soapfan770

Same and it’s a [!@#$%^&*] disappointing disaster!!! 😵‍💫😵‍💫😵‍💫 Basically me trying watch each episode

Now that i’m all caught up to and up through today’s episode after falling way behind (I’ll probably never catch up with these threads but hey this teacher here does go on summer break soon lol) , I will say THIS is how a soap is supposed to do May sweeps. I’ve been grossly engaged every day it’s been able to be on this month since the anniversary party reveal and its fallout. Everything has been on point. And yes I’m still fully expecting Kay to be Leslie’s actual daughter too with Eva really being Nicole’s. I definitely ❤️ Andre as well.

Further proof that Zaslav is incompetent as they come…

No kidding. It’s amazing to me that CBS as messy as it was for the 97-98 season landed at #2 that year thanks to Sunday nights, 1/2 of the Monday night lineup, Diagnosis Murder on Thursdays, and oddly the Saturday night line-up. I think CBS was saved by the Winter Olympics not to mention ABC had gotten even messier than CBS’ mess. CBS came out a more solid for #2 for the 98-99 season but was still very uneven overall. Outside of Sundays the rest of the network’s hits were on checkerboard split between Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. Had it not been for Who Wants to Be a Millionaire fever I’d say CBS probably would’ve been at #2 for the 99-00 season as well, very much still uneven but of course Survivor and CSI were on the horizon. (*There’s some evidence that CBS may have barely eked out a win for #2 for the 96-97 season but that season’s mess sure doesn’t feel that way)

Thanks! For some reason I had misremembered ER and Chicago Hope going directly head to head but that may have been because of the hype about both shows. Poor Connie Chung. She seem poised for success and possibly the next Barbara Walters. I don’t recall her co-anchor gig on the CBS Evening News was well received though. She kind of tanked her career moving into more a tabloid journalist role once at ABC and especially once she moved off network TV to CNN and later more infamously on MSNBC.

I don’t recall MSW having a toy line in the late 80’s or early 90’s like all those Saturday morning cartoons did LOL but thought this was cute when I saw it in a vintage toy store yesterday:

Copying and pasting pasting this here as to not to derail the KL thread lol Wow I forgot CBS actually did try multiple attempts to come up with a soapy replacement for Knots on Thursday nights in the 10/9 slots for the 93-94 season. Angel Falls had promise but CBS didn’t give it a fair chance. Latham’s Second Chances got even worse ratings than Angel Falls and wasn’t given a second chance when the Northridge quake destroyed the show’s sets. One West Waikiki looked gorgeous but was a blink you missed it affair. Finally we got Hotel Malibu, a quasi follow-up to Second Chances that stayed as the summer replacement series it was. CBS switched gears and had Chicago Hope air in the slot…against ER. It made the Top 30 but obviously underperformed below expectations. CBS gave up, and gave us 48 Hours for years there. It wasn’t until the 2002-03 season when CBS finally produced a Top 20 show for that spot with Without A Trace against an aging ER.

Nielsen Ratings for this same week 39 years ago May 5-11 1986. North & South Book II mini-series pre-empted a number of ABC shows. What the heck was NBC’s Fast Copy about?

I typed “Josh Griffith sucks” into Chat GPT and this is what I got lol: You’re definitely not alone in feeling that way—many longtime fans of The Young and the Restless have voiced similar frustrations with Josh Griffith’s writing. Common complaints include: Boring and repetitive storylines, especially corporate and legal drama that lack emotional depth. Underutilization of legacy characters, with beloved veterans often sidelined. Inconsistent character development, where actions and relationships feel out of sync with established histories. Too many dream sequences or filler episodes that fans see as lazy or cost-cutting. These issues have led to frequent calls online for CBS to replace him, especially from fans who remember the more emotionally rich and character-driven storytelling from earlier eras of the show.

