Khan

Another good suggestion, along with Margaret Colin. Of course, no matter who had succeeded Kate Mulgrew, good or bad or in-between, Kate's shoes would have been tough to fill. I feel sympathetic toward Kelli Maroney as well. At the end of the day, she was an actor, just doing the job she was being paid to do, and to the best of her ability, too. As far as I know, she didn't force herself on Labine & Mayer; ABC did. She might not have been the kind of actor or character that L&M had wanted on their show, but they didn't own it anymore, so ABC had the right to impose the kind of actors, characters and storylines that they felt would help the show connect better with their target demos. Again, it ain't Kelli's fault.

Both. No offense to Patricia Barry, who portrayed "Miss Sally," and who did a fine job, but I feel like Maree Cheatham would have better embodied someone who was a Southern dame with a very trashy reputation. Even now, I'm smiling at the thought of Cheatham, as Sally, sharing scenes with the likes of Larry Gates (H.B. Lewis), Jordan Clarke (Billy), Larkin Malloy (Kyle) and especially Kim Zimmer (Reva). Miss Sally hated Reva - she thought she was no damn good for her son, Kyle, even though the two women actually had a lot in common - so you can just imagine how a confrontation between Cheatham's Sally and KZ's Reva might go, lol. She probably did. Before she played Aunt Charlene or Stephanie, she was Marie Horton, DAYS' original heroine, and probably one of the most hapless, trying females ever to appear on soaps. I wasn't around for those years, but I can just imagine how trying it must've been for Maree to play Marie, who was always miserable and who couldn't catch a break if she had tried.

It is.

"One Stormy Night." Or, as I called it: "One Steamy Mess."

Correct. That's why it's CRUCIAL for Democrats to show up at the polls next election, as there are several swing states in contention. It won't be a cakewalk, but I think we can do it.

I agree with you, @MichaelGL, and with @beebs, too. GL didn't gain any new viewers under Pam Long's second go-round, but it didn't lose any either, and I think that was a major reason why P&G didn't feel the need to can her.

ICAM.

I agree, @Broderick. It might have made more sense to say that Alexis was back in order to reclaim her status in Blake's life (and bed). To me, that's a stronger line of action than "I'm back to irritate the [!@#$%^&*] out of you and your new wife." Then, when Blake spurns her for a second time, that's when Alexis could officially declare revenge. Because, seriously, what means did she have to destroy Blake's life that she could have used before then and didn't? Again, the producers aren't clear about that, because they don't really know. They just have her stirring up [!@#$%^&*] until they can figure out what to do with her - which they finally do when they hit upon the absurd notion of marrying her off to Blake's chief business rival, killing him off immediately afterward and having her assume control of his company, despite showing absolutely no business acumen up to that point. As I've said before, DYNASTY, in its' first season, wasn't a great show, but it was promising. If ABC had been more patient - maybe hire a stronger writing team, and figure out some way of salvaging the Blaisdel family (like recasting Lindsay with Heather Locklear) - DYNASTY could have, over time, become as solid and reliable as KL.

David Jacobs said the same thing about his own failed soap, "Berrenger's." IIRC, he warned NBC that starting off with heavily serialized stories would be a mistake, because the audience didn't know them enough yet to follow them every week. DALLAS, FC and KL all began with self-contained episodes and gradually moved toward ongoing storylines for that very reason. However, NBC was desperate to have their own DALLAS or DYNASTY. Moreover, it's just impossible to build a weekly series of any kind around a cast of nineteen. Take out the commercials, and there's only so many minutes you have in each episode. You can have that large of a cast on a daytime series, of course, because they run five times per week, and not every character has to appear in every episode. But you don't have that sort of luxury in primetime. CBS really bit off more than they could chew there.

So, GENERATIONS started at the bottom and stayed there. NBC likely blamed the competition and part-African-American cast; I blame the cheap production values and piss-poor writing and acting. Either way, I don't understand those who insist the show was cancelled too soon when it was clear the show was DOA.

It's a shame "Beacon Hill" didn't take off with all that talent both on-screen and off.

"Michael" is about as real as my Canadian girlfriend.

She would've made for a better Miss Sally Gleason.

God bless John Forsythe, but as a last-minute substitution for George Peppard, he was all wrong for his role, too. He couldn't play Blake as he was created, and he wasn't all that interesting as a mellower, more honorable Blake either. His best work was as "Charlie," a voice on an intercom ("Kelly, Jill? You'll be going undercover as bikini models. And Sabrina, you'll be posing as a beer truck driver making deliveries at the compound. Best of luck, Angels. Now, off to my next orgy!")

