Jdee43

Watching episodes from late January 1985, I've come to appreciate Stephen Meadows. It's too bad that they screwed up his character from the very beginning, giving his background as high school teacher, then having him be a cooperate exec, then revealing he had been a male prostitute, then turning him into a jealous bad guy willing to resort to murder, then a hospital patient for a couple of months, and finally a serial killer. He didn't mean to be a serial killer; it was all caused by a brain aneurysm he got as a result of injuring himself while trying to kill Joe 😂 At least the show gave him the chance to go out in a blaze of glory, and he rose up to the challenge. But again it's too bad they couldn't give him a decent long term character, he was good.

The show hasn't introduced one successful new character since the current regime took over in 2012. Their new characters all have had convulted, unconvincing backstories, and they all do stupid things that sabotage them from the go. In bringing back old characters, they look to the 90s or 00s. There's nothing to bring back from the 10s; no one anyone would want to see come back. It's just a testament to how creatively bankrupt the show has been for a decade and more.

No doubt Robin Wright's feelings for the show are also clouded by her meeting one of her ex-husbands on it, who the show also didn't treat well. Santa Barbara was the only show where A and Marcy were truly "the stars." I'm sure they regret its cancelation. Not sure they could have done anything to prevent that though; had they stayed, the show probably would have been canceled anyway, right?

This is also probably about making Kristina more of a lead by giving her a partner that she really has chemistry with. She had very little with Blaze. Since there are so few single female characters on the show, I fully expect them to test her with Lucky when he reappears.

Fall 1984 through spring 1985 showed Ted and Laken in the same classroom. They were supposed to be in high school, their senior year. In the fall, Mr. Bottoms played by Ray Walston was their teacher. Perhaps the show was trying to pay homage to the movie Fast Times at Ridgemont High by getting Ray Walston? In the spring, their teacher was the pointless character Jackie Parks, friend of Amy Perkins. The initial idea seemed to be that Ted and Jackie might eventually hook up somehow, but that never happened and she was dropped, disappearing.

The show has never done a good job in casting Lulu. I doubt they'll do it right now. My favorite Lulu was the one they had in 1996, with the black hair and big blue eyes.

Miranda Wilson looking better here than how she ever looked on her last stint on DAYS! Vincent Irizzary was completely wasted on Santa Barbara. The big mistake was making him a doctor. For whatever reason, this show could never do doctors or medical stories; all attempts were blah; it just wasn't their thing.

Wow, Louise Sorel looking better than all of them there!

A quick summary of the show's history: 1984 was rough. 1985 and 86 were its peak. 1987 it started to decline. 1988 and 89 were the bottom of the barrel, its nadir. 1990 and 91 were spent trying to recover. 1992 it threw in the towel. 1993 it was off the air. A good quick summary?

Happy 40th Anniversary to the show! Can't believe 1984 was 40 years ago 🤯

Why hasn't P&G donated whatever their have to a major archive or research facility, like the Library of Congress or UCLA, or to any university or museum looking to start up a research archive? P&G was an early pioneer in getting their soaps up and streaming. Remember the AOL Classic Soap channel from the late 2000s? They even had Another World from 1991-1992 up on Hulu. Then Guiding Light and As the World Turns were canceled and everything changed. Out of spite, or whatever, nothing has been heard from them about classic soaps for going on 12 years now. You'd think they'd continue with AW on Hulu, and add classic ATWT and GL, but nope, they were done. As to the fate of the tapes, who knows; but again, I don't understand why they won't let other people at them.

I have no certain knowledge one way or the other, but I think that the evidence and the arguments lean more to the side that all of the P&G soap tapes have been destroyed.. Wish there could be a more definitive answer, but it seems as if P&G has never and may never respond to any inquiries about it..

