soapfan770

So from what I can gather if one was to rank the networks for overall viewers it would look like this I believe from the late 70’s through the end of the century for the big three: Circa 1977-80: 1. ABC 2. CBS 3. NBC 1980-1984: 1. CBS 2. ABC 3. NBC 1984-85: 1. CBS 2. NBC 3. ABC 1985-87: 1. NBC 2. CBS 3. ABC 1987-91: 1. NBC 2. ABC 3. CBS 1991-92: 1. CBS 2. ABC 3. NBC 1992-94: 1. ABC 2. CBS 3. NBC 1994-97: 1. NBC 2. ABC 3. CBS 1997-99: 1. NBC 2. CBS 3. ABC 1999-2000: 1. ABC 2. NBC 3. CBS

LOL wasn’t the woman in the limo supposed to be a returning Dominique had the series been renewed for a Season 10? I still can’t Paulsen chose not to have some time type of closure for Season 9…did he and Spelling just ignore the writing on the wall?? Idk Matt coming back from the dead to hold the family hostage and die again was already too much. @j swift I agree to some extent about the Dynasty reboot especially once we got Cristal 3.0 and Alexis 3.0

Idk he was in the midst of a career revival and I guess someone thought his personality would translate to sitcom? What a mess. The show’s plot about an Interfaith couple was already a DOA (see the doomed 70’s sitcom Bridget Loves Bernie) but add in Mason’s bombastic (and politically incorrect) persona and well…the show was on the decline anyways as that Time Magazine article mentioned when Mason made his remarks. Like I said it definitely wasn’t Mason’s first time in his career was derailed because it was mired in controversy because of him running his mind mouth off and it definitely wasn’t the last. 🙄😵‍💫 @Paul Raven @kalbir In addition to CBS’ 1988-89 season and NBC’s 1981-82 season I would have to nominate ABC’s 1984-85 and 86-86 seasons, NBC’s Fall 1983, and CBS’ 1989-90 season. Seemed like so much also failed for those specific networks for those particular seasons.

God I hated the Constantine story it felt like the story never would end.

The SINN montage used today was nice I like that psychic connection kicking in again and Finn realizing something is off with Luna. Also was there a slight time jump lol? It felt like only a day has passed yet everyone on today was saying Steffy had been gone now for “days” like the week passed in real time lol. I can’t recall the last time a daytime soap actually did a 1 episode = 1 day concept since the mid-00’s with the P&G soaps doing that.

TBH same here as well especially after rewatching it ever since it resurfaced, where as before I had shrugged it off (probably because I always found Alexis more exciting) but then once rewatching I realized how much more likable the characters are and how FC had such unique characters like Emma, Pamela, Meredith, and later on Genele that weren’t found on any of the other primetime soaps. I love how debonair David Selby is Richard. I enjoy how he works as both the show villain and anti-hero. Rewatching the show made me Richard was a primetime counterpart to Victor Newman. My last rewatch of Dynasty had me enjoying Seasons 1-5, rolling my eyes at Seasons 6-7, wondering what the heck I was watching for Season 8 and enjoying Season 9. The 1991 movie left me mixed. For Falcon Crest I enjoyed Seasons 1-4, rolled my eyes at Season 5, entertained the high octane Seasons 6-7, wondering what the heck I was watching for Season 8, and Season 9 felt like a season of another TV show. Some of intriguing, some of it depressing. At least everyone got a happy ending and I was satisfied with the finale.

Thank you for the update!!! Not going to lie but I hope it stays this way forever lol 😁

Problem with the James/Taylor affair was it ignored for years and years but pesky fan bases and soap mags constantly brought it up. The biggest issue I had was James was never brought into the equation, and of course the following year in 2007 Thudley stepped into big time with the Who Shot Grant revisit backfiring on him big so badly he had to write write some quickie convoluted ending to it. Faux good girl turned bad girl is nothing new and Luna-tic is adequate at best. @YRfan23 Liam’s recent appearances remind me of where Nick was in 2009 or where Wyatt was at back in 2017 with threats that are completely unsubstantiated. In fact Liam hasn’t done much this year at all and his “big” romance with Ivy went DOA. Even though we all hate Liam appearance I’m beginning to think Liam may go the way or Nick and Wyatt soon enough.

@edgeofnik@YRfan23 Too be fair actually it would be best if those kisses from last year were completely forgotten and Steffy already told Liam off back in November. Only because last time Thudley decided to drudge up the past was finally revealing the one night stand of James & Taylor 11-12 years after the fact and the result was ineffectual. Ridge went to the Catholic Church Bishop to annul his entire marriage to Taylor while a shocked Brooke married Eric and slept with Nick. What the actual [!@#$%^&*] i can’t believe B&B is still around after some of the atrocious late 00’s stories.