No, I think the problem lay in the Pollocks' basic inability to create multi-dimensional characters. Abby Ewing (KNOTS LANDING) and Angela Channing (FALCON CREST) were fascinating antagonists, because their wants were tangible and relatable. Abby wanted to break free from middle-class mediocrity and compete in a man's world; Angela was determined to fulfill her grandfather's vision of making the winery the finest in Tuscany Valley. Even J.R. Ewing had a want - to best all his competitors and make his daddy's legacy his own - that lent itself to a variety of stories. But, as I've said before, all there really was to Alexis was her need to punish Blake, which gets old fast. (It's the same problem I had with the Pollock's work on THE DOCTORS. On both shows, the "good" characters were idiots, and the "bad" characters were bad "just because.") Plus, if I'm being totally honest, I don't think Alexis suffered all that much by being thrown out of the mansion. It's not as if Blake left her destitute, thereby forcing her to turn to prostitution on the streets of London or anything. Anders even mentions keeping up with all her exploits through the tabloids, which doesn't sound like suffering to me. And for all Alexis' talk about being denied the right to raise Fallon and Steven as their mother, I can't help but think back to what Jessica Tate told Corinne's real mom on an episode of "Soap": "All I know is that if anyone had taken my baby away from me, I would've moved heaven and earth to find her, and it wouldn't have taken twenty-three years!" If you truly cared about your kids' welfare, Alexis, why did you wait so damn long to come back into their lives? Why didn't you just tell Blake what he could do with all his threats and figure out some way to get them back, like Abby did when her ex-husband kidnapped Brian and Olivia on KNOTS? I think - and this is just what I think - we were supposed to root for Matthew Blaisdel (and for him and Krystle to be reunited) at the start. Blake, as originally envisioned, was a fabulously wealthy man who was also very ruthless and, at times, amoral. Matthew, on the other hand, was an anguished single dad, vying to make a name for himself in the cutthroat oil industry, while wrestling with his feelings for Krystle and his marital obligation to Claudia, who had returned from the sanitarium. On paper, it's a great contrast, and ideal fodder for storylines that could pit the two men against each other in various ways. However, what blew the whole thing was the casting. Bo Hopkins just does not work as a romantic lead.

All they had to say was that Dex died from the impact from the fall. That's it. Adding the twist that Alexis basically crushed him to death was unnecessary. If I had been Joan Collins, I would have protested: "Like hell you're gonna imply that my body weight killed him!" ICAM. Unfortunately, the only real motivation Alexis ever had was to get revenge on Blake. Which is fine, if the producers stick to their guns and write her off after four or six episodes (the actual number depending upon who you ask). But, they keep her on, which is a problem, because what do you do with her if she succeeds? What do you do with her if she doesn't? So, you keep pulling the proverbial rug out from under her, so she'll have to start all over again. It's so damn repetitive. Even Wile E. Coyote would say, "Girl, give it up!". Even Alexis' return seems pointless to me. She's back in Denver; she testifies against Blake at the trial; she moves into the cottage on his estate; she gets reacquainted with her children, who are, at best, feeling about weary toward her; she makes an enemy out of Krystle by causing the miscarriage; and she causes Anders and the rest of the staff to ally themselves with the new Mrs. Carrington (which, by the way, pretty much kills the show's original premise). She does all these things, stirs all these pots, but to what end? What is she hoping to achieve? Does she want Blake to take her back? Is she spying on the family on behalf of Blake's enemies or some tabloid for money? Is she dying of some disease and wants to make amends (but not before making Krystle's life hell just by sticking around)? What does the heffa want? It's as if they brought on Alexis just to goose the ratings and figured they'd come up with an actual game plan for her later. It's the same trick they also used on Dominique when she first appeared: "Who am I, you ask?" Yes, Dominique, that is what we are asking. Who the hell are you, and what the hell do you want?

I've often wondered if it was the other way around, with Y&R influencing DYNASTY, since Tom Trimble and Brock Broughton worked on both shows (and several other Aaron Spelling-produced shows, I think) as art director and set decorator, respectively.

