vetsoapfan

Right. We were used to Nola's skewered version of events. Speaking of that, while I adored Dorothy Malone, I thought Lola Albright did a fine job as a temporary recast. I agree. We expected a bunch of new faces before the show even premiered. Viewers who didn't want to accept that, just wouldn't even watch in the first place.

When even TPTB were in on the joke, winking at the audience (no one in the world would use such a line, ever, LOL), it was hard to be mad at the show for a moment of harmless silliness.

I'm glad you are enjoying this thread as much as I am. Ben Andrews, who played the Tate twins was sexy as hell. Benny Tate (the "good" twin) had a terminal illness and died tragically after marrying Allison McKenzie, and then Jason (the "bad" one) hooked poor Allison on drugs. The show's writing was tepid during the first several months, but then it picked up dramatically and the ratings began to rise with it. I had wanted Mike and Constance to get together in the original primetime series (they had great chemistry), and I was interested to see them finally consummate their feelings on daytime. The actor who played Elliot on RTPP was too stodgy for me. Kathy Glass sued the network because her dyed-blonde hair began falling out in clumps. Susan Brown had similar agony because of the dying process on her hair. I preferred Glass in the role of Allison, but Susan Shoop ended up being fine. Yes, the Nola/Vanessa catfight was played for laughs on purpose and therefore did not come across as contrived and forced as many of the more "serious" soap battles of the day.

That "reunion" catfight was contrived, forced, unrealistic and STOOPID.

Believe me, people were vehement about getting answers way back then, too.🙃

I have a gut feeling that the audience of the primetime version would have rebelled at seeing a recast Allison, since Mia Farrow owned that role so well. Still, the daytime soap had two different actresses portray the part, and I was okay with them both. Maybe because most of the cast was made up of replacement actors. I don't know how I would have reacted to a "fake" Allison playing opposite Dorothy Malone.

I'd say it started to peter out at the very end, and certain cast changes damaged the tone, but particularly in its early years, it was lushly done (great direction and camera work) and very absorbing. It certainly had fans talking for a long time, and there was a lot of interest in finding out what had happened to her. I think it was a mistake to drop Connie and Elliot from the show without any resolution to their daughter's story, however. Or they had popular characters just cease to appear or even exist all of a sudden, often for years on end (Tommy Horton, Carl Williams, Ellen Stewart...). The lack of explanation or closure always vexes me.

It was such a bizarre way to write her out. She just wandered around town for a while and then headed up a long road and disappeared from Peyton Place forever. People theorized to me, upon watching her final episode, that perhaps Allison had had some sort of break with reality and was in a fugue state. I'd point out the lack of build-up to such a scenario, but the character did seem "off" in her final moments. It was quite haunting, and the original series' never providing any definitive answers or closure left everyone I know frustrated. The daytime soap Return to Peyton Place, the 1977 TV movie Murder in Peyton Place, and the 1985 TV movie movie Peyton Place: The Next Generation all gave different resolutions to the Allison question. I'd say that The Next Generation's explanation was the best one that could have been done, considering the respect it gave to the character and the sweet flashbacks used.

ITA. The clear usage of body doubles in stunts was something we all noticed and usually kvetched about, but accepted as just par for the course. Monica Quartermaine fell down the stairs in the Q mansion once, on GH, and we could easily tell the stunt woman was wearing knee pads (they were HUGE, LOL). It was hilarious. Yes, and that cartoonish, drag-queen type catfight ended up permeating every soap. I didn't find it effective or character-driven most of the time; such fights generally looked contrived and tacky to me. NOW, that being said, in this scene from AW in 1973 (which starts around the 42:09 mark), I was hoping to see a real, knock-down-drag-out brawl, with both Alice and Aunt Liz opening up a fresh can of whup-a$$ on Rachel's sorry behind. That conflict had been five years in the making, and Rachel getting her comeuppance would have been well-motivated, deserved, and soooo satisfying. (This scene is one that actually made me scream, "You BITCH!!!" at the television, LOL). Also, in the 1970s on OLTL, Dorian Cramer (later Lord) had accidentally killed a patient, but Larry Wolek ended up being accused of the crime. Dorian was eventually outed as the culprit and her reputation in town was destroyed. She insanely held a grudge against Larry (!!!) for her downfall, and thirsted for vengeance for years. Cut to Viki's murder trial in 1979, when Karen Wolek broke down on the witness stand and confessed to having been a prostitute. A triumphant Dorian took this as her golden opportunity to finally get back at Larry, Karen's husband. With a member of the board in tow, Dorian marched over to the hospital and proceeded to change the locks on Larry's office door, in preparation to have him kicked out and removed from his position as chief of staff. Karen found her there and demanded to know what the hell Dorian was doing. Dorian crowed, "I am removing your husband from this hospital. He has been asking for it for a long, long time!" Karen silently lowered her head, like a bull setting its sights on its target, and replied in a deadly-calm voice, "So...have...YOU!" Then she pounced on Dorian and let her have it. The sounds of Dorian's shocked, "Oh! Oh! OHHHH!" were exhilarating! I started jumping up and down and cheering. It was great! OMG! Thank you so much for the kind words.😚 I'm humbled and blushing.🫠 You know whom to come to, if you ever need a kidney!

