Reverend Ruthledge

Hello Mike. Do you happen to have an exact episode date for when Granny was mentioned in 1965?

Didn't they eventually make Bob and Kim's kitchen into part of the WOAK set or was that a nightmare I had?

Back from the dead stories are my most hated plot device and why I currently hate DOOL (once one of my favorite soaps). You are right that a death on DOOL means absolutely nothing anymore.

That's actually what I was thinking. There seemed to be a slew of cop shows in the 80s. Not that there wasn't in other decades but it just seemed more popular in the 80s.

Very good question, and, surprisingly, he may have been. I'm stretching my brain trying to come up with an earlier character who was a cop and while there were many small-part characters who were cops, I can't remember a full-time character being a cop until Rusty. Same with Margo on ATWT. And Hope Williams on DOOL. It was definitely an 80s trend to make main characters policemen and policewomen. I'm not sure why.

If I remember correctly, Colin was VERY in and out (mostly out) during those four years.

Oceanview was actually called "Lakeview" in a few scripts. Agnes seemed undecided on the name so perhaps they were wrestling with whether to change the location at this time in 1965. The history books say the location changed to Springfield in 1966 but there is no mention of Springfield in 1966. Nor is there mention of Los Angeles or Selby Flats. The characters always just refer to where they live as "the city".

I'm know I'm in the minority, but I think all the 80s prime time soaps were the best in the beginning. Like the first and second seasons. All of them. Even Dynasty which people said was boring until Joan Collins came along. The first season of Dynasty was my favorite. I guess I just like things in their purest form with the original vision still intact.

Nobody knows what happened to Kenny and Ginger?

I don't think it's about YouTube guidelines. Proctor and Gamble don't seem to care about people posting their old soap material so I don't know why YouTube would. It's really only a problem for soaps still on the air. Sony will yank Days material down in a hot second. Whole episodes of GL, ATWT and AW have been posted for years. I don't think her only having scenes she's in is so much about ego as it is about the fact that she's not a fan of the show. One thing I've noticed over the years is that we expect actors to be into the shows as much as we are. For a lot, if not most, of them it's just another gig. They're not necessarily soap fans or even a fan of the show that they're on. Whereas we fans of the shows would want whole episodes, an actor might only be interested in the scenes in which they worked.

How did they write Kenny and Ginger out? I don't remember. Did they just move away? I just kind of remember they just weren't there anymore and nobody talking about them but that's going on a very old memory.

Not to be pedantic, but I think you mean Santo Domingo.

AW from 1964-1975 was soap opera at its best. The Matthews was a great soap family and right up there with the Bauers, the Hughes and the Hortons. How AW stayed on the air the last twenty years that it did is, in my opinion, nothing short of a miracle.

Although they had much shorter runs, I would add Ted White, Ben Scott and Lee Gantry to that list.

I really hate that, with each new interview that comes around from The Locher Room, I have to decide if I'm going to watch it by mentally measuring whether my interest in the guest will outweigh the annoyance of the host.

I think this was the decision to kill off Julie Bauer on GL. When they moved Mike to AW, having him a new widower opened up a lot of storyline possibilities. That, plus the fact that Sandra Smith probably wasn't interested in playing the character again.

Thank you for posting that, Alan. I always liked Lezlie Dalton so it was interesting to see her now.

I agree with the previous posters about ATWT in the late 70s. ATWT was always a slow-moving soap in the past but with a depth that most soaps didn't have and that kept viewers thinking below the surface. The slow, conservative (some say stuffy) tone of ATWT in the 50s and 60s was a strength as it allowed for a lot of subtext that I think intelligent viewers enjoyed. There weren't too many gimmicks and shiny objects to dazzle that a lot of writers use to forego the harder work of writing on a complex level. Having long-time characters only adds to that multi-layered aspect. However, in the late 70s, the core of the show and its raison d'être got lost along the way a bit and the positive aspects of being slow and conservative weren't as much of a strength of the show as it was in the past and the negative aspects of being slow and conservative, without the positive aspect, became a bit glaring. Things got a bit drab and boring. Characters, instead of becoming even more complex with time, became a bit tired and boring. Attempts to make them more interesting usually had them doing things out of character. Any attempts to "jazz up" the show seemed to fall flat as it meant a lot of disconnected, inconsequential characters and weird, uninteresting storylines. This all came to a head in the early 80s which is the only time ATWT really felt completely lost and the show went a bit off the rail. I know he's not everyone's favorite, but Douglas Marland really performed a miracle by reviving the show when he came along and he struck the perfect balance between making the show exciting plot-wise but also engaging the viewer to think on a deeper level. He also knew what to do with characters that had a long history by actually utilizing those histories and making the characters interesting BECAUSE they'd been around so long. I think the only instance he dropped the ball on this was with David and Ellen Stewart but I know Henderson Forsyth's lack of total commitment to the show dictated some of that. Anyway, Maryland really "got" the show which I honestly don't think anybody had gotten since Irna Phillips. Having said all that, I think there was some good writing in the late 70s. I just think it's the time when the show started to have a bit of an identity crisis which got worse in the early 80s and which it recovered from when Marland took over. As much as I love the 50s, 60s and early 70s of ATWT, I actually think the show was the best under Marland. Not that he was better than Irna. It's only because a show like ATWT is dependent on its history probably more than any other soap and it just took several decades to let that history happen. Marland had a lot of history to mine from and he did that. I don't know who was writing in the late 70s and early 80s, but I don't think they got that.

I agree with your assessment of the character. I'm equally bewildered as to why she lasted so long.

Danny Pintauro seems like a nice guy and Colleen Zenk was probably the nicest soap star I ever met. It was good to see them together.

The exact date is March 20, 1958

Great idea, FrenchFan. Thank you. Next best thing to being alive and in front of a television set on May 11th, 1965.

I didn't realize Roerick died in a car crash. Interesting to learn. I always thought it was an age-related ailment that caused him to die.

100% correct. I get so mad because he interviews a lot of people I'm interested in and couldn't see interviewed anywhere else but I have to endure him in order to see the interview. He's a horrible interviewer and strikes me as someone who believes his own PR. Someone who really cares about him needs to stage an intervention. Having good connections does not make one a good interviewer. He should be behind the scenes organizing things and let a more skilled interviewer do the interviewing. Although he's in good company with some big name interviewers. Larry King comes to mind. He was the king of missed opportunities and not listening to his guests.

Most writers, with a few great exceptions such as Marland and Nixon, don't want to play off another writer's material and want to create their own stuff. However, most of them are also deluded to think that they are just as good, if not superior, a writer than the previous writers. That's the mistake. It would help them to ride the coattails a bit. Very few later soap writers seemed to get the concept of the specific genre that long-running serials are and the CONTINUING (which means incorporating the past) aspect of it. They treated it like it was a new show that they were starting. Trying, and mostly failing, to make their mark as a writer and ignoring that the show was bigger than they are.