vetsoapfan

I've always contended that it was the intimate, personal, theatrical quality of soaps that first attracted audiences to soaos, and kept us glued to them for the first sevveral decades f their existence. Even stereotypical storylines can be elevated by fine, perceptive dialogue writing. When WAS the last time we had that?

100%.👏👍 Even the worst of the 1970s was better than what soap viewers have had to endure in later decades. What's most egregious is, standards have deteriorated to the point that even damaging soap-hacks like Hogan Sheffer, Ron Carlivati and Jean Passanante have won awards for their material!

Yes, both TGL and ATWT saw some weak years in the 1970s, but at least the shows were not both atrocious at the same time. TGL's initial slump occurred in the early part of the decade, while ATWT's first decline happened towards the end. Both soaps had been doing quite well before then, and both rebounded, more or less, within a few years. Compare that to later on, when TGL remained in the toilet from the mid-1990s to its cancellation in 2009 (after recovering briefly from a horrific run in the '80s), and ATWT was weak-to-awful from 1993 to its death in 2010. The fact that Chris Goutman was allowed to remain at ATWT from 1999 to 2010, despite his atrocious handling of the series, astounds me. ATWT's being saddled with writers such as Stern and Black, Leah Laiman, Hogan Sheffer and Jean Passanante, and TGL's misfortune in having the likes of Jeff Ryder and Ellen Weston as scribes? Yikes! Only the enduring loyalty of die-hard fans helped these soaps survive (if on life support) as long as they did.

Well, that's is what I meant, yes. A vintage soap magazine once posted something like, his work on The Doctors was not Marland at his best, but it was better than the garbage he inherited. Even watching the show live at the time, I think I overvalued Marland's contribution to TD, mainly because it was not as god-awful as what had come before him. I always wonder how much of the weak material we see from otherwise-gifted writers is the result of network and sponsor tampering and interference. Pat Falken Smith should not have been as bad on Ryan's Hope as she was. Claire Labine's material on TGL was mysteriously subpar. Ditto Lemay's on The Doctors. Many esteemed scribes have openly spoken about the interference from TPTB which hindered their work at one time or another. Poor production values and a largely-mediocre cast only make the situation worse. We were offered a lot of great drama in the 1950s and '60s, but yes: I do think the soaps reached their creative peak in the 1970s. The science-fiction dreck, the dismissal of the vets, the low-brow camp, the characters being reduced to caricatures, and the shallow focus on glam, glitz, temper tantrums and adolescent antic severely crippled the genre in the 1980s. It has never recovered, IMHO. In the golden days of the 1970s, I didn't appreciate how blessed we, the viewers, were.

I agree about Lakin's and Edelstein's work on The Doctors. While IMHO, Marland's material on The Doctors did not really jell as well as fans of his later work would have thought, I will admit that his writing for TD was still better than many of that show's other scribes (before and after his tenure). Interesting, Harding Lemay's work on TD was a snooze-fest as well.🤔

Anne Howard Bailey got the axe about halfway through the run of the series. NBC replaced her and the executive producer, and dropped some actors. The surge in quality, from AHB's material to Rick Edelstein's, was instantaneous and even exhilarating to me, but NBC had clearly given up on HTSAM. I knew it was a lost cause, once I heard it was being moved to an earlier timeslot, competing directly against ATWT. In the early 1970s, TIIC at NBC had launched four soaps in the late-afternoon (Somerset, Bright Promise, Return to Peyton Place and HTSAM), all of which were saddled with terrible writing from the start. Each one later fired their original scribes and hired newer and significantly better ones, but even though all four soaps improved significantly and became quite compelling, I think viewers were too burned out to give new NBC soaps much of a chance...yet again.

Both of those soaps were firing on all cylinders in those years! The 1960s and particularly the 1970s seduced me into believing that daytime soaps would always provide viewers with high-quality, intelligent, absorbing and adult entertainment. Little did I know what would happen to the genre in the 1980s and beyond.🤢 This.👏 Still, to be honest, I would take Upton's work over later soap-killing "writers" who harped on science fiction and low-brow camp. (I can't believe I am saying that, but it's true.) Lipton...no.

