vetsoapfan

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.

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! 🙄 🤣

I must ask, is there a specific reason why unsolicited advice on grammar is suddenly necessary?🤔

Believe me, DAYS fans enjoy and appreciate everything you post!

I cannot imagine who this latest internet troll is, who is purposely putting rare soap opera uploads and channels at risk, but this sort of antagonistic troublemaker has long been plaguing the community. It was people like this who made me stop trading and sharing my ultra-rare material to begin with. If they get outed, ostracized and banned from any platform, I won't cry me a river.

Kin Shriner's Scotty Baldwin is one of only two TV characters whom I have literally wanted to marry, for real! LOL!

Even Kin's often...quirky hair looked great!

Never before, and never since, have I watched as many soaps on a daily basis as I did in the 1970s. Probably 15, I think. (Yes, it was insane. I was a geek with no life!) The vast majority of them really were on fire back then, penned by master writers at the top of their game. When shows were broadcast on competing networks at the same time, I'd alternate between what ones to watch and what ones to audio-tape and listen to later, in the evening. The few soaps that were not as good in various years of the decade (Love of Life, General Hospital, The Secret Storm) were still okay enough for me to keep up with, just not every day. And it's true: when Y&R debuted, the sets, lighting, wardrobe, EVERYTHING made it look so lush, expensive and opulent, like a classy Ross Hunter Hollywood motion picture. I was indeed blown away.

@MissPalmer and @FrenchFan, I remember Bryna Laub and her newsletters! Back then, the publication dates of various magazines and newsletters were often slightly "off" from the news contained in them. Still, there's always the possibility that back in 1975, I wrote down the wrong date when I first saw Courtney appear on the show. Or maybe she had actually appeared before *I* first saw her on November 12, 1975. But it's hard for me to figure out how I could have gotten the date THAT wrong, LOL. And Jacqueline Courtney has always been my favorite soap opera actress, so I was waiting on pins and needles for her to show up. I watched the show every day, and on the rare event that doing so was impossible, I audio-recorded it. I am willing to admit I could be mistaken, but...hmmm. I guess there will never be concrete, definitive proof.

In the mid-1970s, Another World was a powerful force in the ratings, while on ABC, General Hospital was in the toilet. It was a poorly-done and tedious mess. As OLTL's lead-in and AW's primary competition, GH crippled OLTL's chances, I would say. I remember writer Gordon Russell saying that OLTL was in dead-man's gulch following GH, and wished AW and OLTL could have competed head-to-head at 3:00 PM, eastern time. I think the original core families and characters would never have been considered expendable, if OLTL had been in a better position to compete in the ratings. I'm sure its numbers would have been stronger. It was a good show. Significantly better than GH at that time, and far superior to anything we see on daytime TV today. Yes, TPTB had to renegotiate contracts when soaps started expanding. BTW, George Reinholt said he was being paid $70,000.00 a year on the hour-long Another World, but on the 30-minue OLTL, he was "only" getting half that salary.

@MissPalmer, that seems like an awful lot of story to play out over a single month, particularly back in the 1970s when everything on screen moved so slowly. I wonder if the synopses was a combination of October and November, although I would not press that point; it's merely speculation. Anyway, I literally watched OLTL every day back then, and I remember I was adding articles to my scrapbook on the day Courtney appeared for the first time, and I immediately added the note/date to my records. So while I, personally, am sure November 12, 1975 is the accurate date of Pat Kendall's first appearance, I can understand why other fans might be unsure, hearing conflicting information from different sources. At least everyone agrees that she debuted towards the end of 1975.

Dorian and a doctor named Mark Toland had accidentally killed a patient named Rachel Wilson, but did not confess to their participation in the incident. Innocent Larry ended up standing trial for the woman's murder. Of course the Woleks loathed Dorian afterwards, but so did most of Larry's friends. Few Llanview-ites were thrilled with Dorian after that. The situation with Dorian and Victor only made the animosity much worse.

Allegedly, several cast members in the latter half of the 1970s were miffed to still be working for relative peanuts, when ABC hired Courtney and Reinholt at almost twice the salary everyone else was getting. Frankly, I'd be annoyed too.

Back in the 1970s, I was an unabashed soap opera geek. I kept "live" scrapbooks on all my favorite shows: I'd rate daily storyline synopses, keep magazine critiques and interviews, keep track of the the Neilson ratings and what actors/characters appeared on each episode, etc. After Courtney left AW, I was hoping ABC would be smart enough to snatch her up for OLTL, and when she appeared as Pat Kendall for the very first time, I was working on my scrapbook and happily wrote down the note in it. I just double-checked right now and yes, the date she debuted on OLTL was November 12, 1975. Where was that summary stating that she began in mid-October? I'm curious. Obviously, I would never say I am right about everything, but since I specifically wrote it down during her very first episode, I'd bet 11/12/75 is the accurate date. Heck, I didn't even drink in the afternoons back then, ROTF!!!!