Tisy-Lish

Well, the head writer obviously knows nothing about writing romance. He writes couples, but there is nothing romantic about them. They just pair-up for a year or so, and then move on to somebody else. He needs to give us a couple of long-term romantic pairings that struggle to get together, and make mistakes despite their deep love for one another -- couples like Victor and Nicki used to be, or like Doug and Julie, Bill and Laura, Alice and Steve, Rachel and Mac, Holden and Lilly, Tara and Phil, etc, etc. Everything this dude writes is so superficial and lacks any kind of depth. Even his silly business plots aren't really plots -- they are just musical chairs for who is CEO here, or there, and then over there.

Understand. But actually Patti should have been a generation older than Liza. Patti and Janet Bergman (Liza's mother) had been contemporaries a decade earlier. So when they cast Jacqueline Schultz as Patti, most long-term fans felt it did not ring true. Sometimes de-aging a character by a few years is successful on soap operas. But to de-age a character by an entire generation was silly and stretched believability a bit too far.

Understand your point. But I usually see Reginald's mustache twirling villainy as ultra campy bordering on comedic (albeit unsuccessfully). And upon Reginald's exit, most of the overt camp/comedy seemed to cease. And although I'm aware camp and comedy are not exactly the same thing, I tend to throw them together anyway -- especially when discussing soaps. You are correct, Mary was not played for laughs. When I used to term "let's play everything for laughs" I didn't mean literally everything or every character was comedic. But TPTB put so much effort into comedy, it did tend to eat the show for a few years (again not literally). I'm just expressing my perspective on the topic, and lots of folks probably disagree. That's cool. People who like comedy on soaps tend to defend it, and folks who don't like comedy (or think it want too far) tend to criticize it. Whichever side of the fence one is on, it sure didn't help the ratings on AW.

Doesn't matter if its off topic. No need to point it out. Things will get back on topic soon enough. They always do . . . And I do love the off topic photos from the Bill Bell era! So thanks.

Sure! And we promise, Mr Corday -- we will ridicule those wonderful old episodes daily on social media. NOT!

I would say, Denise was the ONLY good thing about that insultingly ridiculous plot. But all this took place near the end of Another World's "let's play everything for laughs" era. Thank God that nonsense ended around 1988.

Oh yes, that would be grand! But Ken Corday will never allow that. No executive-producer wants to hear people rave about how good his show "used to be". Thank you for sharing that information. I barely remember that plot, but it was so significant in DOOL's history. Ramifications went on for years and years.

Thank you for the clarification, but Susan didn't name her child after David. It was Julie who named her own son David. And how/when was Susan's son killed? And didn't Susan kill David Martin and stand trial for his murder? The genius of Bill Bell -- truly.

Oh my -- long time ago, huh?? What was the actual storyline? Here's what I recall: Susan was married to David Martin and had his baby, Dickie. David allowed Dickie to fall off a swing-set or something, and Dickie was killed. So a distraught Susan shot and killed David. Julie had been having sex with David Martin, and was pregnant with his child when Susan killed him. Then Julie named her newborn child David. And that was really what began the big feud between Susan and Julie. I KNOW I have a lot of this history wrong -- so anyone please feel free to correct my historical errors. I would appreciate that very much. Now back to Denise's Another World connection. Although I loved Denise as an actress, I was never crazy about Mary McKinnon. Mostly because of her completely unbelievable introduction -- two back-from-the-dead characters returning in the SAME storyline. It seemed ridiculous, and was just a bit too much for me to accept.

I hate quick snip scenes. Such a tired hold-over from the 1980s. And that nonsense does not belong on BTG. Bring back the long scenes.

Does anyone know which head writer introduced the Marriott family? That is about the time I noticed something important had changed in the writing for Love of Life. Everything was really falling apart, and I could hardly get through an episode. But I will admit, Hugh Marlowe's son was a beautiful man. He played the Marriott son, maybe his name was Andy. Not sure.

According to the head writer list, it seems the show may have started to fall apart while either the Schneiders or Upton were writing. And when it started to crumble, it crumbled fast. It was sad to see everything Labine had brought to LOL be disassembled.

Total agreement. But wasn't AW wonderful with all those servants? Louise, Brooks, Rocky, Karl (never seen), Beatrice, Helga, Sven, Vivian, etc. None of the post-Lemay servants ever seemed to resonate, nor did any of them last very long. I do think BTG would benefit from casting at least one servant for Anita and Vernon. And perhaps another for Nicole and Ted. The show needs more have-nots for the different perspective.

