vetsoapfan

TPTB have seemed to honor and cherish certain male actors over their female counterparts for a long time now. I seriously doubt they ever would have dropped John Beradino from his contract, yhet they had no qualms about releasing Emily McLaughlin and Rachel Ames. The show bent over backwards to pamper and appease Tony Geary, but never showed Genie Francis the same respect. And as for your comment that Sonny should not be a lead...YES! A thousand times, THIS. I just fell in love with you, LOL. The show should indeed be about the personnel of the hospital. How it got to center around a greasy, Teflon mobster who never pays for his heinous sins, I will never know.

Knowing that I have watched soaps for several decades, someone asked me recently what I thought were the WORST storylines ever told on daytime TV. I tried to compile a list, but became overwhelmed quite quickly, because there were so many to choose from. The Tale of the Two Romans, The Garden of Eden, Melaswen, Marlena's Possession, Princess Gina...DAYS has had a lot of absolute, painful stinkers

I don't trust the soaps to keep anyone on canvas, no matter how beloved by the fans or important to the shows' fabric they are. They've written out Laura multple times before. Still, I hope you are right about them not letting her go...AGAIN. I agree with you yet again in that Laura should be a wise, talk-to; the tent-pole, heart and center of the show, surrounded by family. Lucky, Lulu and even Lesley (as much as Denise Alexander wishes to appear) should be around her. The show needs a strong core family again; one which is NOT driven by mobsters, killers and general degenerates.

I've hated most of DAYS' story choices for the last 30+ years. I don't think the current writers on any soap opera are capable of telling erudite, thoughtful, well-crafted stories. Nor are they capable of writing three-dimensional, intelligent, believable characters. To be honest, I'd rather the shows come to an end than continue indefinitely in their present, crippled state, although this sentiment always invokes a chorus of protest ("I don't care if the show is a steaming pile of doo-doo. You would just shut up and accept it the way it is, if you were a REEEEEEAL FAN!") Grunt, LOL.

Again, I agree, except that I do not believe the current PTB have the will, interest, talent and ability to write continuing storylines for stable, mature, evolved "older" characters, even though their evolution would be totally understandable and desirable in real life. We've already seen how Laura, Scotty, Bobbie, Monica and so many others have been put out to pasture and/or discarded completely because the show can't or won't write anything for them that is "traditionally exciting." My concern is that with unimaginative producing and writing, the show won't keep up with good, evolved, stable characters long term, and will end up letting them go the way GH phased out beloved vets like Audrey Hardy.

I agree 100% that in real life, a stable, steady, uneventful pairing like Laura and Kevin would not only work, but be a great thing. As I age, myself, I don't look for or expect ROMANTIC FIRE! ENDLESS PASSION! NEVER-ENDING DRAMA! I just want peace and tranquility. But that doesn't work with couples on soaps, alas. I still root for Kevin and Lucy too, but if the show ever gets a good producer and savvy writers again (I know I am dreaming in Technicolor) they could make anything work, even Laura and Scotty. If not, *I* will take him! LOL!

Weak, incompetent writing has done in many a fine pair or would-be storyline, alas. I blame Frank and the writers for most of the show's failures. Genie and Kin could pull it off with the right support from TPTB. I like both of the characters too, just not as a couple. On soaps, when there's no fire, no passion, no spark, boredom sets in and the characters are backburnered or settled into "old-people, tent-pole" status. GF and JL are too charismatic individually for that fate.

I agree. I like Kevin, but he and Laura have absolutely no romantic or sexual chemistry together. It was a case of short-sightedness and poor writing, to take Laura out of a relationship with Scotty (with whom she had had a long history and shared lots of chemistry), only to leave her floundering around until pairing her with Kevin, with whom she shares no spark. I say, let's go with Laura and Scooty, Round Three!

OMFG. I had the hots for Scotty SO BAD, back in the day. How Laura could dump him for that icky degenerate, Luke Spencer, I could never understand.

RC is painfully childish and unprofessional. Every television series, every film, every book, every record album, every piece of art ever created is open to commentary from the public. Why should the public give him a pass?

