Khan

What can I say? Everybody loves a trainwreck!

But at least it wouldn't have me feeling like I'm watching a black-box theater production of "The Lady or the Tiger."

Which is a shame, because I think he would have been just as good with HBS as Margo as he was with Margaret Colin. I don't know what it is, but I've always been more fond of the quirkier, more off-beat actors on soaps than I am of the ones who played heroes and ingenues.

Why did the Dobsons leave ATWT the first time (in 1981)? And why did they return less than a year later?

Erica always had trouble with women who didn't necessarily need the constant love and attention from men in order to validate themselves. To me, Brooke was what Erica could've been with a lot less insecurities.

Mason/Julia was my favorite couple on SaBa, because their conflicts always were internal rather than external.

You know you're a POS when you've got Deidre Hall being critical, lol!

Maybe Bill Bell should have brought Darlene Conley to B&B as Rose DeVille instead, lol!

I agree.

Please tell me Tara's shoe company wasn't named "Locke Step."

Actually, @Sapounopera, I thought SaBa's sense of humor helped the show stand out from the rest of the pack. (Another reason why I would've loved to see the Dobsons head-write AMC or OLTL). But I do agree that there needed to be more of a balance between the humor and comedy and strong storylines that would have a real impact on the canvas. Too often, stories on SaBa were wrapped up much too quickly with little to no lasting effects on characters.

And guess who's been in cahoots with him the whole time? That's right: Jordan!

Oh, Lord, yes, lol. I laughed so hard listening to him. Then again, I laughed pretty hard at pretty much every actor who wasn't from the area where they shot but who gamely tried the accent anyway.

I still remember when he participated in those "I Love the" docuseries on VH1. SMH.

The only thing that I still remember about GL's primetime anniversary special is when several of the show's actresses sat around and talked for an entire segment about all the "hot" men who were on the show at that time. Like, seriously, ladies, take some cold showers, lol. AW's primetime special was like most ads that NBCD's marketing department would make for GENERATIONS: they gave the uninitiated a show that was far more racy than what it really was.

Exactly. I remember JER talking up the show beforehand to the soap mags, referencing PP and other works and saying it would be a traditional soap but "with a twist" (meaning, of course, Tabitha and Timmy and that creepy girl who was warning Dana Sparks that "evil is coming!"), but nothing that said, "But we'll also give our audience a few playful winks and nudges and just have some fun with the conventions of this genre." Norman Lear made it clear at the outset that "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman" was not meant to be taken seriously, as did ABC with "Soap." If your intent is to send up something like the soaps, then you say so, so your audience doesn't go in with false expectations. Otherwise, if you don't make that clear up front, you're just confusing us. Frankly, I think JER was the only one who thought what he was writing was any good, satire or not, and that no one else who was affiliated with PASSIONS ever had the heart to tell him otherwise. By the way, I apologize for turning this thread into a PASSIONS-oriented one, but I've always seen that show in particular as the final, bitter outcome of a gradual dumbing-down of soaps that began all the way back in the early '80's with the Ice Princess storyline on GH.

I'm saying PASSIONS and NBCD wanted us, the viewing public, to believe that what they were producing everyday was legitimately good soap opera and not anything else until they realized that they were fooling no one. Then, rather than admit that the show was horrible, that no one other than small children thought it was any good, that NBCD had made a mistake in giving JER his own show and full creative control, and that maybe they should replace him as HW (if not as EP and show owner, too) with someone who knew what the [!@#$%^&*] they were doing, TPTB decided that they would Jedi Mind Trick everyone instead into thinking it always was meant to be camp/satire/spoof and that we were just missing the point.

That's almost exactly like what's going right now over at GH: "How dare that Nina report Drew and Carly to the SEC for something that they did that was totally illegal and stupid?" I guess the pandemic and widespread budget cuts also affected these shows' ability to prop their shittiest characters?

Compared to the other P&G soaps' openings from that same period, I'd say "Ritournelle" was the weakest. ATWT's was the best, of course, followed by EON's and AW's. SFT's also was good, if a little too simple, but GL's was too muddied (IMO, anyway) and SOMERSET's was just too vague.

Again, I have to go back to PASSIONS as being the absolute nadir of this genre. There were bad soaps before PASSIONS, but no soap, IMO, was as bad - not just dull, like pre-Barnabas DS; or generic, like most of LOVING; but flat-out, funky-ass bad - from day damn one as PASSIONS was. I mean, bad writing, bad acting, bad directing, bad music and sets - that piece of [!@#$%^&*] never should have seen the light of day. But the truly funny/sad part is how PASSIONS tried to re-brand itself as tongue-in-cheek satire after they realized how much of a thud they had landed within the general soap watching community. "It's campy, because it's supposed to be campy!" Bitch, please! Your show reeks and you know it! Anyways. Y'all were saying?

I'm surprised we didn't get: "Up Next, the stars of ABC's newest hit comedy, 'Abbott Elementary,' share their favorite GENERAL HOSPITAL memories!". And I love Sheryl Lee Ralph, but I really don't care whether she was a Bryan/Claudia fan BITD.

Jo Koy hosting your awards show is a good sign that your awards show has ceased being relevant to most everyone.

The fact is the soaps, and the people who work in the soaps, always have been ashamed of themselves. They don't see what they do for their most loyal fans as being as "legitimate" as what primetime shows and movies do for their audiences. IOW, daytime has suffered for a long time from a massive inferiority complex; and it's that complex, IMO, that has been the primary cause of its' downfall.

I guess anything was better than this:

He has what scientists call "rotten luck," lol. Here's my problem with Daniel Cosgrove: several of his past co-stars have talked in the past about how funny and charming he is IRL, but you never see any of that on-screen! It's as if the moment the director yells "Action!" or says "and in 5...4...3...2...1," all the humor and charm leave his person completely.