Manny

As soon as I read #1, my mind went to Hope Williams Brady.

I was thinking that cutting soaps to half hour could be a good thing. They would have to trim the fat and lose a lot of dead weight. But seeing how bad B&B is, I guess it does not mean it would work lol

Wow, they all approved upon the same time last year! I am shocked.

Great blog!! Good job! Thanks for sharing! I bookmarked it and I will continue to follow your work!

I loved Ricardo/Gabi/Antonio stuff on Sunset Beach. Such a sexy love triangle. But I did not like how Ricardo's character became evil due to this in the end. I get he was hurt, but damn..

So I got to THE letter part.. and omg, not only did Brooke take the letter, but she took it as an agreement with Thorne! Oh, Thorne... I do like you, but this is sad.

You are right, maybe this is why I am enjoying it too. Because there is no current soaps to enjoy lol I do see some cliches and continuity issues in these old episodes, and some wtf moments within the stories, but I still enjoy it quite a lot

That's an interesting topic. It was such a sad time in that period when all these soaps were just killed one after another. Passions ended just a year before GL, no? 1) Well I think soaps are still at least somewhat profitable to the networks. Talks shows would be much cheaper to produce, but indeed they tried and failed with several of them. 2) I was one of the people who was sure that soaps could not survive another decade and these 4 are still here. And I am again one who thinks that they cannot survive until 2032. But lets see 3) Granted I stopped watching all the remaining soaps years ago, but I am still around to know what is going on and how it looks like, for the most part. So based on this, I would say no. I think the quality of everything has gone down almost irreparably. From anything related to production itself (sets, lighting, visuals..), to writing, to acting... it's not good. But hey, maybe those who watch on a daily basis would think differently.

Wow, so many similarities! Thank you for sharing this. It was definitely interesting to read.

I never thought in my life that I would enjoy B&B. Based on what I have seen in the past through the 00s, I always found B&B to be the worst soap out of the bunch (except Passions.. nothing was worse than that). But watching now this show from the beginning, I am shocked at how much I am enjoying it. Such old fashioned soapy goodness! And indeed the characters work together really well. It's a shame that Logan family seems to have disappeared rather quickly after the first season though. I wonder how I will like that. But lets see.. I have now arrived to the point where Caroline's trial is finishing and the verdict will be announced (so exciting!!!) And omg, at that trick they did when they showed the verdict being read and it turned out to be Bill's fantasy. I was so confused that half of the episode would be about Donna's aspirations of being a model and Kristen and Clarke and then suddenly we are at the trial. I was so confused. And then the freeing verdict and Ron gloating in front of everyone and then Bill shooting him. It was so strange. But then it turned out to be a daydream Good one, Bill Bell!

I agree that Bill's timing was terrible. He should have told her the news earlier (as soon as he found out himself, I would say). But I guess I don't see that as a manipulation. I would be grateful to my father if he uncovered the truth that my partner/spouse was unfaithful to me. He was pushing for Thorne to get with Caroline, sure, but it was finally Caroline who chose to be with Thorne, even though she clearly did not love him (at least not the same way she loved Ridge).

Thank you for further details! Indeed in the vault it is marked as Dec 3.

Can I ask how did you see Bill's actions as manipulation? I am curious since I have seen many people say this and I just don't see it. Also, you do not list Ridge as someone how hurt her and she trusted him a lot.

Correct! That is it! Oh, I completely did not remember to look at the closing credits to see the year! Thanks @Broderick!

Wow, they really slashed Moss' salary that much from one year to another? No one would accept that big of a salary cut. I mean, I get he would still be earning 400k which is a lot of money, but still.. no surprise that he refused. Exactly. I wonder also if Y&R people just are not good in handling such a smaller budget since they were used to the much bigger one? Maybe they should hire some new people who would be better at handling smaller budgets and then still have a better quality on screen than what they have now.

Team Caroline by far.. I am not as far in watching as all of you are, but Brooke's reasoning and actions are just not right, IMO. Then again, I hate Ridge and I would never want to see Caroline with him, so I guess Brooke and Ridge can be together...

