RavenWhitney

The first four months of the Emily/Kirk storyline was painful. I hated that milk toast actress. But Slesar turned it around in the second half, culminating in the August amusement park location shoot.  Edge took off after that through Slesar's firing.  Last great chapter of the show.

Joe Lambie was a revelation. So sexy and dang good actor.

I loved Poppy and Eddie! I thought they should have kept Poppy around and made her Mitzi's sister.

It was so depressing to watch Lee Sheldon ruin the show in the last 18 months.

Shout out to Eric. Freiwald, writer of today's script. Eric was with YR for 30 years and died in 2010. He wrote YR first under the name Eric Roberts.

https://www.dcourier.com/news/2010/feb/02/obituary-eric-w-freiwald/

8 hours ago, MichaelGL said:

The era after Agnes Nixon's departure as head scribe and before the Dobson's arrival is such a mystery to me, especially when you look at the ratings ups and downs for such a period. I wish there was more available.

Robert Soderberg and Edith Sommer wrote the show from 69-73. I have part of their story bible in my attic. I won it off of ebay at some point. It's really interesting.  It's been a while since I've read it.

The actress who played Carmen was overrated; she couldn't cut it with the pros on the show.  I hated the Santos family.

Y&R also has the largest number of FICORE writers on staff and the pending strike has been delayed with the contract extension through 30 June, I believe.  The ficore writers are Griffith, Harmon Brown and Conforti.  I've though all along they brought in Harmon Brown to help write the show if a long strike ensued.  He's also friends with Steven Kent.

A current veteran Y&R staff writer confirmed on Facebook that the entire writing team was furloughed on March 23 due to the pandemic and production halt.

This is like her fourth exit in 2 years. She's probably already inked a deal to come back when the show resumes production. Even if they killer her character off we know Ron brings everyone back from the dead. 

Maybe now that Nathan Varni is out as ghost co-headwriter, someone will take over who ices Sonny, Jason, Carly and Michael.

This is the year CBS lost confidence in Estensen/Brown as head writers and were forcing them to do stories written by CBS exec Wendy Fischman. Terrible. Wendy wrote the clone story.

It makes no sense to me that CBS won't post the classic episodes on the day or day after they air. Anyone know of a reason?

OMG Jon Lindstrom called Liz Hubbard a battle-axe!  Alan couldn't end the interview fast enough.  

A battle-axe is a term, generally considered pejorative, for an aggressive, domineering and forceful woman.

It's too bad Days thinks Ron is their savior. It's the only show that can run original episodes through the fall yet the stories are so awful, even during a nationwide lockdown, viewers can't stomach the nonsense.  Oddly, I think the pandemic gives Days another year of life because the networks are scrambling to fill the hours and if there are future lockdowns, Days can run new episodes through the fall. I'd say they should replace Ron but it won't matter.  Corday wants this crap with every month back from the dead and brain chips.  

More evidence that even when 90% of the country is in lockdown, viewers don't want to tune in to Ron's version of Days as it's no better than Higley or Griffith's tenure.  

2 hours ago, jam6242 said:

Retro put the "Where Are They Now," special on Vimeo.  Supposed to be more to come later.

 

https://vimeo.com/410663920

 

Anna, Elizabeth and Count look fierce. All could be great additions to current soaps. 

I think the Corringtons were brilliant on SFT but it was too much too soon and the older audience didn't cotton to the New Orleans angle. But Travis and Liza kept the show going.  Texas was a hot mess.  The Corringtons lasted a hot minute as HW of Capitol, OLTL and GH. GL even hired Joyce for a few months during the Doug Anderson head writing debacle.  Maybe the Corringtons should have stayed on SFT and expanded it to an hour.  They found their footing after they moved the action back to Henderson.

On 4/16/2020 at 9:37 AM, OzFrog said:

 

 

Some more EON episodes have just emerged. No dates, but they appear to be from 1979. Not sure if these have been uploaded previously. I did like that the first one has Margaret Colin (pre-ATWT) and Vasili Bogazianos (pre-AMC).