During her heyday, Courtney was hugely popular, so it's always annoyed me that ABC suddenly dropped her from OLTL in 1983, claiming "lack of story for the actress" (regardless of the fact that she was already being groomed for a new frontburner storyline with Michael Zaslow and probably Robin Strasser). It was also inexplicable how AW brought her back in 1984 and then barely used her and kept the actress on the backburner until dropping her again in 1985. It's been theorized that she was eliminated from OLTL in preparation for Paul Rauch's arrival, and that her returned to AW failed because Gary Tomlin and TPTB failed to research her character enough to understand her history and significance to the show, but who knows for sure? Even the most popular superstars need good material to thrive, and savvy PTB to use them effectively.

After Alan-Michael was suddenly SORASED to his late teens, I thought that Courtney would have made a good Hope Bauer. IRL, she was the age that Hope would have been with a young-adult son, and she had had her greatest success as the leading heroine on AW. Courtney's star appeal would have been an asset to TGL (if TIIC had used her correctly), but I do think her strength lay in portraying "good" characters rather than darker, more manipulative roles. She did not fare well as Maggie Ashley on OLTL or Diane (was that her name?) on Loving. Still, if JC had been cast as Alexandra, I would have cheered her on!

I am already known for endlessly castigating TGL over all its blunders in the show's painful, final decades, but I must add my voice to the chorus condemning this egregious storyline as well.

Yep. That's one of the reasons that I grew to loathe the character. To me, the show's resurgance, which took place while she was "dead" came to an end after Reva returned as a ghost. I acknowledge that there are viewers who agree with you. Do you mind if I ask what year you started watching the series? My experience has been that viewers who believe TGL was suited for campy material became viewers in the 1980s. My most vehement objection to the entire storyline that it was historically impossible, since we had seen Brandon die on ther show. So to trash established, witnessed history, to dip the show's toe into the water of a "controversial" plot that went nowhere, was frustrating.

Don't even get me started: Reva the Ghost, Reva the Amish Amnesiac, Reva the San Cristocrapian Queen, Reva the Illegal-Immigrant Savior, Reva the Blind, Reva the Clone, Reva the Time Traveller...EEEK! When TGL went over the top, it plunged into the abyss, and it plunged...hard. TGL was never created or presented as a show to tell wildly-unrealistic fantasy/camp stories. The combination of slaughtering the pre-existing cast and resorting to Saturday-morning cartoon material was the series' downfall. Of course. I know various viewers who vehemently disagree with me. There are those who loved Casey the Space Alien on General Hospital, Marlena Possessed on Days, Viki's Trip to Heaven on a Space Ship on OLTL, etc., which (to be honest) just baffles me, LOL. But, as previously noted: to each his own!

I fully acknowledge that there are viewers who enjoy "camp" material, and I can get into it, too, depending where it's served. John Waters? Sure. But clones in Springfield or The Great Gazoo pestering Maggie Smith in Downton Abbey? Nooooooooooooooooooooo, thank you. LOL! There's a time and place for everything.

Hillary Bauer's brother, Paul, could have ended up being Bill's biological son, but the show seemed to completely forget he ever existed.

There were so many potentially-great ideas/relationships/stories that could have played out...and yet we ended up getting The Ghost in the Attic, the Dreaming Death, and Susan Piper. 🙄🤮

Actors should never have the power to dictate storylines, IMHO, no matter how popular they are. If everyone tried to do that, it would be anarchy behind the scenes. After TGL killed off Leslie Bauer, the show never really found a suitable love interest for Stewart's Mike Bauer again. Various characters were tested or rumored to be in the running (Anne Jeffers, Ivy Pierce, Jennifer Richards, Trish Lewis, Lillian Raines, Alexandra Spaulding), but none of those potential or proposed matches panned out. If a triangle had developed, I would have gone with Jennifer/Mike/Alex. The mileage from Mike and Alex alone could have run for years, fueled by Mike's contentious relationship with Alan. In the long-run, however, I would have had Mike end up with Jennifer, tying Amanda to the Bauer family. This could have caused more friction between Mike and Alan, with Amanda being both Mike's stepdaughter and Alan's daughter. (Yes, I know TIIC tried to rewrite history and claim that Amanda was Brandon's child rather than Alan's, but that was all total BS and impossible in accordance to what we had already seen play out on screen. Amanda was Alan's daughter, period. I will die on this hill, LOL!)

