Khan

Some think that, in order to recreate the Bill Bell aesthetic, you need expensive-looking sets, lush-sounding music and fabulous lighting and wardrobe...but you really don't. Like he said, all you need to write like Bill Bell is a great script and two wonderful actors. And if those actors are portraying characters who want to be together but who, for whatever reason, cannot, even better.

In retrospect, it was kind of silly to see someone like Angelica Nero in rough-and-tumble Texas. But, DYNASTY had overtaken DALLAS in the ratings, and so Philip Capice decided to inject more glamour into DALLAS. You know, J.R. was always hung up on who was a real Ewing and who wasn't, but I always thought the perfect storyline for him would have been for him to discover he wasn't a Ewing after all. Of course, such a story wouldn't have been entirely believable - for one, Miss Ellie never would've cheated on Jock - but I wonder how J.R. might have dealt with such a revelation.

Blake and Ben being siblings is hard to swallow, isn't it, lol? Like you said, @SFK, you can buy Frankie and Sable as sisters, because at least they took the time to explain (or explain away) the difference in their accents. But I don't recall them ever explaining Ben's accent, or even Adam's. (Billings, Montana, my ass, lol). That's one of my many problems with DYNASTY. Characters either died ugly deaths (Claudia!) or simply disappeared without explanation or further mention. No one on that show ever just left town. (Well, aside from Krystle, lol).

I realize that Nikki was pushed this time off the wagon. Nevertheless, I'm just bored with watching MTS play drunk. To me, it has a real "been there, done that" feeling to it.

I agree. It's also why I think later antagonists like Ben come off as tiresome and redundant, because Alexis is enough of an antagonist for Blake and Krystle without bringing on others.

In the beginning, I think viewers fell in love with Victor, because he was a mysterious, charismatic man, who literally came from nothing, and who refused to take [!@#$%^&*] from anyone. He always commanded respect and loyalty, especially from his children. The problem is, since Bill Bell's passing, a lot of nuances to Victor's character - in particular, the vulnerability that @BoldRestless mentions - have gradually faded away to the point where Victor, at times, comes close to being a boor, and a bore. A similar transformation has happened to Jack Abbott, by the way. You look at who and what he is today, and you'd never know that, once upon a time, the guy was literally sex on a stick.

I wish more people who work in the industry would remember that. Not just people who work in daytime either, but all of television/streaming. They seem to write for men all the time; yet, whenever advertisers talk about demographics and such, it's always about the female demos rather than the male ones.

With all due respect to real-life recovering alcoholics, I am so sick and tired of watching Nikki fall off the wagon over the least little crisis.

Jimmy Carter loses his enemy and his wife in the same week. The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away.

And it was a pretty harmless joke, as far as I was concerned. Yet, because they made the joke, SNL was somehow making light of genocide. (Social media's gonna be the death of us all, lol). I agree with @JaneAusten. People, especially young people, have to stop conflating things. Being against Netanyahu is not the same as being against Israel or against Jewish people, anymore than being anti-Hamas means being anti-Palestine as well. The situation is far more nuanced than "Israel GOOD, Palestine BAD," or vice-versa; and those who insist we're being "cowards" for not "choosing a side" will just make the tension worse in the end.

I think Lorie Brooks was the greatest character that Bill Bell ever created, on ANY soap. Seriously.

I'm shocked, too, but I'm not surprised. I'm sure TPTB thought he wasn't "hunky enough," or that he looked too boyish on screen.

Anything has to be better than an ice cream company. Anything.

For sure, I think the events that happened in the pilot - for instance, wasn't there some story about someone terrorizing and/or killing prostitutes? - should have carried over into the actual series. Otherwise, if it's all contained within 90 or so minutes, what's the incentive for the audience to "tune in tomorrow," so to speak? And if it meant you couldn't hire Lloyd Bridges or Geraldine Page, then...oh well! *shrug*

I think so. Next to Luke and Laura, the Lesley/Rick/Monica/Alan quadrangle was (and still is) GH's most memorable storyline, and probably the story that catapulted GH to the top of the ratings, too. Denise Alexander and Chris Robinson were available at that point, so I can understand P&G's wish to lure in GH viewers by hiring them. (Frankly, I think they would've done better to lure away actors from either ATWT or OLTL, since those were their time slot competitors, but I digress). Unfortunately, P&G believed that the mere act of hiring them would be enough to attract and keep new viewers. It never dawned on them that viewers don't just want to see their favorites on screen again; they also want to see them supported by good writing, too.

I've been saying for weeks that people who claim they aren't going to vote for Biden next year never intended to. They only needed an excuse not to; and sadly, the Gaza conflict has provided them with one. I've also been saying that it's easy for people on the far-left to say, "I'm not voting for Biden, because the lesser of two evils is still evil," because, what do they really have to lose? Even if Trump is re-elected, life can go on more or less as it's always gone for them, for obvious reasons. For people like me, however, who are also people of color, or who are gay/trans/nonbinary people, or who are non-Christians, letting Trump back into the WH means literal death for us. So, basically, the message that the far-left is sending to me is, "I don't give a [!@#$%^&*] about you, you're on your own." Which only proves that the horseshoe theory of politics is correct.

I've always assumed he signed on for a number of episodes, and when those episodes were done, so was he. But I could be wrong, lol. Personally, I don't think the show needed him.

