic friendship with her when most would say she didn't deserve could be called an early highlight of his SB days

5 hours ago, Marissa Gallant said:

Something is wrong with me. I'm not objecting to Brick and Santana together as much as I think I should be. I might be dying or something. Please, someone talk some sense into me.

The current Santana is the most neurotic of the 4 portrayals of her over the years. Gina Gallegos's version might have also made her the most vulnerable as a result