te.

I can only assume Emily O'Brien is like Galen Gering at this point - someone they just really like on a personal level and probably easy to work with. I don't really see a big storyline purpose of having Gwen back at this point, especially since they killed off Abby.

Lar Park Lincoln on the origins of "Sally's Friend": https://www.knotslanding.net/interviews/lar.htm So, it was always meant to be someone new but I guess they consciously made it seem like Jill to trick viewers. Maybe they were meant to play around with it more, but Lar was set to play her until they figured she was too young-looking to be credibly paired with Gary (I guess that was not an issue for Greg since he was kind of sleazy).

Could be, though it's worth noting that Lar Park Lincoln was "Sally's Friend" in the first appearance, so it could've been the way they wanted to re-introduce Linda until they decided against it.

The Andersons in general seemed like such a huge part of DAYS for a decade and they're just... gone. They even had what seemed like the major company in Salem to work for. I guess there's been other families that have disappeared during the decades, but the Andersons just seemed almost too big to not even have a living descendant walking around in Salem. I guess the stillborn kid with Bob Snr would've given them a legacy in Salem, but it wasn't to be...

I agree with you - I loved crazy Jill and wish she had been there all season. Hell, she had a good reason to go off rails to begin with, so maybe they even could've done a redemption arc lol.

To be honest, it wouldn't surprise me if Spelling was actively looking for a reason to get rid of Hayes at the end of season six as the show was failing and he wanted to shake it up. Having grounds for dismissal meant he could bypass giving him a settlement, so I could definitively see far worse things being glossed over on set than a production manager behaving inappropriately by showing 90s internet porn. Wrong, of course, but considering some of the nightmare stories we've heard lately it is in the "mild" department. But of course, we only have reports of Hayes' lawsuit and not how it was settled, so there might be more to it that we're not privy to.

TBF, Courtney, Laura and Daphne were all gone by the time this happened, so it wouldn't really be fair for them to drag this up. From what they said on the podcast, it also seems like they had a good relationship with him so... who knows. Even from the above document it's not that Hayes personally harassed someone - it's that he was neglectful to implement policies (and Hayes himself claims he was set up, which is very Melrose).

This? https://www.geocities.ws/Hollywood/4616/lat0418.html I guess it's pretty "mild" in comparison to what we've heard lately (*cough* Lively / Baldoni situation *cough*) but I guess his departure wasn't amicable. I suppose it'll be glossed over. With that said, it doesn't appear he harassed anyone specifically but failed to enforce sexual harassment protocols when someone was caught on set with internet porn (in the late 90s no less!). I could see this being an excuse to get rid of Hayes though as the show cleared the deck for the last season with Frank South also leaving.

Rewatching season one along with the podcast definitively has made me notice how hard they went for the will-they-or-won't-they angle of Billy and Alison post-Keith with the Alison fibrosis storyline. But that teasing clearly didn't lead to the ratings that the conflict of Keith brought, so I assume they noticed that and brought in Heather (who was also similarly going to be a four episode guest star initially). Still The Place is also reaching the good episodes. They've also talked about bringing on Chip Hayes (who's also married to Deborah Adair) and Darren Star on soon.

I mean, it's pretty obvious CBS were trying to appeal to the Dallas audience with that one. Similar thing with how they marketed The Mississippi that held the post-Dallas slot after Falcon Crest ended early in season 2: When you actually read the summary of The Mississippi, it sounds more like your standard legal procedural in line of Matlock and similar shows rather than as exciting as the poster makes it sound. I'd imagine that a lot of posters would've tried to feed off the popularity of Dallas during this era.

No? That's just a random free-to-use tune. Why would an actor sit around with the WAV to the soundtrack at this point? ETA: it literally says what tune it is - Mayaewk - Autumn Vibes:

Well, I guess this is sort of an appropriate thread - but there's a trend with Netflix trying to do their shows / movies more "background" friendly: Of course, this is historically how soaps often functioned - background noise for hausfraus while going on about their business and sitting down to watch the good parts. I think this is another sign why Days keeps getting renewed, Amazon picked up Neighbours and CBS pushed through with Beyond the Gates. People want some sort of format they can dive in and out of.

I've always assumed that he knew he was on his way out when he set up this Body & Soul storyline. It just seems like a passive-aggressive jab at the show and the industry in general. They might've just told him his contract wasn't going to get renewed and that was that.

I wonder what'll happen to Lecy post-Conners? She sort of got lost in the wilderness the first time around between the show and the comeback. I hope that doesn't happen again.

To be honest, I think only Donna really "got" Abby and it shows that she had a lot of hand in the character pre-Latham/Lechowick. She nixed Abby being directly involved with kidnapping the twins and understood that Abby had to have *limits* to be a viable long-term character. I think Dallas and Dynasty were bad at understanding this with JR and Alexis respectively later on in the series. There's just no tension if a character will and is able to do anything while also never getting a comeuppance.

From memory, it was pretty much stale-mate between Sue Ellen and JR (due to him throwing Nicholas off the balcony / her shooting him in return) which led to charges being dropped and fueling her to do the pointless movie.

It's odd, because looking aside from casting, the concept doesn't quite work. So Abby became Abby because she met this rich guy once, had her heart broken and then just marries Jeff and lives a boring suburban life? Huh? If anything, you'd think Abby's killer instinct would've kicked in sooner. I actually prefer the simple version of Abby being middle class, hating it and grabbed the first best chance to escape it. If anything, I think Olivia's storyline in season 11 was meant to be an Abby: Origins story until they nixed it.

TBF, execs do dictate storyline ideas at times and might've specifically told them to do more "action" as it was getting more popular.

Honestly, as long as the actress is willing to, let her age into the role. If they need to re-cast once she gets to her teens, then do it. But yeah, I want this to be more like Shawn-D and Will thing, not a Belle and Brady situation.

I agree. It clearly had a good flow from Dallas. I guess you could reason they should've moved Falcon Crest to try out other shows, but realistically, they sort of did try out both Nurse and The Mississippi there and neither did well outside the timeslot. So they'd just move Falcon Crest (which would do significantly worse and probably be a middling performer in another slot) to replace it with... another prime time sudser compatible with Dallas? I think they did the right thing to keep FC there as I don't see what benefit moving it would've had.

I missed a lot of the talk about the 1994-95 season, but it's always worthy to post the Vulture features of it from a decade ago: https://www.vulture.com/tags/1994-95-tv-week/ I think the A18-49 demographic ratings also paints a different picture from the regular Nielsen: As can be seen here, the youth skew of Fox's show was actually insane. Melrose Place was at #57 in the total ranking for the season, but forty places higher in the demographics, not far behind Beverly Hills 90210. Models Inc (#62) was unlucky to lose out getting a renewal considering Party of Five (#69) and New York Undercover (#60) did.

I hope the early start on filming they'll at least be able to do that for the first couple of weeks, but realistically, they'll need to adapt to the same schedule as all other soaps sooner rather than later.

It is worth mentioning that the lead-in (Caddy-shack) had a 12.2 rating - so people did specifically tune in to see Falcon Crest. It just wasn't in the same major numbers Dallas' did. And realistically - they probably realised that few shows could hold onto the Dallas audience as well as Falcon Crest did. They did try with The Mississippi in late spring 1983 when Falcon Crest still only had 22 episodes and it didn't do as well as FC. I guess they could've moved FC off Fridays to some other night and had it as a mid-performer (that probably wouldn't have lasted nine seasons, I agree), but why?

Screenshot! I'm curious.

I agree, though I get the feeling we'll get a cast opening since both Y&R and B&B have it. I don't see why BTG would deviate from the standard on the network.