vetsoapfan

I know that Bell used to write yearly story projections in advance while he was at DAYS; he, Pat Falken Smith and Ann Marcus have all referenced them in various interviews. He had a long-term bible for the first year of Y&R as well. I wonder when he drifted away from preparing them. They seemed to be mandatory components of the writing process on soaps.

I agree that the anecdote was probably made in jest, but the problem is...so many people end up believing it, like the gag about Phyllis Diller being Susan Lucci's and Robin Strasser's mother, LOL. Bill Bell and/or TPTB on his shows like DAYS and Y&R did have the annoying habit of dropping characters from the canvas, without any explanation, leaving them in twilight-zone limbo. Sometimes the characters would eventually reappear, but often not. I believe now the audience is to assume that poor Tommy Horton is gone for good, probably passed away.

Tommy did disappear for a few years there, and went unmentioned by other Salemites (which always annoyed me because you'd think he'd at least deserve a throw-away line or two along the lines of, "Tommy is in Hawaii on a research project."). But the pancake story is made-up BS, conceived by someone who just pulled that nonsense out of his hat.

That Tommy story is total BS.

Thank you! The more places that the video is saved, the better.

OMFG! Janice Lynde is a QUEEN! I cannot believe that she has just shared extensive material (20 minutes' worth of clips) of Y&R from 1974, in honor of the show's anniversary. We get to see Leslie Brooks in the decrepit Detroit mental hospital, victimized by fellow patients and degenerate staff. I never thought in a million years that I would see any of this again. It is chilling and mesmerizing, and really illustrates how pointless and weak the show is in 2021, compared to what it was back in 1974. I imagine that someone with computer skill and know-how will be kind enough and smart enough to store these clips in the vault, before it disappears from you-know-where.

Clearly, you are intent on giving me a stroke!!!🤔 At least it was so nice to see a picture of our beloved Jessie at the nurses' station. I miss her, Steve, Audrey, Lee, Lucille, etc.🥰

Unfortunately, I think playing a degenerate appealed to Tony Geary, and TPTB always seemed to cave in to his demands. I would have killed Luke off decades ago.🤮 Now we're stuck with a huge number of putrid degenerates on the canvas. Steve and Jessie must be rolling over in their graves.

I loathe Luke. I always hated Laura being with him. Yes, I know I am in the minority, LOL. I have always wanted Laura and Scotty to be together.

In terms of long-running characters on Love of Life, I've checked, and this is what I've come up with. --Vanessa Sterling: 1951-80 --Bruce Sterling: 1959-80 --Rick Latimer: 1960-78 --Sarah Dale: 1951-56, 1968-80 --Vivian Carlson: 1959-71, 1975 --Henry Carlson: 1959-71 --Barbara Sterling: 1959-71 --Ben Harper: 1951-58, 74-80 --Meg Dale: 1951-58, 1974-80 --Alan Sterling: 1959-70 --Charles Lamont: 1966-78 --Diana Lamont: 1966-76 --Hank Latimer: 1965, 1970-78 These are (probably) the most "durable" of the characters from the show (most played by multiple actors).

Alas, the current PTB clearly do not care about the show's long, rich history and legacy characters. There are still branches of the vintage family trees to pluck from, but I think we'll be stuck, instead, with Frank's slimy pets forever.🤮💩😪

Or, EVERYONE named Dingle, LOL.

I have often thought that acclaimed, prolific, popular mystery writer Jonathan Kellerman (of the Alex Delaware crime series) would be a great choice to pen an updated version of The Edge of Night. Like Henry Slesar, Kellerman writes intricate, surprising mysteries populated by interesting and colorful characters. And just by basing the stories on the novels that Kellerman has already published (more than 30), a revised TEON would have enough story fodder for YEARS. How about Mike and Nancy Karr's grandson as an attorney, Bill Marceau's grandson as a cop, and Jim and Liz Fields' granddaughter as a psychiatrist, working on solving and battling crime in Monticello? I'd watch that! As for Peyton Place, I'd die to see an update, particularly if Mia Farrow, Ryan O'Neal and Barbara Parkins could be convinced to do at least cameos. (I mean, are they doing much of anything else, LOL?)

