EricMontreal22

Oh good, so when the show was still fairly young and strong. Thanks!

So that should be Sam Hall and Henry Slesar. Wiki says: July 1982 to January 1983 Sam Hall Henry Slesar March 1980 to May 1982 Sam Hall Peggy O'Shea

I have a friend who is going to try watching Ryan's Hope on Soapnet (sadly I still can't get Soapnet here in Canada). Could someone tell me roughly what year they're showing currently?

Who was HW at that time? Was it still the pretty great Sam Hall? Or was this one of the funny interim eras like when Slesar came on briefly to co headwrite or the Corringtons?

One more comment, what she calls bad direction to me seems intentional, and again a style she just didn't like. Agnes wrote Phoebe as a Broad Dickensian caricature, especially early on. Joe and Ruth on the other hand were meant to be the down to eaarth, realistic flip of that. It's not actor or director choices, it's what the characters were meant to be. Sheesh Deborah!

I just get the feel she simply didn't get the show. Agnes' strength has always been to use soap tropes like amnesia, etc, but in intelligent ways. Reading the story for other soaps at the time, particularly Irna Phillips late stuff, I simply don't buy what Deborah is saying in her first two paragraphs (only with Harding Lemay's work I suppose, where he did consciously set out to avoid soap melodrama cliches). She doesn't really give many examples of where these other soaps avoid the cliches. It is true though, again that many vet soap fans were thrown by the mix of story styles in AMC, from broad comedy, to slightly cliche love stories, etc, and it sounds like Agnes, Washam and crew, didn't really find a way to make these styles mesh better together till later on. She mentions how interracial concerns are of importance, and MC didn't touch much on them early on, though of course OLTL did, but I don't see other soaps of the time doing much with them either. Even Lemay's AW was more about intereconomical issues. And I don't agree that intereconimcal (or I'd just say class issues) ever truly became irelevent to modern Americans, even today. In fact I wish soaps would deal more with them now, where everyone seems rich, or at least very comfortable.

It is commonly felt too, to be fair, that AMC came into its own in the second half of the 70s--although All Her Children was written in 1975, and it's clear it was already attracting a group of soap fans who would never normally have been attracted to soaps. Still the very title of her piece gives me the impression she was thinking "You think you're so great and sophisticated, AMC, but let me tell you you're not, so THERE!"

That article is amazing! But the thing is, throughout the 70s there's a marked resentment about AMC, and to a lesser extent OLTL from the soap press. I have a number of books that clearly have an agenda against them. It seems that part of it is a love for old school soaps like ATWT, and I think there was some resentment about the fame Agnes got from the press for "updating" soaps, making them socially relevent, etc. It's too bad cuz in the pieces Agnes did write to the NYT and elsewhere defending soaps, she's VERY clear to point out good stuff happening on the other soaps as well--at no time does she come off as bragging about how great her own shows are compared to the others. But still, I honestly think a lot of it is jealousy. Kinda ironic that now AMC looks like perhaps the most traditional soap on the air...

Agreed. What was so wrong about that too, was it was clear that the show had given up on Edmund by that point. Wich is too bad, but... Of course under Rayfield we had Edmund suddenly lock up and try to drug maureen to force her to remember Maria, which really won him over. And then Edmund got in the accident--I mean did they even have more than one second of being happy as a couple when Maureen did become Maria again? What a poorly toild story (and then Edmund was killed for a reason I still can enver remember by jonathan... ugh)

Aside from Guiding Light, out of the dozens of radio soaps I've listened to, Right to Happiness is the most compelling. I know Irna only wrote it briefly, but every era I've heard has been pretty compelling and I believe it was well rated, I dunno why it was never transfered. It would seem natural when GL became a TV hit to pair it with RTH

Here is the People article mentioned http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20084224,00.html How did I miss this thread? I've wondered about this soap for AGES. A cable soap from Marland with tons of familiar soap faces, that has almost completely vanished? (speaking of didn't Falken Smith have a showtime soap set in a Country Music Bar? The Soap Encyclopedia mentions it in passing but doesn't even have a heading for it... Anyone know?) It is interesting he went from this immediately to Loving (like the same year).

Well deserved!

