Khan

SUNSET BEACH was awful from day one. Awful actors, awful characters, awful premise and storylines, all handled awfully. In fact, in all my years of watching soaps, it might be the one soap that I've hated most. Lord knows I'm not a Bob Guza fan, but I think ankling that show at the first opportunity and returning to GH was the smartest decision he ever made. PASSIONS, on the other hand, had potential - at least in the beginning. To use a home renovation term, the show had "good bones." However, I think the audience figured out pretty quickly that JER was a one-trick pony, who got lucky at DAYS, a show that was in so much trouble before he got there that anything he wrote for it was bound to be an improvement; and that, for all the talk of him being this master plotter at shows like GH and GL, his actual, day-to-day writing for his own creation reeked. Pretty soon, people weren't watching PASSIONS because they thought it was good; they were watching, because they were laughing at how awful it all was. Instead of realizing their error, however, and maybe figuring out a way either to get JER a more competent EP and Co-HW or to force him out altogether, NBC doubled down, suggesting that PASSIONS was always meant to be campy and satirical, when anyone with even half a brain knew that that wasn't the case, lol. I think NBC would have been better off expanding SFT when it acquired the show from CBS in 1982.

I wonder if that's due to good, old-fashioned network interference, or to the Dobsons realizing that what worked on the page as they were creating the show wasn't working on the screen. Either way, I think they realized early on that they had made some poor casting decisions that, in turn, hampered many of their original plans for the show. As for the story centering around the teens, however, I tend to think the Dobsons' hearts simply weren't in writing for them - that, in fact, they were forced to write for them, even though SB was their creation, because NBC was chasing after the youth markets, and they believed featuring younger characters in their own stories would lure younger audiences to the show and away from GH. If you look at the Dobsons' material on other shows - GH, GL and ATWT - you'll notice that they didn't write much (if at all) for the teenaged characters. I can't say that I blame them either. Teenagers aren't that interesting to watch. The only ones who could write for them honestly and still hold viewers' attention were Douglas Marland and Agnes Nixon.

Well, life isn't always fair.

You forgot about "Drexell's Class," his short-lived sitcom on FOX. There, they tried softening his usual, abrasive persona by pairing him with a classroom full of precocious kids. I guess the thinking was he'd come off as looking like a curmudgeon instead of an out-and-out [!@#$%^&*], lol.

My money's on Eileen Fulton.

ATWT's John Dixon once faked his death, I think, in order to frame James Stenbeck for murder. Like much from that time period, the story was convoluted, and the performances were overwrought. Nevertheless, it created quite the impression on me, lol. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLIS9KLhaHc Douglas Marland and Henry Slesar were good at letting the resolution of one story feed into the beginning of another. Stories didn't just end with characters dropping from sight.

Her, too. Which is worse: not acknowledging their passings, or acknowledging them in the most grievous ways, like when FOX News's website marked Liz Hubbard's passing...with a photo of Marie Masters? Found this after @Vee told me she had passed: they literally misidentified MM as Liz! I thought this sort of thing only happened with us black folks! https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/as-the-world-turns-emmy-winning-star-elizabeth-hubbard-dead-89

Or...we learn that Jeremy one-upped Phyllis by faking his own death...and (PLOT TWIST!) Diane was the one who put him up to it.

Forgive me, @wonderwoman1951, but I don't know how else to say this: aside from their fans, no one gives a [!@#$%^&*] about ATWT or GL anymore; and to those from outside the industry, soaps mean only three things: Luke & Laura (and by extension, GH), Susan Lucci/Erica Kane, and maybe Eric Braeden/Victor Newman. That's it.

With Molly now working as an attorney, it might be cool to see Kristina working as a physician.

I agree. Bobbie was more than just Luke's sister. We don't need for Tony Geary to return (and make it all about Luke) to have an effective memorial.

Hasn't Phyllis committed a crime by faking her own death? Perhaps she should face possible jail time for her actions? Of course, Diane faked her own death, too, and AFAIK, she hasn't suffered any criminal repercussions, so maybe that's a no-go, lol. I wouldn't be surprised if either CBS or Sony (or both) told Josh that the story wasn't working and to wrap it up as quickly as possible.

I guess giving Kristina a profession that ties into the hospital (on a show called GENERAL HOSPITAL) is out of the question.

Whatever (allegedly) happened to cause enmity between SR and Dee, it probably doesn't compare with SSH decking Kaye Stevens in the ladies' room.

The real "bomb" is the story itself.

