Paul Raven

James O'Sullivan ALL MY CHILDREN Dr. Jeff Martin Dec 23 1976 -79

Maybe Jordan was a stripper at The Bayou who was the lead attraction till Nikki came along. She's harbored a grudge ever since. Erica Hope makes a 1 day appearance as Jordan.

Also ATWT dropped Judge Lowell, Joyce, Don, Grant, Mary, Jay, Dan,Susan, Sandy etc over a 2-3 yr period. GL also dropped Mart Hulswit for younger(slimmer) Peter Simon. SFT dropped Bob, Ellie AW -John Randolph Probably others we've forgotten. Another trend was the push to location shooting. It certainly was a welcome change from interiors but instead of it becoming a regular thing where we saw characters in their yards or outside workplaces-day to day stuff, it was saved up for splashy sweeps stunts in most cases. And made the contrast with fake 'outdoor' sets even more noticeable.

This whole story is moving way too fast. Within a month of meeting Claire has kidnapped Nikki? Where can they go from this? My feeling is the aunt Jordan thing will be some lame retcon. I think its going to be another misfire from Griffith.

Requests Rev Norman Walter Jay Lanin Joseph Cali Carol Mayo Jenkins

Do posters think Tovah Feldshuh would have been a good Mary Ryan replacement? Those who have seen her as Martha McGee would have an idea.

David Gale Search For Tomorrow .... Capt. Porter 1977 Berrengers...Rick Carol

Search for Tomorrow Captain Porter...David Gale ..77...cop investigating Wade Collins murder

Search for Tomorrow Laine Adamson ...Megan Bagot Aug 78- Aug 79 Ambitious daughter of Ted, sister of Sunny.Becomes roommates with widowed Liza to get info on Collins Corp for Ted,suggests Liza sell her stock to finance Steve's movie. Becomes Gary Walton's patient and is attracted to him and vice versa. Also involved with David Sutton. Upset when Carolyn and Gary reconcile and discovers she is pregnant with Garys child. On trial for criminal negligence in construction of Tourneur plant.Leaves town for Florida and attempts suicide David rescues her and offers to claim paternity but Laine decides to leave for good.

Dynasty makes a come back in early 87 Week 19 Dynasty 18.9/28 Gimme A Break 16.1/24/Toretellis 16.2/25 Broken Vows CBS Movie special 14.1/22 Week 20 Dynasty 18.2/28 Magnum PI 16.7/25 Gimme A Break 14.3/22/Tortellis 13.1/20 Week 21 Dynasty 17.8/26 Magnum PI 16.7/25 Gimme A Break 13.6/20/Tortellis 11.6/17 Week 22 Dynasty pre-empted for Amerika miniseries Week 23 Magnum PI 20.6/30 Dynasty 16.9/25 Gimme A Break 13.6/20/Tortellis 11.6/17 *Magnum hits a season high.W/o checking I suspect this was some kind of highly promoted special ep. Dynasty begins another dip Week 24 Due to Pres Reagans speech Dynasty pushed back to 9.30 I'll Take Manhattan 22.5/36 Dynasty 13.7/21 NBC continued Reagan coverage not rated Week 25 Houston Knights 2 hr premiere 17.1/26 Dynasty 16.5/25 Highway to Heaven 2nd hr of 2 hr rpt 13.7/21 Week 26 A new possible challenge as NBC moves Top10 hit Night Court from Thursday Dynasty 16.8/26 Magnum PI 16.1/25 Night Court 16.5/28/ Tortellis 14.22

Michael,Kevin and Gloria? They've outlived their usefulness, esp criminal Kevin. I can stand Michael and Gloria for occasional appearances, but that's it.

Jordan seems an odd choice of name for an aunt-guess I am picturing someone older. They surely wouldn't do a doppelganger story???

Search for Tomorrow Agent David Sutton...Lewis Arlt... Jan 76-81 Dr. Allen Ramsey...Conard Fowkes... June - Oct 77...best friend Wade/kidnapper... . Doris__Ramsey.. Gwynda Don Howe...June - Oct 77.wife, Allen Laine Adamson Walton...Megan Bagot.. Aug .78-79...+Gary=Craig Dr. Matt Weldon...Robert Phelps...Jan - Sept -73 friend, Dan W.married Melissa

Go Sean ! Has any other POC been #1 in monthly rankings ?

