Khan

The way I've heard even Angela Lansbury herself tell it, hardly anyone outside of Broadway (or old Hollywood) knew who she was before MSW. Of course, I think she was being her usual, modest self. (British actors, I find, tend to be modest and self-deprecating, lol). But, yeah, I do think expectations were somewhat guarded at the start. At best, CBS hoped MSW would retain enough of "60 Minutes"'s audience to help them win Sunday nights. They certainly never expected it to be the one show that kept the network afloat across two decades! What CBS failed to take fully into account, however, is one, very basic philosophy: that television, as a medium, thrives on intimacy and authenticity. The more "real" and welcoming an actor on a TV series comes across, the more the audience will be drawn to them. Viewers took to J.B. Fletcher, and to Angela Lansbury, because she represented to them (and still represents to them) the relative or neighbor they either knew or wish they did. At the same time, MSW, along with the OTHER surprise hit of the '80's, NBC's "The Golden Girls," helped lay waste to the ridiculous notion that women of a certain age were nothing more than doddering grandmas who sat at home all day, draped in afghans and drooling and wetting themselves on the regular. J.B. Fletcher proved to a lot of folks out there that the second half of one's life can be just as adventurous as the first - a sort of ambassadorship that Lansbury herself clearly took very seriously.

That would make sense, @Soaplovers. I'd love to know, though, who the fourth couple was before they were replaced with Gary and Val. What kind of characters were they? Were they newlyweds, like the Ewings and the Wards? Were they an older couple, like the Averys and the Fairgates? LOL!! I suspect that as well. I think Filerman/Jacobs realized early on that things weren't clicking with Kenny and Ginger, or with James Houghton and Kim Lankford, but Jacobs just wasn't ready to let go of his original vision for the show yet. If I could sum up David Jacobs' relationship with this show at least through the first four seasons, it'd be like this: S1: "It's 'Scenes from a Marriage' times four. It's gonna be a hit, I can feel it!" S2: "No, really, trust me on this - once we get the bugs worked out, it'll take off!" S3: "Okay, maybe I didn't think this 'Scenes from a Marriage x 4' concept through enough. Just give us a lil' more time and we'll have it!" S4: "[!@#$%^&*] it, let's just play Soap Opera!"

Yes, she will! Angela Lansbury SAVED CBS in the '80's and '90's!

When it comes to the Wards, the show's very first opening sequence says it all. There, you have Sid and Karen gleefully kissing like a couple of lovesick teens in their garage, Gary and Val sharing a tender moment (and a kiss) on their living room couch, Richard and Laura gettin' sexy in their bedroom with the tacky '70's wallpaper...and all Kenny and Ginger can do is look at it all from afar through their window.

Well, maybe working on a soap opera wasn't all that challenging to him, but it's certainly more challenging (and more stable) than working on low-budget movies on Lifetime Movie Network, lol.

Cracks me up every time, lol!

I don't believe he's getting a bump either. Trump's long past the point of winning over anyone who isn't won over by him already. At this point, if you're not voting for Trump or for Harris, you're likely voting third party or just staying home.

Yeah, I didn't understand Reed's sudden regression to being a spoiled rich girl who couldn't hack it in Hollywood as a struggling filmmaker's wife. That didn't make any sense to me, given how differently Ashley Judd had played the role.

For God's sake, if Stephanie couldn't have fled the studio the moment she heard a noise, why couldn't she at least have tried to find something to defend herself with, instead of cowering and clutching that locket like it was going to save her? And I still can't believe that all those women were terrorized and murdered for some lousy real estate! Poor Suzi. First, she loses her bio dad; then, she loses her mom; then, she loses the man she REGARDED as her father; then, she gets mixed up with Warren Carter; then, she loses her step-mom; then, she, herself, is terrorized by the same man who killed Stephanie (and maybe Wendy); then, she finally dies as the victim of some grudge match between families and leaves her son, Jonah, whose own parents are now both dead, to be raised by a step-dad who, if SFT had lasted beyond '86, probably would've been killed off, too. I [!@#$%^&*] hate this show, lol.

