te.

It's a great one, but also one that shows how they lost interest in Laura as a main character.

I pretty much feel the same way - I like Ma Walsh, but the Cummings' coming to Los Angeles just felt pretty forced and took away from Meg's "fish out of the water" status. With them there, there were never any question of her packing her bags and going back to Kansas. Sara was sort of meh, especially with the "ripped from the headlines" Lewinsky storyline. I did like Shawn Batten, but preferred her on Spyder Games though lol. A.J. and especially Leo just were bland to me... I barely remember them existing on the show. Again, why bring in A.J. without Elaine there?

Could be, though I don't remember exactly when it happened. With that said, Kelly Hu was written out much earlier than that (maybe in April?), so I feel they started adjusting the show pretty early on. I do think Guza might've left out of frustration with NBC's demands. Of course, they did the Terror Island arc at the end of the year with James E Reilly coming in as a story consultant.

I suspect that must've been a part of the direction of making it more in line with the other soaps. It's obvious that initially they had more of a 90s Spelling soap feel with "unconventional" family units and "chosen" families. I never got why they expanded on the Deschanel's while leaving Elaine in the dust. But I guess they needed Elaine to leave to get the Cummings there to run the waffle place. I checked and Meg Bennet already came in after one month (episode 25 per IMDB). So I suspect not as it probably had barely premiered when they filmed that.

Honestly, I don't really get why they choose to write off the characters they did in the mini-revamp that happened maybe eight months in. Tiffany I understand since the actress that replaced Franz didn't have the same charisma, but Paula and Elaine I don't get. I thought the set up of Gabi being Paula's half-sister on her paternal side and Cole being Elaine's son was an interesting family dynamic that went effectively wasted. I guess they wanted to expand on the Torres's and maybe uncomplicate it a bit for new viewers.

I'd assume he was initially cast because he's George Hamilton's son and it's not a secret he's struggled with sobriety along with eating disorders. I'm sure that played into him being recast so quickly. I do wonder how far they shot ahead though at that point.

I'd assume it was done when they started doing early promotions for the show. It wouldn't be the first time for Spelling to do this - Melrose Place actually started promotion before they shot a second of the pilot and they filmed those character shots that were used in early promos and the ending credits in season one. That's why Billy doesn't have a shot in the ending credits since Stephen Fanning was originally cast and they didn't bother shooting one with Andrew Shue; you can see Fanning's discarded promo shot at around 0:25 here (along with apartments #9 and #11, which never existed on the show): TL;DR: they were likely shot at least a month or two they went into production since I doubt they did a pilot. Hence Garita being present despite not being on the show for the first month or so.

I really loved the first few months for this reason. He really did make an effort to make it look as close to his prime time soaps at the time, which is why I suspect it went over better in Europe than the US. Of course, they eventually caved in to the US soap fans demand and tried to make it look more in line with the other soaps. It's a shame really since it didn't make the show a success and I thought it looked worse. The fact that the utilised location shooting so much was amazing, yet daytime soaps hated it lol.

That's a good point. Considering other families like the Martin's either got usurped into the Horton clan, disappeared (The Anderson's) or were just flat out villains (DiMera's), I think the fact that the Brady family has been able to survive as a clear main family for over 40 years is a feat.

Not sure why this shocked me - I guess 77 isn't exactly young but to lose him this soon after Drake and with the Bill Hayes memorial finally airing, it hurts a bit. RIP Wayne. The show treated him badly after they decided John and Marlena was the end-game couple.

I'm not sure why, but I image "Donna" with huge teased sprayed hair and chewing gum while delivering it all in a deep New York accent.

Oddly enough, Jean Mowry, who played the oldest daughter and "mother figure" post-Ellen's death was also born in 1923. I guess when they cast Ellen Cobb Hill they didn't worry about the (lack of) age difference since she was killed off in the first (?) episode (though I've always been curious if it truly was episode one or the first week or so). Then again, Peter Hobbs (who played her father) was only five years older (b. 1918)...

It always seems odd to me that they took so long to bring back Meg, especially as she was such a huge part of the origin story of the series and then seems to be tied into the brief revitalization of the show in the mid 70s.

It also has eight episodes of Berrenger's (missing episode 1, 3, 11 and 12) and the French dub of Valley of the Dolls. Too bad the latter doesn't seem to ever resurface without the dub...

It doesn't help that Cady's usually brought back at this point when something big happens that requires her to be in tune with Jennifer's relationships to various characters, which clearly isn't natural to her (for obvious reasons). Even during her first run, she had the rather unthankful job of having to step into the role with Jennifer finding out Hope (her cousin and long time friend) had suddenly up and left Salem. I hope we get a lot of rare Doug flashbacks for these episodes. To Ron's credit - he's been pretty good with these memorial / milestones episodes in getting more than the usual overused flashbacks and has been good at refering to history (let's not get into how he *uses* it), so I'm holding out hope for these episodes.

I've said it again and again - either just take the full plunge with Cady, or just work around Missy for these scarce appearances. This switcheroo isn't working, mostly down to the fact that they're different takes of the same character plus Cady really does take a while to get going when she steps into the Jennifer role. Say what you will about Missy, but the moment she steps on screen, it's instantly Jennifer for me and that's fitting if she's only going to appear every other year.

I really wonder who scrapped that? Ron seemed to imply it wasn't his call and the fact that Kristian seems to have had the entire story pitched to her seems to verify he had a rough outline. So what happened? Did some of the higher up execs hope that they could pressure Kristian and Peter to come back if they didn't get the happy ending?

I don't think "sweeps" really matter on streaming as determining ad rates and such, but I assume that media will still take special interest and increase coverage of shows during these months, so it helps them I guess.

I assume that some periods just simply had stations that either kept kinoscopes for a long time or had a packrat working there who did.

A May 10th, 1953 episode "premieres" on the Moviecraft Inc channel in about 12 hours:

I'd assume they would want to fold it into one platform, but yeah, it's actually my most used streaming app. I wouldn't follow it to behind a paywall though lol. Apparently Netflix France have ordered a musical (!) daily soap opera and has given it a direct order for 90 episodes. So I definitively think it's a question of time before we see a daily soap opera that's specifically developed for streaming at this point.

I wonder if CBS Studios will push this on Paramount+/PlutoTV (though I think they're getting rid of the latter) internationally?

That explains so much about Higley's multiple failed tenures really.

The reason why I think so many shows in the 90s failed when they tried to bring on their own "Amanda" is that they never really looked at what actually happened to Melrose Place. Yes, Heather's first episode got a bump, but it fell after that only to explode in her fourth episode. The truth is, that the conflict that she brought to the Billy / Alison relationship is what made it pop but also the fact that they started to heat up other storylines to keep viewers on (most notably Jane / Michael / Kimberly). I mean, there was already a pre-cursor to this with Keith; viewers responded to that conflict, but the other storylines at the time just weren't quite that high in stakes to keep viewers on the show at the time. But most tv execs just saw that a big guest star character joined and thought that was the magic trick to get viewers.

I'm going to take a wild guess and say someone lost the password.