vetsoapfan

They made one of the last remaining Sugdens a murderer and trotted him off to jail? What a terrible, short-sighted mistake, to destroy a legacy character like that. UGH! So the Bartons have been sucked into the Dingles' orbit as well. How depressing. At least the fabled Sugden family farm still exists, but it's a shame it's tied in with the Dingles, like everything and everyone else on the show. Was Gavin Blyth the last competent producer this series had?

The last I heard (but was unable to actually watch), Aaron married Robert Sudgen and took the Sugden family name. I was satisfied upon hearing that, mainly because it meant an additional Sugden family member on the show. Whatever happened to Robert? And if Aaron is now calling himself a Dingle, can we at least hope that he will marry this new, incoming Sugden too, and return to using THAT family name? Please, Lord.😖 BTW, are there any Barton family members left on the show, or have they all be assimilated by the Dingles too? I have a feeling there are not many characters from "my time" still living in Emmerdale. Who is running (or owns) the Sugden farm now, or has it been wiped out and forgotten?

Wait, what? Eons ago, when I was able to watch Emmerdale, Aaron was a Livesy. He's a Dingle now??? EEK!

LOL!

To me, the Dingles are as bad as the Shaynes, Winslows and Santoses on TGL. Bleck!

I haven't had access to Emmerdale for many years, but I still think of its golden years fondly, and the idea of a new, blood Sugden being introduced thrills me. Hopefully, TPTB won't screw it up. I be happy to see a strong push to reinvigorate the core family, and maybe have Diane, Andy and Robert return too. Out of morbid curiosity, I just looked up the show's current cast of characters. I was aghast to find such a widespread infection of DINGLES.🤢

Maybe prices were different here in Canada than in the United States, but when I bought my first VCR in the mid-1970s, I had to cough up a whopping $27.99 for one blank videotape. I had to use the same one over and over again, and simply could not afford to buy enough tapes to use for soap-preservation purposes. My first VCR was, I believe, $1,400.00.

Stuart was sarcastic in her book, describing the Jimmy situation. It was clear she thought it was careless and idiotic. There were headwriters who were derogatory about Stuart and her place on the show, and I understand her bitterness towards them, but she was also publicly negative about Ann Marcus' tenure, which I disagreed with, since Marcus did keep Jo involved in the action, and since the ratings rose noticeably under her reign. (I thought SFT and Mary Hartman represented Marcus' best soap work; certainly better than her awful turn on DAYS.)

That was true for a lot of soaps back then. After being seen and acknowledged as the Bergmans' son, Jimmy faded into oblivion for a while, and then when he resurfaced, he was inexplicably referred to as Stu's and Marge's nephew. The cast noted the absurd error, but the new writers left Jimmy as a nephew instead of the Bergmans' child, until he faded into oblivion again. Piss-poor and careless writing: I hate idiocy like that. I'll never get over TGL's painfully stupid revisionist history, making Amanda Alan's sister (which was completely impossible after we had seen her original story play out). ITA. While it felt to me like there were 9,876,543 Patti recasts, Loring was the real Patti to me. She and Stuart were divine on screen together.

SFT was an excellent soap for many, many years. Gems like this remind me of that fact.

Much obliged, @te. Thank you.

I loathe no-life, pointlessly-vindictive hackers who destroy people's hard work and ruin the internet for everyone. My proposed punishment for them would be swift and severe.

It was just so weird, so out-of-character, and made Alice look idiotic. Having Rachel mentor Sally would have been a realistic and effective way to keep the flames of conflict alight. Yes, there were times when Marlowe stumbled his way through scenes, either fumbling his lines or forgetting them all together. When it was extensive and noticeable, it was painful to watch. Little glitches like in this scene were no big deal to me. Issues with dialogue aside, I did find the actor to be warm and generally likeable, although my favorite Jim Matthews was Sheppard Strudwick. I wonder if that was Mulcahey's influence.

After Courtney left, Alice behaved like she was intellectually limited, IMHO. She had already been very wary of Willis, and then to suddenly fall in love with him? Marrying Ray Gordon whom she had not known for very long? Going after her cousin's ex? None of this was in character, and came off as a puppet being pushed around from story point to story point, to fit into absurd plots. I cringed to see Alice showing up at Ada's back door, meeting Rachel in the kitchen, and then sitting down to have soup with her. WTF? These women hated each other. Why would Alice cheerfully agree to eat with her? GMAFB.😑 I was surprised Harney was listed so close to the top of the cast crawl. Victoria Wyndham was then first, of course. I can't recall right now if Harney was the second or the third highest-ranked actress (perhaps Beverly Penberthy was above her), but she should have been further down the list, behind other vets. The negative reaction to Harney, voiced by viewers in fan magazines, was widespread. I'm sure there were members of the audience who accepted her, and for the reasons you specified, but a vocal legion of fans did not. Even Harding Lemay admitted that despite continued focus on the character, Alice never again enjoyed the popularity she had attained with Courtney in the part. Lemay even acknowledged that JC's presence on OLTL may have contributed to that series' steady climb in the ratings. A few months after the cast massacre, the entire story was reported upon, in depth, in the daytime press. Jacquie Courtney wrote an article, herself, explaining her side of the story. Again, readers of the magazines were enraged. This is a lovely scene; the type that soaps used to do so well, but which we rarely see any more. It feels like we were watching a quiet moment play out with real family members. Jacquie Courtney was radiant. Her subtle performance added depth to the scene. And while Hugh Marlowe stumbled a bit with his dialogue, I didn't mind. In real life, most of us get tongue-tied from time to time. What a treat Ariana Muenker's clips are!

