Paul Raven

Well Jess/Jill always delivers, especially now she's been softened a little. For a while there everytime she turned up it was to be a nagging shrew. Susan is a class act and Leigh Ann, while no great shakes (blame inexperience, mediocre writing and lack of direction) has a spark and her character, unlike the bland Amanda and Elena, actually has an agenda and attitude.

Nowadays fans are up in arms about pre emptions for major political events, imagine the outcry if Days was interrupted by a report about the moon. How times have changed. That whole race to the moon was deemed big news. Did the average viewer really care?

So basically just some footage of an old SUV catching fire and plummeting into a lake with studio shots of Li and Sheila driving spliced in. That stunt was probably done years ago for another Sony show...

Fabtastic news! Just proves there are many people involved with shows at the time that have tapes of unseen episodes.

By now Traci should have adopted/mentored a young woman who has become her surrogate daughter and part of the Abbott family. Maybe Steve had a daughter whose mom died and came to live with the Connellys? That could easily be explained and worked into the story. Traci becomes a surrogate mother to the girl and they stay close after her divorce from Steve.

Enjoyed the anniversary episode. We got to see Danny,Tim, Amy,John and Brad. With so much history there they had to be selective and did a good job. Eileen and Beth made the dialogue flow so easily-obviously with years under their belt and knowing the characters inside and out. But it contrasted with Kelsey Wang who sounded a little clunky to me. I like the actress but the newbies aren't getting the direction, the character background or the time that Beth and Eileen had in their early days. What do we know about Allie? She seems a nice young woman and that's it. Also Jack got the final shot? Should have been Ashley and Traci.

Yes great story potential there. Shows how easily Mike would have fitted into that storyline. I'm guessing one of the reasons Mike didn't return is that TPTB wanted as few 'old' people as possible.

I agree. Constantly trying to involve Victor in his children's lives is beyond ridiculous by now. He has betrayed them/interfered so many times that they look like fools in these games of one upmanship. If only EB had retired or limited his presence after his 40th so they could actually move on from retelling these same stories. As for business, again it would be nice for them to descale and instead of billion dollar conglomerates have characters operating smaller operations that could be more easily and realistically depicted. Victoria could run a high end art gallery, Lauren ONE small scale dept store etc Have Jabot be a more upscale boutique operation, rather than this nonsense of them purchasing international Italian based fashion companies. PS what is Victoria wearing in those pics-some sort of 2 in 1 dress?

Ashland has been sporting the casual look w/jeans for a while now.

Guiding Light Teri Keane as Trudy Bauer rather than Lainie. A true connection to the past rather than a retcon relative. Trudy could have had children in the decades away. Maybe as a single mom, hence then having the Bauer name.

Bernard sans toupee It's interesting how soap actors were used in commercials despite being known to millions as a character. A lot of viewers would have been like -Why is Johnny Ryan the pharmacist? Primetime actors were not used the same way eg you didn't have Ricardo Montalban pretending to be a Chrysler salesman for the Cordoba or the likes of Cheryl Ladd pretending to be a housewife. Just points out the different attitude to soaps and soap actors.

How about John Colenback ex Dan ATWT?

Not totally familiar with B&B BITD when Joanna Johnson was brought back as Karen, but am I correct in saying that Ridge/Karen was never explored? Despite the fact that Ronn Moss/Joanna Johnson had clicked previously and it was an obvious story to have Ridge entranced by Karen due to her resemblance to Caroline and for Karen to be captivated by Ridge, Even if they didn't want Ridge/Karen as a major couple at least it should have been explored?

Not sure of a debut date but the mention of the Colonnade Room reminds me that in an old synopses (I think it was Days) there is mention of the Colonnade Room as a swanky dining destination. So Bill Bell must have liked the name to use it again. Unless I am misremembering and it was another show? And when did the Colonnade room set stop being used? Found that there was a Colonnade Room in Chicago at one point .Wonder if Bill dined there and decided to use the name

How come Doug Davidson didn't get a 40th anni episode in 2018? He was still on the show at that time. Was he already marked for extinction at that point and they didn't want to draw attention to his status?

