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EricMontreal22

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Posts posted by EricMontreal22

  1. 11 hours ago, RavenWhitney said:

    Ron probably tried to get Erica to play Vivian. Glad she has more class and dignity and didn't take these BS roles. Poor Robin trashed herself to play Vivian for 30 episodes and wasn't invited back. Loved how Erica called out her fav head writers (Malone and O'Shea and Carlivati) and indirectly shaded Higley.  But she defended Frons.  I never realized that Gillian Spencer was fired as the first Vickie. I wonder why since she ended up playing Daisy and was a story consultant to AMC for a while. Erica also mentioned that she was originally up for a new role. I think the role was Mary Kennicott on AMC.

    I don't like to argue with Erika, but that's the only time I've ever heard that Gillian was fired, and didn't want out on her own.  It doesn't make much sense (especially, of course, since there was a Vicki between them).  And yeah, Erika, for some reason, has always been a bit too kind towards Frons I think lol.  In that respect I prefer Susan Lucci and Agnes Nixon's take (two women who are usually loathe to say anything negative)

  2. Yes, but there did seem to be more involvement than in other forms of TV--I guess I should have said "relatively".  I was also thinking of radio soaps--the big forces there were women--Irna, Anne Hummert (OK, with her husband Frank ;) ) and Elaine Carrington.  Though it's true actual writers (and creators at the Hummert factory) were often men, Robert Harvey Andrews, Orin Tovrov etc.  Agnes Nixon has claimed in her memoirs that the daytime industry was much more welcoming to opportunities for women in writing and producing where they wouldn't have been considered in similar jobs in prime time.  But your point is fair

    2 hours ago, Errol said:

     

    It wasn't rushed. They asked me to provide clips when I was contacted in September because they were having trouble with some stubborn people at the networks and studios. I had to kindly tell them I couldn't help them since A) Soap Opera Network isn't, B.) has never been, and C) shouldn't be confused with, SOAPnet. What they could get looks bad by comparison, but when you see it knowing the hurdles they had to get through, I give them a pass on this one.

     

    As for former soap watchers watching reality shows like "The Real Housewives" and "Keeping Up with the Kardashian," while I do not count myself among them, I can attest that it is A LOT.

    Well your last comment is depressing ;) Maybe the soap fans I know who miss them are mostly older (ie outside the demos networks would care about) and they can't even follow those reality shows lol.

    Thanks for some of that behind the scenes info!  So very bizarre that the studios were stingy with their footage (and, seemingly, would prefer that they use technically illegal Youtube footage??)

  3. 1 hour ago, titan1978 said:

    I just started watching it.  The clips are clearly pulled from a secondary source, and are hard to watch because of it.  Just like the soaps today- this product was rushed out  and could have used some more time and care.

     

    As for reality tv-  I think that while everything is serialized these days, I do agree that reality tv took the place of daytime.  I don’t really enjoy or watch most of it (I enjoy stuff like British Bake Off, Project Runway).  But the Kardashians have been on forever.  If you watch them, you have seen them grow up, marry, divorce, have families, fight, etc.  At their peak, you had the main show and then spinoffs with certain family members, so they were on tv like half the year.

     

    I think what people may mistake is that they are comparing one show against one show.  I think the soap mentality is not necessarily that they are following the same show, but the same types of people across lots of shows all year long.  And people do follow them like they used to follow soaps.

     

    My mother watches all the Housewives, and the spin offs.  Yes it’s not the same as watching GH M-F, 52 weeks a year.  But it is the same type of people and storytelling all year long as various seasons air at the same time over the whole year now.  She can tell me their backstories, etc.  it is a soap type of following to her, and to a lot of people.  Plus their lives continue on social media, so your favorite “character” is never really off the air.

     

    I think money is by far the issue failing these shows.  They need more money to put out a better product, but because of how much they cost the stakes are too high to do that.

    I agree with you--and I think that's a good point about following these people--and it being similar that extent.  I just wonder how many former soap watchers watch something like Kardashians.  In my experience, not many--but that's my personal experience.  I've seen the examples where it does seem to be true online.

    As for using youtube footage--it could be that this was rushed, but honestly that seems to be (I hate this term which I always hear now) the new normal.  All those CNN decade by decade documentaries use youtube footage, the talk shows do, the news does...