An interesting article with the head of NBC mostly blaming the audience for the lack of quality programming. https://www.nytimes.com/1984/09/30/arts/nbc-s-head-says-tv-viewers-spurn-quality-shows.html NBC'S HEAD SAYS TV VIEWERS SPURN QUALITY SHOWS By Peter W. Kaplan Sept. 30, 1984 Grant Tinker, the chairman of NBC, got up from his desk in his office on the sixth floor of the RCA building in Rockefeller Center. Behind him hung a huge framed blowup of the dictionary definitions of the word ''tinker.'' He sat on a couch and stretched his legs; across the room from him, three television sets were tuned to the three networks' evening-news broadcasts. Mr. Tinker, lean, white-haired and exactly as tanned and wrinkled as a 58-year-old man would like to be, stared a little wistfully at the three screens. ''You know,'' he said, ''in the beginning, nobody had seen any of it before. Some people would watch test patterns. Ed Sullivan, 'Your Show of Shows,' 'Philco Playhouse,' 'Playhouse 90' - they were more important than what we've got. It was more of an event. Now, we are taken for granted. As we should be.'' Grant Tinker, the man who helped revitalize the situation comedy with ''The Mary Tyler Moore Show,'' who put ''Lou Grant'' and ''Rhoda'' into production and who founded the company that now produces ''Cheers,'' ''St. Elsewhere'' and ''Hill Street Blues,'' has been the chief operating officer of NBC for three years. When he took on the position, after NBC's now-semi-legendary disastrous slump under the leadership of Fred Silverman, it seemed like the right appointment at the right time. And in many ways, for the network, it has been: morale is better, management changes have been put into effect, the profits of the company are up dramatically and, apparently, rising. It may have been the right appointment at the right time for NBC, but whether or not it was the right appointment for Grant Tinker - or at least the man who has committed his career to getting good television programming on the air - is another thing altogether. Speaking on the eve of a new television season, Grant Tinker, the chairman of NBC, has a bleak view of the state of network television and of what viewers are willing to put up with. It is fair to say that he feels constricted by the boundaries of his business and is even critical of some of the programming his own network has chosen to start the new season with. The blame, he said in a recent interview, has to be shared by the three networks, which as businesses look to profits above all else; by overused, worn-out suppliers of shows whose creative inspiration ceased to contribute to the industry, by his account, a long time ago; and, perhaps most of all, by the audience, which swallows much of the worst programming that is fed to it. ''We're all doing the same shows,'' Mr. Tinker said of the three networks. ''I think it is criminal of people to stare at television so uncritically.'' Mr. Tinker, a former producer who says he has lost none of his enthusiasm for television but is perplexed, not to say frustrated, by its limitations, ascribed the dearth of good programming to what he called a depressing and unwitting partnership between producers and audience. Not only is there a lack of ''creative people to bring you something better,'' he said, but bad programming is accepted by all too many television viewers, of whom he said, ''They're such a disappointment.'' Mr. Tinker, who produced a number of highly praised television series, took control of a network in disarray in July 1981. NBC has continued to rank third in the network ratings during his tenure, and its programming, while having its peaks and winning more Emmy Awards than the other two networks - it picked up 11 awards this week, to CBS's 10 and ABC's 5 - has only sporadically gained viewer loyalty. The new crop of NBC programs for the 1984 fall season have, in their initial broadcasts, garnered some excellent ratings. ''The Cosby Show,'' a situation comedy with Bill Cosby as a New York obstetrician and father of four, finished first in the Nielsen ratings last week, with extraordinarily high viewership in large cities, and received very good reviews. But a number of the other new NBC programs are not the kind of entertainment that Mr. Tinker has been associated with in the past and are not the kind about which he seems to feel particularly proud. They are, he says, the product of business decisions that he calls necessary for his company, but not necessarily a good-conscience gift to the viewing audience. One of those programs, ''Hunter,'' has already been the subject of some controversy. Scheduled against the champion of Nielsen ratings, CBS's ''Dallas,'' a program that has a very high viewership among females, ''Hunter'' is a program tailored to appeal to young male viewers in the style of what television believes young male viewers respond to: car chases and shootings. ''Hunter'' had high ratings in its two-hour premiere last week, out of its time slot, but the series is not the kind of programming Mr. Tinker created when he was selling to the networks rather than overseeing one. ''I think if you put 'Lou Grant' somewhere in the schedule now,'' Mr. Tinker said, ''it wouldn't work. The audience has changed some - and not for the better. I don't know why. It has something to do with the maturing of the medium. A very big part of the audience has never been without television. They settle for it, and take it for granted. ''The audience,'' he continued, ''won't make the effort to follow a 'Lou Grant' or to laugh at a literate comedy. And the kind of programs the three networks put on certainly doesn't help them.'' During Mr. Tinker's regime at NBC, the network has been singularly supportive of slow-building hits, such as ''Cheers,'' ''Remington Steele,'' ''Family Ties,'' as well as ''Hill Street Blues'' and ''St. Elsewhere,'' both award-winning MTM-produced programs. Surveying the new NBC schedule, which includes ''Hunter'' and another show with a high violence quotient, ''Miami Vice,'' as well as the return of ''TV Bloopers and Practical Jokes,'' Mr. Tinker rationalized his approval of them. ''As an executive, if I'm going to be attentive to the shareholder interest, I have to put on shows that work,'' he said. ''Shows that we just think are good won't perform.'' He went through his lineup, describing some of the new programs and generally making favorable comments about their ''execution'' rather than their content. ''There are a lot of question marks in there,'' he said, expressing frustration at what his programmers were able to put on the air. The only new program he praised for its quality was ''The Cosby Show.'' Beyond that, he said, he could ''not see anything that wauld qualify in that area. ''The truth is,'' he added, ''it's not against the law if we do not in a given year develop superior programming.'' NBC has made a strong recovery from its low point in 1981, when, under Mr. Tinker's predecessor, Fred Silverman, the network made $48.1 million in profits while ABC and CBS each made more than $300 million. Last year, NBC made $156.2 million. ''I would consider parity with the others - to be equal in profits - a success,'' said Mr. Tinker. ''A dollar measurement as opposed to a Nielsen measurement would be a success for us.''

