vetsoapfan

Samantha Livingstone Chandler was only around in the mid-1970s, and always a relatively minor supporting character. Like so many others of that time period, she didn't last very long. She was a young nurse who fell in love with, married, and got pregnant by Bobby Chandler, Lee Baldwin's stepson. Bobby was diagnosed with the terminal (fictional) Melenkoff's Disease, but Steve Hardy saved the day by discovering that Bobby had been misdiagnosed. The young man actually had a different (but still fictional) disease called Farrier's Syndrome (I think), which could be cured in New York City. Subsequently, Lee, his new wife Caroline, Bobby and Samantha all packed up and moved away from Port Charles. The show was in turmoil then, with a revolving door of writers and characters. This was GH's way of cleaning house quickly. Lee Baldwin later returned to the show, announced Caroline and Bobby had both passed away, and ended up marrying Gail Adamson. Samantha had apparently survived (she was not mentioned among the deceased), but we never saw nor heard from her again.

The storyline was very poignant and very well handled. I had had to drop OLTL completely in the 1980s (after watching it for 15 years) because of the damage Paul Rauch and the idiotic sci-plots did to the once-fine and respected show, but the Billy Douglas/AIDS quilt storyline pulled me back in. That surprised the heck out of me, but it ended up being a memorable time in Llanview's history. Thank you for sharing this chapter of your life. At their finest soaps can entertain, enlighten AND enrich people's lives. The genre has lost/abandoned real attempts and enlightenment nd enrichment, but daytime TV had a real impact back in the day.

Back in the golden era of the 1960s and 1970s, soaps made mistakes and hired weak writers too. The difference was, those errors in judgement were rectified pretty quickly, and hack scribes did not last for ten freaking YEARS as ratings sunk lower and lower.

It's like the situation with Hogan Sheffer on ATWT. When he came aboard in 2000, he had writers like Carolyn Culliton to keep him grounded, and it seemed lie he might work out. After CC departed, however, and fellow hack Jean Passanante joined Sheffer's team, the show went quickly to hell and never rebounded.

I read a great interview with Bill Bell, way back when, in which he acknowledged that so many stories on soaps echo those on other shows. He said there is only a finite number of plots out there, and the difference comes in how individual writers develop and explore those plots; that even familiar storylines become unique because of the specific characters involved, and their reactions to the events. The horror of watching what DAYS had turned into, and knowing that Passions would end up reinforcing a type of storytelling which I knew was destructive to daytime, precluded me from ever appreciating or even tolerating JER's material. The abject stupidity (IMHO) was too overwhelming, and negated any small moments of "better" storytelling that may have seeped through. I think the team JER was part of on TGL did much better work than Claire Labine did on that series. (I have a feeling JER really only made coffee runs and used the copy machine, bwahahahahaha.) Real writers like Nancy Curlee and Lorraine Broderick created magic there. Claire Labine gave us some sweet moments, but the heavy focus on the Santos mob and all those vile San Cristocrapians running around (probably a mandate from MADD and TPTB) ruined her tenure in Springfield for me. The last straw was the shoot-out in the Bauer kitchen. BLASPHEMY. That being said, Labine was brilliant at Where the Heart Is, Love of Life, Ryan's Hope (mostly) and General Hospital. It's my contention that her tenure on GH, dealing with BJ's heart and Stone's AIDS, was the last time any daytime soap reached the level of greatness.

OMG, yes! Rick Oliver was shot and killed in 1967 and Martha Marceau was accused of the crime. The real killer turned out to be Laura Hillyer. Thank you for refreshing my cloudy memory! Here's a list of The Edge of Night's murder cases: https://community.fortunecity.ws/lavender/casino/403/murders.html

Very possible. In any case, it was pointless all the way around. To me, Sarah was abrasive and irritating, and Lainie was a retcon (i.e. fake) Bauer whose existence did not fit in with the show's canon. At least Barbara was a character with family ties and a long history in Springfield. His bizarre return was fumbled and unnecessary if that's all they were going to do with him. TGL made so many mistakes back then, What a mess.

They did bring back Barbara Berger for a while, and had her interact with her family a bit, but the show did very little with her and then just let her fade into oblivion again. Adam Thorpe returned for Blake's wedding, but mysteriously vanished halfway through the day, and his disappearance was never mentioned or explained. Something must have happened backstage, but it was a clumsy mess.

I agree it was probably just happenstance, but if TPTB had cared about the integrity of the show itself, they would have put in the work necessary to weave important, missing characters back into the fabric of Springfield.

While I don't think SSH would have been right for the role of Alexandra, I was disappointed in Marj Dusay's performance.

Julie was a complicated vixen, with both flaws and virtues. It was what made her fascinating and popular, I believe. The audience could root for her and want to strangle her at the same time. I also think it was a mistake to kill off Addie. The story would have been more complicated and layered if Doug continued to be drawn to Julie, even though he loved Addie and Hope. Seeing Addie grow as a person, realize her value as a human being, and regain her own self-respect, would have been an inspirational story. She could have finally left Doug, not settling for a man who wanted her daughter, resulting in a significant growing experience. And then she could have found a man who loved her for herself. Watching Doug squirm as that man then bonded strongly with Hope? Fireworks!!!

I was watching when Michelle was born, and saw Miner be cast and grow a lot as Michelle. In situations like that, viewers are more likely to become attached to the performer. Jada Rowland grew up on screen as Amy Ames on The Secret Storm and Kimberly McCullough grew up as Robin Scorpio on General Hospital. Replacing them would not be looked upon favorably by the audience, I'd say.

