soapfan770

Ahh the whole Gary/Josie story on AW, which I remember was widely panned as a blatant rip off of Mallet/Harley right down to accusations of reused dialogue LOL. Who did JFP do that to on OLTL? I was trying to think back but only thought of Antonio and Roseanne, the latter given the heave once Tomlin took over. I think what really struck me as off kilter during Harley’s first big cop story was her being reduced to damsel in distress once Daniel St. John threw her in the root cellar. I suppose it added tension to the climax, but her needing rescued by Mallet is so JFP in hindsight. The Oakdale PD was probably IMO the most competent police forces I’ve seen on daytime lol tbh. Margo, Hal, and later Jack were quite the cops. I think the Springfield PD might have done better if they invested more in the Eugene Levy character, Frank’s partner who I enjoyed seeing more than Frank. Same goes for the ill-fated Cutter. The show had David as a cop during the Tifford years but of course did absolutely nothing with him unfortunately. The less said of the later years the better lol.

Every time I tried to read Nikki’s history it sounds like she had at least 7-8 years of history crammed into 3 by the time she met Victor. Same thing goes with the whole initial John/Jill/Jack triangle plus the whole Jill/Andy/Karen mess. Paul stuck between April and Barbara Harding along with Barbara’s husband is one of the most bizarre twin stories I’ve ever read and seen on a soap before. I’ve always been curious about Lance being engaged to the French woman, I think her name was Monique? I always wondered what did Vanessa think of this engagement LOL. I also feel that the feud between Bell and Conboy was probably a major distraction as well for the show. I once tried to ask my mother and the one soap watching grandmother about this era. My mother only remembered being a Snapper & Chris fan but during that time she watched AMC & GH more while Grandma thought the show got better with Newmans & Abbotts, but she was more into P&G soaps to begin, her watching Edge & SFT to their bitter ends.

Yeah I thought she was still directing but realized she hasn’t directed in two years since Dynasty 2.0 went off the air after looking it up. A shame because I thought finally utilizing HT again would have brought something watchable to this miserable story, but instead we get HT phoning it in for the first time in her career and that’s pretty disappointing.

Haha even though the story of Summer stopping Harrison from leaving the country with Kyle was a bit much and unrealistic, I like Summer just casually calling out Kyle with names like “spoiled brat” “overgrown baby” and “man child” Haha the dialogue for AL’s Summer has at least been on point and to her strengths.

That makes sense and fairly realistic but I figured between social media and Reddit groups there would have at least been someone who knew of Tom’s whereabouts plus at least a couple clickbait articles sitting out there or something out there lol. But I definitely agree with you on B&B should at least giving us better backstory before the murder, but who are we kidding? Thudley just wanted to push a D-list celebrity around the show for a hot minute.

I’m sorry but HT’s Katie looks so bored and constipated in her scenes lately. And how exactly did the homeless guy go from being a well known musician in 2004 to being forgotten and homeless in 2024, WTF ?!!?

Unless he filmed additional scenes that have yet to air, for all purposes, it’s over. Tucker hasn’t appeared in over a month since losing to Audra, and then I think it was Audra who briefly mentioned that Tucker had vanished. The show never mentioned a final airdate officially so that makes me wonder if he’ll pop up again one more time maybe next month or something.

Some of those late 80’s shows were very good (Equalizer, Paradise), while some decent but lacked the quality of what it was replacing etc. I’m still puzzled on why out of all those late 80s shows it was Jake and the Fatman that lasted the longest 🤣. CBS kind of fell into a complacency overall between 1982-85, but for the bigger shows there was nothing to fix as it wasn’t broken. Seems to me one of the biggest issues CBS had was programming new blocks of shows on what had been traditionally movie nights like Wednesdays and Saturdays and expecting it work right off the bat without having some type of anchorage of an established show and with tight competition at work.

This reminds me of some of the alleged conspiracy that Ed Asner had that season about CBS cancelling Lou Grant because the network was out against his political views. CBS stated it was because the show’s falling ratings they axed the show. Certainly the ratings were down a bit but still decent enough for a middle pack show. But I don’t know if there is any credence to Asner’s theory about why Lou Grant was canned. My best uneducated guess is the reality is CBS probably wanted something new instead of trying to save a older show that was starting to flail, and there was at least one exec who was more than happy to say good riddance.

A more 2000’s example of tank job and sabotage is Malcolm and the Middle @Vee Tank job: After treading water in the ratings during the show’s 5th season, Fox moved the show to an earlier time slot from 9PM ET to 7:30ET for Season 6. The show tanked in the ratings and the season itself received lukewarm reception compared to earlier ones. Sabotage: For the 2005-06 Season 7, Fox moved the show to an 8:30 ET timeslot on Friday nights behind the untested Bernie Mac show. The show absolutely collapsed, plummeted to the bottom of the ratings, and cancelled along with Bernie Mac.

