te.

I think most of all from Abby's point of view there was no way she was going to settle with being the accountant for a car dealership! From the first moment she stepped on the lane, it was fairly obvious she had higher ambitions in life than suburban life with a nice, but boring job. I guess Abby could've gotten Anne's homeless plot? Though she wouldn't have been as hopelessly bad at it...

Is Falcon Crest also available on demand on Plex?

Eh... it's a medical procedural and they aren't wildly different from each other. Unless the script existed before hand I'm not sure how they'd prove it's basically just a CTRL+F version. With that said, it's dumb by them to not try and make the ER deal work.

I doubt it - they replayed the entire series, so I don't think there's an issue there. The whole channel's purpose is to air their long-running Lorimar properties that aren't Dallas it seems. My understanding is that the channel is broadcast directly from Warner Bros and then picked up by various streamers looking to expand their channel offerings.

Interesting - since there's no way they'll finish Falcon Crest before that, it either means they saw the amount of streams Knots generated and is rushing back to it sooner, or they're starting to divide up seasons of shows better.

It's fascinated me how the US networks seemingly just gave up on programming Saturdays and just made Fridays into a niche night - in Europe, both days are where networks here tend to put their most family friendly shows which seems like a no-brainer. US networks seem resistant to the idea though.

Obviously, this was 10.7/20 since it tied with Baywatch. And yeah, Falcon Crest probably should've been moved off the night a few seasons before this, but then again, who knows if it would've survived such a move? I'm not sure if it would've made it to nine seasons without favourable programming (but then again, would that have been a bad thing?). Interesting to see Baywatch debuting. The pilot movie did well on Sunday in the spring, but clearly the target audience wasn't at home on Friday nights. Surprised it made it to a full season on NBC before getting cancelled.

The first 13 episodes are clearly more written as episodic, especially obvious is that in one episode the Gioberti's are onto Angela's plots to drive them out of the valley and in the next episode they're chummy with her again. The show really kicks into high gear when Ana Alicia enters in episode 14.

I agree - she was basically pushed into the position with little time to prepare for it and then had to deal with the strikes, plus probably couldn't just fire Ron because the budget just isn't there to pay him out. I said it before, but I almost get the feeling he knew he was on the way out and this Body and Soul storyline is his passive-aggressive way to make jabs about the show and the backstage politics.

Homefront and China Beach were sort of soapy enough that I could've seen them put it on this channel if they're airing Sisters.

I assume it must've been a way to control costs - as you said, they had bigger issues to deal with and agreeing with a certain licensing cost from Lorimar probably seemed like a good deal. Of course, Lorimar just kept hacking away at the shows cast to try and keep a profit on the show ultimately not even using the cheaper cast members in all episodes of season 14.

Funny to think that the revival of its lead-in would encounter the same issues almost three decades later.

Seems like the cycle on the channel will be Knots - Sisters - Falcon Crest then. Shame, I had some faint hope that they'd throw in something like Flamingo Road.

Teri Austin didn't play Sally's Friend - Lar Park Lincoln did. Lar Park Lincoln also had credit for "body" in 10x23. I don't remember what happens exactly in that episode, but I guess they just liked Lar Park enough to throw her a bone? Penny Peyser is credited as Amanda in 10x23, so Lar Park Lincoln only played Sally's friend for one episode.

Nice interview with Darren Star in Vulture - he talks about Beverly Hills 90210, Shannen Doherty and Melrose Place among other things. Also flop shows like Sex and the City and Emily in Paris: https://www.vulture.com/article/darren-star-in-conversation.html

Unfortunately, if they were going to cut people in season nine due to budget concerns, both Laura and Lillimae made sense - McCashin and Harris probably earnt a fair amount of money due to their seniority on the show, but both Laura's and Lillimae's roles had diminished through the years. Laura had essentially played second-fiddle to Greg since season six at least and Lillimae was mostly used as a talk-to to Val. I can see why both characters ended up on the chopping block as I can't see who else they'd cut to significantly down the budget. Sheehan had already been sent away in the season 8. I'm really not sure who else I'd cut except Ben, Lillimae and Laura tbh if I was forced to make cuts.

Could be true. "Sisters" should take about five days to air through, "Falcon Crest" around nine-ten days. So assuming these shows are the only ones airing on the Primetime Soaps by WB channel, it would track.

I'm not sure why people keep saying that serialized dramas don't work - one of the biggest success story of recent years have been Yellowstone, which is basically a western soap opera.

It's time for Missy Reeves to shine!

Eh, I agree with @carolineg - either work around Melissa Reeves or just hire Cady permanently. I do think Jennifer is Melissa Reeves because of the amount of time she's put into the character, but I find that Cady tends to do better in long runs. It's these disjointed runs where she has to literally jump right into high stakes emotional situations that it becomes bizarre. It was the same thing when she first got on the show - the first scenes she had was to react to Hope leaving and it just came off... wrong. But she improved in that run, I just don't think she handles these in-and-out visits well and needs time to settle in the character.

It genuinely wouldn't surprise me if The Gates does well across platforms.

I loved Tonya Crowe as Olivia, but I think she gave off a very "young" energy (well, she was like 19 when she was booted off) and I think they thought it limited her. Even if she had relationships with Gary, Val and Karen, you could've never seen her seducing Greg (as an example). I mean, Greg and Paige always gave me the icks, so I'd be like Stan kissing Wendy in South Park if Olivia tried putting the moves on Greg, or any of the other older males on Knots. Michael was of course out of the equation for her. Ultimately, Linda came off as more mature (since she is 10 years older for starters) and played the role of the gold-digging skank well. For whatever reason, her and Greg never bothered me because it was never played off as tru' wuv and I could've seen her go after any male on the cast (and let's just toss Karen in there for good measure). I re-watched the series a few months ago and killing off Linda has to be one of the biggest mistakes the show did in its later years. They tried to introduce Vanessa, but the actress was... erm, not very good.

It felt like they actually did start to push Olivia in an Abby-esque direction in season 11, with being miserable in her marriage with Harold and wanting more material things. But then they just kind of sent her on her way with Harold. I think they ultimately saw more potential in Linda / Lar Park-Lincoln as the younger version of Abby, but of course that ended up being cut short with her mindless murder in season 13.

That explains why I couldn't find anything about the pilot being produced when I searched for it in 1985! In the 1984-85 season ABC had 29 pilots in consideration - some that did get ordered to midseason. This rather harsh article called them "clones" (which was true tbf): https://books.google.se/books?id=YXdkAAAAIBAJ&pg=PA13&dq=midas+valley&article_id=1343,841005&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjd64HxsYWIAxVYEhAIHUFpLOQ4FBDoAXoECAoQAg#v=onepage&q=midas valley&f=false

Ridge, the cuckold?