After Hope Bauer gave birth to Alan Michael, Don Stewart gave an interview in which he said it was a major mistake to "make the show's number-one leading man a grandfather." He felt it aged Mike unnecessarily. Stewart claimed that the writers had originally intended for Hope to lose the baby, but changed their minds after the audience reacted so negatively to Amanda's miscarriage. TPTB did not want to incur the audience's wrath again. Then Stewart opined about Mike's romantic life. The show was flirting putting him together with Trish Lewis, and he said that he didn't understand the reasoning behind that, considering her youth made Trish age inappropriate for Mike. He said that he and the more-age-appropriate Deborah May (Ivy Pierce/Renee Dubois) had had good rapport and chemistry, and he was sorry to see Mike's blossoming relationship with her suddenly dropped. (These comments surprised me, because the general theory among fans had always been that Stewart had actively campaigned to have Mike paired exclusively with much-younger female co-stars.) Very possibly, particularly when TPTB knew they were losing Charita, they might have wanted Stewart to remain in order to provide a glimmer of continuity, but it's hard to say. P&G/Kobe/Long/whomever, gutted almost all of the pre-existing cast in 1983 and '84, so I doubt they cared too much for continuity or the desires of long-time viewers. The show might have fired Stewart even though Mike had years' worth of storyline potential left, the way it axed Hope, Hillary, Amanda, Justin, etc. Right. Marland (in an uncharacteristically mean interview) said that the show preferred going with a "younger, sexier" Ed. He called Hulswit a "dodo," and threw Lenore Kasdorf under the bus by announcing that SHE supposedly loathed working with Hulswit and found him icky. I hate to be blunt, but Hulswit was a lot cuter and sexier than Peter Simon--or even Marland, himself, LOL--so who was DM to snipe? Nobody among TPTB at the time seemed to understand or care about TGL, its core and its audience. This is was why it was allowed to be decimated so quickly and so completely.

The extraordinary aspect of Slesar's writing was his versatility. Mystery/suspense stories were his claim to fame, but he was also wonderfully adept at romance, family drama and characterization. He could do it all. (And his scripts had characters speaking like intelligent, real-life people actually speak!)

I had not even thought about trying to find soaps on dailymotion, which is probably strange because I've searched (and found) rare movies and bootlegs of Broadway shows and concerts there. I'll check it out. Thanks. I'd love to see the Jingles story again, for sure, but my number one choice would be Slesar's absolutely terrifying Jonah Lockwood storyline from The Edge of Night. It was a masterpiece; filled with endless twists and turns, involving most of the cast, and acted extremely well. That and the Stephanie Martin saga, also from TEON, were probably Slesar's best stories, IMHO. I more often write about TGL and AW, but I sure do miss the glory days of TEON too! And even though Somerset had its ups and down, it was still better than any of the soaps being produced today, and I miss that soap too.

I'd love to be able to sample this show--and so many others--but alas, foreign soaps are geo-blocked, and I can't even get Emmerdale any more. This was indeed a creepy scene. On American soaps, Henrey Slesar was the only writer who knew how to scare the living daylights out of the audience. His best suspense tales were truly terrifying, not unrealistic and ridiculous, low-brow camp nonsense like so many other "writers" dished out. I miss the days of when the mysteries on soaps were well-written and well-produced enough to make viewers cringe in terror, LOL.

Back when morality existed on soaps, and everyone in town did not glorify and bow down to degenerate mobsters, rapists and murderers. We need Audrey back on GH. (Yes, yes, I know that will never happen.)

I agree that Charita Bauer was an essential component of the show, representing its core and heart, but there was literally nothing the show could do to keep the character of Bert on canvas after Charita became ill and passed away. That being said, TPTB could have, and should have, tried to minimize the damage of losing Charita/Bert by doing everything they could to keep continuity alive and strong. Hiring Richard Van Fleet as Ed Bauer was a major gaffe; he was miscast and unlikable. Mart Hulswit should have been asked back. Or even Robert Gentry. Killing off Bill Bauer, a legacy character who could have been rehabilitated and function in a role similar to Papa Bauer was gratuitous, cruel and foolish. Eliminating other, essential legacy characters like Mike and Hope Bauer was damaging and unfathomable. Eliminating Hillary Bauer served no purpose and further weakended the show's core family for no discernible reason. In 1983 and 1984, we lost all these characters as well as Kelly Nelson, Jennifer and Morgan Richards, Amanda Spaulding, Eve Stapleton, Justin Marler, Nola and Quint McCord, etc., etc., etc. Since TGL was being completely gutted anyway, why not just cancel it altogether, and replace it with a brand new show: Texas Meets Scooby Doo? 🙄