  4. Awesome!  I knew that Bell helped create AW, but didn't realize until recently that originally it was credited on the show as being co-created by him.  I always wonder why he never became HW when it was having trouble, instead going to DAYS and Nixon went to AW.

    And woah--why in that collection is there one for All My Children that says "Series Idea"???

  5. 6 minutes ago, Soapsuds said:

    At least they released two. I agree it should've been 20 episodes. 

     

    I really wanted the German release as it had so much more content but I didn't have dvd player that could play them. I own a blu ray player and that's where I play all my dvds from soaps to TV classic shows to movies.

    I wish we'd get a YR dvd release but I'm not banking on it.

    I mean Sony did release the very first episode of Y&R as a promo online for one of the anniversaries (the 40th?) and I noticed they haven't removed it.  But yeah...  I guess with B&B part of the thing is the main characters even in the first week are... more or less... recognizable to audiences.

  6. Ah good old Spyder Games!

    I didn't grow up in a household with any soap watchers.  My grandma remembers listening to Ma Perkins and Guiding Light and others when they were radio soaps and she was a kid, but that's it.  I do remember being very little and here in Canada AMC aired after Sesame Street (the Canadian version with French inserts instead of Spanish ;) ) and it fascinated me, especially that book, but mom would make me turn it off because soaps weren't appropriate for kids.

    Anyway then when I was 11, Summer of 1991, I was stuck at home recovering from pneumonia, and somehow I started watching All My Children with the Natalie in the well/Introduction of Wildwind, etc, etc storyline.  I was hooked.  By the time I was back in school I had started rushing home during my lunch hour to watch as much as I could (it aired at noon here), and then within a few months I was recording it every day.  Even as a kid I was a geek about such things, so already I was getting every book about soap operas that I could from the library, I rather naively even wrote a letter to ABC asking for a tape copy of the first episode of AMC (they replied explaining they couldn't provide copies of episodes--it wasn't until much later that I sadly found out that there is no copy of the first episode...)  Schemering's wonderful Soap Opera Encyclopedia gave me a ton of the background/history of the genre, as did Dan Wakefield's All Her Children, still one of my fave soap books.  I did begin watching bits of the other soaps when I'd be home, though stuck faithfully to AMC.  At some point I did become hooked on Loving when I found out about the AMC crossovers (first Ceara and then the much more extensive Carter Jones one)--funny enough I had never even heard of Loving before--and also sometime in 1992 I became aware of the Billy Douglas storyline on One Life to Live so became hooked on it too (during one of its best eras, of course--but ABC was pretty strong in general then).  And, the rest is history.  I've gone in and out with soaps ever since, though I did stay loyal to AMC through thick and thin, Loving/The City until it finished and One Life to Live although there were a few rough spots where between being really busy, and the show being in a rough patch (such as the late 90s) I wasn't paying super close attention.

  7. On 5/19/2020 at 7:21 PM, Soapsuds said:

    Anybody ever buy this release?  It's a great set to have.

    074c37d95bae347be5eec22639075148.jpg

     

     

    It's too bad other soaps haven't done this (yes, I know about those brief GL and ATWT releases--but I'm surprised Days or Y&R haven't).  Why 16 episodes though?  Wouldn't it make sense to end at 15 or 20 (for a full month?)

     

    There's a German release under the same title, except it's 25 episodes (five discs) per set and they've released 8 volumes--the first 200 episodes (which I guess is almost the first year).  They are in English and German but in European PAL format I believe.

  8. 34 minutes ago, GLATWT88 said:

    As annoying as Andy can be, he is able to express himself well and in a way that can at times be inviting and draw you in. His specials on Bravo where he discusses his shows, their impact and how they (the show and castmembers) have evolved over the years is usually really nicely put together. He states he's a soap fan and I believe it and he has talked about soaps before, so I'm sure if asked the right questions, he could have a lot to say.

     

    I mean you have the matriarchs of AMC and OLTL representing their shows and you pick Sonny from GH? Really? There were so many things wrong with this.

     

    Also, to express something I felt after going through the most recent comments. I think the show did enough with addressing the male audience. I mean there just wasn't time. There were more important things that were glossed over and it did come down to time more than anything (even crappy choices). I think the importance of saying that soaps where made for women by women wasn't an insult at all. Soaps were targeting the female consumer and the fact that they were written largely by women at one time is important to point out especially since most entertainment spaces, many of those that target women, are actually run and conducted by men. To say this space (soaps) that are telling stories about women, their issues, their trials but told from an authentic place I think was spot on. 