Question... In the vault, there is an episode listed as December 1975. It features John McCook as Lance. However, several places that I looked online, I saw that John McCook did not debut until 1976. So does anyone know if the date on this episode is correct then? Should that maybe be December 1976 instead?

I am not a fan of opera, but omg this is very interesting! Did you also find any similarities with the course of stories? I mean, I assume there is similarities, just wondering to which degree. Thanks for sharing!!

Maybe also Y&R uses their budget to pay its stars more than other soaps, which leaves them less money for other stuff like sets, costumes, clothes etc.

It would be silly to just cast her for the sake of having "Reva and Josh" back together without any story or plan... so yeah, I guess they will do that

Omg, thats great for Robert Newman! I will tune in to Y&R to see his debut, even though I did not watch Y&R since Kevin saw that stupid chipmunk.

Rick Hearst already played Matt Clark on Y&R. I don't know if Y&R is reusing actors who had notable roles in the past in new roles.

I am in October 1987, Caroline's rape trial began. I am pleasantly surprised at how they are telling this story, with a lot of explanations about why they are choosing a female attorney for Ron; a female judge; also the conversations that Caroline had with the counselor... I don't think they deal with rape like that anymore. I mean, they could be (I haven't watched modern soaps in years), but back when I did watch, I don't remember being handled like this. On the topic of Brooke... she really did change her mind about Ridge really quickly. She is telling her Mom that she is going for Ridge because Caroline is no longer interested in him. As a real friend, she should have checked with Caroline first. But she knows deep down inside that she is doing a wrong thing.

Of course, I did not mean to imply that social media has only negative or only positive aspect. I don't know how my original post came through, but I do agree that social media has both positive and negative aspects, as you said. Reading the comments, I definitely see some points you are all saying. And of course there is not much change coming from social media in terms of soaps, because lets face it, there is not that many people that watch soaps. This is why I meant in the past, if social media existed, when Luke and Laura's wedding was watched by 30 mil people and they were all discussing it online, would that have an impact if you had such a huge number of people talking one way or the other. Someone said that we can only speculate and that we cannot know for sure how things would be.. well yes That was the point of my post. Just to bring some discussion and speculation... we are not writing a scientific report here, it's just a soap message board with speculation and discussion To give just some background on why I came to think about this topic.. Emily in Paris (show on Netflix). For those that are not familiar, season 1 came out last year and it was found to be very bad by many, depicting the French in a negative way etc. Then the Golden Globes nominated Emily in Paris in whichever categories and apparently the backlash was so huge that it started changes in Golden Globes that happened. Now, to be honest, I was not following this story when it happened last year, I was watching a video this year that this happened, so if the video was misinforming, I could be also wrong. Anyway, my point is, this type of backlash got me thinking about changes and impact on soaps in the past. Of course, someone else said that it is all about the cash. I completely agree, because even in case of Emily in Paris, the show was not cancelled because of the backlash, season was released by Netflix, because even if it was so hated online, the show was still watched by a lot of people, thus generating cash for Netflix to order season 2. But some things were changed in season 2 as a response to the critiques of season 1, so I guess backlash did help at least a bit... But some new stuff happened in season 2 that got even Ukrainian government to respond, so lets see what happens in season 3

I was thinking how soaps today are always playing it safe. There is barely no risk or barely any pushing the envelope. It seems that soaps nowdays are waiting for other media to push a topic into mainstream before soaps tackle it, while in the past it seems soaps were also telling these types of stories. One of the reasons why I think this is today is that network executives are afraid of negative social media reactions. While I know that network execs were probably afraid of negative outpour through letter campaigns back in the day, it cannot be the same, since it is so much easier to write a negative comment online than to sit down and write a letter and then go to the post office and send it. So thinking about this, do you think some stories would have been cut or would not have happened in the past had there been social media? Would Erica have an abortion? Would there be interracial relationships of GH/GL/DAYS? Bianca's coming out storyline? Didn't ATWT have one of first divorces way back when? So this just got me thinking... What do you think?