te.

LOL, yeah. I assumed everyone talked about Karla's dress, not Tunie's. I think the former's dress look a bit trashy, but I think it's meant to mirror her character. You get the vibe she's desperately wants to be on Housewives of Potomac, but maybe that's what they're going for. Or rather - the overlooked daughter that's always been starved for attention because she's neither had the brains or ambitions to strike out on her own.

Exactly - "star-crossed lovers" has long been a trope for literature, but it's not the same thing as a supercouple. In all honesty, I see so many shows still clinging onto that thing and it's just not working these days - partially because of the budget (action/adventure stories rarely work without at least some budget), but also since it seemingly makes viable characters never being able to move on.

It was a classic case of season 5's issue with attempting to be grounded but it had gone too far at that point to properly be so. See also Kimberly's brain cancer and the endless will-she-or-won't-she-die. Or Jake and Alison's boring relationship from hell. Someone once described season 5 as being at a "break-neck speed and daytime slow" at the same time, which is somewhat impressive I guess. But it's stuck with me because it's so oddly accurate.

The arc in itself was pointless, just like Maggie being adopted on Falcon Crest. Ultimately, the only thing that would've made it matter is if it changed her relationship with Sydney since she put up a lot of crap with her because they were sisters. So being adopted would've given Jane leverage in theory the next time Sydney started pulling her bullshit again. Same thing with Maggie and Terry on Falcon Crest. But Jane left soon after, and no it was never acknowledged again.

I said the same thing in the Search for Tomorrow thread when an episode resurfaced from the 50s - I was amazed with how effective it was in telling its story and there wasn't a dull moment, despite not being particularly exciting or even knowing too much of the context. I really think that type of soap and storytelling would be incredibly effective for a streaming service, especially if one weeks episodes end up being no more than a bit over an hour per week (for easy binge viewing).

WTF was this?! Even barring that the actress bombed in her first scene, it's so incompetently set up. It's the anti-Alexis enters the courtroom scene (and that was just a model).

In some lighter news, Casa Walsh has so far escaped the Eaton fires: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/walsh-family-house-beverly-hills-90210-survives-eaton-fire-1236105845/ Dylan's house was still standing as of late January 7th, but no news since then.

Yes, I've noted the same thing before when @JAS0N47 posted the full charts with viewers. They don't actually look that drastically different to the numbers in the late 90s. I'd assume time-shifting viewers became bigger and most of all, there's just more media to consume that a daily soap gets lower priority (I don't think it's a coincidence that people getting more access to things like internet seem to affect the linear viewing downfall).

She was also the second-highest paid cast member, I guess due to having a decent agent after being in movies. If they had signed another contract with her, it would've also raised her salary significantly due to how the contract was designed. It's also interesting that Heather was actually directly paid by the network (who'd also fund for guest stars like Loni Anderson and Priscilla Presley); I guess any time someone has the title "Special Guest Star" they're paid outside the regular production.

I mean, there were certainly ways to integrate Lucy into the show more, even better islanded plots would've been preferable. If they were going to go with the rich bored debutante story arc making muddling her way through life, there's a lot of story to be harvested from that. But I don't think they thought in the long-term what Lucy's role on the show would be. There's a lot to be said of what Falcon Crest became, but it does feel like Earl Hamner had a vision of what each character would bring to the show. That Vicky and the Nuñezes ended up not fitting into that once the show started going soapy is one thing, but everyone was sort of useful from the get-go. I'm not sure David Jacobs had the same sort of long-term vision for his shows and had to adjust eventually (see also Ginger and Kenny being useless on Knots Landing).

The Chip Hayes interview is up! Only 10 minutes in but also a lot of interesting tidbits - among others he recalls how horrible Peppard was on the Dynasty set ("Absolute monster") and that's why they recasted him with John Forsythe ("one of the loveliest actors in Hollywood"). https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-still-the-place-191057736/episode/chip-hayes-255023790/

I guess the difference is that early on they positioned Angela as angling for Lance to carry the Falcon Crest legacy - or in a pinch, Cole and Vicky would do. So they pretty much skipped that middle aged generation and got the early 20-somethings involved in the action straight away. On Dallas, it's more clear that Lucy was never seen as a potential heir to the throne by anyone (putting aside acting abilities). It was clear that the ones with the actual power were the middle aged generation who were going to one day turn it over to their kids (who were just toddlers when the show started). So there was really no room for a bunch of young late teens / 20-somethings. Even if they had given JR and Swellin' a teenaged kid, it's obvious he wasn't going to turn over reigns of Ewing Oil for the next 25+ years if he had anything to do with it. Angela on the other hand, being in her 60s, had to start setting up for retirement as the show started. Or to put it another way - if Jock had been in charge when the show started, maybe the younger generation still could've been in play. But as it was, the decision was already made which generation were carrying the torch after him and that left power struggles between that generation with no time for Lucy.

