Khan

Say what you will about Gloria Monty, but if she were handling this storyline, you KNOW you'd get some exciting scenes on location.

Didn't James dress up as a clown at some point? I could swear I saw him in full clown regalia one afternoon and thought, "Okay, even the most mediocre HW'ers that ATWT had back in the '80's would NEVER have done THAT to James Stenbeck!"

This (and so, so much more).

Yeah, leave it to Ron Carlivati to drive an already bad thing even further into the ground. (And I'm a James Read fan.)

Neither did Peter Bergman.

They might as well. The demographics they DO want gave up on network TV a long time ago.

I actually liked those stories -- but, you know, to each their own.

You know, there was a time when even a non-fan like myself wouldn't have thought Y&R's music sucked. But the times, they are a-changin'.

Absolutely agree!

Then why in God's name are you still watching it?

[Bright side]Well, at least she doesn't think she's Liz and still in love with her own father.[/Bright side] And maybe I'm nuts, but wouldn't it have made MORE of an impact if "Renee" had revealed herself for the first time to Tony and Anna instead? At the VERY least, this story has to climax with the REAL Renee coming back from the dead (and played by Anna Stuart?) or else there's just no damn point. (Oh, who am I kidding? There's just no damn point.) Agree!

I really don't believe that's true. I could be wrong, of course, but I truly believe the majority of MSW fans weren't over fifty. Even my current boss, who was probably still shitting his diapers when Jessica had solved her last whodunnit, probably knows about the show. To quote Thomas Magnum, "I know what you're gonna say;" no other network would have touched a series that (allegedly) skewed older in the demographics. Perhaps. But, to the networks, a top 10 series is STILL a top 10 series; and that's what MSW still was before Les Moonves smothered it to death with a pillow.

I think ABC should purge all available footage from the Internet and then perform Jedi Mind Wipes on anyone who even heard of it.

Ah, yes. "Angela Lansbury's Positive Moves." I still recall thumbing through the book version as a child at my local Venture department store. Angela had absolutely nothing to lose by calling out Les Moonves publicly. She'd proven many times over how valuable she and her show were to CBS. If anything, I wish another network (maybe NBC?) had had the guts to cook up a deal with Corymore and Universal to bring the show over to them (with the promise to keep it on Sunday nights), as MSW had proven they could still bring in viewers. As a matter of fact, when AL and her family formally took over MSW's production, they did a rare thing: they took a long-running series that WAS showing some signs of fading and placed it back in the Top 10 without alienating its' audience. Like I said upthread, not all episodes were winners -- which was true even during the Peter S. Fischer/David Moessinger years -- but the quality nevertheless remained high. ETA: Compare that to, say, "Law & Order: SVU." The more control Mariska Hargitay exerts over her series, the more unwatchable it becomes.

It's hard to say whether anyone knew of Gilbert since I don't think he was even mentioned before the Jeremy/Gilbert storyline. (If he was, I don't remember it.)

There really needed to be a moment in that story where Barbara's insanity becomes too much even for James to handle, thereby forcing him to side with everyone else and get her the help she clearly needed. If the same thing had happened to GL's Roger and Holly, with Holly going off the deep end, like she did during the Nursery Rhyme Stalker mess, Roger would have had enough sense to tell others, "Okay, so I'm an evil s.o.b. who doesn't deserve to live. If it convinces you all that Holly is in trouble, so be it!". Agree. You could tell just from the change in the story's tone that something was going on BTS. Before Melaswen, the SSK storyline was unsettlingly grim and sinister. Afterward, the whole thing became non-stop camp. JER was a great many things, but he was never tonally inconsistent. Hands down, the silliest moment in soaps' history.

Alan seems to suffer from a lack of many things.

Janet was not Natalie's identical twin.

I'm sure Peter Bergman is REALLY enthused about mentioning Keemo's name after all these years.

Exactly. There is no logic to this twist whatsoever. It's just more random bullshit that Ron Carlivati keeps pulling from his pale, untalented ass. Even JER at his most tasteless would make this make sense.

In a way, Angela Lansbury and Jessica Fletcher did (and do) represent every woman -- or, at least, every woman of a certain age. Just about everyone, I believe, knows a lady who is still as active and vital as Angela/Jessica; and if they don't, then they hope to be as active as she is when they're that age. To me, it's that kind of across-the-board appeal with viewers (and make no mistake, people from all ages and walks of life adore Angela Lansbury and Jessica Fletcher) that makes for solid characters and series. So many shows out there today don't achieve that level of success, not because there's so many viewing options out there, but because producers don't try presenting characters whom everyone could admire, empathize with or appreciate. And I think that's why MSW reruns continue to attract audiences to this day. No offense to the grittier shows of the day or the people who loved them (myself included), but many don't hold up as well when you watch them today. MSW does. To quote another poster, it's timeless. About the only other detective(ish) show from yesteryear that I think stands up to multiple, repeated viewings is "The Rockford Files"; and again, as with MSW and Angela Lansbury, it's largely due to James Garner, who possessed an everyman quality that still makes him attractive to most viewers.

Well, hope does spring eternal.

Douglas Marland did such a masterful job of convincing us WHY James Stenbeck was irredeemable that it almost pissed me off when they brought James back from the dead years later.