te.

It honestly seems like CBS nixing the nazi treasure storyline really just gave an incredible blow to the show which it never recovered fully from. This start-and-stop storylines really culminates in season 7 when Freilich seemingly can't expand a storyline beyond three episodes; Maggie's supposed "alcoholism" being a prime example. She basically becomes a full-blown alcoholic overnight and then recovers just as quickly.

I've been pretty sure Stacey has been wearing a wig for a while now. I assume she might not want to have the long blonde Kristen hair herself, while the show seemingly thinks that's how the character should look.

It's ridiculous to put anything on a single character - it's more that they tried to revamp the show in season 8 to make it more grounded and when that didn't work they once again brought in a new team in season 9 that also had to deal with major budget cuts because of the ratings falling off. I do love season 9 though, even if it should've been called "Falcon Crest: The New Generation" and sold as a spin-off. Genele cracks me up.

I actually love Rachel - she's such a spoiled brat that I'm looking forward to her teenage years.

Actually, CWs app supposedly had more cleaned up episodes for a while, but for some reason they haven't put those up again. I never watched those myself, so can't verify, but it would be odd that they haven't put those up elsewhere again.

I don't think they exactly "knew" from the start, even if you argue writing's was on the wall. Shows back then weren't given final seasons - they were produced to go on indefinitively and it likely wasn't until Jacobs & co sat down and talked with CBS late in the season that they realised that there would've been even further cuts for a 15th season, so they decided to end it. I assume that's why there was a bit of a gap between the 17th episode and the final two.

Have they defined Dmitri's sexuality yet? Peter Porte's gay so I guess Ron could re-heat the old "obsessed DiMera" trope and have him either constantly kidnap either Andrew or Paul 😅

It's odd how many DiMera's are currently on the rooster to be honest - to the point it might be time to clear out some of them as I don't think we need as many of them as there currently are.

I kind of assumed that Beyoncé and Jay-Z are going to tear down the house and only bought it due to the location. Maybe it's the those early Tina-designed Destiny's Child outfits that skewers my opinion, but I've never taken Beyoncé for the minimalist type.

Oh poop. I just started re-watching Knots about two months ago and am at the end of season 3, but if it's coming in better versions than the terrible tv rips I might as well pause if it's coming soon? Is there a timeline to this?

I mean, she admitted herself that shooting a scene like that previously was really hard work and by all accounts the Dallas' actors actually hated doing those scenes for the exact reasons she stated. Still, making a good show isn't all about comfort and I agree - the dinner scenes, breakfast scenes and drinks in the living room were severely missed. I guess you could argue that the Ewing family was fractured at that point, but if that was the case the show would've been about bringing everyone back into the fold.

Surprised she's not Paulina's sister.

I'm not really sure if I'd call Mimi a "lead" character though; yes, she became a main character but she was clearly always kind of pushed aside imho.

I'd like to believe that both DiMera and Kiriakis Enterprises are businesses, where people can do business thingz, like drinking coffee, black. Yell at an assistant - wait we don't have the budget for that. But they have meetings in a tiny board room and sit in the lone office at times. They also shuffle papers. Yaaaay! Business thingz.

To be honest, I think she was more hired on the basis of Cane, which was pretty much compared to Dallas when it debuted and seen as a bit of a victim of the 2007-08 writers strike. I thought that show was pretty good and works as a mini-series type of deal. I think the biggest issue with TNTDallas was that they never quite figured out what it would be and I get the feeling TNT might've been pushing it into the crime drama direction; as much as Cidre might be blamed for some decisions that went wrong, it's easy to forget that she's not the only one making decisions. (Personally, I'll never get why they cast the wooden wonder Jesse Metcalfe as Christopher - their biggest mistake as he was never going to be able to be the second lead.)