#1 and could be long gone by this time next year...

So possibly there might be a whole story invented about Casey in the time she's been away. Knowing JG quite probable.

Some Dynasty trivia John James tested for Steven ,along with Al Corley and a few other actors. The auditions were taped on a set at the General Hospital studio. George Peppard upset the Shapiros by rewriting his lines for a presentation film made for ABC bigwigs. Also he rewrote scenes in the pilot and instructed Al and Pamela on how to play scenes. The Shapiros issued an ultimatum him or them. One scene was written for Matthew and Blake to get into a brawl but when John was cast Bo Hopkins wanted it change because it looked wrong to have his character pummeling 'an old man'. George may have been off the booze but his trailer was well stocked with 'dolls' Dale Robertson upset the shooting schedule one day when he refused to wait around a location for hours to film the final scene of the day. The pilot was supposed to be 2 hr but came to 2 and a half once filming was complete. They expected to have to trim things down but Esther Shapiro decided to write extra scenes and persuaded ABC to go with a then unprecedented 3 hr premiere. Initially to save time they contemplated using long shots of Peppard but then realized he would have to be paid for any appearances. Entire scenes w/o Peppard were reshot b/c originally local SF actors had been used and they would have to be transported to LA for reshoots. So it was cheaper to do the whole sequence again. Jerry Ayres and Barry Cahill were among the actors hired as replacements.

Some comments from Ralph Senesky director of the pilot and episode 5. LAKE CARRINGTON: It is pretty much accepted that the whopping success 2 years earlier of the television series DALLAS had an effect on DYNASTY. Consider a similarity: the unscrupulous J.R. Ewing, an oil baron in Texas of the earlier series, and DYNASTY’s Blake Carrington, an oil baron in Denver. George Peppard, the first Blake Carrington was properly unscrupulous, but he lacked the fascinating evil charm that Larry Hagman brought to his baron. John Forsythe brought power to his baron sans the unscrupulousness From something I’ve recently learned from an 8-year old television interview by Richard Shapiro, co-creator of DYNASTY, John had brought unexpected positive elements to his characterization of Blake Carrington. In the pilot, in a scene following the wedding of Blake and Krystle, an enraged Walter Lankershim, a wildcatter friend of Matthew Blaisdel, armed with a gun comes to the Carrington mansion because of an accident at their oil derrick. In the interview Richard stated, “…and the script says ‘Blake puts the dogs on him’, and John Forsythe said, “I’m not putting any dogs on anyone.” …when we got into the editing room…there was a shot of John standing on the porch and he just moved his eyes to the left and I said “that’s it, that’s the signal” I had staged the scene unaware of any of that conversation and unaware of what occurred after I turned in my director’s cut. It was true. John had brought dignity, decency and integrity to his man of power. Episode 5 I was even more certain of what I sensed while directing that episode — the series was changing direction, there was a shift of tone. When I was signed to direct OIL, along with the script I was given the series ‘Bible’, a document with many more pages than were in the 2-hour script. It contained the background history of the story and complete detailed biographical information of all of the leading characters. This was the usual procedure for any project that was a possible series. I had ‘lived with’ the Carringtons for almost 10 months. I felt I knew them intimately and as currently being scripted they were not acting as they had in the pilot. It was as if a new ‘Bible’ had been created for the series.

Beacon Hill was a tremendous gamble at the time. Remember this was 1975 and the likes of Starsky & Hutch and Police Woman was considered standard drama fare. I'm sure there were a lot of people at CBS that hated the whole concept and thought it was doomed to fail. Reading b/w the lines it seems they wanted more plot and less character stuff. Maybe they should have started it over Summer to iron out the bugs instead of a splashy Fall debut. Hill St Blues 5 years later was seen as daring and was low rated but NBC stuck by it. And compared to BH it was way more accessible to network viewers. The Saturday timeslot was a problem also. A lot of viewers are not home every week so following a serial can be tricky. Had NBC already decided it was a loser and burned it off in a low rated slot? Bottom line -was Berrengers any good?

Looks like Claire is going to be short term? Unless she joins the long list of criminals walking the streets Of GC free as abird. Are we leading up to aRoberta Leighton return? And what set is Nikki in when syringed?