Being quite familiar in the realm of soaps, and how these things work out, I could see the plot coming from a mile away. I just knew Rachel would end up having Steve's baby.🙃 The scene in which Jim tells the truth about the baby to Mary is still seared in my memory. Loving, maternal Mary flew into an uncharacteristic rage and shrieked, "I...HATE...HER! I hate her!" We were used to Audra Lindley's Liz screaming at everybody, but not Mary Matthews. It was chilling to see her go berserk (chilling, but understandable) .

Catching up on this thread, I was thinking of posting all of these exact same sentiments, but you did it for me. You've saved me a lot of wear and tear on my typing fingers. All this to say: I agree with everything you wrote in this post.👍

Awww, @slick jones is kind enough to tag me in this post because he is, no doubt, offering up Luca Calvani to me on a silver platter.😝 Gracias, Slick!

Awww, shucks. As an original cast member, beloved by the fans, Jacqueline Courtney was an important cornerstone of Bay City at the time. The day I dropped the show for good, as a daily viewer, was the day I saw Susan Harney in the role of Alice. It hadn't helped matters that I found David Bailey so stodgy and one dimensional as Russ, and that Virginia Dwyer and George Reinholt had also gotten the axe. I was hanging in for Courtney, and when she was dismissed, my patience with the show evaporated. (It takes A LOT for me to drop a favorite soap. I continued with ATWT and TGL to the bitter end, primarily because of a few veteran characters/actors whom I cared for.) TIIC at most soaps have made this same blunder for decades, and they never learn. P&G continued the idiocy by decimating several vets Hughes from ATWT and the Bauers from TGL in the early 1980s, moves which seriously damaged those series. Right. Recognizable human drama is relevant at any time, through any decade. This reminds me: at one point, someone asked Jamie how he and Sally were related, since his father was planning to adopt Sally too, and Sally had ended up as a Frame. Jamie replied, "She's like a cousin or something." That line has always stuck with me, because...it was stupid, LOL. If anything, Sally could be called his stepsister, through her adoption by Jamie's stepmother. (But since Steven died, even that description is "iffy"). THIS! As long as viewers are emotionally attached to the characters, they will persevere with a soap for a long, long time. If all their best-loved characters are written out, however, and the shows are poorly written and produced, viewers drift away. AW, ATWT and TGL (among others) lasted much longer than their substandard quality deserved, and I believe die-hard viewer loyalty helped them...until it just wasn't enough anymore.

@DRW50 You wrote a fine piece here. For those of us who had watched and loved AW from the beginning, eliminating the Matthews family was like choosing to get rid of the Waltons from...well, from The Waltons. It took the heart out of the show, and after they were gone and the writing continued to get worse, many veteran viewers simply felt that AW wasn't AW any more.

Antipathy towards a certain host does end up bringing the viewing community together, however.😁 That is a fact, and can engender various sentiments.🤨

"It's nice to see her responding to fans and to see memories of people who were watching back then. I can imagine cost saving was a factor, especially given the quality of some of the recasts (Alice, for one)."--@DRW50 God, yes. I think Wesley Pfenning was the most bizarrely-miscast Alice, and Vanna Tribbey was the blandest, but Susan Harney's version of the character just didn't have the depth, vulnerability or warmth that Alice needed. She also couldn't cry convincingly to save her life (but I guess I am quibbling now, LOL). George Reinholt once acknowledged that he was earning 70 thousand dollars a year on the new, hour-long AW in 1975. I imagine Jacquie Courtney had a similar salary. I wonder what P&G offered Susan Harney as JC's replacement.🤔

Alan makes my teeth ache, LOL.

I couldn't deal with it. The entire scenario was just so far removed from the ATWT that I had grown up with; such a drastic shift in style, tone and presentation made the show feel alien to me. That era, to me, started the erosion of the show. https://henryjenkins.org/2013/04/as-the-world-stopped-turning-lynn-liccardo-talks-about-soap-operas-part-one.html?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR1scP4YRmhJe4AhP_pY4w2d4aajFpquIW3XwRAY0qAmL6EROeqKTHlbwZE_aem_rlFB18R38LxZzf2v22mrxA

LOL, personally, I loathed both of those characters, so having them featured so much did not endear the show runners to me at all.

Yes, if Y&R had not been having trouble, it might have had stronger ratings. My point is, however, that GH was a cultural phenomenon at the time, garnering endless publicity, buzz and huge ratings. Unlike Y&R, TGL was in DIRECT COMPETITION with this daytime powerhouse, and still held its own. Maybe as GH's direct time-slot competitor, Y&R would have done much worse, considering it was weaker than TGL then. Even under such challenging circumstances, pre-Kobe's TGL was still strong. After her diddling, not so much. Soap fans are a hardy bunch, and hang on for a long time, but there comes a point when they've finally had enough. After years of dreck on screen, I think viewers had just become disenchanted with the show, expecting it never to become "the real" TGL again. Ironically, they turned away from it just when its short-lived rejuvenation was underway. I've seen that happen so many times to so many shows. They make marked improvements after years of being in the toilet, but viewers are so fed up and burned out by then, they don't come back.