There were so many major, beloved, essential characters whom TGL gratuitously axed in 1983-84. Ignoring them and bring back Miss Sally just annoyed me, to be honest. She was basically irrelevant to the show's history. Patricia Barry was wonderful on DAYS. The idea was always for Doug and Julie to wind up together, but Barry's poignant portrayal of Addie made a lot of fans to root fror Doug to stay with her and forsake Julie. When Bill Bell killed off Addie to facilitate a Julie/Doug reunion, fans were enraged. They called for Bell to be fired, and they protested loudly.

Budig was perfectly adequate as Michelle, but my favorite adult version of the character was Lenz. NSA was by far the weakest. The REAL Michelle, in my eyes, will always be Miner, who was so solemn, so "still waters run deep," so endearing in the role.

IMHO, her best and most poignant work was as Addie Horton on DAYS. The audience loved her fiercely, and rained down hell on Bill Bell and the show when the character was killed off.

Not to add more confusion to this question, but I believe the lists are correct. I kept detailed scrapbooks of several of my favorite soaps in the 1970s (I had no life, obviously, LOL), and I recorded information in them which I had culled from watching the shows live. According to my personal records, Russell Kubeck was Somerset's final writer. Just for what that's worth.🙂

Ahhh, sadly, the list of deserving-but-overlooked shows and performers who were never nominated is endless, while we all can name names of mediocre winners in various Emmy categories. It is, indeed, infuriating. After 50 years of this, it is not going to be remedied any time soon, alas.

I had never read this great article before, so thank you very much. I loved it.

Oh, very good additions! I was just about to post these same three, so you saved me the trouble!😉 I just wanted to note that Dr.________Prentice's first name was John. I wish I could remember the name of the first character on TEON whom Martha was accused of killing.

That's why I've never really gotten around to giving The Archers a try. Since so many years are unavailable now, I'd at least want to have recaps of the story from the beginning in order to get my bearings before I dive into the show. A soap that has been running for 74 years must be doing something right, however, so I'm curious about its appeal.

Has anyone ever listened to The Archers, the British radio soap that has been broadcasting since 1951? Just curious.

Of all of these stories, the Lorie/Mark saga was by far the most compelling and the most devastating.

ITA about the infestation of Dingles, and how they have permeated the fabric of the village thoroughly. Trying to decontaminate the show of the entire horde would probably leave Emmerdale in tatters, and ultimately not salvageable. To me, DAYS has long been contaminated with abject idiocy, and the ludicrous stories foisted on its characters have destroyed their integrity and viability (exhibit A: Marlena Evans). I came to the conclusion long ago that the soap would be better off dead and buried than limping along in its present state. Of course, there are still viewers out there who watch it, and I'm not selfish enough to want them to lose their show, so the best solution for me is just to pretend it is already gone. The show I knew, admired and loved died decades ago anyway, for all intents and purposes. Sounds like General Hospital, with its fixation on glorifying rapists, unrepentant murderers, degenerate mobsters and the like, and treating them like the charactes we are supposed to root for.🤮 Yep; 1966-1976 was a rich, golden era for the show. It was such a complete and utter change from the magic we had seen before, it was hard to stomach...and ultimately downright revolting. He worked some elements similar to DAYS into Y&R, and then a lot of Y&R's elements into B&B. I always found B&B to be a weaker copy of Bell's earlier work. It helped so much that Edward Mallory and Susan Flannery as Bill and Laura, and Bill Hayes and Susan Seaforth as Doug and Julie, exuded great chemistry with each other. And their characters were layered, complex, and intelligent (characters in later years tended to be one dimensional and dumb as rocks, LOL). I stopped being a daily viewer when Pat Falken Smith was fired as head writer in early 1977 and replaced by Ann Marcus, whose style was not a good fit for the show. Bill Bell was still credited as story consultant, but Marcus made it clear that she dismissed his ideas when and if she saw fit...and it showed onscreen. That's just it. His style was to tell long-range storylines that lasted for years, and often moved at a snail's pace (we waited almost a decade for Bill and Laura to get married). It's didn't matter, however, because his characters were rich and the stories were engrossing. You felt mesmerized into watching and it was hard to turn away. The genius of Bill Bell, Irna Phillips and Agnes Nixon was that they could deal with adult, controversial, topical material in such a subtle way that the audience still knew exactly what was going on and what was being said. For a long time, daytime TV dealt with strong subjects that primetime shied away from. I think Y&R handled subject matter in a franker way than DAYS, but both soaps dealt beautifully with their plots and respected the audience's intelligence. Two siblings in love with EACH OTHER was a theme played out on Bell's DAYS and Y&R, too.

@Maxim, that GIF is hilarious...and illustrates exactly why I came to loathe the pod version of DAYS that was borne (or should I say spawned?) under JER. Let's just say that your contempt for Emmerdale probably corresponds to my animosity towards DAYS, and for several, similar reasons. The slight difference being, at least Emmerdale did not go full-out, sci-fi/supernatural camp. When I actually have the time and the energy to write my encyclopedia-length tirade about how TPTB destroyed a once-great show, you'll be the first to know.😉 Do you find any redeemable qualities in the current version of Emmerdale? Are there any elements, plots or characters you would want to keep? Or do you think the show is simply beyond repair and redemption at this point?

Bwahahahahaha! The explosion would burn down the house, no lie.😂