vetsoapfan

Thanks for the tag, @slick jones!

Thank you for the heads-up, @Soapsuds! Alan Locher makes my teeth ache, LOL, but I can endure him for short periods, with enough incentive!

Thank you, @slick jones. Your posts are always informative and entertaining, and memory-jogging too!

Martha appears...unmoored.😬 It's scary how many MAGA supporters are unable to function within the realm of reality.

THANK YOU! That's what I said, but folks kept insisting that it's Jeffrey Hunter or Charlton Heston. Other choices included Peter Hansen, Kenny Rogers or Colonel Sanders, ROTFLMAO! The internet is an endless source of amusement!

All four of the remaining soaps need to replace their head writers, overhaul their stories and structure, and prune away a large number of useless characters from their casts. I'd say DAYS and GH even more so than B&B (which needs massive help as well, of course).

This photograph of Emily McLaughlin, from the ninth anniversary of GH, has been uploaded on Facebook and posters are debating who the man with EM is. Most people keep insisting that it's Jeffrey Hunter. Apparently, the hairline gives it away. 🙄 Forget the fact that the gentleman looks nothing like Hunter whatsoever, but JH died three years before the photo was even taken. 😑 The next most popular assertion is that it's (get this) Charleton Heston. Lord, give me strength.

I love finds like this. Thanks @slick jones!

I don't know whether to cheer about finding an age-appropriate cohort, or commiserate with you about another one of SON's Golden Girls, LOL. Seriously, I'm sorry to hear that you battled with depression back then. It's such a lonely and misunderstood affliction.

I'm so sorry you had to struggle with depression on your own, without anyone to talk to about it. People often wax poetically about "the good old days," but in reality, things were not always so good. Depression and other forms of emotional issues were sublimated and not talked about. Spousal and child abuse was covered up. Issues with sexual orientation were demonized, leaving many people on the outskirts of society rejected and condemned. MAGAs rage at anything "woke," but it's made society kinder and more enlightened.

Thanks for the tag, @slick jones. I may be the only one here who's old enough to have watched Scotty's mom on GH. It's a shame about the actress passing away.

Yes, that's right. I loved that set.

Thank you for the tag; always appreciated!

@DRW50, that was a fun curio which I had never seen before. Thanks for tagging me.

I never DID equate PFS' tenure to CL's; I merely pointed out that both these brilliant writers made (IMHO) egregious errors at the show. I wasn't comparing the writers to each other and arguing that their blunders were equal. The reason I found the gorilla and tomb stories so painful was because Labine had created a rich, erudite series, and helped elevate it to the quality of a daily stage play. Pat Falken Smith never produced quality material here. CL introduced us to multi-dimensional, intricately-drawn characters who came across as identifiable, "real" people. PFS gave us mediocre (if not downright forgettable) stock figures. Watching a theater-like drama devolve into King Kong and Scooby Doo antics doesn't mean that CL's work and PFS' work on RH was comparable. Watching core characters get jettisoned to the back-burner for hair-models and other newbies under Smith was even worse than the fantasy nonsense, because at least CL's fantasy plots centered heavily on core characters. Unfortunately, whatever precipitated the problems on this show, many people had their hands in messing it up at one time or another. Claire Labine and Paul Mayer, on the other hand, are mainly responsible for giving us the golden years.

The endless recasts really hurt the show, IMHO. Throughout the soap's run, we had six Franks, four Pats, four Marys, five Siobhans, four Delias, four Faiths, four Joe Novaks...and five (IIRC) Sister Mary Joels. * including one short-term, fill-in actor for Frank and one for Delia. I count them because they did appear on-screen for plural episodes.

I understand your bewilderment. Tolan was loud, abrasive, coarse and noticeably unable to speak coherently at times. Not to be unkind, but while Kate Mulgrew and Mary Carney were lovely, Tolan simply...wasn't. It's hard to fathom a worse recast for the show's young leading lady. It's like when ATWT cast Jason Kinkaid as Tom Hughes. Egads! What were they thinking? I am Tolan's career in writing was more successful for her.

I've read reports that said it was the network's idea, to attract GH viewers who had been fans of Mattson's Heather Webber. Whoever made the decision, it was a mistake. Mattson was totally wrong for the role of Dee. She was basically playing a foreign, unfamiliar character, not Delia Reid Ryan. Randell Edwards was very good in the part, but in the end, only Ilene Kristen could be the REAL Delia. I thought Mary Carney (Mary #2) was a good actress and may have succeeded in the role had ABC not pulled the plug on her so quickly. Subsequent replacements (Kathleen Tolan and Nicolette Goulet) were terrible choices, particularly the harsh and abrasive Tolan whose Mary felt like a harridan. If Randall Edwards and Mary Carney had stayed in the roles, I would have accepted them as Delia and Mary, but I do believe if the original actors are good, the audience prefers them.

Yes. All soaps fall into the same trap at one time or another: new PTB come in, decide to reinvent the wheel, and sweep away the old to make way for the new. When the changes invariably fail miserably, another set of PTB descends upon the soap do the exact same thing. It's ridiculous, but nobody who actually understands soaps and the audience has worked in the industry for decades.

I found her to be quite colorless and unsubstantial as Mary Ryan on RH and Kathy Phillips on SFT. She was far too green ever to replace strong performers like Kate Mulgrew (especially) and Courtney Simon. Her Meredith didn't do anything for me, either. It's amazing to consider how many irrelevant and disposable characters TGL foisted on viewers in the 1980s. That's what I thought, too. And frankly, I much preferred Maeve's quiet and demure tone to Reva's endless loud-mouth, ham-in-the-can behavior.