    Oh I know Andy was a huge soap fan--the anecdote Susan Lucci told in her youtube interview last week confirms that even more. 

    Yes, that's exactly how I feel about people like Eric (Braeden, not me :P ) griping that they made it sound like only women watched.  And I say that as someone who has, since I was 11 or 12, spent a lot of time trying to dispel stereotypes that men don't watch soaps.  But I do feel that sometimes when it is acknowledged that there's a male audience, it comes off as sort of like "See, these shows do have worth!  Men watch them as well!" 

    34 minutes ago, DramatistDreamer said:

     

    That's a fair point.

    I wish that soaps had pushed harder for some sort of way to count delayed viewing back in the VCR era. Just imagine how many viewers were pitched because VCR viewings didn't register back then. I don't know how it could've been done or if the technology was even there (although A/B switches were part of the technology back then) but I wonder how those ratings would've been different.

    Completely agreed.  Obviously so many people watching soaps on video tape affected their ratings (and exposure to their sponsors, or lack thereof) more than with primetime shows.  I know that in the early 90s numerous articles would quote that All My Children was the most video taped program in North America and I suspect other soaps weren't far behind.

  9. 12 minutes ago, titan1978 said:

    Oh Andy-  always there to take the credit and the attention.  Never one to take the blame.  Don’t you change.

     

    The one thing I would argue about the Housewives (I do not watch, but my mother watches all of them), is that they rarely feature multiple women under the age of 30.  They are filled with women that soap execs and writers have been neglecting on daytime for about 25 years.  It is exploitative and often ridiculous, but they do not ignore an age group that soaps often try to, or at least sideline quite often.

    That's a fair point.  I've never watched enough to really be able to fairly comment on them, just that they don't appeal to me.  (And when people suggest they fill the gap left without soaps, it just makes me think that those people didn't watch soaps for most of the same reasons I did.  You know stuff like well written dramatic scenes, deep family relationships over decades, sensitive depictions of controversial social storylines...  If the Housewives franchise is known for these, than I apologize).

    And yes--Andy's reaction is so...  Andy.  And it's why so many people find him so obnoxious. 

    3 minutes ago, GLATWT88 said:

    I'm going to defend Andy on this one and you can drag me if you want, but they did ask him about reality TV and not only did they ask, they decided to include the footage in the final product. Who ever put this together is to blame.

     

    The Vulture piece I linked to with the producer does mention she got the idea to pitch this when she was originally going to pitch something about reality shows, and she saw a connection.  So it does seem pretty clear why he was asked...

    1 hour ago, DramatistDreamer said:

     

     

     Let's not dismiss that aspect.

    Thanks for that--you're absolutely right and it is important to acknowledge that.  I jumped unfairly on Sara's comment--and ironically after I made a post where I thought that Eric objecting to the show pointing out how soaps were primarily, initially written for women sorta missed why it was important to stress that.  I guess part of my reaction is it is still undeniable that people (particularly women) going into the workforce played a big part in ratings falling (and probably also why the young student demo became increasingly important).

  10. Wow, DC, as always your analysis is indispensable--thank you.  For some reason I always thought I started watching under Addie Walsh, but maybe that's just when I began paying attention to the credits, as I definitely started watching when I could when Ceara crossed over to the show (which was done well but seemed an odd choice--she hadn't even been on AMC that long, of course back then when I was 11 I didn't realize she was the actress who played Laura!).  I didn't start taping it daily though until a year later (I remember Kate, I think, locking Jeremy and Ceara in a garden shed or something so that they'd resolve their feelings).  In hindsight she probably would have fit better on Loving permanently than Jeremy, but of course her character was killed off camera when they were to move to Corinth (and Genie already had left the role).

    I wonder if Munistari was fired or quit.  I admit even at the time, I thought it was a mistake how Haidee phased out the campus setting.  Walsh's second tenure between Nixon and Brown/Esensten was very brief, and more of an interim job, wasn't it?

  11. 38 minutes ago, mikelyons said:

    Are there any sensation serials you'd recommend?

