Jdee43

Jane Elliot is the best. She's the only one on this show that can make you feel real emotion. We're all fortunate she's still on.

Interesting seeing Tom Eplin. In hindsight, he retired after leaving ATWT in 2002. Was his retirement hs choice or was he blacklisted from the industry? He's never done any AW retrospectives or interviews about his career. Again, his choice or was he blacklisted? Whatever happened, it looks like he saved his money or invested wisely. He really should have been playing a new, different character when he went to ATWT.

I've seen Leslie Charleson's 3 guest appearances on the 1971-76 TV show Cannon. She's great in each one! Probably the best of the 3 is her first appearance, from 1972, "Sky Above, Death Below" (Cannon Season 2, episode 2). It's the best written of the 3. She's so spunky and full of life!

The lame attempt at a Guza era edgy montage was so campy.. Michael on fire while Willow's in heat. The only acceptable way for the Drew /Willow story to end is her putting two bullets in his chest, Sonny style. Maurice was awful today; no depth, no emotion, just auto-pilot. You'd think it was one of his flunkies who got hurt, not his son. Of all the returns, Lois is the worst. Other than lame character assassination, no one has any idea of what to do with her. Only Lucy gets worse writing. Rena's Lois returns after 25 years and all she does is hang out at the Q mansion. She needed to take a 25 year break for that?

Also, it's interesting how they never reran Perry Mason in the 60s. I guess the hour format, and it being in black and white. Many execs thought it would make an ideal soap opera, and it did inspire Edge of Night, so maybe having Edge on is another reason CBS didn't show it? Also interesting how they never reran the 30 minute Gunsmoke. That could have opened the door to a western soap opera or something. They also never reran the 30 minute Twilight Zone, which could have opened the door to more sci fi in daytime.

I Love Lucy was a staple of CBS daytime from 1958-1966, typically running at either 10am or 10:30am. But it was all in black and white, so from 1968-1972 they reran The Lucy Show at 10am, which at least had some color seasons. The Dick Van Dyke Show was also on CBS daytime starting in 1965 and lasting to 1969 in the 11:30am time slot. I'm surprised they aired it from 1967 to 1969, considering it was in black and white and everything was switching to color. Was Dick Van Dyke the last show that CBS daytime aired that had all black and white episodes? CBS didn't air any primetime reruns in daytime from 1972-1976, an incredible era of original programming. When reruns returned from 1976-1979, it was Lucy's latest show, All in the Family, and MASH. Here's Lucy was kept out of syndication after it ended in 1974 out of fear that it would harm the rerun potential of I Love Lucy and the Lucy Show. When CBS put it on in the air for 6 months in 1977, it was the first time it had been seen since it ended production. In 1979-1982, it was The Jeffersons, Alice, and One Day at a Time. These were the top rated sitcoms on CBS at the time, other than MASH. From 1982 on, no more primetime reruns in daytime, with the sole exception of Designing Women for a few months in 1991. Maybe CBS wanted to get more eyeballs on that show; it was it in the top 10. Newhart had ended its run in 1990. CBS daytime to 1972, and then from 1976-1982, when they showed prime-time shows, seemed to be about certain classics (Lucy, Andy Griffith) as well as reruns of the highest rated sitcoms still on the network. It is interesting how The Mary Tyler Moore Show never made it. Maybe if CBS had shown reruns from 1972-1976, it would have, paired with Lucy.

No meaty scenes for Michael, where he got to put anyone in their place. Instead he got to sleep walk through his final episodes. We've seen the crap with Sidwell a million times. It felt like they were just re-doing Lucy's scenes with Victor from 2022, only with a different actor reading the same lines to Lucy.