@Reverend Ruthledge summarized the situation perfectly, as always, but I would like to add my personal opinion from viewing that time period of the soap. Agnes Nixon only left at the tail-end of 1966, if I recall correctly, and TGL was excellent for most of that year. Then the revolving door of writers began. Perhaps P&G kept hiring and firing different scribes in an attempt to find the perfect one to helm the show, but there were probably more than a dozen head writers credited from the time Nixon departed to when the Dobsons came aboard in 1975. The quality of their material was uneven, to say the least. Some very capable writers were hired, like Jane and Ira Avery, Robert Soderberg and Edith Sommer, even Irna Phillips. Unfortunately, there were dregs among the choices, too, like James Lipton (who somehow managed to get hired twice--UGH) and Gabrielle Upton. The constant shift in quality, tone and focus was jarring and off-putting. IMHO, the weakest years of the show were 1973, 74, and into 1975 until the Dobsons arrived. Of course, TGL had the misfortune of heavy competition from NBC (Another World) and ABC (General Hospital) in the early 1970s. Both those shows peaked from, say, 1971-74. A disorganized soap with poor writing was bound to falter in such conditions. (I still remained steadfastly loyal to Springfield, however!) Then, General Hospital completely fell apart around 1975, with its own revolving door of weak writers. With one of its principle competitors sinking fast, and with a renewed vigor thanks to the Dobsons, TGL started to rebound in the ratings. Even in a few years, when Gloria Monty and Douglas Marland brought GH back to new heights of popularity, TGL continued to acquit itself nicely with solid ratings. (By that time, it was AW's turn to wane.) Anyway, all this to say: back in the 1960s and 1970s, all soaps had their ups and downs. Fans just understood that if we remained patient, the ships' courses would be corrected soon enough. That has not been the case for decades now, however, as soaps have been allowed to sink into a state of lethargy and disrepair, and remain that way indefinitely. So many soaps have ended in cancellation, with the same hacks in place who helped destroy the genre in the first place. At least in the early 1970s, TPTB knew TGL needed help and working on fixing it. (BTW, I am not saying that I totally loved everything that happened to TGL under the Dobsons, but I'd take them as writers over James Lipton any day.)

There were four actors who played Julie's first husband, Scott Banning: Robert Carraway (briefly), followed by the excellent Mike Farrell, then Robert Hogan, and finally Ryan MacDonald. Carraway was first, but didn't last long. He wasn't terribly interesting. Mike Farrell was great: affable, warm, a truly endearing presence. Hogan was a solid actor and good in the role, but I had trouble accepting him after Farrell, who played the kind of decent and supportive husband Julie needed--even if she didn't know it at the time. Ryan MacDonald was okay, and the hunkiest of the lot. He made a splash appearing in Playgirl in the early 1970s, and was the final actor to play Scott when the character was killed off in 1973.

Intellectually and rationally, I have to agree. What we HOPE for, and what we believe will actually happen, do not always align, alas.🥺

From the promotional material available so far, BTG does appear to be focused on glam, high fashion, gaudy excess, and at least one petulant vixen with an attitude problem. It might be an advertising ploy, however, to attract a certain type of audience (fans of over-the-top 1980s' soaps and todays "Housewife" nightmares). TPTB tend to underestimate the intelligence of the audience, and dumb down everything to the lowest-common denominator. The actual show may be much deeper than the shallow images we are being given so far. I am hoping for the best, but if it ends up being slap-fights, tiaras, tantrums and glitz, without real and meaningful human characters and storylines, I think many people are weary of seeing that sort of show, and yet another one will be a hard sell. I would prefer that as well: having a solid mixture of haves and have nots, with a multi-ethnic and realistic-looking group of actors, dealing with identifiable issues. I guess we will soon see what the show turns out to be. Fingers crossed. The more successful this show is, the better it will bode for the future of daytime soaps. I'm jaded from decades of mismanagement by the executives, but I really do want this show to be a winner.

Yep, that was me. Under Bailey, HTSAM was cold, stiff and quite unappealing. Then, when Edelstein assumed the reigns, the quality of the scripts surged. It was amazing, IMHO. Very few shows have rebounded so instantly and left my jaw agape: GH when Doug Marland came aboard, Somerset when Roy Winsor took over, and Love of Life under Claire Labine were the most memorable examples to me.

Thanks for the tag, @DRW50. I don't recall seeing this episode before.

