te.

Ultimately, for community soaps it's all about interactions between characters that you'd sometimes not expect to; Knots suffered from the same syndrome Melrose Place did in its later seasons, namely islanding of characters into their own storyline bubbles. The show was still good, but you could tell that probably for budget reasons those interactions became less and less.

Oh, FreeVee delaying their decision on their Who's The Boss sequel/reboot going to series or not makes sense now. I'm assuming they'll be tracking the performance on this.

Thing is that when DAYS (and I guess soaps) made their first stories about "coming back from the dead" they weren't outlandish - men going missing in war, being declared dead and only to return wasn't entirely unheard of. People being misidentified wasn't entirely unheard of. Of course, that's a far cry of what's happening these days on soaps when you can essentially have been decapitated and still come back from the dead.

No, because Abby managed to turn it around and once again make it seem like she was the innocent baby-saver while simultanously confessing to get Olivia, Greg et al off her back.

I said it just by reading the synopsis that they probably just switched Morgan to Joan's character and added Loni as Morgan's. With that said, it's really lazy to leave obvious references like that in, but then again it is a Lifetime movie.

I'm sad that no Susan Flannery episodes have ever surfaced of DAYS because I'm really curious how she played her - of course, she was great as the cold matriarch on Bold and the Beautiful; a role that seemed almost tailor-made for her, on the other hand on Dallas she had no chemistry with Larry Hagman and was one of the worst parts of an otherwise good fourth season. It just makes me wonder what her chemistry with on DAYS was with the male actors? Plus, I always thought Laura was rather "soft" as opposed to the cold steely excellence of Stephanie Forrester (in her prime years), so I wonder if she could really pull it off? She was seemingly popular after all.

Well, she had to die once she cut her shampoo commercial hair. Sorry, I don't make the rules.

I doubt we'll get more Beyond Salem. In hindsight it just seems like an experiment to see how DAYS would fare exclusively online.

DAYS might be making a comeback, but it didn't stop the rest of the line up from crumbling.

Yes, but you're potentially comparing someone who started watching a show when it was good and sticking with it through a rough patch and actually tuning into a new show. You can't start your show off bad and expect people to tune in - to even like the characters there has to be enough good writing and foundation for you to stick out the bad times (and even then we all have our limits).

It's the 30 second elevator pitch isn't it? Describe a show and get people interested. Loving and Generations just didn't have that.

Yes, exactly. Make the conflict about how a black family owned business would promote "white"* families for profit. This could've been a controversial soap opera forcing people to tune in because it showed how cynical the business is, and ultimately lead to progression! * I throw in "" because of how we know diversity is often sold in ads where you have one family member of "ambigious" race.

https://www.eonline.com/news/1390549/shannen-doherty-shares-cancer-has-spread-to-her-bones

Santa Barbara under 3.0 for the first (?) time! That show just suddenly started crashing after the 80s; of course the downfall of NBC daytime and the "supercouple" era didn't help.

Exactly right. It didn't exactly scream glamour and passion - maybe that was a conscious decision in the sense that it's the type of show that does well in syndication reruns, but it's not something that soap viewers would specifically tune into daily. But in all honesty, besides "the first show focusing on black characters" I just don't get the feeling there was much of a pitch. I guess in that sense I feel the same way towards Generations that I do towards Loving - it just feels dated and not really that well-defined. It probably doesn't help that the time slot hadn't housed a soap in the past few years after Search was cancelled. Maybe they could've had a production company since they started with the "fake soap" opening - one that ironically would focus on white characters despite the company itself being run by black people. It would've at least opened up some conflict, I guess social commentary and would've been a "sexier" and more exciting business.

I think it's unfair to compare anyone to Donna - she's clearly had great styling, plastic surgery and the ability to know when to quit and not go for the "too youthful" route. She looks like herself, even if it's blatantly obvious she's had quite a bit of help over the years. I think the biggest issue with Morgan's wig is that the hairline looks so very off. Donna's looks like it's based in her own hairline while Morgan is clearly going for the straight-on fake look.

Eh, in the same tv guide interview where she announced she was leaving she also stated that she'd "do some episodes". It seems like a classic case of Joan playing word games plus not wanting to admit that they wouldn't pay for her to do the entire season.

To be fair, I don't think they expected Dynasty to do well in the slot - usually when they move an aging show the hope is that it'll do well-enough to at least act as a band-aid while they focus on other time slots (as you said, China Beach and thirtysomething were clearly priorities for the "new era" ABC). In Dynasty's defence, it was usually the best rated show on ABC for that night, but of course that maybe just shows you what a trainwreck Thursdays were for them. If Knots hadn't been in the 10 PM slot on CBS they might've moved up Dynasty for another season if they could've gotten it for a low enough budget to attempt to make something work on that night. But obviously, they saw a few years earlier what happened to The Colby's when it and Knots went head-to-head.

Hell, in a recent interview Nicolette Sheridan pointed out that Knots was a night time drama. People still have an aversion to the term soap for whatever reason.

Well, yes. Central Park West probably would've been more successful if it had been on Fox as an example as the only thing that was "wrong" with that show was that it was on the wrong network. Savannah was off-brand for the youthful The WB and was too expensive since it didn't repeat well and they couldn't afford doing more than 22 episodes per season. NBC is the one network that never found their "brand" of prime time soaps - though you could argue that the Dick Wolf brand of Chicagos are soaps...

Actually, looking at it, I wonder if Morgan was originally set to play the role Loni's playing (which would go well with her whole "always the bridesmaid, never the bride" type of success with prime time soaps) and they might've wanted another name (Dame Joan probably) for the role Morgan ended up with?

She definitively must've passed on Loni's part. They likely wrote the script once they had secured the talent tbh. These movies aren't exactly hard to write. I do agree Loni was an after-thought. I assume they must've been turned down by Dame Joan at least.

NBC Daytime is just falling apart at this point. Ouch.

I'd imagine that one advantage with DAYS' for actors is the amount of dark weeks since it allows them more time off to do other projects or just plain holidayin'. Considering the insane taping schedule when they do tape I'd think it's a trade-off essentially.