soapfan770

LOL. I bunch of my friends and family were doing all those 80s/90s horror theme AI images on Facebook so I figured hey why not an 80’s soap night 🤣

And finally, @kalbir @DRW50 @Soapsuds @Khan a pictures of me on a Friday night in 1986 (they both came out a bit much LOL)

Lord here are a few of mine I made. Mind you I think using Paint 20+ years ago for the old fan logos I made was much easier time than this lol

Rare ad featuring Wyman advertising the 1985-86 season finale (Earthquake) which aired on a Thursday night in Knots usual timeslot.

Bob or no Bob, K&A was definitely blown out of the water by it’s time slot competition Alf being a Top 10 hit for its sophomore season. Plus didn’t Kate’s daughter leave earlier in the season? Been a while since I watched whole series. Obviously the strike affected the most troubled shows the worst, which most notably included putting Moonlighting out its misery. Another issue was a number of shows saw a number time slot changes that resulted in tank jobs. I would say on the flip side, Knots definitely benefited from LA Law’s abruptly shortened season as well KL holding its own that season. And of course Roseanne was a hit.

As bleak of shape as the show is now it weird to think that was a time when it was even worse lol. I definitely didn’t feel anything either. Am I suppose to care about the Bacalls? I mean I like TB as an actress, but I’m already feeling that they will be gone faster than you can say Ashland and Tara Locke lol.

Maybe Steve Shaw before he passed? Idk. Patrick Peterson was too generic. My preteen gay self might have a minor crush on Thomas Wilson Brown in Honey I Shrunk the Kids, but his role and appearance as Jason is so completely different from the movie that I wonder why I ever found him cute lol.

Obviously someone at Lorimar must have enjoyed that type of James Bond style storylines as Knots continued to employ them later with stuff like Ben/Jean, the mysterious Okmin Industries, and the Nigel Treadwell story that closed out the show. Obviously Falcon Crest suffered through this too between the Cartel, Neo-Nazi’s, and The Thirteen instead something more realistic like a powerful rival vineyardist threatening to take over or destroy FC lol. Obviously the already shady oil business was probably more suitable for this James Bond stuff to occur on Dallas and/or Dynasty. As for the Sumner Group it was never quite clear what else they had going on aside from some shady/dodgey real estate and land business.

My gosh I was actually thinking about that too and how that really got the show revitalized during her run. I know a lot of people on this complained a lot about Sussman’s writing, in retrospect would they have complained as loudly knowing we’d eventually be suffering with Josh Griffith for over 6 years now?

Kyle meeting Sienna in what looks like an empty knock-off Hard Rock Cafe set is just as ridiculous!!

Lorimar made a fatal mistake/error of judgement typical of what we saw hurt P&G soaps time and time again: a lot-flip flopping the crew. Flip-flopping Dunne and Paulsen didn’t work at all for the 85-86 season and they both were gone afterwards. If anything Paulsen should’ve been sent to Falcon Crest in ‘85 and probably could have gotten the show focused again. Did Michael Filerman make that bone headed decision?

Agreed on the Season 8 theme being my least favorite of all the themes. So after re-watching the Peter Hollister seasons I still have so many questions. I don’t know if these questions were addressed in the series and I missed them, (I feel like I watch the episodes pretty closely, but maybe not) Did Greg Sumner ever find out that Peter wasn’t really his brother? If not, did Sumner ever find out that Jill was Peter’s sister? If he did know that Jill was Peter’s sister, did he think Jill was his sister too? Was Gary the only one who knew Jill and Peter were brother and sister? Did Gary only think that Jill was also Sumner’s sister or did he know that Peter and Sumner weren’t really related either? I know Gary told Mack that Jill was Peter’s sister and about her Dottie Simpsons after Jill’s death, but I don’t remember anyone else really knowing. I know Abby knew that Peter and Sumner weren’t really related, but did she know Jill and Peter were? I’m so lost with who did and didn’t know about Jill and Peter.

LOL what helps me is that it was obviously Latham era of Knots that was my first exposure to the show. Yet even for younger early teen me Linda Fairgate’s murder was too much so I still don’t care for much for the final 2 seasons at all, although years later I can certainly see how the losses of both Laura and Abby affected this show a lot. Morgan Fairchild on Knots? LOL to that too. Had she been cast I could totally see her playing some recurring gig like Karen’s producer Dianne Kirkwood in Season 11 that Robin Strasser found herself miserably in. I still would’ve like to have seen Morgan back as Jenna on Dallas, but alas. She wasn’t a good fit for Falcon Crest either (where as I thought both Jill Jacobson and Jane Badler fit in more naturally) and she had obviously big footprints to fill as Racine on Paper Dolls after Joan Collins perfectly played Racine in the movie.