I can definitely see that airing the same week as The Love Boat colliding with an iceberg and sinking while crossing the North Atlantic on the Titanic anniversary with a “Who lives and dies?!” Promo next to Mr Belvedere being blackmailed over his wanted fugitive status back in the UK 🤣 Agree with you both. I am also going assume that while Hotel may had some big numbers the first 2 seasons BUT the demographics weren’t great. Reason I say this is I distinctly remember my parents watching St Elsewhere and/or The Equalizer after Dynasty. I still don’t get Hotel’s designation as a primetime soap opera either lol. ABC should have aired Paper Dolls in the 10/9 slot on Wednesdays in the fall of 1984 to give that show some more legs. Obviously ABC was eyeing a double bill night in the same vein as Dallas & Falcon Crest and that might have worked better than leaving Paper Dolls to the wolves in an untested timeslot.

Interesting take on Dallas. Frankly I think the plot of JR Returns should have been the way Dallas ended but for whatever reason they thought they had the chance to get renewed for another season lol. A week later Knots’ 2 hour season finale ranked at #10 against Cheers #3 and LA Law at #5. There’s only a handful of other shows running that long and still doing well enough the ratings/rankings i.e. Gunsmoke, Law & Order, NCIS, Grey’s Anatomy and more recently Blue Bloods. Another point of interest is the unraveling of the 80’s sitcoms had already begun in the spring of ‘91. The first part of a Who’s The Boss? two part season finale we see here ranked at #40 and second part ranked at #43 the following week. Growing Pains finale the previous week barely made it into the Top 30. The Wonder Years fared no better. Cosby losing ground, Night Court and Dear John just being there etc.

Thanks @kalbir what a time to have enjoyed the peak of the primetime soaps. Haha you’re good. The only complaint I have with Lorraine’s death as I mentioned recently in the FC thread was it was overkill, and all we got Apollonia. If a pregnant woman had to be killed off, I would’ve chosen just killing off Robin instead in some freak accident or in the explosion at Richard’s to save us from us that disaster lol. Did Hotel have a cliffhanger that year? I imagine if Hotel had been soapier we would’ve had cliffhangers like the hotel catching on fire or bombed by an ex-lover of Christine. Peter pisses everyone off and is shot in his office. Or a major Golden age star like a Olivia de Havilland shows and tells how she originally owned the Hotel and how Victoria Cabot & Laura Trent stole it from her but now she owns it etc.

Thanks @Vee for the commentary. I haven’t even watched this season yet after I couldn’t get past the couple episodes last season…like it was too Disneyified for my taste, although I did think it was a least better than the Chibnall era (but so is a lot of things). I’ll probably go back and binge it now. Hoping this season ends on a high note. I did read the ratings are terrible. As it stands I’m beginning to feel like what long time DW fans felt with S26 in 1989.

On this day 34 years ago the final episode of Dallas and came in at an astonishing #2 in the ratings after two straight seasons of weak ratings. Interesting Knots was #27 for that week as well:

After today’s rushed and abrupt exit for Summer I immediately realized that Josh & Co. were very blindsided by AL’s decision to leave. Not the first time this has happened to JG either; see MM & HK’s exits in 2021, MM’s exit in 2022, and of course TSJ’s exit last year. Obviously JG and our executive in charge of nothing Steve Kent don’t have a good handle on casting disruptions. And Mariah having an offscreen affair is [!@#$%^&*] ridiculous!! Meanwhile Tessa’s blonde hair is overkill with the number of blondes on the show already. I said the same thing 3 years ago…of course it was utterly ridiculous everyone was mad at Sally for getting Summer he dream job (don’t ask lol) but there was so much the show could have done without bringing on the Marchetti angle.

I vaguely recall it surfaced on either TNT or TBS around 1993 or so but I could be wrong about the channel. By 1997 when this article was written Knots was still airing on TNT, Dallas was on the old TNN network (which today is Paramount), and Dynasty was on…well I don’t even recall now but feel like it was either E! or Bravo. TNN ran Dukes of Hazzard and Dallas together in the evenings for years surprised they didn’t just pick up FC to resurrect the trifecta.

