P.J.

Because the fans feel a personal connection to soap actors. However rightly or wrongly, you feel you "know" them. Intellectually, you may know that they're on Infotainment shows to promote their latest movie/book/show, but you want to make the "hey, yeah, I knew you when..." moment.

We don't even know the names of the executives who make the decisions or denigrate us.

2 hours ago, DramatistDreamer said:

. Did the current production people even remember that Nikki existed? 

They must have, Nikki was briefly recast with that Molly look-alike.

I'm glad Jordana has fond memories of ATWT and specifically mentioned BH. The anniversary of his death is right around the corner.

On 6/3/2021 at 1:29 PM, DramatistDreamer said:

 

I also agree with your assertion of Phillip and I definitely believe that scrutiny of a girl/woman character was/is far more intense than the men.  The list is long if things a male character can do/get away with that a woman character couldn't. This is probably the reason why so many women in soaps are reluctant to take on characterizations where they come out looking like the 'heavy' or the villain.

I had never really thought about Phillp and Lily's similarities. I wonder if Marland wrote both their parentage reveals? 

11 hours ago, Mitch said:

 

it would be interesting to see why Marland was so fixated on Lily/Martha.  I can see why Kreizman fixated on Jonathon (he wanted to be him) or Harley (he wanted to sleep with her) but a late middle aged gay man's fixation on a teenage character (who wanst that much fun to begin with) was weird.

Fixated...or just simply the actress he wrote for the longest? Every show in the '80's had that teen ingenue---the one no boy could resist, who's parentage was a fucked up tangle, and seemed to eat the show. YR's Cricket, GL's Beth, DAYS Hope/Jennifer, and before Lily, on ATWT it was Betsy. And as Titan said, you can draw a straight line from GH's Laura, to GL's Morgan, to ATWT's Lily. Although Marland certainly didn't create the sweet ingenue trope, he certainly fine-tuned it.

Not to say the focus wasn't suffocating, and certainly would've benefitted from a lot of come to Jesus moments (I don't think Iva ever even criticized her daughter), Marland certainly was writing for his audience.

Philip could and did cross the line between right and wrong regularly. Maybe because he was a man, it was more acceptable to the audience. 

18 hours ago, titan1978 said:

I feel like I read somewhere that Carly was created on paper by Marland, but not used on screen until after his death.

That is always what I've heard as well. It's not hard to believe that as meticulous as Marland was, he was already forming Carly in his head to be the foil to Rosanna.

The Kim Delaney nod is ridiculous. She's barely been on, and has all the presence of a cardboard cutout of Demi Moore. 

One, I hadn't realized Costner was still alive, or had written a previous book. Hopefully Locher can get some good stories from him. But FCOL, couldn't he get the name of his ATWT character straight? It's Eduardo Grimaldi. Attention to detail counts.

Happy anniversary ATWT.

4 hours ago, DramatistDreamer said:

A few have already been posted, so I won't repeat them but one that I haven't seen is

 

Lisa & Kim, ATWT

Quite a complex relationship (considering the fact that both characters married the same man, with one still married to said man) that came off as being so easy and organic, which I credit the writing and the ability of the actresses.

 

EDIT: I see @Soaplovers
posted them up thread.

And @P.J.

Thought I'd give an explanation why for those who may not be familiar with the characters.

I wish I had seen the moment Kim and Lisa met. I think in general, Kim balanced Lisa's flightiness. And they had been friends long before Kim married Bob, otherwise, lord knows they probably wouldn't have been friends. 

Lisa and Barbara's friendship was just as unlikely, given that Barbara had dated and dumped Tom. It was pretty solid, other than when Barb lied about bedding Tom.

ATWT...

Kim and Lisa

Lisa and Barbara

Penny and Ellen (although this was before my time)

GL

Maureen and Vanessa

Bridget and Kat

Y&R

Nikki and Katherine

I must be the only person on the planet who is unimpressed by Lipton's acting. (the occasional singing he does it cute in a Shaun Cassidy/TeenBeat kind of way..) Every time he smiles, I cringe....and then I want to slap some connection to the material into him. 