These two episodes were broadcast on March 13 and 14 1979. Sharon Gabet's last episode before a six month break.  Her departure episode is one of the best EON / Slesar episodes ever.  Sharon's performance, the directing, music, the rest of the cast.  late 1978 and early 79 was a high water mark for Edge on ABC.  The next six months on the show was tough with Sharon's exit and the Mansion of the Damned plot. They also scrapped the Paige story and wrote her and Brian off.  But Kim Hunter was so entertaining. And when Sharon returned during Margo's murder trial it was the beginning of another big classic EON period.  

On 3/28/2020 at 3:59 PM, danfling said:

 

This is certainly not correct.  The ABC network was opposed to the change of writers.  ABC hired him almost immediately as the co-head writer of One Life to Live.

On 4/8/2020 at 8:52 AM, VanessaReardon said:

Bingo! Didn’t he say that he was happy writing for a medium that has 70 million fans? Wrestling. But yet he downgraded himself to write scripts for 4 million viewers to enjoy. lol And he wasn’t hired longterm. Egg on his face. 

14 hours ago, watson71 said:

 

Maeve Kinkead had a bad experience behind the scenes at AW with Paul Rauch- no doubt she was probably a victim of sexual harassment.  Paul Rauch probably would have lost his job nowadays with the MeToo Movement.  P&G gave her the part of Vanessa on GL probably to avoid any lawsuits.  Not long after Rauch took over at GL in the 90s, Kinkead had left GL.

Maeve left GL after a 20 year run that started in 1980 (she took three 6 month breaks during her 20 year run) and ended in 2000. Paul Rauch became EP in  Nov 1996; Maeve worked with Paul for three years/ stayed until Sept 2000.  She then returned in 2005 until the end (Wheeler/Kreizman/Swajeski).

Just today on the Locher stream with GL actors, Maeve Kincaid who played Angie on AW and Vanessa on GL made a veiled reference to the toxic AW environment. When asked if she recalled day one on GL set she remembered the actress who played Hope Bauer telling her that the GL set was nothing like that other show.....

There's a reason VW never worked again in daytime.  There are stories from many actors that AW was miserable backstage.  VW was the only one there throughout all the EP and writer regimes. Think about all the other actors from cancelled soaps who were immediately rehired: Gabet, Malloy, Ann Flood, Joel Crothers, Lois Kibbee.  Everyone who talks about Edge has nothing but amazing things to say about the Henry/Erwin years.   Has there every been a positive AW backstage story?

Valentini's shadow co-headwriter is out at General Hospital but not ABC.  

https://michaelfairmantv.com/nathan-varni-shares-he-is-no-longer-abc-programming-exec-overseeing-general-hospital/2020/04/11/

On 4/7/2020 at 8:10 AM, DRW50 said:

 

Susan looks amazing and her voice hasn't really changed. She has aged beautifully. Wow

7 hours ago, NothinButAttitude said:

 

Iconic episode.  Beverlee was so awesome.  Iniitial scene between Reva and Alex was fabulous.  Krista's acting is so poor. And I never liked the actress playing Mother Reardon.  

That posted scene of Kay signing the divorce papers. Classic. Oscar worthy! But Mr. Rhoades couldn't act his way out of a paper bag. I never understood that casting choice even if short term role.  

Kay's house. Ah..so sad that Phelps destroyed the remodel. I'm sure they did it to save on space and have a collapsable set but boy did they go wrong.  

On 4/9/2020 at 10:46 AM, Toups said:

 

Janice Ferri Esser was credited for the episode with "cool your jets," (April 7 episode) and she's considered the best Y&R SW.  It goes to show you that sometimes the best can have their clunkers.  We also have to remember that the script goes to the script editor, and then the HW (and maybe EPs and network execs too), and then to the actor (who could've changed the lines), so sometimes it's possible that the person credited with the script did not write a particular line. 

 

 

Maybe Casiello wasn't hired because they've rehired Susan Dansby after the perfectly awful Ambitions was rightly cancelled.

Anne Shoettle out as scriptwriter at YR is pretty surprising; she hasn't written scripts in several months.