The only season of DYNASTY that ever meant anything at all to me was the first season. The Shapiros' writing was shallow, but they had a great foundation that, with some tweaking, could have propelled the show for years. In fact, I wager that Alexis wouldn't have been needed had the Shapiros done a better job of casting and writing for the Blaisdels.

Believe it or not, I would have spun off Alexis. The setup: through a series of moves and counter moves, Blake, Jeff and others finally succeed in getting Alexis ousted from ColbyCo. Alexis is about to leave Denver in disgrace for a second time, when she gets word that a U.S. Senator from Colorado is set to retire (before the end of his current term) due to failing health (possibly dementia). Alexis maneuvers her way into getting appointed to fill his seat, thereby prompting her big move to the REAL center of power in our country: Washington, D.C. The new series would revolve around Alexis' navigation of the halls of power within our nation's capital, aided by a staff (largely inherited) of younger folks, whose cutthroat antics as they jockey for power and influence would make the Carrington and Colby's shenanigans look amateurish by comparison. There would be the requisite clashes with other politicians from both houses of government, the different lobbyists (mostly from the oil and gas industries), visiting dignitaries, the Washington elite, the notorious Beltway press, even the current administration at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue (although, it's probably a given that we would see the president, lol). Alliances would be built and torn down, as Alexis would go to any lengths necessary to carry out her various agendas. There would also be an attorney from one of Virginia's founding families, who shares a past with Alexis that stretches all the way back to the 1960's, when she first arrived in the U.S. as a young model, before she met Blake Carrington. Married to a mentally unstable woman who has been in and out of several institutions, he has been left to raise his now-adult daughter, who would function as the show's resident young bitch. She would hate Alexis almost instantly, as she sees Alexis as a threat to her closeness with her father. (As a matter of fact, the first-season cliffhanger could be the introduction of her mother, whom she has sprung from yet another asylum, just as her father is ready to propose Alexis.) And there would be opportunities for humor, something that DYNASTY lacked, with the addition of Alexis' two servants (one female, one male) in her new D.C. townhouse; as well as the introduction, in the first episode, of young Nicole Morell, whose grandfather is Alexis' younger brother. (Remember, this is occurring before Caress' arrival in Denver.). Nicole, or Nikki, is a teenager from London, whose parents were recently killed in an automobile crash, and whose grandparents are incapable of looking after her due to Jeremy Morell's high-pressure job as head of the one of the Hong Kong trading houses. Therefore, it falls upon "Aunt Alexis" to be Nikki's guardian. At first, Alexis isn't quite sure about this arrangement; however, the longer she's with her, the more she sees herself in her. Plus, it's a second chance to be a mother to someone, something she had been denied with her own children with Blake. Like I said, there would be more humor - not physical humor, but verbal wit. I'd want it to rival the smartest sitcom of its' time in that respect. For the first season, at least, episodes would be more self-contained, with running narrative threads, rather than a full-blown soap, as we would get to know the characters and the world they operate in. There would be requisite crossovers with characters from the mother show (but only characters and stories that would make sense in this environment - we're not gonna just throw Krystle in D.C. just to have her and Alexis catfight in from of the Lincoln Memorial). And we would get to see more dimensions to Alexis' character than that of just rich bitch/vengeful ex-wife particularly in her relationships with the attorney I've mentioned before, her servant/sidekicks and her grand-niece. (In her Television Archive interview, Donna Mills said that Joan Collins told her she'd wished her writers would have written for her the way KNOTS LANDING's writers wrote for Abby. Well, Dame Joan, ask and ye shall receive, lol.) Bottom line, though: whether she's running an oil company in Denver, or rubbing shoulders with the prime movers and shakers in Washington, D.C., Alexis is, at her core, Alexis: a savvy, beautiful, fashionable woman "of a certain age," who is determined to play with the big boys, and win.

Also, I'm sad to say this, but CBS likely noted JZ's passing, because GH was a pop culture phenomenon in ways that the P&G shows weren't. The only actor from a now-defunct soap whose passing I could see making the news would be Susan Lucci's - again, because Erica Kane wasn't just a soap character, she was, for a long time, part of the zeitgeist.

Well, you could have replaced her predecessor, Crystal Hunt, with Helen Gallagher and it would have been fabulous, lol.

I think ABC later made a similar agreement with Steven Bochco.

Emme Rylan set a very low bar with each soap role she took on, lol.

I won't support any Lulu return unless the show and the audience agree to stop calling her "Lulu."

I think so, @Vee. Like you've said, I wouldn't be surprised if Ron had pitched that, lol.

Definitely. I think the only time THE COLBYS differentiated itself from DYNASTY was with the spaceship.

If anyone could write for a character who has no head, it's Ron Carlivati.