Khan

I wonder if they would have been better off starting the story all over again and calling it, simply, PEYTON PLACE.

I would say so, @chrisml. In years past, GL had three main selling points: its' actors, who were among the best in the industry (God bless Betty Rea!); its' emphasis on families (the Bauers, the Spauldings, the Chamberlains, the Reardons, the Lewises and Shaynes, the Norrises, Thorpes and Marlers); and its' 70-plus years of history. Even when GL would experience a bit of a rough patch - like during the mid-'80's, when the Bauers were being phased out and the show itself was doing crazy things like Largo programming Billy Lewis to kill Kyle Sampson - you still had this feeling that although P&G wanted GL to keep up with all the trends, they also did not want to risk alienating longtime fans too much or tamper with its' reputation within the industry. IOW, there was a consistency to the quality of acting and day-to-day writing on GL that helped the show through many a bad story and that was tough to beat.

I agree, @kalbir. I have read so much about how the Dobsons "modernized" GL. Compared to the 1960's stuff that still is out there, the Dobsons' work - that is, what I have seen of it - feels so fresh and contemporary. I wish there was more of it available.

YES. And Hillary B. Smith could come aboard, too, as a new character named "Barbara." I. LOVE. IT.

In my version, Seth... 1. ...is played by a different actor; and... 2. ...he turns out to be Kevin Bancroft's son.

Absolutely! As a matter of fact, @kalbir, depending upon whom you ask, many GL fans consider the Dobsons' era to be superior to the other two! Huh. Interesting, lol. ATWT back then was like Y&R today: it didn't really matter to longtime fans whether there was anything exciting going on at that moment. They still tuned in, because the characters had become familiar and comforting to them.

I still say GL needed two years and minimal interference from CBSD and P&G in order to become watchable again. Not great, but not bad enough to make you want to vomit either.

For people like my mom, "Oprah" was the perfect way to end the afternoon after watching LOVING, AMC/Y&R, CAPITOL/RH, OLTL and GL.

Woah! What happened on DAYS the week of 5/30-6/3 for them to jump all the way back to #2? I would say the latter. Bridget and Jerome Dobson seemed to have revitalized GL by that point, so I could imagine CBS/P&G being very eager to expand the show to sixty minutes. LOL, on the other hand, might not have been at the very bottom of the ratings, but they do seem to be stuck in the bottom half.

Nothing embodies that sentiment better, IMO, than the Marlena/Samantha story. Not only is the premise of one twin stashing the other twin inside a sanitarium and then assuming their identity absurd*, but as several have pointed out, Deidre and Andrea Hall also neither look nor sound exactly alike. Furthermore, what was Samantha's goal in taking over Marlena's life? Because, all that I could gather from watching clips on YT was that Samantha was hooked on drugs, that Marlena found out that she had used Marlena's name to obtain more drugs and that Samantha warned Marlena to back off. I realize that PFS has her detractors and that she probably was a pistol to work with BTS, but I think her writing possessed more intelligence than people give her credit for. Even in the '80's, when she was spinning action-adventure stories for GH and, occasionally, for DAYS, PFS's stuff still was a cut above anything that Anne Howard Bailey or others wrote in that particular style. Her tenure at RH might have been the most problematic for her and for viewers, but on the other hand, I think there were problems with that show that existed before she joined. (*Although, I am certain someone out there will prove to me by way of real-life incidents that it is more common than I would think, lol).

If Bill Bell were writing this story with Jordan and "Cleve," your heart would be breaking as much for Jordan as it would for Cole and Victoria. That was the brilliance of his work.

I think this was the moment when the word "groovy" was born.

I can't say that I blame Joel McCrea for not being interested. I always get Stewart Granger mixed up with Farley Granger, lol. Richard Widmark is an out-of-left-field choice, unless the plan was for Hutch to be very menacing. I swear I heard my mom tell me when I was younger that Glenn Ford was racist. I always wish William Holden had lived long enough to reunite with Barbara Stanwyck on THE COLBYS. (Another "dream casting": Fred MacMurray).

Because, it's the "guiding light." Get it? (Yeah, I think it was stupid, too.)

And just like with the Asian-American groups who cheered for the death of affirmative action and then realized too late that they were screwing over themselves, too.... This country just plain hates black people.

I agree!

OMG, I remembered those tattoos, lol! As I recall, Conboy/Weston often would introduce some random plot point that was forgotten almost as soon as it was mentioned. Jonathan/JB came later, of course, but your mention of those tats, @Mitch64, brought this to mind.

That's Frank's thing.

I think that is Vincent Irizarry (Lujack) and Judi Evans (Beth) from GL, but I cannot be sure. IMO, when that promo was made, CBSD was firing on all cylinders; even CAPITOL was getting good! But the promo emphasized all the right elements: passion, excitement, danger, glamour, DRAMA. And just in case there were any men or lesbians out there watching? There's also GL's Kristi Ferrell riding a mechanical bull.

Looking at your summary of events, @beebs, I think PFS should have done one of two things: either wrap up the Trish storyline as quickly as possible, or develop another, lighter storyline to counter-balance all the heavy melodrama that was going on at that time. The Don/Marlena/Sharon storyline might have been okay, but dealing with Trish's mental breakdown on the heels of Mickey's feels like too much. Did PFS leave DAYS voluntarily the first time, or was she fired? If she was fired, then I think NBCD might have acted too hastily. Yes, the ratings were down, but there wasn't any need to panic yet, since PFS had proven she could do better. The network could've just given her time to figure out what needed tweaking and then let her tweak it. (Again, Pat, I would've wrapped up Trish's story sooner rather than later).

My hunch: Claire Labine wanted to put a period on everything related to San Cristobel with that story, but either Paul Rauch or MADD intervened, fearing what doing so would mean to the show (i.e., viewer defections, lower ratings, etc). I can't remember who said it, but someone with insider knowledge intimated once that Labine, MADD and Rauch were often at odds over the direction of the show. (I also heard that Labine often fell asleep during story conferences, but that's another post for another thread, lol). I agree that Cassie, Edmund and Tammy had reason enough to be angry with Reva for turning off Richard's life support, but to me, even their motives felt like reaches (and again, why not just let us in on it sooner if it was going to be someone who was personally affected by Richard's death?). I thought it either had to be someone we knew but with a huge twist (example: Cassie blacking out and stalking her sister, perhaps under the influence of some alter ego) or it was someone whom we didn't know and had never heard of before, which would mean that Culliton/Taggart likely went into the story with no idea how it would end.

As everyone did eventually on DYNASTY.

That might be the best daytime promo ever produced.

I agree. It's one thing if MSW no longer fit within CBS' agenda. No show runs forever. But CBS owed Angela Lansbury the opportunity to close the show on her terms after everything she had done to help the network through what you yourself called some very awful years in the late '80's and early '90's.

You might be talking about "Reflections of the Mind," which aired on 11/3/1985, during MSW's second season. Guest stars included Ann Blyth, Ben Murphy, Stacy Nelkin, Esther Rolle, Steven Keats, Martin Milner and Wings Hauser (ex-Greg, Y&R). What I loved about that episode was how Jessica did not at all think her friend (Blyth) was losing touch with reality; that, in fact, what she saw and heard were very real, and very clearly the work of someone trying to drive her mad. Now that's a friend, lol!