Khan

You know, just the idea of Jerry Jacks making yet another return.... It makes me break out with hives.

I think Eve appealed to the part of every male who was searching (whether consciously or not) for someone to mother him. Kinda like "Sterile Carol" Deming on ATWT.

Exactly! DALLAS drew so much from classic westerns (not to mention, Arthurian legends and Norse sagas). DYNASTY, on the other hand, drew from glossy '40's and '50's melodramas.

Oof, Sid and Nancy. Talk about star-crossed lovers, lol!

I agree. To me, comparing DALLAS with DYNASTY (and vice-versa) is like comparing Agnes Nixon's shows with Bill Bell's. They don't necessarily draw the same types of viewers.

From what Sheri Anderson, who created Kate (along with Austin, Billie and Lucas), has said in the past, it doesn't sound like that was supposed to be her backstory - that, in fact, it was JER who ended up making her Bill's long-ago mistress (and mother of his illegitimate son).

To everyone who thinks Gatsby-themed events are the coolest things ever: did you actually read the book? Because, it's not exactly a celebration of that era. If anything, it's a cautionary tale about what the decadence of post-WWI America would ultimately lead to.

Yes, because, almost from the very beginning (with Carla), OLTL explored what life was like for those who lived on the fringes of society...and you couldn't GET any more fringe than Barnabas [!@#$%^&*] Collins, lol.

I certainly could understand why, lol. People who've never lived in Oklahoma or Texas assume we are Southerners, but that just isn't so. Texas, IMO, has more in common with Arizona and New Mexico; while Oklahoma has more in common with Kansas and Nebraska. We might share a lot of the South's political and religious views, but that's really where the similarities end; and while Pam Long might've envisioned the Lewises and Shaynes as being very Tennessee Williams-esque clans (right down to the Lewises living on a plantation, which, if you've ever been to Tulsa, you know that's absurd, lol), the truth is, they really should've been more William Inge-ish.

It's what I call the Marcus Welby Approach to Topical Storytelling: tie it up and move on before anyone on either side has the chance to be outraged, lol. Not to mention anachronistic! Zarf and his glam rock ways made me feel like I'd been transported back to 1973! (For irony's sake, they should've cast David Bowie as his ultra-conservative dad.)

I love Susan Bedsow Horgan, but she really needed to tell Michael Malone to cut that [!@#$%^&*] out. It was convoluted AF and felt like reheated RH.

That's because the P&G shows were DESPERATE to shake off their image as old-fashioned once GH and the rest of the ABCD lineup took off. Unfortunately, what P&G ultimately did in the process was alienate their core audiences (to chase after a entirely different demographic that never would've switched to AW/ATWT/GL/SFT, etc., no way, no how).

TBH, I'm not so sure about that. Don't get me wrong, if Karen Harris had been allowed to write with only minimal network/sponsor interference, she would've been better than most of the HW's who worked on GL after '94/'95. However, when I look at Harris' body of work - not just at GH and PC, but even in primetime and first-run syndication - I'm just not sure she had the right touch (for lack of a better word) for a P&G show. In order to write for the P&G shows, IMO, you needed a sensibility that jibed with that of the so-called heartland. You needed to write like how people in the Midwest think - and people in the Midwest tend to be very conservative, even when they profess to be politically liberal. You could BE progressive, as Douglas Marland often was on ATWT, but only up to a point; and whatever progressive issues you wanted to explore had to be explored with that in mind. Similarly, writing for an ABCD show STILL requires an ability to be urban and urbane. That's why I think Claire Labine had her greatest successes at ABCD shows due to her NYC worldview. On the other hand, as provocative as Bill Bell was throughout HIS career at DAYS and Y&R, he never would've succeeded on an ABCD show for the simple fact that even HIS envelope-pushing stories (not to mention, his terribly traditional, very methodical day-to-day writing) would've been seen as too staid for ABCD's more urban audiences. The Dobsons and Agnes Nixon were arguably the rare scribes who could write both kinds of shows, but I would attribute that to their ability to imbue stories with humor and wit, which are always the greatest equalizers in storytelling. Of course, I think it also might explain why the Dobsons ultimately failed at NBC with SaBa and maybe why Nixon never worked on any NBC show aside from P&G's AW. To work on an NBCD show (that isn't from P&G), you have to have the ability to write romance - preferably romance that is star-crossed - and you have to "think young," even younger than you would on an ABCD show. Certainly, Nixon could do youth and star-crossed romance, but Jerry and Bridget? "Youth" and "star-crossed lovers" were NEVER their strong suits, lol.

I think that was due mostly to Pamela K. Long's writing. She might not have understood that Oklahomans are NOT like Texans, but she imbued those characters (and everyone else on GL) with so much heart and passion. It's been a long, long time since we've had anyone in charge who's willing to "go for it."

Wow, Frisco Jones with a turkey neck, lol!