DeeVee

Somehow, I was unaware of this. I looked it up, and WTF? Why would anyone think this was a good way to wrap up a soap? It's making Josh and Reva reuniting by the lighthouse seem not so bad after all. The bar is set now for soap finales: at least they didn't have a gorilla. 😂

I'm sure plenty of EPs have cried--they just didn't get the scrutiny she got because they weren't at the center of the demise of the oldest soaps on the air. I have never understood why GL never went that route with Vanessa and Ross. All that backstory, the actors' incredible on screen chemisty, how popular they both were. It was no-brainer. They teased it a few times and then quickly ditched it every time. One of the great might have beens of GL. Oh, God, YES. Sorry, Ross/Rachel, Big/Carrie, and Josh/Reva lovers, but the knee-jerk compulsion to bring toxic couples together for a finale is one of the worst examples of fan service out there. Maybe Josh and Reva weren't exactly TOXIC, but their expiration date was LONG past. (Unlike, for example, Ross and Vanessa, who could have had years more life to their pairing)

Another attempt to save the show, desperately looking for that magic bullet. This was definitely not it. I don't even know why you would want to give up the "oldest show" mantle. It's not like being "young" helped the newer soaps survive.

WOW. I can't believe they had the chutzpah to ask her. Good for her telling them to pound sand. (Figuratively, if not explicitly).

I always assumed that AW was killed by NBC, not P&G. Weren't they were clearing the way for another soap? Passions or Sunset Beach? I don't remember which one. That was the scuttlebutt, so definitely, it could have been an exaggeration. For a long time I didn't believe it. I really did not believe they would toss ATWT. It just seemed... so wrong. GL was going through so much mess and turmoil, it seemed much more inevitable, but I was sure ATWT would survive. When it happened, I assumed the story about P&G wanting out of their soap gig was true. He was and remains the Devil to me. He did so much to harm the genre.

This is absolutely true. I was a teen when they introduced Katherine on Y&R and I LOVED HER CHARACTER! I was on her side, not Jill's, even though she was my contemporary. When GH became so popular with college students, I think they didn't realize it was a thing for students to watch the show together at the student union or watch together in other groups (I did this with friends). When they left college and started working, they lost interest. I was always a soap viewer from a young age, so I kept watching. My sister was devoted to GH during those years. As soon as she left school, she lost interest. When I tried to catch her up on the show, she was like, "Oh, that. I'm too busy to pay attention to that now." I think that was not unusual for that generation of viewers. It wasn't like the old days, when, once hooked on a show, people would keep watching.

Something a lot of people forget is that P&G wanted to get out of the soap opera biz. (Which is why I was SHOCKED when I found out BTG is a P&G soap). The networks also had decided that soaps were too expensive, that it was much cheaper to produce game/talk/lifestyle shows. They weren't totally wrong about that. During the 80s and early 90s, soaps became very opulent, with frequent location shoots, huge casts, storylines that required big, grand scenes, and stars who got big money. But as soap viewing habits changed, they couldn't sustain it. Instead of rethinking soaps, maybe going back to a simpler way of making them (like perhaps reducing them to half an hour), they just decided to ditch them. Over at ABC, it is my belief that Brian Frons was hired basically to sabotage their soaps. AMC and OLTL didn't die. They were killed. Yes, what they did with GL the last few years reeked of desperation, (and yes, a lot of it turned out awful) but at least they were trying to find some way to save it. They had nothing left but experimentation, and it's possible they could have eventually found the way for soaps into the future. Wheeler made the same mistakes a lot of other shows made, i.e. taking focus away from vets for younger characters. But the vets cost more, and bean counters are going to bean count. I think most of the people working on it knew how dire the situation was and that's why they agreed to pay cuts. They were trying to save their show! KZ, being in her 50s and thinking she still should be the star of the show (IMO, soaps are better when they are an ensemble) is kind of insane. Maybe she was thinking of the grand dames of the older soaps, like Mary Stuart. But they played matriarchs, and she never really wanted to play that part, she still wanted to be the romantic lead. If she had gone along with everyone else, would it have saved the show? Extremely unlikely. The soaps were in a death spiral, so no one can blame her for that. But it doesn't make her look very good.

