DeeVee

The attitude of TPTB on soaps back then reminds me a lot of the people running failing restaurants Gordon Ramsay is trying to save. They'll have a cheapo all-you-can-eat menu that they're losing money on. Ramsay will tell them to get rid of it. "But we'll lose the customers we have!" No matter how much he tries to explain that they're losing money on those customers, and how getting rid of the cheapo deal and adopting a good menu people actually want to eat will bring in a lot more new, higher-paying customers, they still don't listen. We don't talk about it as much as the other reasons many soaps went down the tubes, but kow-towing to shippers (or fans of certain individual actors) was definitely one of the big mistakes many of them made. They were the squeaky wheels, they got the grease, to the detriment of the stories.

I would add to that Ron Raines was a terrible recast as Alan, his return was awful, and they never wrote the character beyond a cartoon villain the rest of the life of the show. It was always going to be difficult to replace Bernau, but there were better, more charismatic actors out there, and Raines was not responsible for the lousy writing for the character.

Kobe, of course, was wrong. The best stories on soaps come FROM character. A perfect example of that, IMO, is Dark Shadows, which was TOTALLY over-the-top as far as plot, but I think why people loved it so much and why it remained a cult show is because everything came from character. The characters even remained consistent through different timelines. Barnabas, for instance, is always a guy fighting against the curse he's under by trying recreate a long-dead romance. Pretty much everything he does comes from that, even after he escapes the curse. Quentin is completely ruled by his dick. (As a kid, of course, I didn't pick up on this 😁). That's consistent from story to story. When DS stopped being consistent (i.e. putting Jonathan Frid and Lara Parker together as a romantic couple instead of adversaries) that's when they lost the audience. If you look at the older soap storylines, so many of them came from character. Rachel on AW and Jill on Y&R wanting more than what they were born into, Iris having a daddy fixation, Laurie's jealousy of her sister Leslie, Katherine Chancellor refusing to let anyone put her on a shelf because she was over 40--those are just a few examples. Soaps could have done the wild stuff just fine--IF a lot it come had come from character. It was plot driving characters instead of characters driving plot that damaged soaps, IMO.

Doesn't Geary's return as Bill Eckert belong in this category? A huge flop. I remember Geary talking in interviews about being very excited at the chance to get away from the Luke character. The character was awful, the storylines were worse, so they had to kill him off and bring back Luke. Am I remembering that correctly?

That's one of the many missed opportunities with GL...they teased Ross and Vanessa many times and never saw it through, even though Jerry and Maeve had fantastic chemistry and the characters had a great backstory. Yes, they could have been the core patriarch/matriarch...ironic, since both started as a bad boy/bad girl. But it makes sense for this show because Bert also was far from a perfect person in her younger days. She grew into the role, and these two could have, too. I know, silly, isn't it? And Bernadette would have not been a modern soap heroine name, either. MY thought was they should have invented a pretty, more fashionable MIDDLE name for Bert, and name a kid that. "Did you know Bert's full name is Bertha BLANK Bauer? Why don't we call her BLANK? Isn't that a pretty name? And so in fashion now!" So. Simple. Especially since ED is called that after Bill Bauer's middle name. It's even a kind of tradition in the family.

It did become a popular name at the time because of Manning, but I don't think either Alan or Beth were sports fans. 😂 I was wondering if they ever actually explained why they picked it.

I never saw the episode where they named the kid. Does anyone know where they came up with the name Peyton? I think I heard that when they thought it was Rick's they AGAIN made a failed attempt to name someone after Bert, and came up with Bernadette. (Which I'm guessing is why they made her Alan's kid, so they could change the name).

It says a lot that the least cringy thing she did during the later GL era was get involved with Edmund. I watch older episodes of Alan and Beth when they were played by Chris and Judi and can't help thinking, "Ew, these two end up married and having a baby."

I was going to say how can anyone think that about MKA, but he should not have said that about any woman. Such a relentless creep. Let's face it, Beth was one character who was done dirty in MANY ways during the show's later years. It's fine that she grew out of being an idealized ingenue, that she became more complex and imperfect, but she was unrecognizable after a while. That goes for relationships she had with other characters, too.