I agree that the show harped on Delia's scheming too much and it became redundant after a while, but at least she was an original, core character who was intertwined with most of the show's characters. Kim was an annoying newbie who was suddenly shoved center stage. I couldn't stand the actress, whose head always seemed to be bobbling around. There are characters whom you love to hate (Rachel Davis, Dorian Lord, etc.) and then there are characters whom you simply loathe and want dispatched from the show as of yesterday. For me, Kin was in that category. I was so excited to hear that PFS was coming aboard the show. To me, she was one of the best writers DAYS ever had, and she made miracles happen by replacing Douglas Marland so successfully at GH, but her RH felt alien, cold, cynical and detached. I don't think she understood or cared about this soap and its characters much. Curiously, from the moment she took over TGL, I felt she clicked and just "got it." The character moments she gave to Bert and Hillary, Nola, Henry and Vanessa, Mike and Sara, and other Springfieldians were lovely. God only knows why her stint at RH was so awful. I ended up considering her the worst writer in the show's history. Rosie has always grated on my nerves, TBH, but I did appreciate how she championed her favorite series. Probably, short of divine intervention. But I think it would have lasted longer than it did, had the network not sentenced it to The Timeslot of Death. Feeling nostalgic about the show, I watched a Locher Room reunion with several members of the cast (Ilene Kristen, Malcom Groome, Ash Adams among others). I tend to avoid Alan Locher because he comes across as so incompetent, clueless and unprepared, but to my delight, he barely interrupted the flow in this group chat. All the actors were talkative and interesting, and didn't need Alan's direction. Ilene Kristen was hilarious with some of her errors. The panel was discussing all the actors who had ever played Frank Ryan: Michael Hawkins, Andrew Robinson, Don Scardino (as a temporary stand-in), Geoffrey Pierson, and John Sanderson). Ilene piped in and said that she knew Scardino and he had never been on the show; she was quite sure. Finally, she realized that he may have played Frank during one her breaks away from the series, so that settled that. Later, she "argued" (in a friendly way) about when RH was cancelled. Everyone else correctly said that it was 1989. Ilene, stressing that she was "pretty sure" of her facts, said the show ran into 1990. Ash Adams, who played Johnno Ryan, quipped, "MOM! You're out of your mind!" The respect and affection everyone seemed to have for each other, even after 35 years, was poignant.

Yes, the bitterness over her alleged machinations to save Loving at the expense of RH was interesting, as were the comments about Loving being the worst show on daytime TV and void of acting talent, LOL. True, I thought RH was (overall) better written than Loving, and had many more accomplished actors, but I could understand why ABC would acquiesce to Agnes Nixon. She was, after all...AGNES NIXON, a proven money maker with a long and significant record of success. That being said, I thought RH got the raw end of the deal regarding the time-swapping. Between Loving and RH, Nixon's show was a baffling flop whereas RH had been doing at least moderately well and receiving a lot of critical acclaim and awards. RH deserved to be nurtured and given the best shot to stay on the air. God only knows why, with Nixon and Marland involved, Loving was such a mess, but that's a discussion for another message thread. Other posters have pointed out some of the former RH cast who later moved over to AMC. I will say, that even though some of RH's plots were clunkers, if I compare them to today's four remaining soaps, I'd watch RH again over the pod versions of GH, Y&R, B&B and DAYS in a heartbeat. Even when it was at its worst (Delia and and the Gorilla, The Egyptian Tomb nonsense, the Kirkland Invasion, the annoying youth influx under Pat Falken Smith), there were always at least some moments of quality to be found. Rewatching The Doctors and Ryan's Hope today, it reminds me how good we had it back then.

So true. I remain saddened and perplexed at how many people failed at Ryan's Hope; particularly creative personnel who (to me) had succeeded so well elsewhere. Pat Falken Smith was good at Where the Heart Is, great at DAYS and GH, and even a wonderful surprise during her short stint at TGL. Claire Labine was also a winner on Where the Heart Is and especially Love of Life. To see writers of their talent screw up an intelligent, erudite, thinking-man's soap like RH was mind-numbing. The Prince Albert and ancient Egypt plots were painfully stupid, and PFS' entire tenure at RH felt forced and broken. Destroying Ryan's Bar proved with that one move alone why everyone involved in the approval of the plot should not have had any control over the soap. They didn't understand it or care the show's history. The destruction of the family bar was as egregious as the mob shoot-out in the Bauer kitchen (!!!) on TGL years later. What an audience-alienating and destructive incident. UGH! I agree, the book needed some judicious pruning. I am grateful for all the work which went into it, and I was happy to read the candid stories and anecdotes, but parts of the book could have been trimmed here and there, particularly towards the end. (I did enjoy the potshot Gordon Thompson took at Paul Rauch; I'm glad it was included in the final draft, LOL!) There are so many bone-headed moves for which I will never forgive TIIC at TGL. I was significantly more attached to it than I was to RH, so the decimation of TGL angered me a lot more. At least RH went out with a bang, on a high note.

Many egregious mistakes were made on RH throughout the years. I've just finished reading Tom Lisanti's Oral History of Ryan's Hope book, and it is amazing to read about all the crap that went down behind the scenes. I had always assumed that the most idiotic story and character decisions were foisted on the show by the network, but commentary from those who were there at the time make it clear that even great scribes like Claire Labine and Pat Falken Smith stumbled badly on RH, as well. Not to be contrary, but could anything BE worse than the Amanda Spaulding garbage on TGL?😬

The fact that we didn't see Penny Cunningham or Ellen Stewart when Nancy Hughes passed away, but the focus centered so much on Katie (🤮) cemented my hatred for that character (and Goutman).