Khan

I agree. I also thought the inherent class conflicts in the beginning (between the Perkinses and Andrades and the Capwells and Lockridges) were a smart way to build a new soap, but I probably would have concentrated just on two: the blue-collar, Hispanic Andrades and the rich, eccentric Lockridges. Rita Stapleton Bauer is so fascinating to me. As I said years ago, Rita basically was a decent person, but with one major flaw: the truth just wasn't in her, lol. Like with OLTL's Tina, though, I never thought she lied with the intent of hurting people. Rather, she lied, but she lied for the right reasons. I'd love to read that novel someday.

The premise is pretty straightforward: pretend you are a head-writing a soap opera. (It can be one that is still on the air, it can be one that is no longer on the air, it even can be one you've made up). If you could choose your staff writers, who would you choose? And yes, they can be dead or alive. (I'm sure even a dead person could do a better job writing some of these shows than the live ones who are writing them!)

To this day, I don't exactly know who bumped off Mary Robeson, or whether she really was Laura's long-lost mother.

I wouldn't say SaBa was dreadful. (If you wanna talk about a soap that was dreadful, look no further than PASSIONS, lol). SaBa had plenty going for it, once they worked out most of the kinks. I just think the bean counters at NBCD and New World Television mucked it all up in the end. I remember reading a WATN interview with former OLTL HW Peggy O'Shea, where she talked about her time as a consultant on SaBa. TPTB asked her to watch the show for awhile and then give her thoughts. She said she told them there was nothing wrong with the show and to leave it alone. "So, of course," she said, "they went and changed everything."

You'd be lit, too, if you had to play those scenes, lol.

They also needed a sponsor and network who allowed them to write what they wrote best and not chase trends, which, clearly, was what they were doing when they wrote stuff like "Barbara Back in Time" or "Tom and Margo vs. Mr. Big."

Coulda fooled me!

Laverne?

For some reason, it reminds me of when Charlotte Rae (aka "Mrs. Garrett") sang part of "The Facts of Life"'s theme song during that show's first season.

I agree! For me, it's like I had to pretend that she really was playing a new character who just happened to have the same name as the character that MW once played. I think what annoyed me more than the changes in Liza, though, was stupid Chuck Pratt telling the press, "Oooh, chile, that AMC cast 'bout to find out, 'cuz Miss Jamie's 'bout to hand them they asses!" Excuse me, lol?? Now, God knows I have ragged a-plenty on many of AMC's later cast members over the years, but as much as I've loved JL, going all the way back to "Just the Ten of Us," I hardly think she was gonna have Susan Lucci waking up and crying on Helmut's big shoulder in the middle of the night, if you know what I mean. (By the way, I apologize for making Chuck Pratt sound like Debbie Allen. My bad.)

ICAM. But maybe that's because so much of their work is unavailable today. If not for the stuff that shows up from time-to-time on YT, hardly anyone born after a certain year would know about or remember the Dobsons' work on GL, for example. And we all know how the folks at YT just looooove to take [!@#$%^&*] down for no damn reason. I do, too. On the one hand, there's no doubt that the Dobsons would have breathed new energy into AW, giving the show a direction or purpose that it never really had after 1979/1980. But, on the other hand, unless NBCD and P&G were willing to give the Dobsons creative leeway, as well as invest heavily in promoting the show again, I question whether their writing would have increased AW's ratings all that much. As I said in another thread, I think there came a point when no one outside of AW's most diehard, core audience really cared anymore about the show, regardless of how well it might have been doing at any given time creatively. Moreover, I just can't see NBCD willing to work with the Dobsons again after everything they went through on SaBa. CBS and ABC might have taken a chance on working with them - I, for one, would've loved to see what they could've done with OLTL or GL again - but not NBC. Given the time and money they had spent litigating, along with the fact that SaBa ultimately failed, I think NBCD would've kept the two far, far away. TBH, I have mixed feelings about SaBa. There was a lot about the show that I loved, particularly some of its' cast (Marcy Walker, Judith McConnell, Louise Sorel, Nicolas Coster, Nancy Lee Grahn and Lane Davies, etc.) as well as the family dynamics among the many Capwells and Lockridges. In the end, though, SaBa was more about great moments - dialogue, scenes, even whole episodes - than about great storylines - at least for me. For example, I thought the Channing Capwell murder mystery, which opened the show, was pretty good, but Eden's rape, although violent and graphic, turned out to be a very distasteful and insensitive storyline. It's like, most of the time, whenever they actually had something good going, they'd always find some way to sabotage it.

