Khan

If I understand this correctly, Kate Cox could face criminal charges if/when she returns to TX after her abortion. Personally, I would just leave the state for good and never look back, but my God! How insane is it that a woman is now considered a fugitive just for electing to terminate her pregnancy across state lines?

I would venture that it was through the former. I, too, read that quote from ES and as you say, @Paul Raven, she laments that fact in the very next sentence. It's likely that EH overlooked it. I agree.

Although I don't feel the same way as you about PASSIONS or JER, I am glad that both have had such an impact on your life. That's important to remember as more and more of this genre disappears.

LC looks so frail. I pray she's on the mend.

I remember her from her brief stint as Pamela Capwell Conrad on SANTA BARBARA and from a guest appearance she made on "Murder, She Wrote."

Let me be perfectly clear: I am against abortion in all cases except where carrying the fetus to full term jeopardizes the life of the mother. But I am also against anyone, especially the government, telling any woman what she can and cannot do with her own body. To me, that's what the GOP cares about - not whether that child is allowed the opportunity to be born, but whether they can dictate what rights its' mother has over her own person. It's appalling, and it's dangerous, and the further they encroach upon women in that way, the more it's going to lead into an epidemic that jeopardizes the future of this nation.

Get it, Dr. & Mrs. Hardy!

Sure, I've heard about those events. The person who could convince me that that was the apex of good comedy or good satire, let alone good soap opera, has yet to be born. There are soaps that I love to this day, and there are soaps that I am lukewarm about. But PASSIONS is but one of two soaps that I have a seething hatred for. Not only because the writing (or what I saw of it) was so awful, but also because it was racist, ageist and misogynistic trash that never should have seen the light of day. JER was a hack who conned NBC into giving him too much creative autonomy, simply because he managed to "save" DAYS (in the ratings, if not creatively) with the few, the VERY few tricks he held up his sleeve.

JER was still at the point where he wanted people to take his show (and himself) seriously. The writing, however, was awful. Viewers, I imagine, started regarding it as parody or satire, because either they couldn't see how terrible it really was, or they didn't want to. Between that growing perception and the constantly low HH ratings, I think JER just gave up and started writing whatever, regardless of logic or taste, because he knew the show was going nowhere. I never saw the DirecTV-produced episodes, but if they were anything like what was broadcast on NBC....

That has ALWAYS bugged me, @yrfan1983. Even back then, I was aware of Eve's history, so to bring her back without anyone reaching for the phone to call the authorities was just odd to me. Did Bill Bell think it was so long ago that nobody would have remembered or cared? Or was that a sign that his mental faculties were beginning to fail him?

I like that old-school Bell/Nixon/Marland style of writing, and I'm a Gen-X'er.

Was it all really absurdity and satire, though, or was it just bad writing?

My fear is that we'll have to create some sort of "underground railroad" for women who need abortions.

The last one has me thinking of this song...

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It's possible Sheri Anderson went Fi-Core and wrote for DAYS during the strike as a favor to Ken Corday, as it's probably likely she's otherwise out of the business.

Thank you, @beebs, ICAM. In fact, I was going to add that to my last post, but time got away from me. But, yes, it seemed like every other scene would climax in a shouting match between characters. In the past, AMC always had been about the "brotherhood of man," with a community of people who loved and cared for one another, even when they might have been at odds. With Megan McTavish as HW, however, Pine Valley became a cold and dark place to visit. Lorraine Broderick restored some of the show's warmth and humanity when she came back as HW, but it never was the same. You also have to take into account that Pamela K. Long was the HW for most of Calhoun's run and that, aside from some major storylines, the magic with her might have been gone.

I don't think the show was ever the same after Janet dumped Natalie down the well. The ratings were back up, but, IMO, Megan McTavish's work was so gimmicky and not at all in keeping with the show's best years.

Which pretty much describes the writing at that point, lol.

Ron Carlivati must have been paying homage to JER with that fake-out.

I think Ben Matlock made an oblique reference to Charlene when Leanne first arrived, but I can't be sure. As on "The Andy Griffith Show," however, Ben rarely, if ever, mentioned his late wife.

I have to hand it to her: she did all she could to protect her financial investment in that show.

Elizabeth Hubbard was right: in a sense, because we live with these characters for so long, we do know them. In fact, we probably know them better than we know some from our real-life families!

I agree. The thing is, Agnes Nixon wasn't the kind of writer who'd read about some current event in the newspaper and then graft it onto one of her stories. For example, when she wrote the cervical cancer story for GL's Bert Bauer, she didn't write it just to educate women about the need for regular pap smears, or just to give Charita Bauer material to play. From what I've read, Bert's cancer also served as a catalyst to bring her son, Mike, back home after a period away from the scene. And when little Molly on AMC became ill with leukemia, it wasn't just to raise awareness about bone marrow donations. Molly's leukemia, and how Travis and Barbara responded to that, also broke up Travis and Erica and Tom and Barbara and reunited Travis with Barbara. If I learned anything from Agnes Nixon, it's that stories borne from topical issues have to flow from the characters and their circumstances if you have any hope at all of enlightening the audience. Otherwise, you're just preaching to them.