I thought about tagging you after the fact of starting this discussion thread actually @DRW50 I too hated how Georgie was completely put through the wringer with her being manipulated into an affair with her psycho psychiatrist, which was a strange story to begin with John & Georgie had been through so much already after the Trevor going off the rails that story was cruel and unnecessary. I was glad the finale at least had them reunite and Georgie on good terms with Trevor. I also was never a fan of George Clooney’s Falconer character or the fact the show dropped Mitch as a character but that’s a different story. Oh definitely there is a lot of Northern Exposure and Picket Fences quirkiness running throughout the earlier seasons of the show, which makes it fun in addition to the heavy soapy drama. I just watch watched the episode where Alex goes on local Chicago talk show about her breast cancer experience and is told by the host to make fun of it to keep the show light hearted only for said host to die of a heart attack laughing to a reluctant Alex’s cancer jokes she made up. The whole sequence was a darkly humorous moment filled with irony complete in synch with something like Picket Fences. Yes I agree @Vee needs too!! 🙂 I also forgot how much I loved the original opening credits of the first couple seasons when the four sisters are in the sauna together. IMO that should have stayed the opening credits 😄

Because I was so totally watching Knots Landing reruns last week I didn’t watch Y&R at all last week and only watched a couple B&B episodes just to see the current mess for laughs lol. @Taoboi For once I’m now a week behind you lol, although I did read a couple recaps. I read the 8/23 recap for a second and with the recap’s showing a picture Billy screaming in Chancellor Park in the dark is all I needed to see I wasn’t missing anything 😂😂😂 The sooner this quad is over the better. Also the forcing of Faith and Lucy to become modern parallels of Cassie isn’t working for me at all. It’s stupid and again feels very forced. If JG hadn’t ridiculously SOARSed Faith into college abruptly this story could work with Faith being a HS upperclass vs Lucy being like a sophomore or something, but only if Lucy had the hots for a similarly aged Moses and/or Johnny with their being a retro Glo by Jabot at Fenmore’s theme going on. Something JG is too incompetent to write 😑

I assume you’re talking about Little Puke? 🤣It’s been wayyyyy overdue. Luna-tic’s confession about about swapping the at home paternity tests was freaking hilarious because the whole thing was a bit wonky/preposterous to begin with. Also laughed at Luna-tic saying “my bitchy Aunt Li” 🤣

There is a rumor flying around now that Luna is going be “blown up” and presumed dead with the demolition of the building. Again a rumor but it almost has a truthful feel to it. But I guess we’ll see if it happens or not.

Sela has been the highlight of the show so far, followed so closely by Kurtz and Kalember. Hopefully you can catch some this week! This is another show that should’ve been streaming or on demand a long time ago since the complete DVD series is out there. It may not be well remembered as the Fox Soaps at the time but it was definitely a Saturday night favorite of mine. Another soapy fix for the week.

Oh I definitely agree and agree that Knots had the best series finale of the soaps as we had a good handful major players present and the ending was also that life goes on too haha. I’d FC’s finale is a close second and that’s simply because of after a dreary season everyone (mostly new characters lol) got a good ending with Wyman’s own written soliloquy.

I will always absolutely adore the series finale with Abby returning to the Cul-De-Sac at the end while Anne, Claudia, and Nick went off on sabbatical together I had to laugh at both turn of events. I noticed the channel played the last episode twice. Like @All My Shadows I’ve been enjoying dipping in the evenings the past several days and gave me a soapy fix I was missing so bad. Looking forward to Sisters and Falcon Crest here. I know I did at least 4 full watches of FC while it fully was on Freevee/Amazon Prime so looking to dip into again (with picture quality compared to my bootleg copies lol). And of course I can’t wait to see Knots run again. 🙂

We didn’t have Sisters thread from what I could dig up (or if we did it may be archived) but since it’s running on the Primetime Soaps channel at the moment I figured to start one up as it’s been forever since I rewatched the series. I have DVD’s but they’re buried in storage at the moment. Anyways I forgot how much of a good mix of humor and drama went into the first season between Wade & Alex’s marriage dissolving, Teddy’s phone sex job and relationships, and finding out their father wasn’t as faithful as they believed. I’ll add what the show’s entry in the 2007 edition of the Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV says shortly here.

It all came down to the economic times as I recall Linda Gray talking about Dallas’s rise and success many many years ago. Early 70’s CBS’ Saturday night lineup had massive success partly due to the sitcoms being very relevant and well partly due to very it was cheaper if everyone stayed home on a Saturday evening. 1979-1983 was the same way for Friday nights on CBS and Saturday nights on ABC. In healthier economic times, post late 80’s, everyone seem to go out on Fridays and Saturdays thus the networks eventually gave up but then with in the past decade we have one major network, CBS see its biggest hits air on Friday nights while other broadcast and cable networks (especially both family friendly networks like Nickelodeon and Disney) have had success with various fare on Friday and Saturday nights. Of course in 2024 in the majority of folks will probably have a nice dinner and/or grab drinks before heading home to stream/catch up on they’re binging as of late on Friday and Saturday nights before calling it a night and what not. Saturday nights in the fall usually comprise of college football games and folks trying to watch SNL.