    Sure.  Wilkie Collins basically invented the genre with The Woman in White (which was a phenomenon--they had so much merchandise, including perfumes, fans, etc, connected to it)--but basically he just took what his friend Dickens had been doing and updated the Gothic serials and combined them (as a rule sensation fiction will flirt with supernatural elements but unlike the Gothic they are based in reality--Henry James famously said that sensation serials were the first to take advantage of modern, even often middle class, settings, new technology like the railroad, etc).  And it's still agreat read--there have been numerous film and TV adaptations that really mess with the story, though the recent BBC series is pretty good and faithful.  Wilkie Collins wrote a lot, but his most famous four sensation serials are White, No Name, The Moonstone and, one of my all time fave novels, Armadale which is wonderful and *crazy* (and surprising in how it deals with things like a sympathetic villainous, racial prejudice, etc). 

    Incidentally after Woman in White was serialized in Dickens' magazine, All the Year Round and caused circulation to spike, the followup serial by someone else caused circulation to plummet.  Dickens immediately took the serial he was about to launch himself, and re-edited what he had written to make it much more in the "sensation" model--upping the twists and revelations and use of cliffhangers and reformatting it for weekly installments--that became Great Expectations.

    The other really most famous sensation works are by two women.  One is Mary Elizabeth Braddon whose most famous work, Lady Audley's Secret is pretty amazing, and one of the first examples of having a female anti-hero (and Agnes Nixon surely got the Natalie in the well story from a famous part of this).  The follow up Aurora Floyd is also notable.  The other author is Ellen Wood, due mostly to one novel, East Lynne which would have still been a title the general public would recognize well into the 1930s.  The central theme of this, involving a character who returns to her previous family in disguise to be close to her child, is one soaps have long borrowed from...

    Wiki's rather basic page about sensation fiction is a pretty good summary.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensation_novel

    39 minutes ago, dragonflies said:

    Andy Cohen is being dragged for filth on Twitter for this mess 

    I mean he's been vocal about his feelings about soaps before (both that he loved them and that there's absolutely no future for them), so this wasn't too surprising.  He did seem to acknowledge that a bit by pointing out that Lucci does not agree with him about Real Housewives serving the same function so I appreciated that at least (and yet Lucci was still praising him in her web interview last week).

  12. 2 hours ago, Faulkner said:

    Yes, definitely seemed like it was dancing on daytime’s grave. As if they were a thing of the past and there’s no need for them to exist anymore. 

    Yeah, there’s no way this would fly on a network, especially after those ratings. But who needs the networks anymore. That’s actually part of the story they *didn’t* want to tell: that the big broadcast networks and their precious primetime programming have become just as irrelevant as the daytime soaps they’ve relegated to the ancient past.

     

    But yeah we’ve been begging for a Ken Burns-style documentary series. Maybe even PBS would be good, but a streaming service would be ideal.

    One of the talking heads did point out with a smile how the ratings for a current primetime hit on network tv would have gotten that show canceled twenty five years ago--but oddly she didn't point out that soaps also had higher ratings than nearly everything on primetime tv does now.

    The odd thing about the show becoming more negative about soaps in the last quarter was they did have all these people talking about how they were dead--and then in the fianl bit before the credits it seemed like they did a 180 and were all "we need escapism!  everyone must watch the remaining soaps".  Like other segments, it definitely was a mixed message.

    A couple of years back PBS had a series about TV history that had an episode devoted to soaps.  And it was ALL about the rise of primetime soaps post Dallas...

    2 hours ago, DRW50 said:

     

    How do you go from that to working with a producer who consistently puts out anti-gay material? He was at OLTL at a time when they told viewers that gay men fake hate crimes to get attention and sympathy. What bullshit.

    I mean I agree with you, but I can't blame him for sticking around in his job at all.  Especially with so little alternatives to work in the industry--I hate to say it but I doubt I would behave any differently in his shoes.

    1 hour ago, Faulkner said:

    Hell, I’d be into a doc that starts with Dickens/newspaper serials and the Greeks and sh!t like that. I totally want to an opportunity to geek out and watch something over and over again. And learn.

    There's such meaty material that can be used here too.  I know when I was doing my MA thesis for English and connecting soaps to the infamous Victorian sensation serials (particularly from "the sensational [18]60s") the parallels were astounding.  Sensation serials were read particularly by women, and, increasingly, written by women, the basically perfected plot points like amnesia, people thrown down wells, doppelgangers, etc, while also craftily integrating taboo social issues into their storylines, they increased serialization from monthly to weekly which caused a lot of (snobby, often male and upper class) intellectuals to fear that they were addicting their readers like a drug and those readers could no longer tell what was real and what wasn't (exactly the fear that radio soaps caused), etc, etc.  I know a number of people who came to my various MA presentations with zero knowledge of soap operas told me how fascinating they found it all--there's definitely work to make a compelling doc series...