It was by all accounts going to be a is-he-or-isn't-he-Jock story, so they basically rescued it from the dream season. And yes, Jamie was always meant to be dead, Sue Ellen was going to end up in a wheelchair due to the explosion. There were claims that Mark was going to be found dead in the shower, but by all accounts by the actors no such scene was filmed and the scene where Victoria wakes up and finds Bobby there was of course just filmed with Victoria on the set (not knowing why she did it apparently as Patrick shot his scene separately). But overall, I don't think they had done much plotting for the next season before Patrick agreed to come back. Going by interviews, these prime time soaps rarely had huge plans on how to resolve what happened in the cliffhangers since a lot would depend on contracts etc.

Well, I guess we can assume Kristen and Brady gets in freaky word play in the bedroom.

I think a huge issue is that they're writing her one way, but at the same time MM plays it a whole other way - she's comes across very "cold" when she acts and I suspect they're writing her to be "warmer" than MM is. I just wish they'd either lean into MM's acting style when writing for her or just re-cast.

To be fair, he was - he was only 12 years older than her, plus Adam was supposed to be around 25, not 37 like Gordon.

PSM was on top of everything having health issues with stress and had her hair start falling out (which is why she wears obvious hair pieces). I don't think anyone can blame someone for prioritising their health over staying on the #1 show, especially since she was apparently also unhappy with the direction they were pulling Fallon in. I also think it says a lot about her that they kept asking her to come back but she turned them down, even as late as season 9.

When Dallas first started I believe Larry Hagman talked about how everyone was really rotten in that family and that's certainly the outline that the novel seemingly follows - of course, being 1970s network television they probably couldn't go as far with that concept, but I actually imagine that they're closer to Jacob's original vision for the show.

IMHO, Santa Barbara is typical of a show that really doesn't need a reboot and people would probably be better off creating a show that's similar instead. There's not really a strong "hook" that would be enough to reboot, ie Dark Shadows being a gothic soap opera with a vampire (and horror movie tropes) or like Edge of Night being a soap version of Perry Mason.

To be honest, I think that the biggest issue with some of the actors were that they were just bland, didn't stand out and didn't manage to convey anything deeper than what was written on page; Cole's first wife that died in the plane crash comes to mind. She was actually on the show for a while (34 episodes!) yet leaves no real mark once she dies. Another one I took note of is Melissa's cousin, Robin, who becomes pregnant with Cole's child, but because the actress gives nothing aside what's written on paper to the role you can't ever figure out (or care) about her motives (in my notes I wrote that I wanted a Laura Leighton-type of actress for this one, or at least someone who could go head-to-head with Ana Alicia).

Well, yes and no, I mean they invented Leslie to replace her because they stupidly fired Oxenburg over a salary dispute and Cellini ended up being the proto-Charity Rahmer; so they pretended she didn't exist about half a season before they got Fallon back. But I think her creation just shows the issue with creating a soap centered around families - once actors / actresses leave you're either stuck with recasting (which rarely works well in prime time) or creating a new unknown child or introducing never-seen-before cousins (which rarely has the same stakes as an actual child / sibling) and there's only so many times you can pull that before completely stretching the credibility on shows. I think that's why shows like Peyton Place and Knots Landing had easier times to re-invent themselves (and in theory Melrose Place should've had if they had left it in competent hands post-Darren Star leaving) - you can just have people move in without having to give them a convulted backstory to justify them being on the show. I do laugh at the notion that Michael Culhane was the one that seduced poor innocent Fallon. I know we can probably take it as Blake having rose-coloured glasses when it comes to his darling daughter (who slept with his entire football team), but I think the writers were seriously re-writing history here because it fits with how Fallon had started being written as at that point.

The dumbest thing about it was that they then pretended Amanda just didn't exist. Like, I get soaps don't necessarily like to mention characters that are off screen too much, but I'm pretty sure in season 8 there were references about how all their children (Adam, Fallon and Steven) were there. Amanda who? What's an Amanda? That was definitively something that Joan added in herself - apparently the same thing as calling Caress "Cassandra" and Sable "Sybil". Apparently Joan thought the names were stupid and obviously not something that someone would name their children, so I guess the implication was that they took these fake names to fit in.