Sapounopera

Before we start working on the intro... I want a black Jill Foster type. 

Also I don't we need to watch a soap religiously to form an opinion. I watch clips, read opinions, and try to watch full episodes when I can. Or when I am not bored to death. 

1 hour ago, Liberty City said:

The Heather problem, for me, stems back to the "writer" returning the role and turning her into a caricature, which is something he thinks he does well, and like most: he does not.

The wacky villain/psycho, another problem with modern soaps. If "The Writer" is meant to be Ron, he has been gone for years. What have the other writers done with the character? 

Has Heather's mom Alice Grant been mentioned? She was the Webber housekeeper and another reason the two women should share a connection.

7 hours ago, Paul Raven said:

I don't know why GH is bothering with Heather, a 60 plus character with a convulated backstory not played by the original actress with tenuous links to the current canvas.

If they want to reference the past there are plenty of other characters that could be brought on.

They can always bring back Steven Lars (not Roger Howarth or Michael Easton) and pair him with someone interesting/important in order for Heather's story to make some sense. 

6 hours ago, DRW50 said:

Feels like a case where some up high just love Alley Mills and don't want to lose her (probably also why she stayed on B&B so long). Nothing against Alley Mills, but Heather isn't worth it.

I would say Mulcahey, but I don't think he alone would have that power.

With Robin Mattson gone, it is very difficult to care for Heather. Or even recognise the woman on screen as Heather. Nothing to do with the actress. 

12 hours ago, kalbir said:

 

Yes, Spring 1983 to Summer 1984 Pamela Long got the ratings to rebound from the post-Marland slump and set in motion characters and storylines that would carry GL through its final 25 years but the short-term success ended up causing long-term damage. It was too much chasing 1980s trends which wasn't sustainable and the ratings from Fall 1984 onward reflected that.

I may be one of the very few that loved the Robert Calhoun years. I feel GL was going strong and hitting its stride during his run even though the ratings didn't reflect that, which is a disappointment to me.

From what I have watched the Allen Potter and Robert Calhoun years were the best eras of the show. 

7 hours ago, P.J. said:

LOL...I probably noticed ATWT's location shoots more when they included Carly/Jack. 

I mostly remember parks and (studio) stairs as location.

Blaine was another character who could have stayed around for years. Making her Sandy's boring wife was not the smartest idea, considering that Rich and Frangione had other plans.  

8 hours ago, VelekaCarruthers said:

 And whatever criticism one can level at Pam Long, her era lived until the final episode.

Nobody can deny that. It was her GL that lasted until the bitter end.

9 hours ago, P.J. said:

Her list of offenses against soapdom is long...Jammy, Otalia, firing JvD, Gus Aitoro, etc etc etc.

Kissing cousins, SORAS going crazy with Susan Lemay being the same age as Leah Bauer, depressing stories, claustrophobic sets, Reva having another baby, creepy opening, Cooper-mania, yet the show could have been saved... until the new model premiered. 

7 hours ago, TEdgeofNight said:

THIS! Otalia was a disaster! I couldn’t stand them. Olivia was so badly written at the end. And Ellen Wheeler. No wonder she never worked in daytime again or given interviews. She must be bowing her head in shame for what she did to GL. Disgusting. 

I found Otalia boring and overhyped. And after the show got cancelled Crystal Chappell did everything she could to keep the Otalia myth alive. Please...

On 5/6/2024 at 2:24 AM, Contessa Donatella said:

Yeah, CM should be punished for doing that to both her face & to her eyes! But perhaps she is being punished by having to live with it. She still has one of the most animated faces around but she's lost some flexibility she used to have. 

Alan Locher just posted this, as he said, "rare" look at Ellen Wheeler's apartment near the end of the show. Jill & Ellen worked here, a lot. Almost all of the time there would have been extra hours, after full days at the studio or at Peapack. I know that one of their routines was to take the scripts for Otalia & read them aloud. It was a kind of extra check. I realize this is not going to mean much to most of you but it means a great deal to me. This in a real sense is the birthplace of Otalia, one of the world's great, engaging love stories. 

Why should CW be punished for her fillers? She probably likes them, otherwise she would have them dissolved. I am sure she is happy with them.

So GL's last season was shot in Ellen's apartment? The walls are so Cedars. Wasn't part of her couch in Alan's office? 