    1 hour ago, Soapsuds said:

    Are you Chris Van Etten? That's what he said on the show.

    I'm in the same boat--I was 12, and noticed the Billy storyline so started setting my recorder to tape OLTL after AMC, but always made sure to watch it when my mom wasn't home...

  13. 2 hours ago, mikelyons said:

    I'm going to pour a big cocktail before watching this over the weekend.

    He's right! My dad - 6'2", owned a landscaping company, loved to fish, loved sports, a real man's man - LOVED Jesse and Angie, Adam Chandler, and Erica Kane. You'd never guess it, but that's what happens when network execs and lazy "journalists" assume. 

    You know, usually the assumption that men don't watch soaps drives me crazy, but it didn't particularly in this special for some reason.  I felt that they DID make the point that men watched soaps.  It's true that the second (third?) segment was all about "by women for women" or whatever, which I can see ruffling feathers.  That said, I think it is a very important part of the soap opera narrative that traditionally these were stories aimed at women and often made by women.  That's a *huge* reason that they have not had much respect historically, and I think it's important to acknowledge that.  I know no one here is doing this, but elsewhere I've seen male viewership used as an indication of quality.  "I loved Edge of Night--did you know it had a large male viewership?  That's because it was so good."  (It's similar to how the press and others used to like to give soaps some legitimacy by naming all the celebrity fans--you know, it's not just something those uneducated housewives like!).  I think Eric Braeden is over-focusing on this element of the special when there's other stuff to complain about.

    58 minutes ago, Titus Andronicus said:

    John Stamos posted a few old backstage photos last night.

     

    Another big problem of the special is that soaps were treated as one singular thing. There was no labeling of clips, much less anything to let anyone stumbling in know that Luke and Laura were a completely different show in a completely different time as Marlena levitating off the bed.

     

    It's befuddling that telenovelas weren't mentioned at all, or that nearly nearly every nation with a network has tried soaps at some point. And you've got Carol Burnett, why not talk about her show's sendup of soaps, As the Stomach Turns? 

    Oh, I get only focusing on American soaps.  I think it simply becomes WAY too broad to mention the soap tradition in other countries (and then you kinda have to go into how they are similar and yet so different in many ways). 

    But I mentioned how they should have at *least* labelled those clips (which would not have been hard at all) and maybe dated them too.  As I said, it felt like the show both wanted to be accessible for soap newbies, and yet assumed an awful lot of knowledge from its audiences (even when they name drop, say, Gloria Monty they don't clearly say what exactly her role was at GH.  Or when they did their Irna and Agnes Nixon mentions--couldn't they at least write on the screen the soap operas they created??)

    2 hours ago, Aback said:


    Absolutely. My father was a truck driver. Obsessed with B&B. Same for my brother. 
     

    My Uncle was an accountant and he would not go to meetings or pay any attention to his daughters when Loving was on. 

    Ah but they are European so it doesn't count ;)

  14. 4 hours ago, GLATWT88 said:

     

    I'm not sure if this is it, but it was so long ago that I don't really remember much. I believe it may have been later in the 90s and it was a daytime special or aired during daytime. Perhaps, a special for ABC soaps. All I remember was mention of Luke and Laura, their wedding, and they played the ambulance intro to GH. I also believe they mentioned lots of soap weddings. I was fascinated by it as a kid and I remember there being lots of clips from soaps...not poor blurry ones like we had on this Story of Soaps. I tried searching for it online some years later, but there's so much more uploaded online these days I'm sure it may be up somewhere or it may actually be this. I'm positive this special was on during daytime, because my mom and sister were home and I was either home for a holiday or summer vacation. 

     

    P.S. I recognize your name from another forum I used to be on some time ago. 

    This was a cute moment. I love when celebrities share their love for soaps and this made me smile, because it was hilarious. I also enjoyed Kristian Alfonso's story about the male soap fan. I feel like the special would have done better having random moments like that and showing clips from major moments in soap history rather than trying to fit in so much in so little time and essentially not covering much at all because it was too much for the allotted time. 

