Khan

I don't think Joseph Hardy was untalented as a producer - and I don't think he was wrong in wanting to "open up" RH either. (As I've said in the past, I think my biggest issue with RH is that its canvas was just so dang claustrophobic.) But I do think he was an EP who needed a real HW with real vision to be effective.

I think that is my overall opinion about LOVING as well. It had so much potential, especially at the beginning, when Douglas Marland was head-writing. But it just never seemed to progress beyond being generic and mediocre.

IMO, Roscoe Born's shining moment as an actor in ANY medium were his first two stints playing Mitch Laurence. He took what could have been a standard-issue, easily disposable antagonist and infused him with so much sex and sensuality that you, as the viewer at home, could never get enough of watching him, even as he wreaked havoc on the lives of so many people - Viki, Tina, Dorian, Cassie - you cared about. And no offense to John Loprieno OR to his (or Cord & Tina's) fans, but I don't think Andrea Evans ever had a better onscreen sexual partner than Roscoe. As Mitch and Tina, those two were FIRE.

You've got Linda Gray, from DALLAS; Donna Mills and Nicollette Sheridan, from KNOTS; and Morgan Fairchild, from FALCON CREST, FLAMINGO ROAD and PAPER DOLLS; but you know who or what's missing? Someone from DYNASTY!

Good question. I don't know what the soap press thought, but I would say that the first four (or more) months of SB were worse. From what I've seen of TEXAS, its' beginnings weren't great, but it had "good bones," to use HGTV lingo. It just needed better writing. SB, on the other hand, had problems in its' structure from the get. The Dobsons clearly wanted a canvas that featured families from all walks of life, but two of the main families, the Perkins and Andrades, didn't work at all; and the two families that DID work - the Capwells and Lockridges - were hampered by some bizarre casting decisions, such as both actresses who played Laken and Judith Anderson (grande dame of the theater she might've been, but she was clearly not suited for daytime). Also, tried as they might, but I don't think the show ever found the right actor to play C.C. Capwell, which is VERY unfortunate when you consider that C.C. was essentially the show's patriarch.

Yes! And Hillary B(ailey) Smith would have made a good Siobhan recast, too, now that I think about it. Oooh! Another good one! It's one thing to bring on someone like Robin Mattson because of the following she had enjoyed on GH, but anyone with even a passing knowledge of her and of Delia would have known immediately that she was all wrong for that role. Should RH still have brought her on? Absolutely. But not as Delia. She could have played Sydney Price instead, or even Maggie (not that Cali Timmins was horrible in that part). But not Delia.

Wait, what? Nikki gave birth to Nick off-screen? Oh, the head writer in me just got a terrific story idea, lol.

The first ad makes it look as if Abby is standing with Sid and Karen. Was she in the room for that moment?

Right, lol? But, I've wondered whether Angela Lansbury liked the idea of Jessica teaching criminology at a university, because the season after the second show-runner, David Moessinger, left, it seems like that was dropped entirely. There's also a point in the latter seasons when I really start questioning whether Jessica needs a home base. I mean, if she wasn't still in NYC, she was traveling all over the country (and the world). It seemed like she was in Cabot Cove maybe one week out of every three months, lol.

I like that idea. I also would have had Frasier move "across the pond" and begin a new career at his OTHER alma mater, Oxford. In fact, I would have even gone as far as have the new series taped entirely in England.

For the most part, I think OLTL remained very solid in '88...but it was also clear even then that Paul Rauch and S. Michael Schnessel were starting to take the storylines in very strange directions.

I'm sure Don Hastings felt the same way, lol. For me, the problem with Bob and Miranda's marriage - aside from the fact that it never made sense even on paper - is that DH and Elaine Princi shared no chemistry. TPTB would have been better off reuniting Bob with Kim (which they did eventually) or even with Lisa. I realize I'll always be in the minority on this, but I truly thank the soap gods for Justin Deas. True, he could go over-the-top sometimes in his performances, but except for that period of time on GL when even he admitted he was on auto-pilot, he was never, ever, ever boring to watch.

Could someone who'd know explain Brian Emerson's backstory to me? Reading these latest synopses, I get the impression that Stephanie gave birth to him in Oklahoma City. Yet, whenever I've seen the character, he speaks with a thick "Noo Yawk" accent. Was Brian adopted out of Oklahoma and raised in NY?

I'm not sure either, @te. Younger viewers (who aren't in bed already) tend not to be home on Saturday nights if they can help it. I wonder if they would have been more successful airing, say, on Monday nights, as an alternative to "Monday Night Football"?