Yup. No matter how much you plan out and plot these shows there will always be cast members that don't gel, some that inevitably ends up standing out more and some actors that will just plain suck and need recasting or be written out. This of course effects the storylines in itself and projections will have to change. With that said, even if they knock it out of the park from week 1 (doubtful, but we'll see) there's clearly people waiting with their claws out lol

Exactly. Look at the Rita storyline on Dynasty - it dragged on way too long. On a daytime soap a few months of a impersonator switch is nothing. Part of that is of course that prime time soaps have smaller ensembles, so dragging it out for too long doesn't really work since you end up in a stale-mate position. Add that long-term, actors leave prime time soaps after a few years and recasting doesn't really work in prime time.

I mean, it's either that or they simply didn't want Rachel to grow up as fast as the actress did and the purpose of the recasting was to de-SORAS her a bit. Either way, I doubt it was the actress abilities that did it - she's been good as a demon spawn.

At least it's a kid in a similar age range, so I'm glad they're not SORASing her. Let her grow up on screen as I'm enjoying her as a demon spawn. I'm guessing that Slater might've just gotten tired of acting?

I remember scoffing when Jamey Giddens said he'd originally pitched Ambitions as a daytime soap opera and wondered if he was delusional. But I'd assume Beyond the Gates must've had a long planning time and CBS must've looked over other proposals besides Val Jean's, so it's possible Ambitions was a pitch they heard. It just goes to show you how things might be moving slowly along in the background that we just never know about.

I agree, which is why I'm more interested to see how Beyond the Gates performs on streaming rather than linear. Unless it outright bombs (as in sub-1 million viewers) I think it'd be okay as long as it's doing okay on streaming. That's why I hope they'll attempt to push it on streaming as it's the only way to get a certain audience watching. If they can get an audience on streaming for a soap that isn't an old brand, then that'd be encouraging for streamers to start developing their own soaps, specifically done for streaming. That would pretty much secure the survival of the genre in the long term. With the upcoming planned AMC movies, I'd say they're starting to wake up that they might be sitting on something worth exploring at least.

I think the biggest obstacle that Beyond the Gates will have is that it usually does take a while for soaps to properly gel and since linear is dying there's not really a lot of channel surfing and people coming across the show in the same way it used to be. Hopefully as the show starts building up a library of episodes people might start putting it on while doing other things and get hooked that way down the road. I know Netflix wanted recently mandated shows to have more "casual friendly" scripts for this reason.

To be fair, I don't think she was per se arguing that Anne was above trying to jump from man to man (hence why there was still a flirtation there), just that it would be far too much repetition at that point to have Anne just jump to another man. And she was probably right, especially if they didn't have a long-term plan behind Gary and Anne sleeping together other than her being kicked to the curb again. So Val only being paranoid about it worked just as well.

Eh, Melrose Place and Beverly Hills 90210 were successful. Depending on how willing you're to go with the "soap" label, you also have shows like Party of Five, Dawson's Creek and so on. But most of all - in the 90s the line between prime time soaps and "drama" seemed to blur further. Soaps were at one point the only ones that really did the endless continuation bit, but almost every drama started having soap-like elements like ER, Ally McBeal, Buffy etc.

I mean, AI is becoming easier and easier to use as it is. I'd assume if you have enough footage you could feed that to it to generate things. It wouldn't surprise me - legal issues aside - if Dark Shadows fans were to attempt to recreate that "missing" episode as they seem fanatic and nerdy enough to do it.

From a selfish point of view, I'd think this would certainly be interesting. From a larger point of view of respect to everyone involved with making those shows... it shouldn't be done.

Fox had made an initial commitment for 13 weeks of the show and were by all accounts about to go into full production and then... they just didn't. I suspect that since the 90s Fox soaps were waning at that point, they backed out at the last minute.

I'd love for Valley of the Dolls to show up in English.