Who's to blame for `Beacon Hill'? Bob Wood doesn't know what went wrong with the season's most ballyhooed new show; the creator blames the producer and vice -versa. Robert D. Wood, the president of CBS -TV, is the man who had to make the decision to cancel Beacon Hill, and "I'm sick about it," he says. "With the departure of Beacon Hill, a little bit of me went with it." "I couldn't fault the intention of the series or the production, which was superbly mounted," Mr. Wood goes on. "There was some lint- picking about the writing on the part of some critics, but as far as I'm concerned it was the Tiffany of TV series. And in all my years in the business, I don't remember a series getting as much promotion or as much advance notice in the consumer press. "But the public simply rejected it. Watching the audience decline each week was like watching the rungs of a stepladder going down" Mr. Wood says he doesn't want to play Monday morning quarterback on the reasons why Beacon Hill didn't attract a mass audience. "Maybe we were too ambitious," he says. But the creator of Beacon Hill, Sidney Carroll, says it could have survived if the producers had only followed his original plan. As Mr. Carroll explains it, he scripted the two -hour pilot and then wrote out plot outlines for the first 13 episodes of Beacon Hill. He got involved in the production of the pilot and says he was quite satisfied with how it turned out. He cites the episode's 23.1 rating and 42 share (on Monday, Aug. 25, 9 -11 p.m., NYT) as one of the indicators that "the general public liked the people in the pilot." But between the completion of the pilot and the start of production on the first episode, according to Mr. Carroll, the producer, Jacqueline Babbin, changed the plot outlines he had written. "When I saw how the first two finished scripts differed from the way I outlined them," he says, "I walked off the series." In Mr. Carroll's eyes, the likeable characters he had created in the pilot were turned into "a lot of stinkers. They became nasty and sad and stupid." Ms. Babbin sees things a little differently. "Sidney's plots were charming little stories that could've filled 20 minutes out of each hour," she says. "But CBS wanted stronger material, stories with more bite, more guts to them." Both Ms. Babbin and Alan Wagner, the CBS vice president closest to the series, disagree with Mr. Carroll about the quality of the two hour pilot. "With 19 characters to be introduced, it was like a French farce situation," she says. "The characters ended up being unsympathetic because the viewer wasn't given enough time to understand any of them. And CBS over promoted and ballyhooed the pilot to the point of stupidity." "It was really an error on our part to open up with an episode populated with with so many characters," adds Mr. Wagner. "Everything became complicated, the public got confused and you couldn't follow the characters without a scorecard" Mr. Wagner points to a second "major error." "The series didn't find its direction early enough," he says. "The first batch of episodes were placed in too small a frame and were on too small a scale to interest an audience in 1975." Ms. Babbin adds that the public didn't know what to make of Beacon Hill's characters because "they were too real - they weren't like the cardboard cut -outs you usually see in TV series, who seem to spend all their time in fast cars."

I guess originally Blake was painted as the villianous character who I assumed a la JR we were going to be fascinated to watch. But unlike JR and later Alexis, there was no mischief in his portrayal so he just came across as unsympathetic. John Forsythe had played light comedy way back to Bachelor Father, but there was nothing in the writing or direction for him to lean into that talent. Nightime soaps were restricted by having to focus on the same characters season after season and not stray too far from the formula. There was no way Blake was going backburner for a season.

They just want to recycle the whole Victor is omnipotent trope from years gone by. To accomplish that everybody else has to look like an idiot and pretend they haven't been screwed over a million times and not learned a thing. At least they finally retired Victor v Jack. Same with Phyllis. Nobody should trust her to take out the garbage let alone work/scheme or simply be around her.

Yes that's why I included 'adventure' in the description. Jack/Jennifer weren't battling spies, travelling to exotic locations or encountering super villians.

One trend that accelerated in the 80's was the decimation of core families/long running characters. Part of that was inevitable as actors aged and characters seemed played out, but there was also a wilfull determination to rid shows of the older tentpole characters. Y&R dumped the Fosters and Brooks bar Jill. Days said goodbye to a heap of Hortons The Bauers disappeared from GL as dd the Matthews from AW Steve Audrey and Jessie were virtually extras at GH. SFT had only a few characters from the decade before.