You're not asking me, but I'll tell you, anyway. Judith Light. She was amazing at these kinds of scenes. At the opposite end, Sara Felder on Ryan's Hope. Even though I liked her as Siobhan, every time she started to cry, I would be like, "Oh, God, lower the volume." 😁

They were a perfect example of how soaps sabotage themselves by having "bad" characters doing extreme things for a short-term shock factor. If he hadn't deliberately caused the death of her baby, they could have been one of the most amazing soap couples. Their chemistry was off the charts. My mom and I at the time were like, "Nooooo, they can't get together, but OMG, if only it could be plausible that they get together!" They could have had him do plenty of villainous stuff without crossing that line. It boggles the mind that no one stopped to think this was a bad idea. You had two incredibly attractive, sexy actors with obvious chemistry. His character's whole schtick was hating the brother who had everything HE wanted. Of course he would want his woman, too! And then genuinely falling for her? It's a classic trope and the kind of thing viewers eat up with a spoon. But at that point it was too icky to become a long-term story.

There are writers whose work I love on one show but find their work on another show abysmal. There are probably a lot of factors that can cause this phenomenon: who the EP is, the network it's on, if they have to deal with a sponsor, what condition the show is in when they take over, if there's a big star's ego that needs to be accomodated, etc. I loved AW during the Harding Lemay years but never saw another soap he wrote that I thought was any good.

This is funny to me because I deeply resented Long back in the day. In hindsight, I feel that I was very unfair to her. For one thing, some of the decisions that upset me were probably not hers. We know a lot of the firings were Kobe's work. When she was left alone to do her thing she could write very good stories. The women characters were much more complex and interesting than they were under Marland. She was very good at using backstory to propel and enhance the present story. She created some incredible characters, like Billy, Mindy, and Alex. We ding Zimmer here incessantly, but as long as Reva was just one of an ensemble, I really enjoyed her character. When she left the first time, the drop in quality in the show was SO apparent. So, yeah, I feel now like she deserves credit for keeping GL up there, and certainly was not the villain who crashed it.

I think her FEELINGS were 100% valid. She had every right to be upset and angry. Oprah was also being totally unprofessional. She should not have been fangirling over the ABC people. The way she handled it was wrong, though. Not just unprofessional, but kind of childish. What she should have done was gotten the attention of the producer (who was also not doing their job) during one of the breaks and complained. That would have solved the issue without histrionics.

Huh? I never got that impression from Billy and Reva. They always played to me like he had been Reva's consolation prize because she couldn't have Josh. (Don’t even get me started on the HB thing). Confirmation? 😂 Was he on the show for so long because SHE liked him? O.K., I doubt she had THAT much power, but if by his own admission he couldn't act the part, why was he kept in the role for 15 years? SO unprofessional. Good grief.

Thanks to all who helped fill in Dinah's origin. I found another source that said Gatti started June 1986, so me thinking she encountered GA's Phillip in one of her first scenes is obviously some kind of brain blip on my part. It's hard to know what was intended because one writer may have planned for Dinah to be their daughter and another for it to be Jessie. Is there any other character who went through more personality flips than Dinah? She starts as the tough runaway orphan with Gatti, then is recast with Paige Turco and becomes a sweet ingenue. Then she's written out and her personality changes AGAIN when she comes back. I believe she changed even more times after that. So weird.

This show desperately needs some love stories. Two people meeting, having sex, and announcing they are a couple within days is not a story. MAYBE they plan something to happen to turn it into a story, but the joy of watching a soap love story is the longing, the obstacles, the build up to WANTING to see them get together. Perhaps this is going to be a blip, with Chelsea disillusioned again, which may lead to an actual big romance for her. I hope so, because this by itself isn't very compelling.

Uh... Garrett aged beautifully, WTH was she talking about? That's nice to know about Beverlee. It's tough to be a woman, especially an older woman, in the industry, but there are examples that show you don't have to be a jerk to thrive.

Had some thoughts watching the return of RN/Josh: Dammit. Josh and Reva work. There's just no denying it. There's incredible chemistry. The emotions between them seem honest and real. It's not surprising they were a thing through the rest of the life of the show. That said: Josh is not, never has been, and never will be the sharpest tool in the shed. 😂 The least surprising thing ever is him walking right into the villain's lair. The guy's practically wearing a sign that says, "I'm the bad guy." I like how strong they made Mindy in the post-Kurt's death era. O.K., jumping an armed assassin was a little over the top, but she seemed to grow up finally and it looked good on her. As much as it ticked off the Kyle fans, and how this was dictated by Malloy's upcoming exit, I really like that Reva stayed so firm about breaking off with him. No wavering, no doubt that she wants to be with Josh. If they had gone the love triangle route, she probably would have been more wishy-washy about it. The other stories: ugh. Billy wanting to divorce Vanessa to save their marriage is so stupid. The high school crap, the young adult crap--yeah, they wanted to attract younger viewers, but this wasn't the way to do it. I forgot that Dina had been in the show for quite some time before the reveal she was Vanessa and Ross's daughter. I could be misremebering this, but I thought one of Dina's earliest scenes was with Phillip while he was still played by Grant Alexander, and now he's about to return to the show and they still haven't had the reveal. Maybe someone can correct or confirm that? Now I'm wondering if Dina was always meant to be their daughter. Who knows with the zillion writer changes.