Killing off Colleen and ignoring Keemo all those years were probably the biggest mistakes re The Abbotts as well as the multiple pointless marriages of Jack and Ashley. Keeping the kids to a minimum looks a wise move in terms of later decisions to give everybody kids - now we have Connor, Chtristian, Johnny, Katie, Reed,Bella,Miles etc who are barely if ever seen and have to be written around.

Perhaps it was also Marland running out of ideas after 7 or so years. We see it often with writers coming to a show with fresh ideas, interesting new characters . But once those initial stories have been told and actors leave etc, it gets harder to come up with compelling new stories for those remaining. Having characters like Tess, Hutch,Rosanna driving stories seemed wrong to me. Where were the Hughes and the Snyders who had been established as the core characters who had involvement in every story?

I'm glad you referenced this as it has often been quoted as fact that Lipton put the Matthews on the backburner and focused on the Gregorys. And that Agnes Nixon killed off all the Gregorys. As stated Irna dropped Granny Matthews and Susan Matthews. Alice was a supporting character, Russ was hardly seen. The original focus was on Pat, Bill and Janet with Jim, Pat and Liz heavily involved. Lipton kept those characters frontburner. He took the character of Ernest and got him involved with Janet in a triangle with Ken Baxter. His parents were introduced but they were supporting. Ernest's backstory was that he had been in love with Karen who married her brother Alex. Alex and Karen returned and that situation was played out. Ken and Laura reconciled, leaving Janet to agree to marry Ernest. But when Alex was killed in a car accident,Janet worried Alex would turn again to Karen, so she refused to marry him. Ernest left town. So it was hardly a takeover by the Gregory family. In fact Agnes dropped the character of Janet Matthews who had been a main character since the beginning.

One important factor for core families is the generational aspect. New younger family members are needed as the years go by. But on the flipside, writers don't want to saddle characters with too many children. Some examples AW The Matthews Pat was given twins, who were rapidly SORASED born in 1970 teens by 75 and dropped, never seen again. Russ had no children despite 4 marriages (later retconned) Alice adopted Sally (who was killed off) Susan had no children (later retconned with adopted daughter Julia who was killed off) Bill had no children (a stepson Ricky, who was never used0 So not really much there to build upon. The characters they might have used (the Randolph twins, Ricky were never used ,despite potential) When there was a a renewed interest in the late 80's, Russ returned and given a daughter Josie, but he was dropped and her lineage as a Matthews was pretty much ignored.

Don't know that I class the Andersons as a core family. There was only Bob,Phyllis and Mary and they were introduced 7 years into the show's run. They lasted about 7 years. Julie and Linda married Bob, Neil married Phyllis and Mary married Alex. Melissa took the surname, but otherwise had no real connection. So an important family, but not core. Every long running show has been guilty of discarding the core families, to the overall detriment of the show.

Guiding Light Alice Eldridge Gantry never seen . Deceased wife of Lee Gantry, former Springfield resident, one time classmate of Meta Bauer, left Lee property in town

Y&R Michael Roark who played Travis would have been a good Billy. Jason Thompson - his somber demeanor would have been better suited to Adam.

I wonder if at some point in the 50's the hired help were fired as the Carey's had to do some belt tightening when the movie roles dried up? He had the security of a Paramount contract in the 40's.

The dreaded Maggie surrogate story. When Pat Falken Smith arrived she declared she was puzzled by that story. She said Maggie would be the least likely woman to agree to surrogacy. She had never had a child and desperately wanted one. It would have been better for Mickey and Maggie to use a surrogate themselves. Did Maggie ever get a decent story once she married Mickey? Stuart Whyland replaced Kellam Chandler as the Salem older villian. When PFS arrived she made Stuart an employee of Stefano, who used him to lay the groundwork for the DiMera takeover of Salem.

Jered Holmes Love Is A Many Splendored Thing pre 1970 Robertson Deen Guiding Light Reg Vandermeer pre 1989