14 hours ago, Brolden said:

 

 

Although I agree about Hope, I'll raise the point that the lack of Daniel was much more unforgivable. Both of his parents were in Oakdale the entire time. Parker, who was born around the same time, was driving stories for years at the end. Although I actually kind of liked Ben Levin's Gabriel, why create a new character with a convoluted backstory as a rival for Parker, when they could have easily used either Daniel or J.J.? 

Well, the short explanation is neither JJ or Daniel could've been Craig's secret son. I agree---it's assinine that Daniel never even had a personality beyond years of sleeping on people's shoulders in scenes.  Parker, Faith, Hope and Daniel would've been an excellent teen quad, each one connected to core Oakdale families and miraculously unrelated to each other. (well, aside from marriages, and it took me a minute to think through whether or not Hope and Daniel were....lol) And miraculously born on screen within a year of each other. 

12 hours ago, DramatistDreamer said:

 

Deep down, I knew it wasn't years but the same year??! That's absolutely depressing!

I know I was watching somewhat regularly when both happened, but I just don't remember as much of the details from that period of the show. Yikes!

My sister got married 7/8 that year, and between helping with the wedding and work, I had zero time to be online. When I found out BH had died, I was floored.

Agree with everyone that JF was good, but hardly irreplaceable. I guess McCouch was seen as a hot commodity at the time, but it's not like they couldn't have taken the time to find a good recast. I only remember Onsach and Ferrin as adult Jens...it's not like this isn't the show that had about 13 Toms through the years.

ATWT didn't do a good job developing younger generations for probably the last 20 years of the show. The last really good teens were Andy/Lien/Paul. And after Nikki/Dani, teens were treated like mini-adults, facing murder charges and getting baby rabies.

53 minutes ago, DramatistDreamer said:

 

The show made many savage and idiotic maneuvers in the 11th hour of the show's end run, and killing off Jennifer, Bryant and making Adam Munson a sociopath were just a few examples. Killing off Jennifer a few short years before the real life passing of Benjamin Hendrickson, seemed like a cruel twist in the end.

Hal and Jennifer died the same year, 2006.  Ben's last scenes dealt with Jennifer's death and funeral. Not that that makes it any less cruel.

This may be the first time I've read of anyone praising Van Hansis' acting. Straight or gay, I doubt Lily's child would have been interesting (a problem that plagued many soap children of iconic characters---all of Reva's children were dull as dishwater)...and no doubt the vanilla writing played a part, but to me, Hansis lacked depth. (and I thought a lot of Luke stories were about his victimhood. He was kidnapped by those weird twins to impregnate the girl with the Grimaldi heir, or whatever; Noah's father was going to kill him; Lucinda's closeted husband; Damian trying to send him to a "therapy camp" ) Granted, he ultimately wasn't raped like AMC's Bianca, but I suspect it was more because soaps don't deal with male rape, period, and giving Luke a child to raise would have been even more offensive to some viewers than him being gay.

I don't think it would've mattered who played Tonio---I think Marland purposely kept the character one-dimensional to facilitate story. He's really like a short-term character (like Philip Lombard, say) who just kept weaseling his way around town.

On 11/15/2020 at 6:05 PM, NothinButAttitude said:

 

Was it you or @P.J. that said that Denise used to call Camille "high yella?" I remember bits and pieces of that era, but what stuck out mainly with me was that they wrote the obvious trope for Black women--light-skinned Camille being nice, educated, a doormat basically. Meanwhile, Denise, being of a darker hue, being angry, uneducated, etc. That irked the sh-t out of me seeing as once again they failed us Black viewers by providing us with real complex characters. 

Nope, not me. As a square white girl---I'd have to look that up in an urban dictionary.

Re: LIz....I could understand if she had been exasperated with Marland writing her as the heavy, while Lily made her jump through hoops for her love after discovering the down-to-earth, poor and noble Snyders. Admittedly, I didn't listen to her comments, but the almost obsessive way Marland wrote the town of Oakdale worshipping Lily, might have grated Liz to no end. Not to mention some others.