So, ummm...nothing even remotely interesting is planned. Yawn.

No show can sustain itself with only one beloved, tentpole, recognizable character. The fact that Long and Kobe did not understand this boggles the mind. No soap fan wants huge, sweeping turnovers in the cast overnight. We want and depend upon seeing a variety of familiar faces over time. It's comforting and keeps us involved. While I loathe how Long initially helped decimate the show, I will give her credit for the comments she made in one interview. Regarding all the fantasy/sci-fi crap she had inflicted on TGL, she said that in the end, she realized it was not the way to go, and it was "better to get real." It shocked the heck of me when she remarked, "I'd like to see one of the original characters, Meta Bauer, appear. She had so much happen to her." That gave me a temporary burst of hope that the show might honor its past and start improving, but that was not to be. Long departed as head writer, and the scribes that followed her were even weaker than she was. The mid-to-late 1980s were a wasteland in Springfield. Meta did not reappear until, what, 1996? Gail Kobe was also quoted as saying (something like), "Writing the Bauers out of the show proved highly unpopular with the audience, so don't be surprised to see Mike and Hope written back into the story." More BS, alas.

I loved and was rabidly addicted to TEON throughout its run, until the dreadful Lee Sheldon replaced Henry Slesar (who can never get too much praise, as far as I am concerned; he was brilliant), and so many veteran characters like Bill Marceau were dropped. I would have been thrilled to attend the series' farewell party and say goodbye to Monticello. I still miss it. Paul the Roach, UGH! Getting rid of Ellen Holly, Al Freeman, Jr., and Lilliam Hayman was EGREGIOUS! The slaughtering of the cast and the dumbing down of the show with asinine sci-fi crap destroyed OLTL. Stewart reportedly complained about the ages of some of his romantic leads, but not all them because they were "too old." I recall an interview in which he commented that Trish Lewis was too young, about Hope's age of 24-ish. TPTB's quest for going "hot and young" has always been a disaster for soaps. The audiences love the vets, and we do not want or need everyone to be a 25-year-old himbo or bimbo. Imagine firing Jeanne Cooper or Frances Reid or Helen Wagner because they were "too old." Pffft. The audience would have gone APE-SH*T. Firing Stewart was a major mistake, a blow to a show that was already being stripped of its identity and losing all continuity from the pre-Long/Kobe reign of terror. And they canned Tom O'Rourke just when there was so much story for Justin to sink his teeth into. Unreal incompetence, all around. (Replacing him with Christopher Pennock was a disaster. Ditto, hiring Richard Van Fleet as another fake Ed.)

Long was a fairly novice soap writer when she took over the reigns of TGL, and while I admit she exhibited heart and feeling for her own creations, her work really damaged and crippled the core of the real TGL, which had been consistently solid for decades. I do think the situation was exacerbated by the dread Gail Kobe, whose comments and actions at the time showed that she simply did not understand or care about the series and its audience. The two women combined were poison to Springfield. I cringe when I recall how Long dismissively remarked that she had so much "dead wood" to get rid off among the cast of characters. I don't think that The Doctors showed Marland at his best (General Hospital, on the other hand, soared under his pen), but I remember that at the time of his tenure on TD, a soap, a soap critic remarked, "Marland worked wonders with the garbage he inherited." I agreed. It was like going from a putrid Charles Pratt to mediocre Gary Tomlin. Any improvement, no matter how slight, was welcome. I'll never really understand how Loving turned out to be such a failure, with both Nixon and Marland involved, although I never felt is was terribly well cast or produced. A lot of the actors did not seem to have chemistry with each other (IMHO), and many characters just did not...gel. (Still, if I had a choice, I'd watch the entire run of Loving again over today's excruciatingly bad, Y&R, B&B, DAYS and GH.)

Oh! I could see that! I do think Y&R gave DD the shaft. The show's longest-serving cast member should have a place on the canvas. I'm not saying he has to be front-burner or on-screen several days every week, 52 weeks a year, but he has earned his place in Genoa City. If they don't use him, I'd be perfectly happy to see him as Jeff Webber. He can project the sunny disposition that RDA used to offer in the role. We need more Hardys, Baldwins and Webbers and a LOT fewer Sonnys, Jasons, Francos and Carlys. I agree. I want both characters on the canvas and on contract, but they have no chemistry together. I'd end that relationship ASAP.