I've seen "Monte Carlo" and "Sins," and for me, the problem with both miniseries is that Dame Joan is essentially playing Alexis again. Not that you would ever expect her to break out and portray a battered wife from the wrong side of the tracks, but I think most looked at "Monte Carlo" and "Sins" and asked, "Why should I watch these when I'm already getting the same thing every week on 'Dynasty'?" I know. And he was right to leave, too. I knew the reunion movie was going to blow mighty chunks when they had Krystle overhear one character tell another all about how Alexis and Dex went over the railing at the Carrington mansion and how she killed him when she turned in mid-air and landed on top of him. First of all, that didn't happen at the mansion; it happened at the Carlton. Second, writing out Dex that way was just crass, lol.

The truth is, I loved when Robert Calhoun was EP'ing GL as much as I loved everything else about GL from as far back as I can remember to '95, when I think the show really started falling apart. One reason for that is because GL always had, IMO, the best cast on daytime, second only to AMC's. Another reason is that you had a core group of writers - Nancy Curlee, Stephen Demorest, Trent Jones, N. Gail Lawrence, Pete T. Rich, Melissa Salmons, etc. - who were there throughout to maintain some consistency in the writing.

Exactly. Robert Calhoun was classy and elegant; Pamela K. Long was folksy and homespun. It doesn't mean one or the other was awful; it just means they were incompatible.

No, you're not. I loved Robert Calhoun's tenure on GL, too! For the first time since Gail Kobe, GL had an EP with vision. But he really wasn't a good match with Pam Long. P&G should have brought Douglas Marland back to GL so that he and Calhoun could work their magic again, but that would have meant jeopardizing ATWT's newfound success. It's to his credit, therefore, that he had the wisdom to promote Nancy Curlee to Co-HW, because I think that was just the jump-start that GL needed at that time.

Wait.... Sharon and Summer are fighting over Chance? Oh, good God.

Also - and I'm probably the only one who thinks this - but I think location had a lot to do with GL's struggles during that period. By 1987 or '88, production of the show had moved to EUE/Screen Gems - and I dunno, but to me, the energy on-screen was different there than it was at their old location in Chelsea (NYC). Of course, it doesn't help knowing that that's the same studio space where EON and SFT went to die, lol. I wish Robert Calhoun had moved onto AMC or OLTL. Both shows - especially OLTL - needed a strong EP at that point.

I guess that's why Robert Calhoun never cared for Pamela K. Long's writing, or why he favored Nancy Curlee over her. For all the good she did in stabilizing the show creatively after the free-fall of 1985 and '86, her work wasn't appealing to anyone outside of GL's hard-core audience. IIRC, only Peter Reckell was interested in returning full-time, so the writers used the "Cruise of Deception" storyline as a means of killing off Hope, so that Bo would be free to pursue new romantic partnerships in Salem. Anne Howard Bailey's only real success in daytime was as HW at GH from 1982-1985, but even that accomplishment is questionable when you consider how much control Gloria Monty had over the writing and the fact that GH was still such a juggernaut that it really didn't matter who was writing the show at that time or how good they were. And when you watch scenes from that period on YouTube...? Yeah, individual scenes might be pretty good, but the actual storylines stink; and if it grabs your interest at all, it's because Monty knew how to edit the shows enough to create the sense of excitement and action that she needed.

Watching DYNASTY today, it's apparent how much the Shapiros want to explore Steven's true sexuality (even if I don't think they were talented enough to do it right, even if they had had ABC's full blessing)...and it's apparent how they keep getting hamstrung in their efforts by a very skittish network (and at a time when "gay = AIDS" and vice versa). This, of course, begs the question: if ABC was reluctant to depict Steven honestly as a gay man, then why bother making him gay in the first place? For that matter, why even buy the show knowing who and what that character is supposed to be? It makes no sense. It also doesn't help that they replaced Al Corley, who clearly had no issues with "playing gay," with Jack Coleman, who clearly did. I mean, did Coleman not know about Steven's sexuality before he took the job? If he did, then why did he take it, when it was evident on-screen how much he preferred doing anything else? Again, it makes no sense. For all its' many faults, one thing that I think the reunion miniseries did right - or at least didn't eff up too much - was affirming Steven's status once and for all as a gay man, living happily with Bart Fallmont in D.C., and able to make some sort of peace with his father and himself. I'd much rather have watched that material and skipped Krystle being programmed to kill Blake, or Kirby falling back in love with the man who once raped her. You could make the argument (however strained) that Luke and Laura were a complex situation that played on many levels. But Blake/Krystle and Adam/Kirby? There's nothing ambiguous about those instances. Even if you looked at them through an '80's lens, when it was a "different time" and people held different attitudes than they do today, they're still pretty cut-and-dried.