Khan

I agree. Abby made an innocent statement. Scott Easton took that ball and ran with it. Once Abby realized what he had done, she was horrified. (After all, she had gone through something similar years before, when her ex-husband kidnapped her kids). However, there was no way for Abby to undo the mess without making it look as if she had conspired with Easton.

Yes, but at what cost? His work, for the most part, was simplistic and gimmicky. What's more, it reveals someone who, at their core, had serious psychological issues, particularly in regards to women and to sexuality. (Sorry, @Toups). JER might have saved DAYS from cancellation at that point, but is DAYS truly the better for him having worked there? Are soaps in general truly better off because of him?

To say I wasn't a fan of JER's work on DAYS would be almost an understatement, lol.

Mike Johnson is so in the closet, it's not even funny.

Given Mickey and Laura's history, it made sense for another psychiatrist to come in and help Mickey recover from his breakdown. Otherwise, if it had been Laura, it would've been a conflict of interest of the highest order, lol. I think the only actress who could have matched Susan Flannery's take on Laura was Erika Slezak; and obviously, she was otherwise engaged at the time.

God bless Peter Bergman, but he's basically playing "Dr. Cliff Abbott" (or "Jack Warner," whichever you prefer).

I don't HATE Robert and Anna as a couple. I'd be fine with them reuniting and spending their twilight years together. But it's clear someone(s) at GH feels differently. If it's Tristan and Finola who keep resisting the idea, then I say, why force the issue? It'd be lot easier just to have Robert and Anna pursue separate romances than to reunite them and make everyone, including the actors and the audience, utterly miserable.

I've seen parts of it on YouTube. Lisa Hartman certainly brought enough camp for everyone, lol! I dunno. There was nothing wrong with what I saw of the miniseries, per se, but it didn't stand out a whole lot for me either. I think part of the problem was that, no matter what, it was going to pale in comparisons to both the book and the film.

That should be an interesting book to read. When TEXAS premiered, NBC was in serious trouble. The only shows on their lineup that were even marginally successful were "CHiPs," "Diff'rent Strokes" and "The Facts of Life." Everything else was struggling, especially the new shows - "Hello, Larry," "Supertrain," "Pink Lady & Jeff," etc. - that then-network president Fred Silverman believed would bring the network to #1. Affiliates were bailing, President Carter's decision to boycott the 1980 Olympics cost the network millions of dollars in lost ad revenue, and I think there was even talk of NBC folding, like the DuMont Network before them.

Not that I recall. Nobody went to jail or anything; and by this point, people were used to Abby's shenanigans. The real takeaway was that Abby was back in control after being dominated or manipulated for so long.

You're right. Writing was a BIG issue for DAYS between 1989 and 1992 or three. (I would say the issue has never been fully resolved, but I digress). Ken Corday pinned his hopes on Deidre Hall's return bringing back viewers, but what he and everyone else obviously failed to realize was that bringing her and Wayne Northrop back was not going to solve everything. Sure enough, when she returned and reunited with "Roman," the ratings immediately fell again, because DAYS was still a mess, with stories that ranged from mediocre to godawful. Viewers might have been thrilled to see "Doc" again, but not enough to watch everything else that was going on around her.

IIRC, there was a scene, set at some dinner party or function, where Abby, fed up with being blackmailed by so many people, tells all (while wearing a stunning Travilla original, lol).

Just one of the many, many characters on DAYS whom JER reduced to their most basic functions. Susan Flannery's Laura reads like such a complex woman; yet, in JER's hands, JLB's Laura is little more than "Crazy Doctor Lady."

That's because Gene Palumbo botched the whole thing with some bad writing. "Marlena returns from the dead" should have been a slam-dunk. Instead, it was so underwhelming. OLTL was in serious trouble by the fall of '91. The show had OD'ed on '80's excess and needed just the right EP/HW team to push it into the '90's.

This is what I have been saying for the longest time. I wouldn't necessarily re-pair Robert and Anna, but I agree, @Vee, that the ONLY reason why he and Diane are together is due to their ages and nothing more.

I think what also makes her casting (and even Christopher Stone's casting as Bill) harder to accept is that, at the same time JLB and CS are on the show, so, too, are John Clarke and Suzanne Rogers, still playing Mickey and Maggie after all those years. I really believe that Ed Mallory needed to be there for the duration of that story. Even if you can't picture his Bill being married to JLB's Laura, his presence nevertheless would have provided further continuity.

Such a terrible loss for his loved ones. My heart continues to go out to them, and to everyone whose lives have been touched in one way or another by mental illness.

Now is the time to introduce Calvin, Eric's long-lost, black son, by his first love, a black girl named Justine.

Yeah, but I don't think AIW was nearly as fun, lol.

I think people fooled themselves with the notion that anything that was streamed could be streamed forever; it can't. Streamers, I'm sorry to say, have become a business like any other, concerned only with the bottom line. That's why, more and more, I'm seeing people on social media urging others to buy and hold onto "physical media" (i.e., DVD's and Blu-rays) whenever they can. Between all the cancellations and removals, and the merging of platforms and talk of merging, it seems as if our love affair with all things streaming has begun to fade, with many suggesting that the streaming industry is becoming not much different from cable. Of course, returning to cable and OTA TV is out of the question; we're too far gone for that. But what happens if or when streaming becomes passe? What happens to how we receive our entertainment?

I think he loved the actors, though, more than he loved the storylines; and when I say "the actors," I'm referring to the core group: Michele Lee, Kevin Dobson, Ted Shackelford, Joan Van Ark, William Devane, Donna Mills, etc. As for DALLAS, I think we all know why he wasn't as enamored with that show as he was with KNOTS: he wanted it to be "Giant" or "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof," with Pam as the central character, but it became all about J.R. instead. Blame David Paulsen. As good as he was for DALLAS and, to a lesser extent, for DYNASTY, he was all wrong for KNOTS.

I want to believe that Susan Flannery's Laura would have behaved exactly as Jaime Lyn Bauer's Laura did in those scenes. Given everything that I have read about her years in Salem, however, I just can't. Even if I were to accept that JLB's Laura behaved as she did because she had spent the last two decades in a sanitarium, or that she was then under the enormous influence of her "friend" Vivian and Ivan, a part of me still looks at those scenes and says, "Nah, Laura wouldn't act like that." And for me, therein lies the problem. Because as good as JLB was as Laura, at the same time, you have to pretend that she is playing a new character, one that has almost no connection whatsoever to the past. To put it another way: yes, she is Laura Horton, but she is Laura Horton "in name only." The Laura Horton that Flannery played ceased to exist a long time ago. (That's not on JLB, by the way. That's on JER.)

Anyone would have made a better full-time replacement as Jack Abbott than Peter Bergman.

That's why the storyline with Val's twins was wrapped up so quickly in the next season. David Jacobs wanted it over and done with, even though Michael Filerman rightly knew that keeping it going for a while would help the show's ratings. I'm no psychoanalyst, but I think Jacobs viewed himself deep down as a sellout. He wanted to produce artful shows that would win tons of awards and lavish praise from the press. Instead, he became successful producing stuff that, to his mind, was the equivalent of dime store novels. I don't think he ever totally appreciated just how much his shows meant to a generation of viewers. To me, that's the great tragedy of his life.

When you think of KL, you think of two moments in particular: when Ciji Dunne's lifeless body washes up on the shore; and when Val comes face-to-face with her twins for the first time since their birth. Two seminal moments in the show's history that prove why KL was, in many ways, the best of the '80's primetime soaps.