He is a vile, smarmy troll who feels powerful by stirring the pot and causing problems, alas.

First, I just fell in love with you, LOL. 😘 Thank you for the kind words. Yes, I did indeed watch and love Dark Shadows. The reason it was THE notable exception to my no-fantasy rule is because DS was created and designed to be a gothic/supernatural saga, yet it also did not scrimp on characterization. The scripts in the first few years were often very good. (I love slow-moving, subtle, internalized drama, with a lot going on under the surface which would escape the notice and understanding of casual viewers.) Dark Shadows was MEANT to be what it was; the gothic/supernatural elements were part of its essential DNA. This is a marked contrast from all the traditional soaps like DAYS, GH, OLTL, TGL, which were designed to be naturalistic stories about ordinary people next door; people who could be our family, friends and neighbors. After appreciating their fine, literate, adult qualities for years (or even decades), watching these shows devolve into low-brow camp trash was extraordinarily painful. A vampire in Collinsport felt natural. A vampire in Port Charles? Um...not so much. A clone in THE X FILES? Sure. In Springfield? No freaking way. Brain implants and mind-melds? On The Enterprise, okay. In Salem? Give me a break. There are many science-fiction and fantasy films and movies I appreciate and enjoy greatly. But The Great Gazoo descending onto Downtown Abbey and turning Violet Crawley into a Cyborg would just piss me off, you know? If people want to tell these sorts of stories, create NEW shows to showcase them. Don't butcher and bastardize series which will be forever destroyed by grafting this excrement onto them artificially.

I was in love with TGL for decades, but the slaughtering of its core in 1983-4 really did me in. I still wanted to watch "my" show, however, and came back in the late 1980s for Holly and Roger when I saw that the writing was vastly improved, and the show felt like itself again. But the death of Maureen Bauer, the putrid sci-fi crap, the mob, and San Cristocrap turned me off for good. I could never enjoy the series again.

Actually, throughout my life, I was able to get into almost all of the soaps at one period or another, depending on the writers and characters featured at the time. I just never tried to watch soaps that I was certain from the get-go would be stupid or not to my taste, like PASSIONS. If the soaps had been focusing on dumb science-fiction/fantasy sh*t, I NEVER would have gotten into any of them, but during their sophisticated, adult heyday, even DAYS, TGL, OLTL and GH were must-see TV for me.

There have been scores of character deaths on soaps which I deemed totally pointless, but fewer which I considered egregiously damaging to the core, fabric, history and/or structure of their soaps. Some of the ones which baffled and infuriated me the most: --Duncan Eric, Search for Tomorrow --Bill Prentiss, Love of Life --Mary Matthews, Another World --Steven Frame, Another World --Adam Drake, The Edge of Night --Liz Foster, The Young and the Restless --Rick Webber, General Hospital --Alan Quartermaine, General Hospital --Bill Bauer (again), The Guiding Light --Ross Marler, The Guiding Light --Maureen Bauer, The Guiding Light I have to stop, LOL. I am starting to realize that I could compose a list long enough to fill up a phone book!

As someone who has loved soaps for my entire life, I have been attached to most of the long-running ones at various times of my life. As shows' writers changed and the quality rose and dipped, my interest would either wan or intensify, depending on the quality of the individual programs. Once daytime TV made the egregious and damaging choice to get into cretinous low-brow camp and science fiction/fantasy, however, I started dropping the shows one by one, and I have never been able to get back into any of them, despite repeated attempts. Remembering how absorbing and adult the soaps could be in the 1950s, '60s. and '70s, I simply cannot stomach the asinine garbage that has been foisted on viewers for the last several decades. It's a shame because I WANT to watch serials. I had decades' worth of pleasure from following them, but the morally-degenerate GH, painfully-idiotic DAYS, dull-as-dishwasher Y&R and redundant, pointless B&B have nothing to offer.

Good luck with THAT! 🙄 🤣