The Sheila Show is bad even for B&B standards. The character and the story make no sense at all, even for B&B standards. It is not B&B bad, not fun bad, just bad. 
Brad Bell needs someone to help him breathe new life into the show. They don't even try out with new characters, it is the same all the time. Some random c-player might show up for a random story and that is it. 

3 hours ago, NothinButAttitude said:

Question--do you all want the show to be kitchen sink with everyone being middle class, a melange of have/have nots, or simply upwardly mobile characters? 

I am bored to death with super rich characters, Dynasty was cancelled in 1989. I love having middle class people on soaps, someone very ambitious who wants to enter a (not crazy) rich person's world, people who careers, goals and dreams. I don't get why daytime is still obsessed with tycoons and billionaires. Primetime has more or less given up on them in decades.  

Way too many characters. No real umbrella storyline, everyone is just doing their random thing. 

Joss has no personality. She is just a young blonde, like all these girls on Days of Our Lives.

I love the Davis girls dynamics.Thanks to the recasts. 

I love Laura, Tracy, Alexis, Maxie, I adore Liz. I am ok with Jason. 

Having Willow work at the hospital was the best thing for the character. She was part of an interesting group/set for once. She looked good in blue. 

I am bored with Sonny, Dante, Lucy, Lois, Sascha, Cody, Drew, Nina, Curtis, the Chase/Gregory/Finn/whatever his name is/father. 

Carly slowly turning into Ruby at Bobbie's. 

The show could use some interesting younger characters. And some structure. The hospital, the mob, Deception, the hotel, the Qs, way too many tiny, different shows. 

I just hope that not everybody is crazy rich, people don't have 80s mini series names and nobody dreams of turning the show into a campy farse. 

1979 TEON is such a modern soap. I love these episodes. No teens, no big families, just cops, lawyers, reporters.

8 hours ago, Maxim said:

Taylor was killed off in 1994. Hunter left for Melrose in 1996. There is no connection between the two.

 

6 hours ago, kalbir said:

Hunter Tylo left four times from 1994-1998.

1994 she left to film a miniseries and Taylor was believed to have died in a plane crash, which lead to Taylor the desert princess.

1996 she left for Melrose Place and Taylor left town but Melrose Place fell through and she was back. That same year was a pregnancy leave but I can't recall the exit story, maybe attending a medical conference.

1998 was another pregnancy leave and I think the exit story was Taylor and baby Thomas visit Taylor's father.

With Hunter Tylo being so in and out from 1994-1998, it felt like so many storylines were derailed.

Thank you so much for your answers. Obviously I had things mixed up. So Tylo's first exit and return was a shock only to soap beginners. I think the show removed her from the opening credits in order to make it more believable. I don't even remember her 1996 exit, I guess it must have seemed final at the time, since she had booked Melrose. Was she gone for months? Did it seem final while watching? Was it around the time the show was teasing Ridge and Lauren?

Can someone please remind me? Hunter Tylo left B&B in order to star on Melrose. Taylor was killed off. After all the drama with Spelling, Tylo returned to the show and Taylor showed up as an amnesiac princess.

What was B&B's original plan? Were they planning to recast and bring a new actress after a few months? Bring a new rival for Brooke? I don't think that Ridge and Brooke were meant to be happily married forever.

1 hour ago, Contessa Donatella said:

I am amazed that apparently it is impossible to escape this current tsunami of GH Carly hating even when one finds oneself in a Guiding Light thread!   

You must agree that this type of heroine ("The Outsider" Reva, GH Carly, ATWT Carly) has changed soaps and turned them into flashy one-woman-shows. Not everybody loved this change Contessa. Even All My Children was never the Erica show.  

18 hours ago, janea4old said:

Note the reply tweet from Eileen,
in which she comments on the response from the fans to her DID storyline.

 

Oh God. This is horrible. Days of Our Lives horrible.

1 hour ago, Avatar610 said:

Not Stacy- the actress doesn't look ANYTHING like her.  Think opposite,

However the actor was involved with a Stacey on another show, right?

What a stunning woman. I adored her and always wished that Y&R would keep her around for longer periods of time. RIP. 

3 hours ago, vetsoapfan said:

LOL! That's so true: there were an overabundance of irrelevant, disposable, and ultimately forgettable newbies in the mid-1980s.