All the remaining soaps have a number of burned out and/or irrelevant characters who could easily be axed ASAP, but you are right: GH has a TON. It's baffling. I'd want to quickly discard a huge swath of them and refocus the show on true (present and past) legacy characters with roots in the show's DNA.

You are absolutely right. I had just rewatched the following clip on youtube, too, so I don't why I had a brain glitch and referred to the lily pond scene. Probably because that fight might be the most infamous. Anyway, yes, the studio battle was the one I should have said felt well earned I apologize for the "senior moment."

It's interesting that up to 80% of true crime viewers are said to be women. It's...curious that up to half of the audience watching gay porn is also said to be straight women, LOL.🤔🫢

Yes, the show later became known for the super-couple and Reilly material, but whether that was to DAYS' credit or to its detriment is open to debate. The once intelligent, sophisticated and adult soap was vastly altered to the point of being unrecognizable. Depending on how the super-couple material was handled, I could deal with it to an extent, but I loathed the Reilly era with every fiber of my being. It's what finally me turn away from DAYS in disgust. I think giving the unsung heroes of daytime the recognition and credit they deserve is long overdue. I'll add Nancy Curlee to this list, although at least she has been acknowledge before, more than the likes of Lakin and Edelstein.

I think by then, many soaps just threw anything and everything at the wall to see what stuck. All it made was a god-awful mess.

I also thought Rita Lakin and (particularly) Rick Edelstein wrote their soaps quite well, and they are not spoken about a lot, either. While the hacks always stand out in our minds, we've had many unheralded, quality scribes in daytime TV as well. Even if no soap has been well written in many years, viewers were spoiled way back when!

To be fair, there are some catfights that are logical and justifiable, based on established history and characterization. Those are few and far between, however. The majority of them are artificially contrived and forced, thrown into shows gratuitously to get attention. That's why they have become redundant and boring, if not outright childish and stupid. I would say that the first catfight between Krystle and Alexis (in the lily pond) was earned. The endless follow-ups, not so much. I remember that! Unfortunately, although Soapdish was a comedy/parody, daytime TV really has foisted some heinously absurd plots on us. That was one time a soap made it work. Under Gordon Russell, Sam Hall and Don Wallace, OLTL's grasp on characters and its ability to write natural dialogue pulled it off. People spoke the way...people speak, and behaved realistically and well in character. Fans don't often list that writing team among the greats like Phillips, Nixon, Bell, Lemay, Slesar, etc., but those scribes were experts at their craft.

Good point: the back-from-the-dead plots are bad enough when the characters in question have only been presumed dead, but these stories are significantly worse (more idiotic and damaging) when the characters have literally died, for real, in front of our eyes, and then been brought back to life through impossible hocus pocus trickery.

I could have written this entire post, line by line, myself. You have encapsulated my thoughts perfectly. Bravo. I agree the last year DAYS was written well was 1982 under Pat Falken Smith. Did you ever read the interview with Joseph Mascolo, who bluntly said, "When Pat Falken Smith left the show, she took the quality of the writing with her"...? Subsequent writers really turned Mascolo's character into a cartoon villain, an unrealistic buffoon. Others can correct me if I am wrong, but I believe Julie Williams is the only legacy character who has never been presumed dead.

Even a nominal perusal of the history of our culture confirms the popularity of "junk" entertainment. Masterpieces like St. Elsewhere and The Wire languished in ratings hell while The Kardashians and The Jerry Springer Show drew massive audiences. I'm convinced that a huge segment of the public just doesn't like to think; they don't want to be intellectually challenged. They gravitate towards popcorn entertainment that allows them to turn off their brains and "veg out" in front of the TV. Starting way back in the era of radio soaps, critics went out of their way to denigrate the soaps and demean the (mainly female) audience. One critic wrote that the soaps were written for "slack-jawed housewives who can't be bothered to change out of their bathrobes, get off their sofas, or put down the chocolate bon-bons." It was clear that such critics were trying to elevate themselves ("Look how intellectually superior we are!") by vilifying others who "dared" to appreciate an art form the critics neither watched nor understood. I am sure the intense hatred for the soaps and their audience was rooted in misogyny. I have experienced this phenomenon as well: people who mocked daytime TV for being boring, poorly done, and devoid of substance. It was an opinion based on second-hand condemnation of the soaps by other folks who didn't have any knowledge of the genre, either. One of my friends had a long-term medical issue at one point, and was relegated to staying on the couch or in his bed for a few months. Then he started watching General Hospital with his girlfriend. She had not been involved with that show as long as I had, so pretty soon he was calling me and asking all sorts of history questions and for my opinions on current plots. He was AGHAST when BJ died and her heart went to Maxie. He said watching Lucy, Felicia, Bobbie and especially Tony break down just stunned him. ("Have soaps ever been this powerful before?" YEEEEES!) Prejudice of daytime TV is borne from sheer ignorance, like any other form of bigotry. Right, but the challenge is in getting new viewers to give soaps a fair try. People who think the WWE is the greatest thing since sliced bread are not always open to sampling The Young and the Restless, LOL. I agree. That formula has decimated the genre, and it's long past time to discard it.