Lol so true. Still completely unnecessary and contrived, especially since Aunt Ginny left right before Val went crazy in the same convenient way Lilimae did before Jill targeted Val. I would’ve at least explain as some sort of psychological trauma breakdown between Ben and Danny before the brain virus explanation at the very least.

Lord I had actually more or less enjoyed Season 12 up until that point. I had never understood why they had Val go crazy like that so late in the show. It would’ve made more sense if Val had breakdown back in S9 after Ben disappeared or even if Danny caused her to breakdown but that was a bit much and an unnecessary plot device.

LOL the Thirteen really did a number on the show. I suppose it might have been a nice callback to Richard’s cartel days but the story was over the top. It did finally make Eric Stravos finally interesting as a psychopath after spending Seasons 5, 6, and early Season 7 as basically a Lance clone. I do wonder though if the show would’ve been better off just to complete the Gustav Riebmann arc as planned rather shift gears mid-season. (Oddly four years later Dynasty would feature a similar story involving Nazi treasure on the Carrington Estate.) The Rossini revenge story was good on paper and had the talents of Anne Archer and Celeste Holm but was for whatever reason executed poorly. The whole debacle of Robert McCullough firing Ann Marcus and then McCullough getting fired himself certainly did the show no favors either.

What a mistake the show made there tbh. I actually liked her as Linda, and killing her off so we the audience could suffer through 2 seasons of miserable Cole/Melissa melodrama and Melissa have her 1st round of going bonkers crazy just wasn’t worth it.

A bit late to the party but those were fascinating reads @kalbir! Thanks for sharing. Great points especially on the increased sensationalism and comparison to what doomed the daytime soaps as well. Dallas and Falcon Crest could’ve been made more grounded easily; I’m not so sure grounding Dynasty would’ve ever worked. Alexis and Krystle getting into a catfight over a parking spot at K-Mart? Not sure where Falcon Crest would’ve moved to by this point. By this point keeping the Dallas-FC Friday night double bill going had become essential. Maybe FC could’ve moved to Tuesday nights at 10 or get thrown on Saturday nights at 10? Of course the new hotness Miami Vice would become the new coldness the following season and LA Law ended up moving as FC stabilized. Poor Earl though I wonder if he knew his time coming to a close? He mentioned Li-Ying who I enjoyed but her run ended up so short. As kalbir pointed out CBS was having other issues at this point. Notably so many aging hits, while impatiently trying to build a whole new Wednesday night lineup out of a movie night failed miserably except for the Equalizer. Cheers’ history and its ratings has always intrigued me, mainly because the show went through a couple different eras and iterations. The lower rated Coach and Sam/Diane years are held in higher regard; the Harrelson/Alley years, which were more popular at the time, haven’t aged as well or aren’t seen at the same level these days. CBS moving Knots Landing up to 9/8 in the fall of 86 was a chance at counter programming that backfired as well before settling on that weird schedule of Simon & Simon at 8:30/7:30, Designing Women at 9:30/8:30 and Knots at 10/9. On a final note interesting choice words there by Brandon Tartikoff; towards the end of his run at NBC L.A. Law had become the same way and would be its eventual downfall as well.

What a mess, especially after Del Rio’s wife took some cheap shot at Lewis and now there’s folks blaming Lewis for instigating as well.

Oh wow I had no idea she was still living, may she definitely RIP! Did she ever have a successful HW tenure in her own right though? Seems if I recall correctly her best work as HW was often coasting off of her predecessors as occurred on Love of Life, The Doctors, and Days. Her 86-88 AW run with Racina was mixed but definitely had moments. Her 89 run as HW at AMC seems obscure but SOD named AMC and her work as the Best Show as of 1989. Her later runs at AW and Sunset Beach, well the less said the better.

Thinking back to Phyllis early days, was it any coincidence that Abby Dalton was cast as Phyllis’ mother Lydia? I suppose Dalton was another old school Hollywood hire by that point but knowing that crazy Phyllis was the daughter of crazy Julia Cumson from Falcon Crest makes sense in a cosmic way lol.

I believe we already have a variation of this already back in the beginning towards the start of this thread, but here is ratings from 38 years ago.

Agreed. I need to do my own rewatch as well. The first four seasons for me were the best. Season 5 was solid fun too but I seem to remember the excess number of clip shows thrown in. Seasons 6 and 7 had a different set of writers (hello Marc Cherry!) and does feel off. Certainly enjoyable but some of the continuing storylines didn’t feel right at all. I will say Season 7 stands out as feeling different than the rest because while there’s a number of episodes and moments I enjoy, it definitely feels more like a 90’s show even more so than it’s other contemporaries which served up 80’s leftovers in their final seasons. I agree it ended at the right time though although I’m still a bit mixed on the finale. Interesting though Estelle Getty would continue to play Sophia for another 3 seasons on two other shows.

Exactly all this!!!