I do hope the writers chosen will be up to the task of adult, layered, nuanced writing. Some of the names announced so far fill me with unease and/or foreboding, but I hope I am proven wrong and there ends up being quality writing involved.

At the height of my soap addiction, I was watching a significant number soaps every day, and what I appreciated most was that, back then, they were still rooted in reality, with characters we could relate to and identify with; characters who could be like our own families. Yes, everything fell under the category of "romanticized reality," with soap life being just a little bit more idealized and special than real life, but we didn't have mad scientists freezing the world, devil possessions, clones, people jumping into painting and travelling through time, all of which destroyed the reality bubble of the genre and decimated (IMHO) viewers' identification with the characters and dramas overall. Being able to relate to the families on vintage soaps made their Christmases so captivating.

The Christmas episodes on soaps used to be something I looked forward to, and loved, every year. The Hughes, Matthews, Bauer, etc., families always had the kind of holidays we all wish we had.

Alas, Family is geo-blocked on Tubi in my country.🥺 There is a lot of interesting content on that streaming service; it just drives me crazy that Family, which I really want to see, is a series that ends up getting blocked.

Considering I'm more likely to binge on vintage series more than anything modern, his channel is just my up of tea.

@SoapDope, thank you so much for sharing this this link. I never would have even heard of it, let alone been able to watch and enjoy it, without your heads-up. This interviewer is much better than other hosts I've seen, and through perusing his channel, I see he's done many interviews with actors of yesteryear, whom I remember and would like to hear more about. I'm going to have fun with his celebrity talks. Gracias!

Thanks for the notification, @NothinButAttitude. This fascinating, if disheartening. No tacky, unfair or boorish behavior from TPTB surprises me anymore.

The show was drowning in missed opportunities and incoherent decisions for a long time. I won't say that none of TPTB in the last 15 years of TGL's existence cared about it; maybe some of them did. Unfortunately, wanting to do a good job does not equate to actually being able to do so. Having the talent, the perception, and a solid understanding of the soap genre were not in evidence among the show-runners, and that was painfully obvious on screen. Yes, little bits and pieces here and there worked, but it was all too little, too late. The irrational obsession with The Santos mob, San Cristocrap, Buzzard, and Reva's endless sci-fi/fantasy drivel had soiled Springfield through various regimes, and Wheeler didn't make sufficient changes to rebuild the show effectively. And ITA: the miniscule budget was not her fault. The resulting cheap and tacky look of TGL, thanks to the dearth of funds, was not her fault. But the often wretched material we witnessed during her tenure was at least her responsibility.

Yep. The nails began being driven into the show during the 1980s, and continued being being driven in by many subsequent PTB for the rest of the show's life (with brief respites under Calhoun, Curlee and even Taggart to a degree). There were many culprits, alas. Wheeler would not have been responsible for forcing Peapack onto the show (I'm sure that that mandate came from the higher ups), but didn't Ross Marler get killed off under her watch? That decision alone inspires significant ire. There were so many other weak and/or pointless characters on the canvas at that point, who could have been let go first. Jerry ver Dorn should have been held onto at all cost.

Yes, there are a lot more videos of the final years online, than the glory years, although that's perfectly understandable. Not everyone had VCRs way back when. Plus, blank tapes were expensive, so archiving episodes from the 1970s and early 1980s was not affordable for all viewers. In any case, I am so grateful for all the treasures that are in circulation: the massive number of radio broadcasts from 1950 dealing with Meta's murder trial, the string of kinescopes from 1966 dealing with Bert's troubled marriage to Bill, Holly's marital rape, Rita in the funhouse, Maureen's death, etc. As a die-hard fan, I always more more, of course, but I know we are lucky to have what we do have. This goes for the surviving material from all our favorite shows.

My first choice of a family to be represented on TGL would be the Bauers, for sure, but I'd have no problem with the Reardons and other clans being featured as well. I'd bet my retirement savings that more viewers would have preferred to see Bea return following Bert's death (or Meta, which did happen a decade later) than to be force-fed Miss Sally and Sarah, even more characters who orbited around the show-eater Reva.

Yes, and all things considered, it's such a shame that so few episodes of those years are available, while a huge number of the nadir years of TGL are floating around. We are lucky to have a lot of classic radio material and videos from the 1950s and 1960s, however.