That's what I meant, if they ever dated again. Didn't he also take off on a wild goose chase to try and find Reva? Not surprised Harley told him to pound sand, if that's the case.

I did find the episodes where Harley met Matt Weiss, the Jewish character Long introduced. The scenes were not nearly as over-the-top or cringy as I remembered. (Maybe being dubbed into German made a difference, LOL). Anyway, I thought it was nicely done, BUT I just don't see how they were going to weave them into the canvas. They set up this guy as having a successful business in the fashion center of the world. It's hard to believe he would move to SF. Unless they were planning to have Harley break off from SF and have a story about her pursuing her fashion career in NYC. Personally not a fan of multiple locations for a soap opera. So I have feeling this was doomed from the start. Watching these eps also reminded me how much I liked Josh and Harley as a romantic pair back then. Newman left soon after and that was the end of that. Does anyone remember if they ever revisited it? I can't recall.

Oh, wow. Interesting that she felt so strongly about it. Possibly, if she had had the chance to see it through the characters would have been well developed. Thank you! I'm going to see if I can find those episodes. I'm curious to see how I feel about them now. If they're not on YT maybe the German channel has them.

I am going to hazzard a guess that this being dropped may have had little to nothing to do with Long's departure. I suspect that this was dropped more because the network/P&G/producer chickened out. I remember this very clearly. My mom and I were very interested in seeing how they handled this, as we are Jewish. It was awkwardly handled, in our opinion. It was more about Harley reacting to these "exotic" people than about creating actual characters. During the 80s-early 90s, soap audiences were still pretty conservative. We've talked before about how GL failed for a long time with creating a Black core family, even though they said they intended to do it. Besides the Barbados Spauldings, they tried to create a family around William, who worked at the Blue Orchid. They introduced a brother and sister for him, but nothing came of it in the end. There was Hamp and Gilly later on, but it wasn't until they brought in Mel's family that you had a real attempt to create a Black core family. I think it was probably the same thing with the Jewish family. They made it a big deal that they were going to do it, then yanked it really fast. Maybe they got complaints, maybe they just couldn't figure out how to weave them into the canvas. OR, yes, it could just be the incoming HW didn't want to write for those characters. But my mom and I when we heard they dropped it were like, "Oh, yeah, they chickened out." I don't know what the timing was, perhaps our friend @kalbir can tell us exactly when Long departed for the last time?

Maybe some people wouldn't count it as a suicide attempt, but I was thinking of her driving the car into the ocean.

I did a little digging around to see what I could find out about this storyline since I never saw it. I stumbled onto a post that quoted a bunch of cancer survivors DRAGGING the storyline. Mainly because Reva attempts suicide. (I know it's a serious topic and they're not wrong to be angry, but those who said Reva's a "fighter" and "survivor" who would never do this apparently forgot she attempted suicide twice before. Three times if you count Dolly the Clone). They also didn't like that she kept it a secret from her loved ones.

Could be. A little hard to be sure when you can't compare voice.

I did not watch the show during Reva's cancer storyline. Did they REALLY do that? She had two sisters, a brother, a bunch of kids and a niece and nephew but HE was the match? 😂

I don't know if it would have meant much to viewers, but while the whole "Alan sacrifices himself to save Phillip" thing made sense character-wise, it made NO sense medical-wise. Phillip had like a gajillion Marler blood relatives, including a full sister, who could have been called on to save him. (I get why they refused to let James do it, as he had done that for his sister. But everyone else? Come on). Alan did not share any DNA with Phillip, it had to be the wildest coincidence of all time that he was a match to be a donor. Not to mention, he had a heart condition and they would have rejected him as a donor. Yeah, yeah, yeah, suspension of disbelief, but there were other ways to accomplish the same thing. If Alan had thrown himself in front of a truck to save Phillip--THAT, I would have believed. So a return of Samantha might not have been high on anyone's list, but at least it would have made sense.

