Khan

Didn't ATWT end with Paul and Emily reunited? I remember hearing about that and thinking, "You know, if it were still 1989, I would be all for that. But Paul and Emily had been through so much separately and together, and they had CHANGED so much, that it doesn't make sense now to put them back together." Frankly, I was appalled at how Marty had devolved by the end of Susan's second run on the show. Here we had a rape survivor who had grown so much in the years since, and now she's plotting against the likes of Natalie for John McBain like some garden-variety psycho. It was gross and demeaning - not just to Marty, but to rape survivors everywhere - and I wasn't even a fan of hers!

I really think the new series needs someone like Christopher Lloyd or Joe Keenan there to help guide the new, younger writers on not just how to write for Frasier/Kelsey, but how to do that kind of situation comedy that isn't all just one-liners but actual storytelling.

I definitely agree that OLTL lost a lot of its' heart when Marilyn Chris left.

Thanks, @vetsoapfan! I didn't know that about Brad/Leslie and Steve/Alice!

Hunt Block shouldn't have been hired at all. He was completely wrong for Craig, but I tend to suspect he was hired only because GL must have let him go sooner than planned (after writing his character, Ben Warren, into a corner and having no choice but to kill him off) and P&G needed him to finish out his contract, lol. As for Alec Wallace - again, their casting choice (Michael Woods) torpedoed any chance of that character making a real impact on the show. I mean, I like MW, but I don't think he has much of a range as an actor.

And it's tanking in almost record time, too. I don't think it can be overstated how vital Andrea Evans was to the show's success in the mid- and late-'80's. When Peggy O'Shea left as HW in 1987, she took with her the show's ability to ground even the most far-fetched ideas in some semblance of reality. As long as AE was still on the show, however, you could ignore the ridiculous storylines, because Tina remained a very captivating character - sort of an anti-heroine, if you will - in her hands. For me, the low point of that era - lower than Eterna, lower than all the Mendorra [!@#$%^&*] - were the hijinks that S. Michael Schnessel and Paul Rauch concocted for the Badderley (sp?) storyline. That was the clear sign that OLTL had become a victim of its' own excesses and needed a serious overhaul. Unfortunately, I don't think Linda Gottlieb and Michael Malone were the answer, lol.

And then there was Y&R, who took it one step further and had an African-American pretend to be white.

But the article was written on the occasion of DAYS's 25th anniversary, which happened in 1985.

Scenes like those are why I refuse even to entertain the notion that Dr. Rick Webber was screwing all the nurses at GH while also involved with those two. Lesley was a lot of things, but she was no fool; and there's no way in hell she would defend Rick like that to Monica if she had known what a louse he really was. Nice try, Chuck Pratt, Jr. and Bob Guza, Jr., but you failed. It's not so much the slap that impresses me as it is the ferocity she displays both before and afterward. Very few actors in daytime could give it to their adversaries right between the eyes the way Susan Flannery could. Her anger and disgust over Brooke's actions are almost terrifying. I'd have to agree with Eric Braeden: to allow a child to be that disrespectful toward a parent - even a parent like Victor Newman - is beyond the pale. I can't remember what happened next, but I know that if I were Victor/EB, I would have told her to get the hell out of my house and not to come back until they had apologized.

Where on Earth did DAYS get the idea that fans refused to accept Marlena with Roman? If anything, I think they accepted him better than they did Don!

Many years later, WEtv would dust off the premise, add a little spice to it and rename it "Bridezillas."

The stuff that dreams (and gifs) are made of:

I agree.

I remember that episode. IIRC, too, although Vanessa made a lot of dumb excuses for turning in an inferior project - her friend, Janet, had someone to help her; Rudy was always bothering her, etc. - she also made what I thought was a very good point: Cliff had given her a pitiful amount of money to complete the project. Cliff (to Vanessa): "Is the class too advanced for you?" Me: "No, you too damn cheap!"

Yeah, even Patch's "death" underwhelmed me.

It's funny how Lemay personally abhorred plot-heavy writing; yet, in the times when he was forced to do it - Iris' real mother, Sven, the Greg Barnard murder - people actually really liked it, lol.

I think "Cruise of Deception" was the last time I was truly satisfied with the storytelling on DAYS. Even Roman and Marlena's returns felt flat to me in '91.

God rest his soul, but Fred Silverman really destroyed NBC in the late '70's. If not for the success of "The Cosby Show," who knows where that network would be today.

And the man who "gave" Nikki that chronic illness is the same man who is writing this current story. See, that's why I said saddling Nikki with MS was a bad idea.

Didn't Harding Lemay basically say in his memoir that Sylvie was Jewish? IIRC, P&G flinched at the idea until either they or Lemay looked over at Paul Rauch, who was himself Jewish.

I think of pop music themes as a 1980's convention, simply because you don't hear of soaps incorporating contemporary, "Top 40" music before then in any significant amounts. (Although, I could be wrong. Did soaps use a lot of pop/rock music before the '80's, @vetsoapfanor anyone else who was around then to know for sure?) Yes, DAYS and Y&R incorporated music into its' storytelling. As you've said, though, @j swift, it tended to be standards from the pre-rock era. By the 1980's, however, MTV and similar programming was becoming very big among younger audiences, and soaps were eager, if not desperate, to do everything they could to cater to them. I always figured that these shows were fiscally conservative, pre-MTV/Luke & Laura, and they didn't want to use up any more of their budgets than they had to. On the other hand, I can think of at least one instance where THE DOCTORS, for example, had a pop song playing in the background of some nightclub scene, although I can't remember the exact song they were playing.

I tend to look at 1994-1997 as one of those periods when Y&R was still delivering consistently, but nothing on a whizz-bang level like when the George Rawlings or David Kimble storylines were still going. It wasn't bad, it wasn't NOT bad, it was just chugging along.

Listen, I *still* don't understand why Nikki would name her son "Nicholas," after how her own father, Nick, had treated her. Speaking of Nikki, I guess it makes sense for her to be tortured into falling off the wagon again, but...I dunno...I feel like that's a well they've gone to far too often. And has her MS even been mentioned during this ordeal? Wouldn't the stress she's under cause her to have some sort of relapse?

Daytime was trying very hard to appeal to the MTV demographic. Ironically, I think DAYS did that stuff - the theme songs, the musical montages - better than "Miami Vice" and all the other primetime shows who got all the praise BITD.