Viki and Dorian. That is all.

Does anyone have the inside story as to why Kathy Breech was replaced as Karen Wolek? Thanks to YT, I was able to watch some of her work. Although she was very pretty, I really don't think she would've been up to playing the prostitution story with as many psychological layers as JL was. Was that why TPTB replaced her, or was it something else?

Yep, lol! Another missed opportunity: having AP return - in later years, of course, probably after "Soap" was dead and gone - for an episode as the spirit of Reverend Ruthledge. For instance, he could've returned during GL's big 50th anniversary celebration, providing counsel to one of the younger characters who was in crisis (although, chances are, it would've been Johnny Bauer and his damn cancer, lol). And after he/she/they had overcome their dilemma, they go back to thank the man, but learn he had died during WWII. I still would love to know which fool at P&G or CBS approved that opening. The music is okay (although, a little sleepy), but those visuals are just too muddy-looking.

I agree, lol. That story cried out for some good, old-fashioned irony.

And the episodes always have the most mawkish-sounding titles, too. Like, "A Marigold for Margie." (In that one, she's a botanist in her early '20's, who has contracted a rare blood disease that will prevent her from fulfilling her lifelong dream of visiting Africa and studying the plant life there.)

Sigh. The '60's. When a girl on TV couldn't experience anything in life without dying at the same time... She's graduating from college/nursing school - and she's dying! She's getting engaged to her college sweetheart - and she's dying! She's going to have the baby she's always dreamed of - and she's dying! She's published the Best Selling Novel of All Time and she's winning the Nobel Prize for discovering the cure for cancer - and guess what? She's dying (and from something that her cure can't cure)! She's always! [!@#$%^&*]! DYING!

EB looks like Barnabas Collins getting his groove on at the Blue Whale. (IYKYK, lol).

I think that's because their lawsuits with NBC and New World were so publicly messy that the other networks wouldn't go near them, fearing that they, too, would end up in court one day. (Same goes, I think, for Pat Falken Smith, who should have worked in soaps a lot longer than she did). Also, even before they had created SaBa, the Dobsons had essentially retired, claiming that head-writing was a nonstop grind that never allowed them much of a personal life. NBC, however, lured them back with the promise of creative control - which, as we all know, was an assurance that would come back to bite all concerned in their respective asses, lol. Maybe it's me, but I think there was a very good reason why the Dobsons never wrote much for teens and young adults on their other shows, lol.

In a way, he didn't. He took the gig, however, so that he could be at home more with his kids, as his wife was pursuing film work that often took her out-of-town. Or, at least, that's the story I heard.

That is a story that would be just as juicy to follow today! I wish Mercedes McCambridge had made a special guest appearance at some point in the later years as Mary Holden. It's strange to think that was the same actor who played The Major on "Soap."

Which was pretty much when GL itself became OTT. I'd argue, though, that the performances had to be OTT across the board because the storylines had become so unbelievable (and no, I'm not talking just about the clone either, lol). By the way, I'm not defending all of Deas' work. I'm more than willing to accept that he lost control of himself at some point there. But I do believe it likely was the result of not being as happy at GL as he might have been at the start.

...Sigh...

No budget.

I'll wager that she would have appreciated it more if you had created a pair of sniping, sniveling dogs and then named them "Frank" and "Doris." It's been a few semesters, so I can't recall any particular SaBa episodes that stand out to me. Generally speaking, though, I wouldn't watch anything from the show's first year, as I agree with everyone else that the younger cast members, save for Marcy Walker and Robin Wright, were mostly awful. Nor would I watch anything after 1987, because once the Dobsons are locked out, the show turns to [!@#$%^&*] almost immediately. (You watched the Guza/Pratt era of GH, @Vee, so you probably have some idea, lol). According to good ol' wikipedia, the Dobsons return as HW for a year starting in February '91. I remember BD telling SOD that she and JD would need two years to turn things around. (Me: "TWO YEARS???"). Obviously, they never fulfilled their promise, and that probably was for the best, because I remember becoming very bored with the show. At one point, when Jack Wagner's Warren was in Russia, I was like, "If only the Cold War still existed, so he could get trapped there and never return." In retrospect, it was obvious that the Dobsons had not watched their show while they were...um...away, and that they were writing a version of SaBa that no longer existed.