To each his own, but I am lovin' the Duprees. Doesn't mean the show is perfect, but the Duprees are not the problem.

If I'm not mistaken, much of this took place while Claire Labine was writing LOL -- and believe me, it was a very compelling show! Probably the best soap on the air during Labine's short tenure as head-writer. I assume Labine left LOL to create Ryan's Hope in 1975, but much of the action your describe seems to be her work. Not sure why -- maybe some dates are off.

Too bad Anne Meacham is no longer living. Wouldn't it be great to see Louise Goddard appear as Anita and Vernon's housekeeper????

Not trying to be a contrarian, but I don't think the show needs a rival family. Rival families have been over-done on soaps since the 1980s. And it might make the show too predictable. I'd prefer they beef-up the have-not group with perhaps a couple of workers from the Country Club and one or two Dupree servants, joining the existing group of have-nots. They could all know one another without being a real "family." That would give the audience more opportunity to see Fairmont Crest life from the "backstairs." To me this would be a far more interesting perspective than another wealthy family to rival the Duprees.

I'm wondering if the writers are going to un-do their gayness. Tessa has been flirting like crazy with Daniel, and it's a pretty good guess that Mariah may have had sex with a man and might even be pregnant. Could the network be pressuring the show to make them bi, or maybe even straight? I know there is political pressure on all kinds of major companies to down-play gay stuff these days. I hope this isn't the plan for Mariah and Tessa, but frankly it wouldn't surprise me.

Perhaps. But would anyone have wanted The Doctors to turn into what General Hospital ultimately became? Dear God in Heaven...

Yes, I think that is the most likely situation. TPTB were unhappy with the offer(s) they got from the tourism board in Finland, and decided the trip was going to be too expensive for P&G/NBC to finance alone. I would also speculate a similar situation likely occurred a few years later with the planned location shoot in Egypt, which was also cancelled after the storyline had already started, and changed to Arizona.

My comment has nothing to do with cast resentment, but does relate to the Finland location shoot: It may be a coincidence, but Jim Matthews died in Finland in 1982. Hugh Marlowe's final episode was in April 1982, but the character probably didn't die untll May or June. (I'm unable to find the character's date of death, only the date of Marlowe's final episode). SInce Jim and Rachel had very little interaction after around 1975, it is unlikely Jim's death in Finland had any connection to Rachel's potential visit, but the choice to have Jim die in that location at that time is a head-scratcher. I'm sure the writers sent Jim on an extended trip (and off-screen) because of Marlowe's illness. But Finland seems like a strange choice considering the (then) recently cancelled location shoot.

Exactly when did Ada's kitchen become the "centerpiece of the action"? And which set was the centerpiece of the action before that??? Another World premiered in 1963, and Ada didn't even arrive until 1967. And then, Ada and Rachel lived in a small apartment. A couple of years later, Ada married Ernie Downs and moved into his house. So the kitchen so identified with Ada, was actually in the house Ada inherited from her husband Ernie after he died. I'd suggest Ada's kitchen did not become the centerpiece of the action (if it ever was) until around the time Mary Matthews died, and Rachel began her romance with her second millionaire husband, MacKenzie Cory. Others might disagree, but that doesn't offend me in the least.

Mitch, thanks for that history of the Reardon Boarding House kitchen. I had always assumed that every time the kitchen set returned, it was a recreation of the original set. So I have been wrong about that. Was the kitchen set ever used later, while Buzz and the Coopers owned the boarding house?

Terrific ideas -- but would Mike and Nancy's great-grandson bear the last name Dallas? Yuck. Any way we could make him a Karr? And in a similar vein, how could Bill and Martha's granddaughter bear the name Marceau? I love the idea of continuing the Karr, Marceau, Hillyer, and Drake legacies, but if the new characters do not use the familiar last names, the effort to connect them to the past is rather fruitless. Just my personal observation.

I don't mind a watermark, if it identifies the true owner of the rights to the property. But if it's just the person who happens to have the physical video or photo, it seems very odd. Even if they paid for it to add to their collection, that person doesn't own the copyright or the trademark. And I do remember finding it strange that by late 1972, Ada still had both a kitchen and a living room, while Mary and Jim now just had a living room. And this was three years before Rachel even started to reform, when the Matthews family was still very much front and center.