Today was terrible. The writing officially sucks again.

Whoever is in charge should use this opportunity to give Robert and Holly a happy ending.

I doubt Guza would return. They don't have the budget for him. I also doubt they'd give him the creative control he'd want. He'd also be coming out of retirement. I don't think he's done anything since leaving GH 13 years ago.

Aww, no Ted #1 and Laken #1, nor Danny and Jade, nor Amy! And how about CC #3 and Gina #1! 😊

Maybe they made one of the actors the head writer. Actors have perennially dictated story on this show.

I recently saw Bethel Leslie on a late season 1 episode of The Fugitive from 1964 called "Storm Center." Her acting was excellent, but her character and the story unfortunately were not the best. Bethel did so many shows, but could it be that my favorite character I've seen her play is Maggie Powers?? I wish Retro would unearth the rest of her run, from 1966 and 1967. Maybe they could pair it with Bright Promise from the Bing Crosby vaults?? Didn't Retro make a big deal of getting a tape transfer machine and doing all the transfers themselves? There's still a lot of materiel out there that they can use that machine on!!

Today's show was very underwhelming. Anything special in the writing is long gone. The scenes with Anna and Valentine were particularly flat and silly. Something shocking would have been nice, like her actually turning him in or shooting him. Valentine is such a failed character; to ruin Anna over him is sad.

Connie Ford's greatest cinematic moment: I wonder if they ever tried paying homage to this on Another World. I guess there are scenes in the 80s of Ada and Nancy getting into it, but I don't think they ever had Ada slap one of her children like in this scene.

If they were going to put Cody with an older woman, they should have put him with Felicia. It doesn't seem that the writers are that invested in Felicia though, as she barely appears since the new writers came on. From watching the other day, I couldn't help but notice that the short scenes, with nothing happening except the actors looking at each other as if something smells, along with an occasional line to move the plot along, are back with a vengeance...

Sad how Joe and Rose Kelly were forgotten by the show, even with their name being on the show's main diner set all the way up to this year!

Given how many movies and quality TV shows she appeared in in the 50s and 60s, almost all of the great TV shows of the era, it's almost hard to believe that Connie Ford spent the last 25 years of her career on Another World.

Seems like so many folks associated with GH history are passing away.