    Yes, I was really surprised by that. Even on the acting credits listed next to her name they only mentioned General Hospital. I thought it was shady and really weird. She was on GL for a very long time it wasn't just a blip in her resume. Some of the commentators had credits of stints that didn't even last a year to tie them to the soap world. 

    You recognize me from another forum?  Uh OH...  Are you sure you're not thinking of the ABC special devoted to the weddings of AMC/OLTL and GH?  It was marketed as a video tape but may have aired on tv too.  (I have a copy somewhere).

    Those credits were often wrong--they never mentioned Brown writing Loving or co-creating The City for example (and also listed all the dates he was at the shows--as headwriter or just as script writer, but I guess that's understandable).

  15. 21 hours ago, Faulkner said:

    A mixed bag of a year with O.J. raging on. Loved AMC in 1995, though, with Alec/Hayley/Arlene, Liza’s return, and Erica’s pill-popping story that led up to her infamous Woman of the Year speech in early ‘96. For me, that was my favorite year for AMC of the entire ‘90s.

    It was a great year for AMC (mostly due to interim HW Hal Corley and then Lorraine Broderick).  I'm surprised they didn't mention the gay umbrella storyline on AMC starting, but I guess that really began in December 1995 (when Michael Delaney came out to his class).

    "Worst Contemporary Story - Lost In Cyberspace - AMC"

    Was this the dumb storyline between, I think, Cecily and Charlie who were on an online dating site?

  16. As many on here know, I'm a Sondheim fanatic (shocking, I know--a highlight in my life was getting to interview him as a teenager).  But this is way too hard...  I'll have to think on it :P

    Fun fact.  Suzanne Rogers played one of the showgirl ghosts as a replacement cast member when the show, after closing (way too early) on Broadway moved with most of the original cast for a limited run in LA. 

    Also, I think people tend to think Follies should be cast older than it really is meant to be (this may be partly because modern actors, and people in general as life spans lengthen, often to age slower than they did when it premier in 1971.  Similarly why Blanche DuBois  in Streetcar is rarely now cast with a woman in her mid 30s as she originally was).  Ben, Phyllis, Buddy and Sally should all be cast around the ages of 45-50 (which to modern audiences of course does not really seem like someone past their prime).  Their characters performed right at the end of the Follies shows.  Some of the other characters can be cast significantly older...

    Also, I nearly spat out my coffee at Brenda Dickson playing Heidi, the *opera singer* (and oldest of the Follies girls) and singing One More Kiss lol

  17. 11 minutes ago, AbcNbc247 said:

    For what it was, it was really good. I had a feeling we weren’t going to get the complete story, because it’s impossible to squeeze 90 years into two hours, with commercials. (I just realized that Bill Bell wasn’t mentioned at all) 

     

    For me, it started to fall apart in the last half hour. It sort of became The Story of the Real World and the Real Housewives. I’m sorry but we didn’t need to hear about Pedro. I would have liked to have seen more about what soaps did at this time to try to lure fans back. 

     

    But overall, I really liked it. And I’m glad that there are actors out that there like John Stamos and Bryan Cranston who realize what soaps are. I hope the documentary prompts people to tune back to the remaining four soaps.

    Thanks!

    She said during his time on the show, he became so overwhelmed with the amount of work that he went to the producers and pleaded with them to let him go

    They really should have mentioned that Bill Bell was essentially the other one of Irna Phillips' proteges.  But, I guess the problem was they spoke about Irna and Agnes in the section about how it was groundbreaking for being so overwhelmingly by women creators.  (And I still think they could have at least listed all the shows those women created/worked on).

    Agreed about when it really fell apart--I linked to the Vulture interview with the producer, above, and that part must have been left over from her desire to do something about reality tv and she just couldn't drop it.  It was clever juxtaposing it with the GH AIDS story scenes, although I'm not sure ultimately if that was needed.

    I like John Hamm, and I liked his comments, but he was the one actor I really had no idea why he was there...

    18 minutes ago, Faulkner said:

    I was comparing this to the CNN decade documentaries, but those were so much more professionally done, with appropriate budgets. They labeled most of their longer clips. Yet they didn’t have these elaborate sets and graphics mimicking slides from a carousel projector, which, again, were eye-catching (and maybe more accessible to a network primetime audience not used to a stark documentary style), but I’d gladly have sacrificed those for better clips.
     