MAYBE what possibly happened is they decided to give the story they would have given to Kyle to Alan instead. It could have just as easily been Kyle who dicked around with the DNA tests, who could have brought Sonni back and conspired with her to keep Reva and Josh apart. It saved them from a possible unsuccessful recast and they also saved money on another major character. (The irony is Bernau had to leave and they ended up with an unsuccessful recast with Pilon, but no one would have foreseen that). I don't think there was anyone in the audience who wanted Reva and Alan together, while Reva and Kyle had a fanbase. But without Malloy, that could have changed. Which could be another reason why the decided not to bring Kyle back. I never understood why they didn't do a Josh/Reva/Kyle triangle. Seemed like a no-brainer. But if Malloy wanted to leave, that explains it. My mom was the one watching the show more regularly than me at the time, so I could have been going on what she recounted to me. Memory is a funny thing!

When Maeve was on AW, she was not a star. Angie was an expendable character, while ES and KZ were the de facto stars of their respective shows. Maeve wasn't a diva or a star, but she was a popular entity on GL, so the power dynamic had changed. That may have been another reason she agreed to return.

I never doubted that Blake really loved Ross, but she sure did love living on the edge. 😂 I hope you get around to seeing the 80s version of Alan, particularly his dealings with Roger back in the day. It's not that Alan was a good guy back then, but he was far more complex and not a cartoon villain, and Bernau's portrayal was iconic, just like Zaslow's. It was amazing to watch the two of them go against each other. Ron Raines' version of Alan was not great. You have to partly blame the writing for the character, but Raines IMO wasn't up to the task. Never could understand how he lasted that long in the role.

They got SO far away from Beth in the latter part of BC's run. You can make the argument that Beth had gone through some serious trauma, which could have explained some of the things she did. It was just weird that Beth went from the ideal girl next door to an extremely neurotic woman with a very problematic love life. Hmmm... this puts an interesting light on something else she mentioned in the Locher Room. She said Elvera Roussel came up to her and said, "Don't worry, this is the NICE soap opera set." (Something like that). I wonder if she meant that she didn't need to worry about that kind of thing at GL.

After all his wailing over his son and how important it was to be a present father, he basically abandons him. They put the character in a coma to explain why he wasn't in SF questioning the paternity of Reva's baby (they had Sally take over that task). And how close he and Billy supposedly were...they could have handled it so much better. They should have just killed him off (which they did eventually off screen). !!!! That whole thing was a total abomination. Maybe she wanted to showcase her singing? (But she's not being judge as a singer... I don't get it). Interesting how she talked about the year being hard--probably a reference to the EP change/multiple writer changes. Couldn't have been easy for any of the cast and crew. Yes. We did. Honestly, though, I personally hated the time travel story a lot more. Having Alan and Olivia turn up as Nazis in the past was so gross. The big lesson she learned from that experience? "Trust your heart." 🤢 These storylines were just a way to have her suck up a lot air time. Reva was Where Is Waldoing all over the place during her first absence. They couldn't just have her wash up on the Florida coast with amnesia. NO, she had to end up as the princess of a fictional kingdom and then go Amish! (Not to be pedantic, but it was Reva's mom Sara who insisted she saw Reva in the Italian travelogue).

Oh, no--it's mere MINUTES after dumping Kyle at the wedding. She's still in her wedding get-up when she's calling out for Joshua! It had to be close because of the upcoming who's the daddy story, but the fact that she goes from being madly in love with Kyle to being madly in love with Josh in a New York minute is wild. If it had been revenge sex, or Reva had mixed up the dates of her cycle, that would have made more sense. But it's like they were saying to the audience, "Hey, we were just kidding with this Kyle/Reva thing, that was a placeholder until we could get Robert Newman back!"

So I'm watching the episode with the car crash that kills Chelsea's fiancee--and who should turn up as a nurse at Cedars but Fiona Hutchinson! I had no idea she was on the show before playing Jenna. They really tried to sell Chelsea as the "wild" Reardon, and she turned out to be pretty dull. 😂 The other funny thing about this episode was Reva and Kyle planning their wedding, with two of Reva's ex-husbands in the wedding party. Totally normal!

Even though I watched many of these episodes going all the way back to the late 1970s, it's weird now to see how many characters are in scenes compared to soaps today. They have literal crowds of non-speaking extras in scenes sometimes. There are way more minor speaking parts. I feel like saying, "Are you sure you can afford all those people?" 😁