Actually, @SoapDope, Mary Crosby/Kristin appeared in an episode of KL during S2, shortly after she had shot J.R. IIRC, Kristin attempted to seduce Kenny, because she was pregnant (with Christopher, whom Bobby and Pam end up adopting) and needed a father for her baby, or some mess. The whole thing must've seemed absurd to DALLAS/KL viewers even back then, lol. That would've been a hoot, lol! Especially when Ben and Abby were running Pacific World Cable and Joshua had his "PTL Club"-like show. Joshua would've turned the program into a real family affair, with his preaching (with Cathy by his side like Tammy Faye Bakker), Valene hosting cooking segments that attempted to present them (Josh, Val, Cathy, Lilimae) as one big, Jesus-lovin' family, and Cathy and Lilimae performing a Gospel number or two in every episode. Imagine for the moment, though, if Val had decided that the best way to work through her issues with Gary and Abby would be to write a book all about the affair (rather than that "Nashville Junction" that was supposedly all about Lilimae and sold zilch copies, lol). Oh, I totally get where you're coming from with that, @soapfan770, and ICAM. Greg and Paige's relationship felt particularly silly to me. I'd go along with that, especially if it ended with Kenny dead like Charlie Minor.

I dunno, I've always been partial to Greg - the once-idealistic politician who learned that ideals alone don't get the job done - myself. I loved the Tracy/Hepburn-like energy between William Devane and Constance McCashin, too. That [!@#$%^&*] got me right in my comfort zone, lol. I've wondered that myself. There aren't too many roles that I don't love Jon Cypher in. Hell, I even suffered through "Major Dad" for him, lol. But it does seem like maybe there had been bigger plans for Jeff that somehow got truncated due to JC's availability. I agree! KL got a lot of story from Val's book, but it really didn't make sense for J.R. to be so concerned about it. Then again, as I've mentioned before, I've never understood how KL came to the idea of making Val a writer in the first place. At the very least, I see her writing books for children and young adults, since she loved babies so much. But writing what amounted to be a potboiler in the same fashion as Jacqueline Susann just didn't work for me. Suddenly, I'm getting an image in my head of Ginger and Val vying for Ben's attention, with "poor Val" caught in not one but TWO love triangles at the same time, lol.

If not for what happens at the end - I won't spoil it for those who haven't seen it yet - but if not for that ending, the episode would have been a complete waste of time.

Kenny and Ginger felt superfluous to me even during the Ciji Dunne storyline, and that one was centered around the music industry, lol! But seriously. The producers made the same mistake with the Wards that countless other producers and writers on soaps have made with pairings that aren't interesting: they saddled Kenny and Ginger with a kid, as if a baby would generate story for them. (Guess what? It never does). Frankly, I would've killed off little Erin Molly ASAP, had Ginger suffer a total breakdown and end up in an institution, and the last thing you would've heard about Kenny was that he was living out of his van and he had taken up with an 18-year-old, lol!

Oh, I definitely agree. Rushing Karen into a new relationship after Sid's death would have been a HUGE mistake. And I also agree with those who say that year was probably one of Michele Lee's best on the show, if not THE best. I agree. In S3, KL found itself at a bit of a loss, as Don Murray's exit and Jim Houghton and Kim Lankford's reduced importance have laid waste to KL's original "Scenes from a Marriage" concept. Now, it's pretty much the widow Fairgate and her three kids; Richard and Laura and their drama; Gary and Val and Abby and THEIR drama; Multiple Tony Winner Julie Harris doing her best Grandma Walton routine; and the only things that are holding it all together are that damn car dealership and Val's book (and I have to say, I've never fully embraced the idea of Val possessing writing talent, even though plenty of story came from it). I'm not suggesting S3 was awful - there's still plenty of good stuff there, especially in the last third - but it definitely was teetering, lol. Peter Dunne and his team faced three enormous challenges at DALLAS: 1) the BTS conflict between Larry Hagman and Philip Capice, which ultimately resulted in Capice leaving the show and Leonard Katzman (and Hagman) regaining control; 2) the hard push to make DALLAS more glamorous in order to compete with DYNASTY; and 3) the fact that they didn't have the level of acting talent that they had had at KL. As much as I enjoyed watching the dream season, I can also see why, in retrospect, Dunne and Co. were doomed to fail.

I think Richard finally (and very reluctantly) accepted the fact that he was never going to be the business titan that he had always dreamed of being. In fact, I see him leaving Knots Landing, starting over in some small town in NorCal, maybe even hanging up his proverbial shingle again as a "storefront lawyer."

If Trump is experiencing a bump in the polls, then it's likely due to Trump supporters rallying around him in the wake of the "Arlington situation" and questions about his mental fitness for office.