If the entire series were magically available to stream somewhere, I could see myself watching up through 1984, while my old favorites were still featured, but I'd pass right over the "forgettable newbie" period, and pick up again when Holly and then Roger came back.

Being able to take a break from Reva for a few years was such a relief. At the beginning, I probably could have taken her in small doses, but when she ate the show, I grew to loathe her. The painfully stupid stories foisted upon her (Reva the Ghost! Reva the Amish Amnesiac! Reva the San Cristobelian Queen! Reva the Clone!) did the character no favors!

I think I have asked you before. Do you think that Kim Zimmer could have worked as a recast Hope in 1983? Josh was still a bad boy in 1983, right? Alan/Hope/Josh/Alex could be a little like Jason/Nola/Billy/Mona from THE DOCTORS.

On 4/25/2024 at 7:01 AM, vetsoapfan said:

Just out of curiosity, what year did you begin watching the show? In my personal experience (and of course this doesn't hold true for every single viewer; opinions always vary among soap fans), many folks who enjoyed the period of TGL before Gail Kobe took over as producer in 1983 had a strongly negative reaction to the sweeping structural and cast changes.

Did you continue to enjoy the show throughout the 1980s? Again, just curious. I know there are viewers who did.

I live in Greece and I got to watch 1980-82 episodes via satelite tv and German network RTL. I was obsessed. After a while a Greek network bought 1985-1987 and I was horrified. The show was unrecognizable. Bad recasts, tacky, trashy characters and a completely different vibe. I still believe that GL lost something valuable when TPTB decided to erase the Allen Potter years and tranform it into something different.
After that I only enjoyed the Robert Calhoun era but I never stop keeping up with GL until Wheeler went insane with the new production model. 

On 4/20/2024 at 2:52 AM, vetsoapfan said:

Out of morbid curiosity, I felt compelled to watch the newer, Ryan Murphy version...just to see how badly they might screw it up. (I find so many remakes to be pointless, poorly done and ultimately annoying.)

All of those adjectives describe RM's adaptation, IMHO. It was just...bland and inferior and lacked the raw power of the original.

Curiosity killed the cat, as they say.

Like most of todays's shows and films it felt... plastic to me. Nobody cares for atmosphere and artistic view, they just want to appeal to the Netflix crowd. Even Almodovar's three last films have a different vibe, because... platforms. 

1 hour ago, teplin said:

Salem seems to exist in a parallel universe where local newspapers are thriving and magazines fail because of incompetence, not because nobody's reading them anymore. 

Don't forget that the show takes place in 2025. Last year nobody could even dream of getting a new soap opera. 

2 hours ago, Aragorn said:

Who decided on the no Spencer recast? The writers or Frank Valentini? Did NAC piss someone off so much that they don't want to continue his character?

In my mind choosing not to recast a part means that they think that the original actor can't be replaced or that they want him back when he chooses to return.

3 hours ago, Contessa Donatella said:

While you're busy not believing all I said (perhaps believing the important part) I'll test you on this one. But, I think you'll believe this one. No Spencer recast. The only way Sprina will exist is her new guy is named Samuel Ward. But would that just yield Srina? S'Rina? Steven Ward! All fixed. 

Can it be Sean Ward? Can't we keep the Steven name for a Hardy or a Webber?

3 hours ago, Chris B said:

What do you mean about revenge agenda? I thought she came in wanting to reset the characters who were being written wildly out of character. She fixed Sharon, the wrote of dull characters like Chelsea, Chloe and Kevin who were overdue for exits, she gave Cane his best story ever and I liked how she wrote Hillary, Devon, Mariah and Nikki. I think she did a lot in her short time and nothing she did hurt the show. You can’t say that about any other HW on Y&R in recent years.
 

Exactly. 

17 minutes ago, Paul Raven said:

 

I do worry about the show being centered around wealthy characters-that can be limiting in terms of budget -I don't want to see rich characters living in tiny houses with no staff, and being wealthy takes away some story options as well.

I don't find rich people drama that fascinating in 2024. I hope the show centers on some regular folks as well. 

12 minutes ago, Althea Davis said:

What month of 1983 does this change happen? I am scared

Once Allen Potter is gone and Gail Cobe takes over GL begins to morphe into a brand new. By 1985 it is unrecognizable. 

5 hours ago, Althea Davis said:

I just find GL to be like a great novel. It has this different energy from most other soaps.

I had the same feeling.