Matt

I get giddy every time I see that trailer for The Purge: Anarchy because Judith McConnell is in it. Moreover, I've always thought she would make an excellent Laura Horton recast on DAYS.

Actually, Judith McConnell was on GH during the early/mid 70s. After she left GH, she went to NY and ATWT where she played Valerie Conway for several years, then to AW where she played Miranda Bishop for a while before ending up on Santa Barbara.

Bethel Leslie (the 2nd Maggie on The Doctors) transitioned to writing and even served as head writer for The Secret Storm for a bit. C. David Colson, who played Tom Hughes for several years in the 1970s, turned to writing and now goes by the name David Cherrill & is a script writer for DAYS and has written for OLTL & AW and once served briefly as HW for SFT.

I really do hate to self-promo, but I have several Tumblr pages dedicated to posting weekly newspaper recaps for various soaps in order (mostly the "Tune in Tomorrow" recaps that began in 1976 along with others if I can't find find those for that week). On one of them, I'm currently in the process of posting the weekly recaps for "The Doctors" and I'm up to early 1980. Nola just lost custody of Jessica thanks to Mona setting her up to be photographed (drugged) in an orgy & arrested with (planted) drugs on her. And Missy was just in a car accident after witnessing Vivica & Luke on a romantic date (a situation staged by Vivica). The above mentioned Brad, Darcy, Jeff, & Alan are involved in story at this point, as well. http://vintage70ssoaprecaps.tumblr.com/

I really must be odd man out because I HATED Branson as Shayne. Billy Kay was always my favorite, but I even liked West dim, not acting ass over Branson.

Oh, of course. Cancel it now that I've started watching it.

Yeah, I kinda gave up with the subtitles on the youtube eps. Thankfully, I figured out that if you open the Das Erste Mediathek page for VL in Chrome & then let Chrome translate the page into English, when you watch an episode of VL with the subtitles (in German) turned on (I believe this is the only one of the German soaps to post eps with subtitles), Chrome will actually translate the subtitles into English! Sometimes they fly by really fast & sometimes they're very literal in regards to German grammer, but it's MUCH easier to understand that youtube. Also, I'm very surprised that NONE of the German soaps are country restricted on their websites and all current episodes of VL, AWZ, & UU are free to watch (there's a per episode charge for GZSZ, oddly).

OMG! Kim going OFF on both Tanja & Sebastian ROCKED MY SOCKS! However, Thomas & Biggi (while really charming) are as dull as yesterday's dishwater. And Giselle really needs to get hit by a bus. Maybe douchbucket Thore can run her over with his chair. Of course, Thore falls out of his damn wheelchair so much I swear that Caro needs to have Ricardo install a seat belt for him. Sascha & Olli -- *swoon* Of course, Sascha has to be an asshat and tell Olli that even though they did the deed, it didn't mean anything because he was just "experimenting." Poor Olli. But I guess that's what you get when you're always falling head over heels for partially straight boys.

Chiming in on Team David. I am SO there!

I'm surprised that I've found out that you can actually watch current episodes of Verboten Liebe, Unter Uns, & Alles was zählt for free on their respective websites without country restriction. There's a per episode charge for GZSZ apparently. Also, if you translate the page into English (which I do in Chrome) and turn on the captions on the episode (VL offers this option) the translated page will actually translate the captions into English! Granted, they captions are quite literal and direct and sometimes they flash by REALLY quickly, but it goes a long way to figuring out exactly what's being said.

So, quite by accident (in the course of checking out soap openings from other countries), I found out that someone is posting full sameday episodes of Verbotene Liebe on youtube. I kinda got sucked in to watching one, and now I'm hooked --- even though I don't speak a single word of German. lol Now I'm going back to what I presume is when they came back from their forced break to catch up to what's current. Granted, I keep episode synopses open (and run through the translator on Chrome) while watching along with the translated character pages from the official site & the wikipedia pages (which are appallingly not current), so I can actually figure out exactly what's going on (although not what they're saying) pretty easily. I'm also rather surprised by exactly how close to the American style of soaps VL actually is (albeit with FAR better production values).

Spotted Judith McConnell in the trailer for the new movie "The Purge: Anarchy"

We can go ahead and roll that bitch in the wheelchair into the river. Cannot. Stand. Her.

Wow. I love Blessing. She's one of my favorite new characters. Trevor & Grace, OTOH -- I can't wait for both of them to get hit by a bus.

LIAMST is one of those soaps I just WISH there were detailed storyline synopses for the entire series available. Ditto for Where the Heart Is. I'd love to "read" the entire series from start to finish. Maybe in novel form like those old Soaps & Serials books from the 1980s.

I've never been able to handle how utterly douchey Ben is in every single scene I've seen him in. Also, his acting style reminds me very much of everything I've ever seen AW's George Reinhold do. Margo McKenna just seems so whiney as Betsy, but I really appreciated her later as Edge of Night warped and desperate Emily. And god bless her, but Veleka Gary was just... not very good in that scene. That crying fit at the end was painful. No surprise, but Tudi Wiggins was the best of the bunch. I like the set up of Leanne (Meg's presumed romantic rival) being forced to operate on Meg to save her life and then being accused of deliberately causing complications. IMO, that's a really nice set up for a story. Although I simply hate that the series ended with Meg still stuck in that wheelchair.

Chandler Harben has uploaded more videos! One is a collection of full scenes featuring 2 scenes with Ben & Betsy (1 fight about her refusing to sleep with him & him storming out; 1 scene between them in the hospital right after the boating accident); 1 scene with Mia (arguing about Mia's phone call to Betsy at the cabin immediately before the accident); and 1 scene with Meg (who's in the hospital after her fall down the stairs when she learns that Leanne operated on her).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vSHIxq_5XY

The second video is a re-uploading of a previous video he'd uploaded to another account featuring a fight between Ben & Betsy and a physical fight between Ben & Elliot.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVEHk2E3RD8

Oh. My. God.

I just so giddy right now I can't see straight. Love of Life has always been one of those old soaps that I never got a chance to see, but kinda fell in love with via reading all the old SOD recaps. I never thought I'd ever see the final episode (or any full episode from the later years). And the FULL and COMPLETE final opening!

She appeared as herself on the show in 1983. I forget the circumstances, but I believe that this was her last acting appearance onscreen (even though she was playing herself).

I was watching this past Friday's episode of "Grimm" and I noticed that it was written by real-life marrieds and AW alums Thomas Ian Griffith & Mary Page Keller (ex-Catlin & Sally).

I always thought she looked like a drag queen without the stage makeup.

Call me crazy, but I've always thought Ron Tomme was hot. Apparently I'm not the only one because I tweeted Dana Delaney once to ask about her best memory of her time on Love of Life and she tweeted back that it was how hot her father on the show was and how she had a crush on him. lol And, actually, in that last picture he seems to favor Don Stewart a lot IMO.

MAJOR Un-Casting Spoiler

Claire Cooper is leaving the role of Jacqui McQueen

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/soaps/s13/hollyoaks/news/a460521/hollyoaks-claire-cooper-leaving-jacqui-mcqueen-role.html

Luke & Bella just absolutely broke my heart today.

I don't think there were ever any 3rd books for any of the ABC soaps (with Books 1 & 2 being a single, double sized volume). I believe the Soaps & Serials series folded right after their introduction, didn't it? I actually have the GH one and it's all about Phil/Jessie, Steve/Audrey, but MOSTLY about the very beginning of Lesley and the whole backstory of Laura's conception/birth that actually wasn't seen on the show (if I remember correctly because it's been 25 years or so since I've read it).