vetsoapfan

Thanks @Joseph and @DRW50. I haven't seen this episode since 1975. SFT was so good that year.

Another goodie! Thanks @MissPalmer and @DRW50!

Hear, hear! Everyone who alerts the community to "new" vintage episodes deserves applause. Thank you, @MissPalmer!

I appreciate the viewable link, @DRW50! Between this the ep of The Brighter Day you've told me about, I'll have a vintage-soap weekend! Gracias!

Thanks, @DRW50. I don't believe I had seen this episode, either, but I've generally enjoyed the eps of TBD which I have watched. I look forward to it.

As always, I appreciate your alerting me to a rare video, but clicking on this link only leads me to a page that says the content is unavailable. Thanks anyway!

A critic who takes it upon himself to "review" a book about a TV series (or play or film or album or artwork) which he has never seen, heard, nor has any knowledge of whatsoever, cannot be taken seriously as a credible voice of analysis. This dithering piece shames the NYT more than it does Lemay. This is a mesmerizing scene between Pat and Jamie. Beverly Penberthy was the kind of gem (like Jacquie Courtney) whom TPTB should have moved heaven and earth to hang onto, particularly because by 1982, she was one of the few, comforting links remaining to the past. By now, the long-standing idiocy and incompetence of TPTB is well documented, but it never fails to disappoint how willfully and consistently they crippled the soaps over the years. Thanks for sharing this.

As I say, personal opinion can vary completely from person to person. And, it would be terribly tedious if everyone sat around saying nothing but, "I agree with you! You are so right! Ain't that the truth? Nobody could ever deny that!" At least contrasting opinions keep things lively. It's like people who say they hate puppies. They immediately raise my suspicion and ire, LOL!

Perfectly expressed, by both you and the legendary Irna Phillips. To me, Sheffer did not write the soaps in a way they were meant to be written; he wrote them in a destructive, modern-era fashion, a weak bastardization of the genre. Folks like Ron Carlivati are continuing on with that unfortunate practice today, and the soaps are worse off for it.

@te., thanks for uploading that video of Brenda and Dylan. I bought the first two seasons of Beverly Hills 90210 on DVD when the series was first released. It was a big, big, BIG mistake giving away all my VHS tapes in favor of the DVDs. The discs were horrible quality; episodes missing scenes and all the original music replaced by elevator-like muzak, which completely destroyed the tone and feeling of the show. Without REM's Losing My Religion, the scene you uploaded here was emotionally empty. Now I research DVDs thoroughly before I buy them, and if the original soundtrack has been cut and replaced, I won't buy them. Tour of Duty and the original Roswell were two more TV series ruined or at least seriously damaged by music changes when they came to DVD.

While admittedly, some of SoapCentral's posted info is accurate, a HUGE amount of it is untrue fan fiction, created and pulled directly out of some anonymous contributor's butt. The site is just not a reliable source of information.

Don Chastain, referring to when he was writing SFT, once complained that the mandate from TPTB was always, "just copy whatever General Hospital is doing." Executives are not necessarily creative people in any sense. They are more apt to be "monkey see, monkey do" types, in the sense that if they believe a concept is working somewhere, they'll all jump on the bandwagon and drive that idea into the ground. IMHO, that's why we've been burdened with the same tired gimmicks and mechanics on the soaps for the last several decades. They supposedly worked once, and everyone has been copying and using them ever since. Yes, and yes. The bottom line is making money, no matter how unhealthy and damaging certain toxic conventions of today's soap operas are. Rapemances have always turned my stomach, but since GH made rape a glorious fairy tale ("Rape me, Luke!") instead of the degenerate act of violence it actually is, soaps have shamelessly been using it to titillate viewers, despite the harmful message it sends both girls and boys in the audience. Perfectly expressed, as always. Soaps once had a moral compass. Making jokes about rape, and Craig have sex with the child he had raised, was just degenerate. And certainly not true to the "real" ATWT, which had been a huge rating success for so many years. For the record, I found Frederick Bauer sleeping with the girl who had originally been raised as his sister to be quite skeezy as well. Papa Bauer would have boxed his ears!

While I disagree with your take on Sheffer as strenuously as I can, LOL, I acknowledge that tastes, perceptions and interests can (and do) vary significantly from person to person. There have been films, television series, books and plays which were lauded by family members, friends and critics, but which turned me off completely. There have also been films, television series, books and plays which I thoroughly loved and respected, which became some of my all-time favorites, while family members, friends and critics failed to find any merit in them whatsoever. It boggled my mind to hear someone opine to me once that The Mary Tyler Moore Show was "boring and unfunny," but that Laverne and Shirley and Alf were "the best," and his favorite sitcoms of all time. But...to each his own. Probably the biggest challenge of any creative team looking to produce a mainstream hit is finding a way to appeal to the largest number of audience members, despite the to-be-expected, widely-varying opinions and tastes they will have.

I guarantee that I never stopped resenting TIIC who systematically butchered all our shows.

And I've heard it said many times before, from many different folks. The fact that Sheffer won Emmy awards for his writing ATWT confirms the inanity of the Daytime Emmy system, IMHO. (Many of the nominees and winners have been baffling for a long time, if you ask me.) I know that I and other die-hard fans remained with ATWT and TGL looooooong after they deserved it, based solely upon long-time brand loyalty. A friend of mine, who also started watching soaps when were young and in school, used to complain about Ellen Stewart all the time. He said she was dowdy and sullen and just generally annoying. But when Patricia Bruder was fired, he was LIVID. "They can't just write out Ellen like that! She's been there forever; she's PART OF THE SHOW! I can b*tch about her all I want, but how DARE they get rid of her? She's OURS!" He was joking...but only sort of. All fans are protective of our soaps, and that loyalty has helped several shows endure longer than they would have survived without it.