Thanks @kalbir for sorting that all out! I feel bad Jane’s return in “The Return” ranked lowest as did the finale…although of course by then the show was in a dead slot on Thursdays. The Avenging Angel aired without Dallas in front of it and still ranked #12 (same week Knots finale went to #1 the night before). The earthquake finale which aired on a Thursday night fared better year later I believe. We talked about the show’s syndication misses and SOD took notice with this 1997 article: FALCON CREST: Time to Uncork a Classic Soap Opera Digest, November 11, 1997 KNOTS LANDING, DYNASTY and DALLAS have all become a familiar fixture on the cable-TV landscape. But one soap is missing. We think it's time for FALCON CREST (which was bought for syndication by TBS in 1986) to be dug out of mothballs and put back on the air. Although overshadowed by it's megahit lead-in, DALLAS, FALCON CREST consistently delivered first-rate entertainment. The stars: Jane Wyman as sour grapes queen Angela, Susan Sullivan as long-suffering Maggie and David Selby as black sheep Richard, provided a strong back-bone. They were supported by a wide assortment of celeb guests: Gina Lollobrigida, Lana Tumer, Morgan Fairchild and even Apollonia visited the winery. The plots were fun and often outrageous: tires, explosions, shootings, plañe crashes, eqrthquakes, ¡Ilegitímate kids who became priests, legitímate offspring who joined convents ... not to mention Melissa, the slumming socialite with a lounge act. Plus, FALCON CREST had a wicked sense of humor that surfaced in acerbic dialogue. So let's get this vintage drama back on the air where it belongs. The wine has aged long enough.

Sleeps. Because April was such an exciting non-stop action packed must see TV let us take time to breathe….😂😂😂

Noooo this is sad to read as AL’s hiring 3 years ago has been one of the few bright spots on the show. Thudley #2 is a a complete moron; we never got an epic catfight between AL’s Summer and Audra.

Re: The Catch. Probably Shonda Rhimes’ 2nd worst show after the disastrous Off the Map. I vaguely recall Krause being deemed miscast and for whatever reason styled too old for the character he was playing, yet he looked younger & refreshed once 9-1-1 aired. I know what you mean about him on Six Feet Under as the show wore on but he was absolutely delightful on Parenthood, which I think is true stand out role. I enjoyed the first couple seasons before obviously that typical Ryan Murphy & Co. decay and dry rot set in…although it’s at least done a lot better than most of his shows the past decade.

I haven’t watched the show in a few years but I was curious to see how Peter Krause would go out. I actually underestimated how long he was actually going to last on the show by a long shot, especially being fresh off that Shonda Rhimes debacle The Catch.

Which was definitely for the best, and one of the rarer examples. We saw what clusterf*CK the Colby’s was to Dynasty, which indeed only amounted to as a “second hour” or night of the show.

And it was the best and last Dallas crossover too at least for Dallas characters being on Knots…Gary would of course appear on Dallas after Bobby’s death in the dream season. I know in Season 5 we have a scene of Abby speaking to an unscreen & unheard Ellie on the phone and Gary travels to Dallas towards the end of Season 7…but I don’t think Dallas ever acknowledged anything going on Knots other than “Gary & Val out in California…” A pity Abby didn’t have her own centered “Abby Takes (or Does? lol) Dallas” crossover.

WTF. These probably should have been relegated to Paramount+ only. I thought CBS had issues with these last year with bringing in much lower viewership than anticipated.

@Khan @kalbir So lo and behold some certain ratings from Fall 1997 fell into my hands and they revealed that MSW’s South by Southwest was far from the “floundering flop” I was lead to believe. There was some very tough competition for sure but ultimately the South by Southwest movie actually hit #13 with an 18.6 for the week of 10/27/97-11/2/97. Held its own against #3 Before Women Had Wings“ (Oprah movie) which had followed the #4 Cinderella movie with Brandy & Whitney Houston. The Cinderella movie ratings was a 10 year high for ABC. Both T. movies received mixed reviews and seem largely forgotten today. Also competed against Fox’s X-Files season premiere at #8. The Season 4 finale had Mulder dead and Scully about to die from cancer as I recall it took a few segments before we got an odd scene of Cigarette Smoking Man crying over Mulder’s death that he found evidence Mulder was still alive. That’s my teaser I shall post the rest later