S3 was rough for several reasons. First and foremost, Sid's death cast a pall over many of the show's storylines, and over Karen's storylines in particular. I suspect that's the primary reason why her and Mack's romance was so well-received the next season. Viewers were just so happy to see Karen happy and in love again after spending the previous year grieving for Sid. Also, S3 was, IMO, a bit of a course correction from S2, when the show "lathered up" too quickly before they had the chance to develop the characters fully. S3 does a MUCH better job of laying the groundwork for the Gary/Val/Abby triangle than S2. At the same time, because their attempt at becoming more soap-like in S2 had turned out to be such a mess, I suspect the producers were somewhat skittish about trying again, so what you get in S3 is a mix of S1 (self-contained episodes) and S2 (ongoing stories), which might've worked just as well in S2, but only if we had known the characters more. It's only when the Gary/Val/Abby triangle takes off in the latter part of S3 do you get the feeling that David Jacobs and his team have gotten the hang of things. There's really only two seasons of KL that I always struggle to get through. One is S13, and the other is S2.

Forgot to add: I also would've had Julie Harris return as Lilimae - if not during S13, as Val battles what would have turned out to be a losing battle with cancer, then during the next season, as she'd want to be there to help Gary raise the twins. And yes, there would've been tension between Lilimae and Kate, as Lilimae would've seen Kate as some pretty young thing trying to take her Sweetpea's place, but I think she would've come around in the end. Then, depending on whether Harris would've been interested in staying on, I would've had her and Al (Red Buttons) move to a nearby "retirement village," where they could remain close to Gary, Kate and the twins.

I pretty much stopped watching "The Simpsons" when Mike Scully became showrunner. "The Simpsons" might've been an animated series, but Scully's the one who turned it into a cartoon. To be fair, I think most performances on SVU tend to be awful, especially in the earlier seasons, before Warren Leight came aboard and improved the writing.

Don't quote me on this, but my understanding was that the cul-de-sac and surrounding area were built shortly after WWII, as the soldiers were returning home, and their families were expanding and moving into the suburbs. Your idea of Ginger and Kenny as siblings rather than husband-and-wife sounds intriguing, @All My Shadows. It certainly would've created more variety in the storytelling, which I'm always big on, lol. Yeah, I didn't care for JVA's exit either. It seemed to undo a lot of their tentative plans for S14, even though they did a reasonably good job making up for it. From what I understand, however, that was a particularly sticky situation on both sides. JVA co-starred in a pilot for a half-hour series on NBC, and Filerman and Jacobs more-or-less forced her to choose between waiting for the pilot to be picked up (which it didn't) or staying with KL, because (as they said) they couldn't really move forward with anything if her availability was up in the air. And while I could understand why JVA chose the pilot over KL - by S13, Val was pretty much spent as a character - I also think her choice was unfortunate, because Ann Marcus' idea to have her work on Greg Sumner's biography could've been the best storyline that JVA had had since God-knows-when. I kinda suspect that the plan was for Joe to assume the mantle of Cooper/Fairgate family patriarch and bring in more male viewers - something Kevin Dobson and Mack would do the next season - but that Stephen Macht might've been too much for the producers to handle. (I have no insider info about this, just a gut feeling that Macht was/is a difficult person to work with, judging by how often he's written off of different shows).

For sure, I would've had Val's cancer recur during S13, when it was obvious the show didn't know what to do with her and Gary. Imagine: Gary and Val finally reunite after so many years apart, and then - WHAM! - they're blindsided with the news of her diagnosis, and the likely possibility of her dying. And you have Kate there, helping Val take care of the twins and preparing everyone for her dying, which lays the true groundwork for a Gary/Kate romance that comes down the road.

IIRC, Jeff Sagansky was still president of CBS, and he was very high on increasing the visibility of Hispanic and Latino actors on the network. So, I guess it made sense for them to spin off Jennifer Lopez's character, in particular, although I think they would've been better off developing a whole new series for her. "Hotel Malibu" just feels like something the Lechowicks and Stanleys threw together (and CBS aired) in order to fulfill some obligations.

Honestly, does Kamala Harris even NEED the young white male vote at this point, lol?

I agree. Clearly, KL included those moments to draw in viewers who'd been used to watching action-heavy shows like "Charlie's Angels" and "The Rockford Files." In a way, it reminds me of when Paramount Pictures forced Francis Ford Coppola to include in "The Godfather" scenes like the one where Talia Shire's character smashes all the dishes because they were afraid the movie wasn't exciting enough, lol. Shows like "Hill Street Blues" took off, IMO, precisely because of episodes like the one with Val's operation. I think viewers were just plain sick and tired of watching huge issues like that being dealt with in one episode and then never mentioned again.

What would we define "Frasier" as, besides a show we loved before we knew more about Kelsey Grammer than we should've?