    And you are SO right about the hypocrisy of these networks going after unauthorized uploaders of clips yet using said clips to cut costs in their programming, claiming “fair use.“

    Yes.  Seriously, if they are pulling from Youtube, in most cases the soap episode original broadcast dates *are* listed.  Would it have been hard to just put a little label with the name of the show and the year?  I was reminded of how annoyed my mom gets with internet FB and blog posts where someone posts photos and never identifies them :P I mean sure most of us could probably roughly place nearly all of the clips, but...

    And yeah--the whole Youtube thing from that perspective has been a mess for a while now.  I've seen network news, etc, use YT clips (say for when an actor dies, or whatever) for nearly ten years now with no concern of copyright--and yet when it benefits them to remember they own the copyright...

    (Also, I'm sorry, *someone* should have pointed out that Peyton Place was, briefly, something of a phenomenon and helped boost newbie ABC, when they called Dallas the very first primetime soap... :P )

  18. I thought it was better than I expected, though I can't argue with these complaints.

    I know with Andy Cohen there we'd have a whole thing about reality shows giving viewers their soap fix, which rives me crazy.  I know people here who I have a ton of respect for watch Real Housewives--I just can not handle it.  But regardless, the idea that watching it is the same as watching a soap has never held weight for me (though I've encountered it all the time--when I was working on my MA essay about soaps a number of people automatically thought I must watch Housewives).  More pertinent was pointing out how much current "prestige" TV, which is almost all serialized, owe to soaps, but that was pretty briefly mentioned.

    Like a lot of these types of broad specials, I think the problem was you wonder who the audience was.  In many ways it wanted to give a historical introduction to soaps and their importance to people who might not know much about soaps.  But on the other hand, as All My Shadows mentioned, it assumed that the audience would know a lot.  I mean they talk about Irna Phillips and Agnes Nixon but, aside from mentioning Nixon and All My Children, I don't remember them even giving a quick rundown on what shows the women created and wrote.  At least with the longer clips, why not say where the clip is from?  I'm not really sure what a better format would have been for all of this (it's not like we were gonna get a multi episode series that could really focus on different aspects) but...  I did appreciate the talking heads for people I don't often see interviewed (I'm not even sure I really knew what Lorraine Broderick looked like).  But yeah, the main fault was it was neither specific or even general enough.  Still, I guess I'm glad that they did it--more than wishing they hadn't.  I wasn't offended by anything in it really (the reality bit aside).  It was interesting to get into topics like the Luke and Laura rape, but again with that story, without the audience knowing a bit more about the deeper context, would it mean much?

    9 hours ago, Faulkner said:

    Oof. I guess you couldn’t expect much better, but the quality of the video clips...

    Youtube has become the bane of these types of shows (as well as the local news, where maybe I am more keen to excuse it).  I swear for about 2 seconds they showed a bit from the Cortland Masquerade ball from 1980 on AMC that *I* uploaded to Youtube.

    I mean on one hand it must make putting together a show like this so so much easier.  But the quality really suffers and is all over the map (and it does make me think about the irony of these networks who often don't officially approve of such uploads, then using the uploads to save money on their own programming)

    9 hours ago, Faulkner said:

    It’s like they pulled them off YouTube. Hell there are soap clips from the ‘70s on YouTube that are clearer, even watched on my full flatscreen. Even that Annie/Erica bitchslap clip was a mess and that was less than 15 years ago.

    They are 100% pulled from Youtube.

    8 hours ago, soapfan770 said:

    Although I appreciate the Luke & Laura significance in history personally I think Victor & Nikki outdid then and outlasted them a popular supercouple while Tom & Margo on ATWT despite all the ups and downs never once divorced. 

    Yes but those characters never really broke into the mainstream zeitgeist the way Luke and Laura did.  Tons of non soap viewers had some idea who Luke and Laura were.  This has only happened with a few other soap characters (Erica Kane being an obvious one).  I think Victor Newman is pretty recognizable now but still if you said "Victor and Nikki" few non viewers would have any idea who you meant.

    8 hours ago, GLATWT88 said:

     

     

    I remember back in the late 90s there was a special on soaps, I was young so I dont remember what channel it was on but it was similar in nature to this. I was hoping that this special would take a different perspective, but nonetheless it's nice to have something on soaps.

     

    Was it the 1994 CBS special "50 Years of Soaps"?  Some good stuff there--more fitting for the time, it was done in a sorta award show format. 

     

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