Always felt bad for Nancy McKeon’s adult career just never taking off. She had that hit Can’t Buy Me Love show in the 90’s and successful crossover with the Nanny but for whatever reason CBS cancelled it despite being a top 30 show one of the very few hits they had at time. I’m sorry but the rest of it sounds so washed up and fan fiction. These ladies are now in their late 50’s and 60’s and still clinging onto and fighting over something that happened 40 years ago. Lisa Welchel is about as irrelevant as Phillip McKeon is at this point in time 🤣

That reminds how Josh Griffith has completely bungled the plot of Jill supposedly being gravely ill yet and getting special treatments from Snapper yet Billy is the only one back in Genoa City who knows about it 🙄

I’m wondering if that’s what happened as well to CBS and to some extent ABC sitcoms around 1983-84 with the reliance on aging shows and “Hey here’s a new spinoff!!!” leading to the unofficial declaration sitcoms were dead until NBC’s 1984 Thursday night lineup took off. Barring a good number of exceptions and special cases lol, a new decade usually means new shows for the most part. Most of the pre-1971 shows got deliberately axed in 1971, most of the 80’s show’s abruptly collapsed and ended with either the 91-92 or 92-93 seasons, and most of the 90’s staples just faded away one by one between 2001-04, and most of the 00’s shows just limped into the ‘10’s if they had survived at all. And as for dark “Gunsmoke” early on, it reminds me of what happened to Law & Order being a dark & gritty show until 1998 and then it became an old people’s show with increasingly older conservative producers at the helm. The recent revival is one of the worst and most pointless revivals I’ve ever seen 🤣

@Taoboi I felt bad I had meant to respond back earlier too over this past weekend to share my thoughts but got busy, then saw you’re literally the only one talking about the show. No kidding! Even though it’s so recycled over and over again, both EB and MTS always still light up the scene to hold my attention. And I love it.

Always weirds a little to think about shows like the Jeffersons, One Day at A Time, Alice etc. lasting as late as 1984/1985 or so as they were always 70’s shows to me, even growing up in the 80’s lol 😂 Comparisons I can think of on that end is something like NBC just letting Empty Nest run for years on Saturday nights into oblivion; or networks letting shows like Roseanne’s original run, Murphy Brown, Wings, etc. run just a season or two too long that once popular and relevant shows ende in complete irrelevance.

LOL @ranger1rg I feel your pain. It seems to me the past two weeks of the show now have been so uneventful and unevenly boring, that’s probably why this show only has five pages of discussion for the whole month. (The continuous train wreck that is B&B is something else lol) Ehh it’s been definitely a fast forward week as I could care less about Adam/Chelsea fling, washed up has been 3rd rate Newman/Chancellor business drama, Tessa/Mariah celebrating their belated anniversary, Devon/Abby snooze blah etc. I meant to comment on Sharon going looney toons again as I’m not sure what’s going on here because everything is written in isolation and confusion. Sigh there’s been some decent moments usually involving Summer, Sally, Audra and even Claire but it’s other than that this show has the summertime blues written all over it.

Poor Gloria. She was always one of my favorite AMC characters and so underrated yet the show really threw her around. I remember finding her short lived marriage to Dimitri so random and odd, I don’t think the show knew what to do with the character by that point anymore. And thanks @Soaplovers for filling in the gaps! I was going to look in the old SOC recaps to refresh my memory but hadn’t got around to it yetZ

My real guess for is while there may have been some real issues as all the soaps hd to downsize with the post 9/11 recession and viewership and advertising drops, the real reason was probably to elevate his longtime best friend to the job and say “Hey! I cut the budget” Problem was, as a HW she turned out to be a talentless hack. I did the enjoy the slimmed down 2009-11 period as well for the most part but that was because of Tomlin & Whitesell making it work, not anything Higley wrote on her own.

And this is where we have to call bull— on Corday’s part, because then Higley proceeded to go overboard (mystery goop!) followed by using the Serial Killer story as a justification to cut budget by cutting cast (then hired almost everyone back and more!) while JER himself got a fancy six year contract the show had to continue to payout all the way to the fall of 2009 when they were just paying to the estate by that point. Ken’s budget management skills have always sucked. I use to hate he always painted himself as some knight in shining armor while blaming everyone else for stuff he clearly rubber stamped on.

@DRW50 @Vee Correct me if I’m wrong but I remember there was condemnation because Gillian was also almost immediately thrown at Tad as a possible new love interest during the hurricane story as Carl mentioned seemed to get completely upended and a non story that got lost in the shuffle…I know at the time for myself Maria’s presumed death a month prior via a TWA Flight 800 recreation left me in the cold (even if LaRue almost nearly squandered her whole career on that insipid UPN sitcom) Oh and that a lot of people online thought Esta’s accent was “fake” and what not. That was annoying. They were probably same people also were also complaining about Lesley Anne-Down having a fake British accent until they got schooled otherwise.

This is the tragic part because Esta really did put in so much work…Gillian as a character was initially trashed and nearly universally panned by fans the and soap mags alike those first several months but by the time the character died she was nearly universally beloved and it was her death that was panned despite the transition to heaven featuring so many ex-alumni, which was praised for an overall terrible exit. May she RIP.

I remember that now LOL. I wonder who at Sony hired Burgstede for the job, I think Mal was in charge at the time. She may have used past connections to say she was an aspiring writer now…who knows. Pretty sure she was given the shaft when JG filled the ranks with his “groupies” he carried over from his ATWT, Days, and 2012-13 tenures.

Another well said perspective I agree with here on RC. Someone on SON years ago was friends with the actress who played Willow and was distraught by the criticism of her. Then again the year before she played Willow, she had a leading in the 2005 horror flick Death Tunnel which gained notoriety for being one of the worst horror flicks ever produced at the time (yes I unfortunately watched it was horribly boring).

It eventually cost Kalouria his job in the long run—he had to jump ship to work for Martha Stewart before NBCU terminated his contract between the declining daytime ratings and demos by 2005 and Kalouria’s disastrous oversight of the Pax/i/Ion network when he pulled double duty. Kalouria has never worked for the networks again and last check was doing marketing for Sony. As far as Dante’s Cove it was a guilty pleasure of mine at the time. I still have the DVD’s I bought (dusting away with my DVD collection) and you’re right the material is a lot better than a lot of what has been on the soaps in the last decade.

Well said, I’ll co-sign to all of this.