Ugh...Kirk and Ellie were a disaster. I never got it---and I doubt they would've been paired up if Scott Bryce had stuck around.

Kirk was the only guy who was inherently interested in Iva from the jump. With every other guy she always seemed to be a second choice. I loved Kirk and Iva. I practically wore out a vcr replaying their scenes. Him following her into the Mona Lisa ladies room was hilarious.

They haven't known to do with Julian since he nearly slit Alexis' throat. So, I wouldn't be surprised.

But Rylan seems to be on the verge of story. Curious timing. I could easily think of about 10 characters who could go before her.

I'm sorry----I wouldn't have hired Gaskill to play a dogcatcher in a bad Disney movie after seeing him as either Katie's stalker or Dylan Lewis. I understand the frustration with stunt casting, but that doesn't make the actors "flops"---they did the  temp job they were hired to do. It's even hard to fault the parade actors B&B has gone through over the decades, when you already know Bell will lose interest in them after six weeks, no matter WHO they are. 

Michael Easton---Silas Clay/Ham Finn  GH  I do not understand GH's obsession with this dude. He's so low energy he makes paint drying a fascinating afternoon.

2 hours ago, ironlion said:

As for her time on CBS, why would ATWT name her Julia after Jack's ex-wife "Julia" was literally on the show one or two years earlier? 

*shudders in memory*  That was literally the point. Jack. who'd lost his memory, connected with the names "Julia" and "JJ". (His ex-wife and the name of "their" baby she foisted on him after raping him....)

*damn Pissy and Sheffer to hell...*  

I think the problem is that everyone has different definitions of what constitutes a significant or popular character is. By the time GL brought on Michael Burke (whose name I never would have recalled...) Mike Bauer had been absent for probably close to 15 years. And GL was already semi-recycling the name with Alan-Michael.

I would agree that better writers will deliberately stay away from truly iconic show names. ATWT was never going to have another major character named Lisa (unless it was a granddaughter). But those that are truly iconic are few and far between. 

Early Reva/Josh felt  a lot like Brick and Maggie from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

Ed and Roger, GL.

13 hours ago, Brolden said:

As part of this montage, we see Nancy sitting on the couch at the Hughes', with clearly nobody next to her, as Margo walks up from the kitchen behind her and sits with her. Nancy grabs a picture of herself, Chris, Bob and Kim, as Margo says somehing along the lines of "that's a nice one". I can't help but wonder how ED and HW must have felt filming those scenes, and I feel especially bad knowing it was one of HW's final episodes (Thank god she got to be part of the episodes surrounding Bob & Kim's anniversary after that). I get that budget cuts were heavy at that point, but this was just ridiculous. I would have probably rather not seen a Hughes celebration at all than seeing this half-assed attempt at one (although I am glad we got to see Helen).

I seem to recall ED saying that by this time, HW would tire easily and  could struggle with her lines. I just saw it was one of those "quiet" moments we can have around the holidays, remembering the past and those who aren't there.

19 minutes ago, DramatistDreamer said:

.  Writers rooms got stale and became enamored of too much "group-think" and some may not agree but I think there was too much "pulpy" screenwriting-tic tendencies in the writing for ATWT in the last decade or so of the show. 

 

 

 

Obviously, most of the viewers are never going to understand the pressures HW's face in terms of volume and balancing a multitude of characters with issues that are beyond their control. Or even trying to walk the line between growth and keeping characters capable of stirring pots and creating the requisite drama.  

But Pissy seems particularly lacking in character progression, even if a story seems to be entirely created to showcase such. A character can still be a screwup, after making a mature decision . My biggest story beef with Pissy was Carly's tumor. Carly was legitimately sick. And what could've been a heart-rending story ----with no truly "bad" guy----where Jack and Katie could've simply realized  they were getting married for the wrong reasons, and ended their relationship, instead threw Carly under the bus the moment she decided lie. Jack supporting Carly while sick didn't mean they had to reunite; and Brad being attracted to Katie ( :barf ) didn't need to be propped, it could've developed naturally. 

None of the climaxes would've really changed. But....no. HacksawJean struck again. Ugh...still makes me furious.