It seems to me no writer besides Marland knew how to write this character. The heart of Nola's character was wanting to be the star of her own movie. If you remember Opal on AMC, she also was very quirky like Nola and also had high aspirations. It was a GENIUS move by AMC to pair her with Palmer, who was filthy rich but brought up in similar circumstances to Opal. Nola needed something like that. To fulfill her desire to live life large, but with someone who would understand her origins. OR, as mentioned before by some of us, she could have found a way to harness her rich fantasy life so she could achieve fame and fortune--like becoming a romance writer. I don't think anyone loved anyone in this triangle. In fact, I seem to recall soap critics drubbing this storyline. I think there was a movie that came out around this time with a similar theme? Never understood the appeal. My mom thought Jesse was cute. 😁 For me, Maureen's appearances made me mad all over again that they killed her off.

That's one of the reasons they lost a lot of their audience. I totally get liking problematic characters. I like many myself. But there's a red line. Making the victim responsible for the perpetrator's subsequent behavior and putting them in a romance with the person who raped them is gross. Roger didn't just hurt Holly, he was a serial rapist and a sociopath who committed many violent crimes. The worst part is, Roger NEVER paid for his crimes. At most he spent a night in jail when he was first arrested, while two of his victims--Holly and Alan (yes, this is one time Alan was a victim; blackmail is a serious crime)--ended up in prison for things connected to him. I'm REALLY glad GL pulled back from a Holly/Roger romance because if they hadn't, it would have tarnished the legacy of the groundbreaking story they did in the first place.

I agree. Especially considering that Holly was not Roger's only victim. He had a long history of violence against women.

Don't forget, he was also going to kidnap her child. The woman falling in love with her rapist trope was unfortunately extremely common on soaps back then. AT LEAST GL never tried to turn Roger into a hero or make Holly's feelings for him seem like a good thing. Yes, the "explanation" for the rape undermined the history of the relationship. That was bad and no way would I defend that. But Holly was obsessed with Roger since she was a teenager; clearly she had issues that were never dealt with, so her inability to totally sever the relationship was not that unbelievable. More importantly, they never gave into the obvious wish of many fans to make them a star-crossed romance. And good for them. It's a very low bar, but it's way better than how many other soaps would have handled it.

There was a period during the late 70s through the mid-80s when soaps shooting in foreign locations was pretty common. I think the first soap to do it was when Ryan's Hope went to Ireland in 1977. (Strangely enough, I don't think they ever did another one, though they did a lot of local location shoots in NYC). You have to remember that during this time period, soaps were the networks' cash cow. Daytime made so much money it literally paid for their nighttime shows. It became extremely common for soaps to do foreign location shoots at least once a year, sometimes twice. Some of the location shoots for GL during this time were St. Lucia, Santo Domingo, Jamaica, the Virgin Islands, and the Canary Islands. There might have been a shoot in Switzerland. I seem to recall Mike fighting some villain on a ski tram. I'm not quite sure where exactly that was shot, though. By the late 80s, the trend was ending because soaps' fortunes were beginning to sink. More women were going to work, more people were getting cable TV, younger audiences acquired during the heyday didn't stick around as they aged up. By the mid-90s, the O.J. trial had dealt a death blow to soaps. Networks slashed budgets and it spiraled from there. Some soaps might have still done a location shoot now and then, but it was too expensive to do it regularly. It really was an amazing time when they did them. I think one show even went to Hong Kong. But it all ended due to money problems.

That looks like Robert Gentry to me. He played Ed during the late 1960s. He came back to the show briefly during the late 90s, so the timing for this is right.

Yes, that's a really good point. Slimy villains have their place on soaps (usually short-term) but they don't work over the long-term. No one...and I mean NO ONE...could have come out of that Mark Evans story looking good. Not only sleeping with her mother's husband, but when he tells her he is entitled to Spaulding SHE HELPS HIM. She betrays her entire family for this clown. Yeah, they were recently acquired family, but they had all been loving and good to her. Girl, no guy is worth that. Definitely not THAT guy.