I guess a traditional problematic time slot for NBC was 1:30pm, the time CBS was showing As the World Turns. In 1968, Let's Make a Deal was making headway, but NBC foolishly lost that show to ABC. From 1969-1974, nothing they put on at 1:30pm stuck: Hidden Faces/ You're Putting Me On/ Life with Linkletter/ Words and Music/ Memory Game/ Three on a Match/ Jeopardy!/ How to Survive a Marriage. They finally just expanded DAYS to an hour in 1975, from 1:30-2:30pm, and that seemed to finally take care of things. Another problematic slot for NBC was whatever was following Another World, from 3:30pm-4:30pm. Having a half hour between Another World and its spin-off Somerset probably wasn't a good idea. When AW expanded to 60 minutes in 1975, it was finally followed by Somerset. By that time though, Somerset didn't feel much like a spin-off of AW.

What time slots would you say were traditionally problematic for CBS? 4pm seemed to always be tough. They tried a bunch of different shows from the late 70s to the mid 80s, Match Game/ Love of Life/ One Day at a Time reruns/ Tattletales/ Body Language/ Press Your Luck. They just finally threw in the towel and gave that slot back to the affiliates in fall 1986. CBS was the last network to give the 4pm slot up; ABC did it in winter 1985; NBC in winter 1978!

The 2 episodes of The Doctors from 1963 that were streamed by Retro were the first episode and one from April 1963, "The Helping Hand." Both are available to view in the Paley Center Collection. Make of that what you will. We've never seen stuff from 1963-1967 outside of those 2 episodes. You'd think they'd try to stream Matt's or Althea's or Nick's first episode or something, if they really had access to all that stuff.

What happened to Michael Knight? It's like he forgot how to act or something. Why is he even on this show? Lucky looked really domestic. Kind of goes against the last couple of months of him saying every 10 minutes that he needs to leave town..

Could be Retro's deal was just for the episodes owned by Colgate Palmolive; anything owned by NBC would cost extra money to license, and they aren't interested? Maybe that's why we haven't seen the early episodes either, since they may be owned by NBC? Just theories.

I don't like how they are implying that Felicia could be Cyrus's next victim 😠 If they want to kill off a vet for shock value, they should kill off Olivia. It would give Ned and Lois story, and push Dante more to the dark side 😈

The show keeps repeating itself. Now they're doing a new version of the Hook killer, and bringing back the "shock" of the victim being perfectly fine one moment, dead the next 🙄 They are tanking Lulu's return by having it be all about Valentin. And she's not even playing that big a role in it; other characters are taking the lead. If only Charlotte could just show up on Lulu's doorstep and Valentin never be heard of ever again.. The Drew/Willow/Michael stuff fell so flat. The writers never tried to make it make sense by diving into any of the characters. They just had the characters do whatever to manufacture drama. Their mistake is to do it with really weak actors, who can't sell what they're doing either. Now these three have become shady, weak losers. They're ruined and should all be written off.

This guy sucked from day one, both the acting and the character. So many 180s going on behind the scenes! If there was a character that Sonny should have killed, it was Dex. Instead, they go through all these machinations to make sure Sonny doesn't kill him, and they force Mulcahey to try and write for him. Fast forward to 9 months later, and Dex is killed off with hardly an afterthought, in such a lame way, it's more laughable than shocking! What goes on behind the scenes is definitely more interesting than what goes on on-screen. The writers should try to mine the BTS stuff for some entertaining inspiration

I visited the Paley Center, and they have 10 episodes of AW from the 1970s, all an hour long and in excellent quality! 3 from 1975, 6 from 1976, and 1 from 1978. The 1978 episode was from KCST the NBC affiliate in San Diego, now known as KNSD. For those watching Ariana's clips, one of the 1976 ones, from January, features John leaving Pat after learning of Marianne's abortion. I wonder where the 1975 and 1976 shows came from. Perhaps P&G? I think these episodes have been at the Paley Center since at least the 90s. The Paley Center has over 75 episodes of AW. Over 30 are from the years 1995-1999 🤢 It's too bad there wasn't a closer relationship between the Paley Center and P&G, with the Paley Center having a copy of everything in the P&G archive. The Paley Center itself seemed to be a bit of a ghost town. I got a sense when I visited in NY that not a lot of people go there to sit and watch old shows. Who knows how long they'll keep that aspect of the museum running..