Agree. When Frederick was a child, he came off more like his parents than he did his grandfather. I realize people can change as they grow older, but not to that extent, lol.

I thought so, too! It was just so out of left field that it almost gave me whiplash, lol!

In his Archive of American Television interview, James Burrows talks briefly about William Devane's audition. He says that Devane was "very good" and that he brought an "old sage" quality to Sam that would have been interesting to watch. They really wanted to cast Devane, too, more than they did Fred Dryer, who certainly had Sam's swagger, but who was very inexperienced at that point. However, everyone involved in the process - Burrows, Glen & Les Charles, their agents, the brass at NBC and at Paramount - agreed that the chemistry between Ted Danson and Shelley Long was just too undeniable. (Also of note: years ago, I read that Devane chose to perform barefoot at his audition, which turned out to be an unfortunate choice, because he accidentally stepped on a broken glass but carried on with the audition anyway. IIRC, Burrows and the Charles brothers were more than a little freaked out about that, lol.) The first time I saw that ending, I thought, "Wow, what an odd way to wrap up an episode." But that was the Lechowicks for you: always turning left when story logic says go right. I tend to go back and forth on my opinions about the Lechowicks and their work on KL. On the one hand, at a time when the other primetime soaps were getting stale, they smartly infused KL with more humor, more irreverence, more unpredictability, so that you, as a viewer, never knew what to expect from one episode to the next. On the other hand, however, it's only in retrospect that you realize: 1) the Lechowicks adopted a reductive and less nuanced view of the characters that really hurt the show in the long run; and 2) they leaned too often on their narrative tricks, especially in the latter part of their run, to camouflage illogical plotting - and on a show like KL that became more plot-driven as time went on, that could be very exasperating to experience.

In a way, I see Rauch's point. For one thing, because ALS remains incurable, we do know the outcome, so the suspense is already gone. (As Agnes Nixon reportedly told Michael Malone after OLTL's Megan died from complications of lupus: "And then what?"). For another, I think it's just depressing to watch even a fictional character go through the stages of a disease that we know is real and can result in only one outcome. You want to entertain and even educate your audience, but you also want to give them some hope, which you can't do when the disease they're battling is an incurable one.

I know TPTB at both shows (DALLAS and DYNASTY) seriously considered a crossover at one point, but I'm glad that the plans, if there were any, ultimately fell through. IMO, DALLAS and DYNASTY were pitched differently. DYNASTY was the epitome of glamour and high camp, whereas DALLAS seemed more grounded. On the other hand, if DALLAS had ever considered a crossover with FALCON CREST, I think the results would have been quite interesting to watch, lol.

IMO, they took RE's Delia in a different direction almost out of necessity. IK said it best in the chat: she (IK) was a "street kid" from Brooklyn, and that quality bled into her performance as Delia (who likely grew up in a neighborhood similar to IK's real-life one). RE, on the other hand, seemed classier, more upscale, like an Upper East Side version of Delia, so it made sense to surround her Delia in more posh surroundings, like the Crystal Palace. Admittedly, I didn't see much of Delia's faking blindness, because I was just getting tired of the show's claustrophobic storytelling by that point, but I know that the whole premise of that storyline sounded so preposterous to me that it must have been played for laughs, or else how could anyone involved in it get through the damn thing without collapsing into laughter or frustration (or both)?

Great chat! Thanks for sharing, @Soapsuds! I'd have to agree with IK. IMO, Patrick James Clarke looked like he belonged in that family in ways that the other Pat recasts didn't. He could've worked as a Frank recast or as a Pat recast. Michael Fairman mentioned people in the chat who said Robin Mattson was "boring" as a Delia recast. RM was definitely miscast as Delia, but I don't think her lackluster performances were entirely her fault. I think IK hit the nail on the head when she suggested that RM might have been scared playing Delia. Plus, I get the impression that ABC was interfering tremendously with RH at that time, and that between them, Pat Falken Smith, Joe Hardy and the directors, she was probably struggling to get any kind of handle on the role.

IMO, Christopher Atkins was just an odd actor for DALLAS to create a brand-new character for. He would've fit much more easily into DYNASTY or THE COLBYS.

I think that's because Ed Trach still believed in GL, even though others at PGP and at CBS probably wanted it gone.

It's insane to me that CAPITOL was cancelled despite being in the middle of the ratings pack.

It's hard for me to picture Loni with the rest of this cast just because I don't automatically think of her when I think of "ladies of the '80's." "WKRP in Cincinnati" was her claim to fame; and that, IMO, was more of a '70's show than an '80's one.