Here’s the story of Chicken Soup: Canned Soup: Jackie Mason gets the hook TIME Magazine NOVEMBER 20, 1989 With such a proposition, who could lose? Take Jackie Mason, the veteran Borscht Belt comic. Put him in a sitcom produced by the same people who created hits for Bill Cosby and Roseanne Barr. Give it the surefire time period following No. 1-rated Roseanne. Almost every TV prognosticator in the business picked Chicken Soup as the season’s big hit. But Mason had a troubled autumn. He got bad reviews, both for his acting and for making racially inflammatory remarks during the New York City mayoral race. More dismaying to ABC, Chicken Soup — though the highest-rated of any new show this fall — regularly lost nearly one-third of the huge Roseanne audience. Last week the network abruptly canceled its can’t-miss hit. Moral: when it comes to TV programming, nobody knows borscht. Re: Falcon Crest. Seems to me the Big 3 also had a dead zone problem aside from Remington Steele having moderate success with the 10PM Tuesday slot for much of the decade so no telling if that would’ve worked out or not. It probably was better left on Friday nights. It’s a bit strange that suddenly in 1987 everyone gave up on Friday nights and then NBC Saturday nights became a thing lol. Friday nights wouldn’t become relevant again outside of “TGIF” on ABC until The X-Files and Saturday nights with Dr. Quinn and Walker lol.

BTW the opening theme music retro remix for Season 14 sounds terrible and horribly outdated, which is weird they went that route for this season because the show’s score at the time is on point and gives me Melrose vibes for sure. Yeah Seasons 3 and 4 were far much better but I finally gave up with the start of Season 5 and didn’t finish the series…maybe one day lol.

The notorious Season 13 is over and now we’ve arrived to the final season. Actually beyond Linda’s very grisly murder and the ending of the Jason story the back half wasn’t as bad once Romano was gone. What did you all think of the Alex/Claudia mess that just dominated the 2nd half of S13? I love Maree Cheatham but her character is supposed to be Laura’s mother…..?? 🤣 I could see it if was sister or something but yikes. It’s funny few years back I tried doing a rewatch as I pretty much watched every episode live when it ran. I made it through Season 1 just fine with nostalgia but stopped during Season 2 because I became bored with it, and actually skipped ahead to Season 3 without finishing Season 2.

Re: Anything But Love was doomed by constant schedule moving around once moved out it it’s time slot and network meddling. A similar fate met by NBC’s Dear John. Chicken Soup was an initial hit but doomed by star Jackie Mason running his mouth off (not the first nor the last time that would happen to him). The 10/7/89 issue of TV Guide commented on Dallas’ dismal 2-hours season premiere on 9/22/89, specifically at the weak ratings charting at a laughably bad #46! The following week Dallas was up a bit at #43 while Falcon Crest premiered at #57. Clearly the audiences were gone and weren’t back at all.

Unfortunately in regards to the Bauer family obviously the writers of the 50’s, 60’s, and early 70’s severely limited them with their choices the show made and later writers made it more convoluted and difficult. I suppose Bill and Bert could’ve had more children but they just had Mike and Ed. Compare this to David and Ellen over on ATWT who started out with Paul and Dan but then had Annie and Dee or the Brady family on Days. Bill of course was later given as the father to Hilary and Paul Kincaid but strangely Paul never appeared on screen. Trudy and Clyde never had children. Meta had her son killed, then gained a stepdaughter Kathy and had another son Joey but of course Kathy was killed and Joey just disappeared into the woodwork. Mike ended up with Hope and that was it. He almost had another with kid with Charlotte but it didn’t happen. Hope had no other kids apparently outside of A-M when in reality she should’ve. Ed I guess could have had good bundle ie Had his son with Rita lived or actually having a couple kids with Maureen in addition to fathering Michelle but the show always gave Maureen the short end of the stick on kids (two miscarriages and adoption misfire WTF) before she died. People complained about “fake Bauers” but Johnny lasted a few years there. I think a Bauer expansion could’ve worked but the writing and casting were all wrong. I like the idea and later on ATWT’s Jack Snyder proved it could work. I think the proper casting of more dynamic actors and good writing characters like Johnny, Lacey, and the proposed ones of Todd, Don, Doug and Scorr could’ve worked well but the show chose another route that didn’t work at all. The undoing of Rick being Kevin’s dad, as preposterous as it was, was completely pointless and unnecessary to reverse it. Sheesh. Leah’s strange SOARsing was a disaster. Finally, the show not following through on the intention of Cassie being Bill Bauer’s daughter.

One interesting thing I never realized but we’ve hinted at is that fact that Wednesday nights at 10PM became a low rated dead zone for the Big 3 starting with the 86-87 season with Hotel’s decline and lasting into the early 90’s until the rise of Primetime Live and Law & Order in that timeslot. The nadir for that timeslot probably had to be the 1990-91 season where the notorious Cop Rock on ABC along with Gabriel’s Fire, Hunter’s final season on NBC (moved from Saturdays) and the John Shea freshman drama WIOU each failed abysmally in that slot. The 8-10 hours seemed to do okay enough for ABC and moderately for NBC though.

LOL was that her? Honestly rewatching those scenes it actually made me wonder for real if someone had intended for Gary’s mystery woman to end up being Jill alive in the flesh but that might have been too much for a primetime soap at the time as we were still 5 years away from a dead Kimberly being alive on Melrose.