Sheffer really did a number on the show. He could not write multi-dimensional characters. He could not do subtlety. He did not understand many of the veteran characters and kept them sidelined. He was not adept at poignancy or warmth. His ATWT was awash in ham-fisted, low-brow camp with a mean-spirited twist. It was the polar opposite of everything the real ATWT had been built upon and was once popular for. I loved the long-running antagonism Ellen Stewart showed for both Lisa and Susan. Having Kim and Susan (of all people) hug each other in the final episode was just stupid. The 1960s' ATWT was a masterpiece.

@DRW50, thanks for alerting me to this classic episode. I loved seeing it again. I always took glee in watching Kim slice and dice antagonists with her tongue, while remaining classy and superior to them. 👍 Douglas Marland and Robert Calhoun were the perfect team. If I had the opportunity to rewatch full archives of classic soaps, I'd select the years which I considered to be their best (DAYS from 1965 to early 1977, Y&R from 1973 to 1982, AW from 1964 to 1975). With ATWT, it would be a long stretch of episodes, from 1956 to 1981--I'd skip the dark Mary-Ellis Bunim period--and then 1984 to 1993.) I think ATWT and TGL had the longest stretches of quality, overall.

Soaps used to provide ideal, fantasy-fulfilment families for so many viewers. Daytime TV lost an essential ingredient when the older vets (parents and grandparents) started getting let go and replaced by the hair models and himbos du jour. I could sit and watch Ruth Martin, Alice Horton, Bert Bauer, Nancy Hughes, Mary Matthews, and a host of other moms and grandmas all day. Horny teenagers running around having sex? Yawn. Not so much.

The strong, nostalgic pull of soaps dies hard. I have always hung onto once-beloved series long after they stopped being the shows I used to love. The only two I could not abandon completely were As the World Turns and The Guiding Light, but trudging through their final, decimated years was a chore. I guess, in a way, I am fortunate not to have access to Emmerdale anymore. I can remember it for what it was and not be bitterly disappointed by watching it become what it has become.

I went back for the end days of AW, TEON, OLTL, AMC, RH and TheDOC, even though I had drifted away from them years earlier. The way you described it is perfect: you want to honor former loved ones one last time. Of the shows listed, I was only truly pleased with the final eps of RH. Watching the shows' swans song, I was mainly reminded why I had abandoned them in the first place. Of the three, I've only seen H&A. Its first year was available here a few decades ago, and I enjoyed the series, but our network had only purchased a finite number of eps, and would play the same set ad nauseum. After I had seen all the originally-available material, we never got any more. From what I gather, thhe show has been completely overhauled since the debut. Tom and Pippa, their kids, Morag, Fisher, and almost all of the original players have been written out. I think Alf Stewart is still there, however. The last I saw him, Aaron was in a doomed romance with Jackson, and I liked their story. I had sympathy for them both. (And I can't lie, I thought Aaron was cute. Don't hate me!!!) I have no idea what he's like today. Bwahahahahahahahahahahaha! I can't say I disagree.

The family and community elements of soaps used to one of the genre's principle draws. TIIC everywhere lost the plot and forgot what soaps should be about, decades ago.

Looking back on it, I am surprised I managed to hang on with TGL and ATWT until the bitter end. Not me. I'm tired of murder and violence being such a major component of soaps. All of my friends who once loved the show dropped Corrie long ago. I'll always love the soap genre, and wish I had quality ones to watch and enjoy, but they don't seem to exist anymore.

That was a very enticing promo for AMC.

LOL! I thought Aaron would be tolerable if he married into the Sugden family, took their name, and helped create a new branch of the family tree. I guess you disagree.😉 So the show has not been well produced in 11 years? That's starting to sound like American soaps, with weak PsTB in charge for unnecessarily long stretches of time. If soaps want to keep certain characters at all viable, they should not take them in directions which make them irredeemable. Again, this reminds me of American soaps, which routinely turn their main characters into murderers, rapists, mobsters, and other assorted degenerates. I don't know why I felt an attachment to the first, original farm, but I guess it's like the lighthouse on TGL: I wanted it to be like a cornerstone presence throughout the life of the show. I've felt nostalgic about Emmerdale, and have wanted to be able to see it again, but the more I hear about its modern incarnation, the less I think I would enjoy it.

Of all the recasts, Kathleen Tolan as Mary was the most inexplicable, and painfully wrong for the role. I could never adjust to John Blazo as Pat, but at least he could act. Tolan was loud, coarse, and unbearable. I thought Mary Carney was about as good a recast TPTB were going to get, considering Kate Mulgrew was...well, Kate Mulgrew, the definitive Mary. Firing Carney so quickly was a bone-headed move, and what we got after she left was so, so much worse. Between bellowing NuMary and yelling Jillian, it was a toss-up to decide who was more abrasive. But the loss of the stage-play like quality really brought the show down from its former, exalted level, alas. It lost its special sheen, IMHO, and all the recasts that year didn't help matters. Still, the fact that it had been so good for so long is a blessing.