Khan

That is so heartbreaking to watch. Elizabeth Hubbard did the right thing by paying into a long-term care policy that she'd hoped would relieve of her son of some of the burden of taking care of her in her final days. It's just a shame that the bureaucracies that continue to cripple our country's health care industry undermined all that careful and smart planning. Also, if I had my druthers, soaps would be putting a spotlight on these and other real, timely issues today instead of inundating us with more WTD stories.

DYNASTY had already played the "long-lost child" card with Adam, so bringing on Amanda as yet another long-lost Carrington was redundant.

Or, it's Moesha DiMera, another long-lost daughter, played by Brandy.

I get that they wanted to create an air of mystery and possibly danger around Dominique when she arrived in Denver, but I couldn't understand why she kept her connection to the Carringtons under wraps for so long, or why she was trading catty remarks with Alexis as if they were longtime nemeses. Other character: "Just who ARE you anyway, Ms. Devereaux?" Dominique: "Who AM I? That, my dear, is for me to know, and for you to find out...eventually." Khan (watches): "Oh, girl, just tell them who you are so we can move on!"

It's Hayleigh DiMera, Stefano's long-lost child by a soccer mom from SoCal.

It's taken me so long to get to a place where I don't hate Felicia. Please don't undo all that for me now.

Ten bucks says Suzanne took a look at Deidre one day and said, "Again with the pantsuits!?"

The best example of this kind of story wasn't on any soap opera, but on a fifth-season episode of "Good Times" titled "Requiem for a Wino."

I agree!

IIRC, didn't that story climax during a WGA strike? I wonder if Bill Bell had intended for that plot to get as weird as it did.

If only Bill, Jr. and Lauralee would tell their brother that he's burned out and needs to give up the HW'ing reins.

Joss' true calling is to be a human speed bump, which she is fulfilling quite nicely.

I thought the reboot was such a mess. The team had an opportunity not just to update DYNASTY for the 21st century but also to deepen the characterizations and push for grittier, more meaningful storylines. Instead, it was just more, high-gloss camp, only camp directed toward younger people.

Yeah, it's like watching Brenda Dickson's Jill Abbott on Y&R go to work at Jabot wearing glittering evening gowns, lol.

That might be good, too!

Whenever I see Deidre Hall and Jane Elliot's names mentioned in the same sentence, I always imagine them joining Leslie Charleson and Donna Mills on some wild girls' trip, where they take turns ogling the Spanish-speaking waiter with the tight buns on their Caribbean cruise.

For sure, a big problem with the first season was the writing for the Blaisdels, and for Lindsay Blaisdel in particular. Bo Hopkins and Pamela Bellwood were good as Matthew and Claudia, respectively, but Katy Kurtzman was so woefully miscast as Lindsay. A little of her brattiness went a very long way, lol. If I had been Aaron Spelling or the Shapiros, I would have recast Lindsay with Heather Locklear; and rather than have her on as Krystal's socially grasping niece, I would have instead had Krystal and Lindsay forge a new, mother-and-daughter-like bond that would have placed Claudia's sanity and relationships with her family in jeopardy. I also would have introduced a new character related to the Blaisdels - perhaps, Matthew's younger brother - who, in time, would have become Steven's on-again, off-again love interest. Blake and Krystle would continue experiencing problems in their marriage, as Krystle struggles to adjust to her new lifestyle and to Blake's domineering nature, which manifests itself with Krystle's decision to go back to work at burgeoning Blaisdel Oil. And stirring the pot in all this, of course, would be Fallon, who suggests to her daddy that Matthew, and not Blake, is the father of the baby that Krystle is carrying at the end of the season.

My issue with DYNASTY after its' first season is my same issue with THE DOCTORS during its' so-called "golden era" of the early 1970s: the Pollocks. Their work on both shows has to be some of the most plot-driven writing I've ever witnessed. In order for any of their stories to have worked, the "good" characters have to be completely blind to whatever the "bad" characters are doing to them; and most of the time on THE DOCTORS, characters they introduced or re-introduced would be so reprehensible.

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