Khan

Well, now that O'Connor and Van Etten might be out the door officially, I'm sure one or both will land on Ron Carlivati's staff at DAYS in no time.

I vote for the latter, lol.

Wow, I can't believe any soap, let alone AW, played one of my all-time favorite songs, "Sugar on the Floor," by Etta James, as background music in one of their scenes! I definitely think it could be the lack of direction. Even an okay director who had more time with the actors could modulate Jackee's performances better.

I think I read somewhere that Gloria Monty had plans for a Scotty/Amy romance set against the world of ice skating and the Winter Olympics, but I guess Kin Shriner's departure scuttled those plans, along with anything else they might have had in mind for Amy.

It's as if the networks said, "Well, if it worked for Jackie Gleason and Audrey Meadows...!".

Don't get me wrong, @vetsoapfan, I can understand (in retrospect) how viewers who'd been watching the show for decades felt or might've felt about all the changes that took place on-screen and off- throughout the '80's. I also wouldn't suggest that the quality during that time was as good as or better than the previous decades. Whenever I re-watch stuff from that period, however, I feel about as much nostalgia for back then as I do whenever I re-watch anything from Marland's period, or even the Dobsons', if that makes any sense. I guess what I'm trying to say is, I loved GL - the good, the bad, the ugly, the HIDEOUS - because, in the end, GL, like AMC, feels the most like home to me, regardless of who might have been the HW, EP or principal cast members at any given time.

So the austere-looking Mormon number she's wearing in that screenshot was NOT Lila's dress?

Granted, my memories of GL only go back as far as 1981 or so, but I definitely agree with your assessment of the Irna/Agnes years, @vetsoapfan. At the same time, though, I'm not sure I agree with you that 1985-88 were unwatchable - at least, not for me. There's still much about that period that I love and love as much as I love everything that came before and after it, too. In general, I love anything and everything GL-related* from its' earliest days on radio to, at least, 1998-99, which was/is the point I stopped being a regular viewer of the show. (*Although Megan McTavish's crap really tried my patience, lol.)

Thank you, @Vee, for the clarification. Maybe I'm remembering a different show, lol? Yup! "Millionaire" came along at the right time for ABC. Unfortunately, I think the show became a crutch of sorts for the network, who scheduled it on so many nights that, I think, the public became sick of it and wanted it gone. I feel like the only ones who truly enjoyed MAY (both the original series and the revival) were Paul Reiser and Helen Hunt. Everyone else couldn't be bothered.

Let's be honest: Tom Eplin's entire life is just one big OMG. I think Stephen Schnetzer is/was the most embarrassed to be there, followed by Matt Crane. (Mark Pinter might've been embarrassed, too, but then again, his midlife crisis probably enjoyed hanging out with the younger crowd, lol).

I think "Diagnosis: Murder" suffered from the same problem as did "Murder, She Wrote." In both cases, the network underestimated the type of demographic that the show drew, simply because the lead actor was of a certain age. It's like CBS totally forgot that, thanks to Nick at Nite and "Mary Poppins," even younger viewers knew and enjoyed watching Dick Van Dyke, just as younger people liked watching Angela Lansbury on MSW because they might have known her from "Bedknobs and Broomsticks" and, later, "Beauty and the Beast." IIRC - and it's been eons, so forgive me - they actually were in the middle of taping the pilot/first episode (in front of a studio audience?) when either Craig T. Nelson or Barry Kemp stopped taping, realized it wasn't going to work and called off the rest of the series, lol. God, when I think about the number of mediocre-to-awful shows that passed through NBC's Must-See TV lineup over the years....

And even that didn't excite me, lol! I will say this much for JFP: when P&G or NBC wanted to DAYS-ify AW by including vampires and whatnot, she balked. In fact, it's almost refreshing how she did her best to avoid that kind of storytelling on all her shows.

Because, he's got the moves like him? Or, maybe it's because, when he was growing up, he reminded everyone of DEAN Jagger.

Poor Peggy McCay, lol.

It seems like whenever AW attempted to copy trends, or make itself look more "hip!" and "now!," it always wound up embarrassing itself instead. IOW, AW was just one soap opera that never could keep up successfully with the times.

Yep, lol!

AFAIC, now that you-know-who is back, Drew/CM is as good as gone.

Me, whenever I try and untangle the mess that is John Black's history:

To this day, I don't understand why "Coach" appealed to so many. Neither the cast nor the writing was ever funny.

LOL!! "This 'Medical Minute' has been brought to you by your good friends at Procter & Gamble, who remind you to join us tomorrow and every weekday for the continuing story of 'ANOTHER WORLD'."

I agree. Fortunately, I thought she played off David O'Brien (Steve) rather well, so that helped me make the transition. I mean, I hate to imagine how much worse it might've been had she and DOB had no chemistry whatsoever.

I won't argue with you there, lol!

It's just that John and whoever else never digs up anything that is new and surprising and different about him. It's always, "John Black was once a very bad person," as if we hadn't learned that already! Why not dig up a long-forgotten wife and kids, or a sibling or half-sibling, who remembers him before he turned into Robo Cyborg Killer? Hell, at this point, I'll even take a secret past as one of the Von Trapp kids in the original stage production of "The Sound of Music"!

Knowing Frank, he probably hired Patrick J. Gibbons to do it, lol.

Yeah, that story's becoming a real struggle for me, too, lol. Then again, I'm just tired of this show rehashing John's past whenever they don't know what else to do with him. At this point, he could be unmasked as the Zodiac Killer and I would not care.