LOL!! When Y&R premiered, in 1973, the country was undergoing tremendous social and political upheaval. Our youth was upending norms of all kinds. Their changing outlook, in turn, informed a lot of Y&R's initial storylines. By that same token, in 1983, as we were in the midst of the Reagan era, the country was once again experiencing change, as economic disparities were, in a sense, creating TWO Americas: one, for its' wealthiest citizens; and the other, for everyone else. (The more things change, lol). I feel like LOVING should have taken advantage of the moment and delved more into the economic conflicts of the period. Soaps had been built on contrasting families for the longest time, but by the time LOVING premiered, you had an opportunity to explore the economic inequalities that defined most families in this country like never before. You could do more than just pay lip service to the idea of one family being rich and one being poor; you could dramatize on a daily basis what that really means, at a time when it's foremost on your audience's minds. And yeah, they should have come up with a better-sounding title for their show, too.

Exactly. Every show is a family show, and every story is a love story. But why THIS family, or families? Why THIS love story? If all you've got for GENERATIONS is, "Well, one of the main families on the show is black," well, so what? What is so unique about THIS black family? Even "The Cosby Show" wasn't JUST about a black family. What separated it from other black sitcoms was that it was about a black family that was (a) headed by two, college-educated professionals who (b) commanded and demanded respect from their children without resorting to violence or threats of violence. (IOW, you didn't have Cliff or Clair threatening to get their belts whenever one of their kids talked back to them). Not so unusual among black families IRL, but definitely not what audiences, black AND white, were used to seeing on TV in 1984.

I think William Gray Espy and James Houghton were so perfectly cast as Snapper and Greg, respectively, that all the actors who succeeded them in their roles pale by comparison. Truly, John Conboy and Bill Bell did an excellent job casting not just those actors but all the actors in the Brooks and Foster families.

And he might have, too, if he had hired the right people to create, develop and produce SUNSET BEACH. If that was his one, big stab at giving us a Bell-styled soap, then he should've hired people like Kay Alden and Edward Scott. (In fact, now that I think about it, he DID hire Wes Kenney initially, but for some reason, it didn't work out).

DALLAS always wanted to be a modern-day Arthurian saga, and that promo does a very fine job of suggesting as much without overselling.

Perhaps you're right. As far as the thirty-minute, non-Bell-produced soaps go, I think CAPITOL had one of the stronger pitches: the saga of two of Washington, D.C.'s most prominent families, linked together by history and star-crossed romance. There, you have the multi-generational, family drama, set against the backdrop of U.S. politics, with romance and intrigue of all sorts implied. Even if the actual show often came up short, the whole "the passion for power...the power of passion" motif still encouraged the uninitiated at least to sample it. Again, as I've said before, all GENERATIONS seemed to be saying was, "Hey, Blacks are people, too!".

As James Burrows (?) once said, the beauty about the "Cheers" opening is how it gave you the impression of the bar as a place you'd want to hang out at every week; when, in fact, the bar was filled with miserable folks who often ridiculed and insulted each other. Yet, because of the theme song, everyone still remembers the bar as The Place Where Everybody Knows Your Name. Ironically, I think if you were to strip away the "whites vs. blacks" angle, switch out some of the other visuals with those like what we saw on "Cheers," but otherwise kept the theme as it was/is, the concept behind the GENERATIONS theme/opening would have fit much better on RYAN'S HOPE, showing how the bar, the family that owns it and its' regulars have been constants through decades of tumultuous change. Much more appropriate for that show, I think, than RH's actual openings (which didn't even feature the bar!). And the thing is, all TPTB needed to do was to bring back/update the "Autumn Breeze" opening, with an ambulance speeding past present-day GH. It still works on so many levels. It can be brief, which is a plus in a day and age that's all about squeezing in more time for ads; there aren't any cast member shots, so no need to update or rotate every contract cycle (which saves money!); and it can evoke all sorts of emotions for viewers both longtime and new. Even an opening like DAYS' hourglass opening still works, because of what it conjures up for the audience: family, tradition, high romance, DRAMA!!! The DAYS of 2023 is a far, far cry from the DAYS of 1965, but that theme and opening provides some sense of continuity to the show, serving as a bridge of sorts between "old" and "new." (If only they had kept the version of the theme song that played during the "Melaswen" arc....). GENERATIONS was a show that was CRYING OUT for a theme song performed by Jeffrey Osborne or Patti Austin, not an "Entertainer" soundalike. On the one hand, I feel sorry for Sally Sussman, who had to watch her creation die a quick, ignoble death. But, on the other hand, I don't think NBC was so reticent about the show because of its' integrated canvas. I think that tells only part of the story behind their decision to axe the show after only two years. If it had been better made, by people who had had a stronger track record for that type of soap (like, say, Agnes Nixon?), I think NBC would have stuck it out a little longer and weathered whatever controversies came their way. But, the fact is, I think the network recognized right away that they had been sold a bill of goods - I mean, really, Sally, the main (African-American) family on your show runs an ice cream company??? - and just looked for the first opportunity to bail without it looking as if they were dumping it because half the cast happened to be Black.

Exactly. The opening theme and visuals did not match the show's content at all. Even promos for GENERATIONS (created by NBC's own ad department!) could be misleading. As one poster mentioned eons ago, the writing for the African-American characters was often "safe" and bland. Yet, the promos suggested that the show, and its' AA contingent, had more "soul" than "Soul Train"! I also agree that making the Marshalls the proprietors of a chain of ice cream parlors was a stupid idea. I mean, who the [!@#$%^&*] CARES about an ice cream company? If I had created GENERATIONS, I think I would've been inspired to make the family business either "Marshall Communications," which would have been a conglomerate of newspapers, TV and radio stations throughout the Midwest, Northeast and Southeast regions; or a company that manufactured hair care products and cosmetics for the so-called "urban market" (sort of a Black Jabot, if you will).