No character changes more with whoever is writing the show than Cyrus. The scab writers were redeeming him. Mulcahey turned him into a frightened old man and then completely dropped him (probably the best way to handle this mess of a character). The new writers bring him back and turn him into this murdering bad guy. Maybe it will be revealed that, like Heather, he had hip replacement surgery too.. That Cyrus is the murderer is disappointing; it's so cliche and obvious. It should have been more of a mystery and have more to do with Sam's history or the mob. You know if Guza were writing, he would have had one of the many kids on this show be the culprit.

Kin's dad was a famous comedian in the 1940s and 50s on radio and early TV, Herb Shriner. Maybe that's why Kin gets the urge to act goofy.

It was just sad how in 1994 Wayne's Roman was sacrificed for Reilly's possession story. The upcoming possession was the only reason Roman was acting the way he was, so petty and unforgiving, treating Marlena like dirt. Marlena had to get to this dark place so she could be vulnerable to the devil 🙄 Wayne's Roman's last line ever to Marlena at the airport when he was leaving town, hugging her, was "God bless you"; foreshadowing some? 🤔 Reilly was a writer who would sacrifice character in an instant to further his plots. It's too bad, since when he was forced to, Reilly also could do character pretty well.

Looks like Scott is a casualty of the Jagger garbage. Having him around might remind us that maybe Jagger wasn't this super evil dude who deserved to be murdered by Sonny point blank, in cold blood. I guess Scott and Ric are kind of redundant, and I understand going with Ric now for all the sleazy lawyer shenanigans, but I do hope they find a place for Scott, as well as for Lucy. I think a Scott/ Tracy/ Lucy triangle played straight, instead of as a joke, could be interesting. Interesting how Mulcahey was very weak when it came to some of the vets. His Lucy was horrendous, his Lois a non factor, the same with Robert and Scott, his Felicia wasn't even on. I guess there were so many characters on the show, he didn't have the time to try and fix the more marginal ones.

Interesting how all of Wayne's attempts to play a bad guy, on Dynasty, Port Charles, Days 2005, weren't successful. Perhaps it all had to do with the writing each time? Wayne's greatest success was playing Roman in the 80s, a good guy. Perhaps behind his popularity in the 80s was the character's working class background? Interesting how in the 90s, Roman's working class background was used to turn him into an unforgiving, intolerant jerk. I wonder how much of the poor writing Wayne got during his second stint from 91-94 was due to grudges behind the scenes. They only rehired him because Deidre insisted. Wayne only signed a 6 month contract, and when it was up, he played hard ball with the producers, forcing them to embarrassingly write out Roman again right after he returned from a 7 year hiatus. Wayne finally agreed to a new contract, but it seemed like the producers also had to hire his wife. Perhaps the producers didn't forget this, and had the writers destroy his character by the time he left in 1994? It's interesting how all the characters Reilly hated were portrayed by actors who gave the producers, and him, a hard time: Roman, Jack, Tony, Victor.

In the scene, Matt and Maggie are talking about Theodora. The patient seems to be Theodora's housekeeper or something, and Theodora has treated her really badly. It's interesting that they have Bethel Leslie sporting Ann Williams's hairdo. When Lydia Bruce takes over for Bethel Leslie in 1968, they have Lydia sport Bethel's hairdo for a few months too. I guess they thought that would make the transition easier, if the recast had the previous actor's hair style?!

I visited the Paley Center, and they have a 5 minute segment of an episode from 1966. Matt and Maggie were in some of the scenes talking with a patient. Also some of the same music cues from 1968 are heard. I really wish Retro would release whatever episodes exist from the early years, especially from 1966 and 1967!!

New Lulu is definitely a marked improvement over the last one! This Lulu can act and is able to enter into the spirit of the character. Hopefully the writers don't let her and us down.. The worst thing about Lulu's return is that we have to see characters like Valentine and Charlotte again.. Strange how in the flashback between Lulu and Maxie today, which was supposed to take place just before Lulu fell into a coma, new Lulu was a complete brunette!!

Can't believe it took 38 years for Liz Chandler to return! Even longer for Julie's brother! Outside of certain characters, writers and producers really have had little use for the history of the show, especially from the 70s and 80s.