To me, Love of Life disintegrated pretty quickly after Claire Labine left, but I must say that the scenes with Lynn and the baby were very effective. Primarily because the young actress playing Lynn was good, but also because that baby screamed and cried and screamed and cried FOREVER. It wasn't faked or staged, either. The poor kid was going mental on camera, and it wouldn't stop. My sister asked more than once, "How on earth did they make that child scream like that?" I was actually concerned for the kid.

Years later, I stumbled across a documentary on PBS (I think), with a television analyst discussing trends on TV throughout the years. She said that the audience attracted to the camp craze on soaps was not made up of tried-and-true soap loyalists, but just temporary viewers who were looking for a quick fix of silly madness to enjoy. They ultimately were not prepared to spend five hours a day, forever, to watch soaps, however, so they abandoned the genre and went on to find other forms of entertainment to satiate their interests. The problem then was that the soaps had alienated regular daytime drama fans who couldn't stand watching the drivel of the past few years. They, too, had moved on to other viewing choices. It was a lose-lose situation for daytime TV.

YES!!! 👏👍👏👍👏 Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes! I have staunchly made these exact same points for over 40 years, ever since the idiotic Ice Princess/The Cassadines Freeze the World crap on GH opened the floodgates to the low-brow, cartoonish camp stories which ended up permeating daytime TV. I knew that insane clown plots would garner temporary interest from outsiders, the media and kids, but not the dedicated, already-loyal and emotionally-invested viewers who had loved and stuck with soaps throughout their lives. They watched for vastly different reasons; not to laugh at the latest, outrageous stunts. It took a while (TPTB are nothing if not dogged in their determination to beat dead horses into the ground), but the cringeworthy camp phase did end up making a huge swath of the audience drift away from soaps, and the ratings plummeted. The damage is still being felt to this day, but at least sci-fi/supernatural plots are not at the forefront of the shows anymore. With Ron Carlivati gone, hopefully even DAYS won't be resorting to another devil possession.

I turned away from DAYS the moment I saw Marlena levitating above her bed. I just couldn't stand it. The DAYS I loved had been adult, subtle, layered and grounded in reality. The show I knew and the character of Marlena, were destroyed for me that day. And I must say, watching Marlena "murder" beloved characters (especially Alice Horton) was so morally repulsive, it made me sick. I have no problem with shows telling campy, absurd, supernatural based stories if they were conceived and introduced to do so. But, IMHO, inflicting this onto once-erudite and serious soaps destroys their DNA in a way from which they never recover. I do not want to see the Great Gazoo floating around Maggie Smith's head on Downton Abbey and taking her on trips to visit Dr. Who, LOL.

The problem is now widespread. With spoilers so prevalent in the media, whatever you want to watch (soaps, primetime TV, movies) is bound to be spoiled anywhere/everywhere, often immediately upon its release and before many people even get a chance to see it. If you dare turn on the TV or radio, and if you dare surf the internet, you will be hit by spoilers even if you actively strive to avoid them. Many folks spread spoilers on purpose, for fun, which is so annoying. Unfortunately for me, I only forget all the painfully bad, unforgettable moments...which I would never want to watch again, anyway. Great material, worth rewatching, would hold no surprises for me.

I thought about giving BTG a try when it was first announced, but I guess a combination of being really busy and having been burned out by decades of bitter disappointment in modern soap opera style, kept me from delving into the show. I'm glad you are enjoying it, though. I really do want the soap format to survive and thrive, and hopefully make a strong comeback. Laura was a pain in the butt when she was a teenager. She was arbitrary, touchy, headstrong and refused to deal with conflict like an adult, even though she demanded to be treated like one. That being said, the character was a very recognizable and realistic teenager like we have all encountered and known in our lives. Bobbie truly felt that she was better for Scotty than Laura was, and she wasn't totally wrong for believing this, considering how Laura ended up betraying her true-blue young husband and running off with a hoodlum rapist. The fact that characters were drawn in shades of gray, and made you root for them as well as want to smack some sense into them at other times, made the soaps much more compelling and believable. Neither woman was totally innocent/blameless in any of this, and we could understand the motivations driving them both, so our loyalties and opinions could shift from time to time, which kept us on our toes and the show engrossing. The fact that Jill and Katherine ended up hating AND loving each other lead to an endlessly fascinating roundelay of emotions for the audience to enjoy. Having Phillip later turn up alive, and having hidden himself for years to cover his sexual orientation, was a cheap and tacky (i.e. ridiculous) choice, but it could never erase the years of fine drama that had preceded it. James Reilly just left a bitter taste in my mouth, and I loathed basically everything he did on the soaps, but I recognize he had his admirers. I've just never been able to tolerate unbelievable camp and fantasy on soaps, which destroy the "reality bubble." The soaps in the 1970s were surprisingly frank in their depiction of mature, adult storylines and sexuality. It's so weird that they became much more conservative and restricted in later years.