I always wondered about the singing on Y&R (and man I wanna see that special). EVERY 70s soap opera book says that Y&R was filled with musical sequences--surely this was phased out (at least done less frequently) by the 80s. I love the optimism of mid to late 70s soap press and books--I know one of the books I has claims that within ten years stars like Barbra Streisand will beg to star in a soap, the future is unlimited, etc.

I've been behind with this thread--but the show has quickly become my favorite show of the moment. Ep 7 (which I watched last week due to the HBO on Demand thing) was particularly good--the only bit that annoyed me, and my brother says was not in the book, was Littlefinger's obvious monologue, setting up the end, accompanied clumsily by the softcore (if talk of anal sex can be called soft core) whore action. It felt like it was there to keep teenaged males invested, which is something I've appreciated about the show otherwise. Yeah it's as graphic as most HBO shows, but it doesn't seem to pander. (Would I have complained if the same scene had shown male prostitutes? Probably not But I already have ahd some trouble convincing some women friends that they'd really love the show, and it's not typical fanboy stuff). When I was flying back from San Fran I picked up the novel at the airport, and have read up to, basically, where ep 7 ends, now. While this isn't a True Blood case--where I think the tv material is far better than its source--I have to say I actually enjoy the series more. Martin is a very good writer (aside from some comments, like Cat musing about missing Ned's seed in her--I really doubt any woman, or man, actually thinks so literally and ickily like that), but the visuals, and the more interesting take on Cersei, who comes off far more intelligent and rounded in the show, among other things has me more into it. That said, I'm not sure if I can hold back from reading the following books for a year waiting for Season 2. That said, I do appreciate the details the novel fleshes out--and I admit until about episode 4 I had to go to HBO's viewer's guide and re-read all the back history, and character relationships. I'm a little surprised it's doing so well, because I do think it takes work to get into--but is very rewarding. (But please, no more views of the sky prison cells, etc--I thought I had quit being afraid of heights, but literally all those scenes caused such a reaction in me that my legs would start twittching).

Well done! Hope you feel better.

I didn't watch, but I gathered from Schemering's book some hardcore traditional soap fans felt AMC off putting becase in the same bit between commercials you coul dhave a comic scene played broadly, a dramatic scene, etc--lots of different tones. From reading All her Children which was written late 75 though the show and sense of community is something the author of it felt was best of all about AMC, and stood out compared to other soaps.

The second episode completely won me over! Can't wait for ep 3! BTW HBO has a great viewer's guide http://viewers-guide.hbo.com/game-of-thrones/#!/guide/houses/ that helped me sort out the characters relationships and backstory but unlike Wikipedia isn't filled with spoilers from the first sentence on.

Back in the day I actually really would agree with you--I think now I'm just overun by nostalgia fever. But no one I knew likes Laurel, and I know Noah was beloved by many--but I liked everyone connected to his stories, except him. The only thinf I dislike now about this era is the background music--it's so pervasive! I think back then I didn't even notice. Because you know if Pine Valley had a Heaven it would be one that looked like an Easter garden party....

Welcome! I wish he had more AMC cuz, yeah, the video quality is terrific. I kinda get why some felt that by 1987 the show had become a bit too segmented, but it's terrific stuff.

Totally agreed. It seemed especially odd with Griff--the online "character preview" episode was him all shirtless--and in the new credits they show him the same way. But we've gotten kinda half shots of him when injured which could not be remotely called gratuitous--and that's it. Aside from that one Scott scene, we haven't had any male semi nudity really on the show all year it seems. Wouldn't things like male nudity fall down more to the EP than the HW? Don't forget GL (although a long time now) had the male ass shot.

It's really odd how AMC has completely toned down the sex/"nudity" in the past few years when it would have made sense to play it up. I'm not sure if I mind--I would hate to have seen it turned into what OLTL is right now (though during the Rayfield era it was close) but...

Ha Whoomp There It Is was hardly just a "Black" hit anyway...

For me, at the time, it was *wow* TV. I think in hindsight it looks tame--yet not at all compared to (not to pick on another fallen show) what OLTL had done a years later

Yeah and it ended up Opal wwho questioned his sexuality over and over. Even though none of Pine Valley was too homophobic--I think it showed the riff in a realistic light

Teens will never be written as masture adults again I think...