te.

I think people might confuse Tori dating Vincent Young (Noah) with Jamie Walters. Vincent was definitively hired for that fact while Jamie was seemingly hired because Aaron worked with him on the short-lived The Heights. Though, who knows? I don't really remember the rumor at the time, but Tori "dated" a lot of 90210 co-stars...

WHERE'S THE COKE KELLY?

I think the issue is that they wanted to "revamp" an old drama series and make it into something more suitable for the decade and the television landscape at the time; of course it just led to old viewers tuning out because they didn't recognize the product in front of them and few new viewers are going to tune into a tv show because it featured a grisly murder. I don't even think it's John Romano's fault per se - I think they hired him for a specific reason and probably gave CBS/Lorimar the show they thought they wanted.

Sultry Alice with her hair down.

I remember one of the early reviews of Melrose Place pointing this out - how it was okay for 16-year-old Brandon to learn about racism, but became down-right stupid to have 23-year-old Billy Campbell learn that racism bad. Melrose of course realised this - for whatever reason 90210 just didn't want to drop social issues storylines despite the fact that they were never that good at them at their peak and literally no one watched the show for them, much less in the waning years.

Yeah, I really think that the first 13 episodes before Darren Star was booted in favour of Camille Marchetta is a great prime time soap that only failed because it was on the wrong network. Had it been on Fox I feel it would've succeeded. But I think maybe pushing it to a generational saga with the Fairchilds at the front and center, maybe amp up the mystery what happened to Linda's husband (did Allen off him?), maybe instead of Nikki they could've had the woman Allen had an affair with be the older "unhip" former editor that got replaced by Stephanie at Communique. That would've expanded the older character's storyline a bit and maybe made it more appealing for the older audience, while still keeping youth appeal with Stephanie, Carrie, Peter, Mark, Alex etc. And of course, not airing it in the 8/9PM slot against the Fox soaps.

Yeah, the only one that came close was 2000 Malibu Road and they screwed that up by not securing the cast and crew into contracts and instead having to re-negotiate everything if they wanted more. In an ideal world they could've rushed out more episodes by midseason and put it in Knots's time slot away from the Fox soaps while they took a break to prepare for the series finale in March 1993. But then again, why they later didn't at least try to salvage Central Park West by moving it into the 10PM slot when Fox was doing everything to destroy it (airing a double season premiere of BH90210, airing Melrose's 100th episode etc) is beyond me.

The Spelling shows brought in ad dollars though - Beverly Hills and Melrose Place were regulars in the top ten of the A18-49 demo despite neither show making the top 40 in total viewers (#41 and #50 as the highest position respectively). Both shows also rated highly in the A18-34 demographic, even toward the end of their runs. Add in that CBS was a mess throughout the 90s until they landed the CSI franchise in 2000, it's not hard that they might've wanted at least a stable player like Knots on the air if it only was a bit cheaper.

I'd argue that 2000 Malibu Road and Angel Falls were also attempts by CBS to launch new prime time soaps to replace Knots. They seemed to have a lot of short attempts at prime time soaps in the 90s. Larry Hagman's Orleans was also a bit of an attempt to recapture that 80s audience.

Jill was justified!!!!

Absolutely. They were all meant to be dead up until the moment that Tom Horton's head scared Marlena out of the Horton house. I think the sequence where Marlena comes back and "kills" Alice is where the re-write started. It's almost as if you can see the switch in that episode.

Pretty much. I mean, Netflix went from pretty much renewing everything because they were still starting up to cancelling a bunch of shows within the first few weeks of their debut seasons. Likely the reason why they kept those early shows going was to build up their own content library, but now that they've done so they feel like they can cancel shows that aren't driving subscriptions to their standard.

I'd assume that's how it came about - I think this would've been filmed October-ish? Maybe we'll get high-quality Renée flashbacks so there's that I guess but considering the bust of the Stevano thing I'd just rather not.

To be fair - the ratings were really bad. The last episode had a 0.15 in the 18-49 demographic, which means it was almost adjusted down to 0.1 in the finals and even with the poor broadcast ratings these days ABC just can't let that stand. I hope it can somehow thrive on streaming as I personally enjoy it and like that it's a no frills prime time soap.

I don't know - most cut scenes seems to be "recap" ones. It makes me believe that they might film some extra scenes at the time that they sort of know they can cut in case the episode fall a bit short as to avoid having to go back and film "filler" dialogue scenes later.

To be fair, I don't think the brass had anything against the actress playing Linda on KL - I just think it was the changing tv landscape at the time, moving more into crime and "gritty" drama that made them do the ill-advised death. I agree though that it felt really off even watching it for the first time a few years ago - and this is the show that had Chip fall on a pitch fork!

Oh wow, I barely recognized Victoria Konefal without all the extensions put in. (Also, her Instagram is pearl-clutchingly racy)

Episode 13 functioned as a series finale with all loose ends tied up.

I hope it can somehow thrive on Hulu, but I'm not getting my hopes up and will just enjoy the six episodes that are left. I really enjoy that it's a fairly straight-forward prime time soap that's not necessarily trying to be clever. But maybe that's the issue in todays landscape where you have to have a twist? Featuring a largely latin cast and flashbacks isn't enough to capture people's attention.

I like the actress and I think if they'd play up the sibling rivalry between her an Abigail she could work on the canvas since siblings fighting is a soap staple. Oh wait...

There were a few HIV / AIDS storylines, particularly on the 90s soaps. Of course, Dallas didn't have any direct storyline about it but I do recall a scene in the later seasons where JR made a move on I believe Marilee Stone and presented a condom. Beverly Hills 90210 tackled the issue of course - first with a guest character (Stacy) that had a seminar revealing she has AIDS in the first season. Surprisingly, I believe they made a later season reference to her passing away. Val later had a HIV scare in season 8 (?) after a one night stand (of course), which turned out to be negative. Kelly also had a storyline when she worked at a hospice meeting a gay man with AIDS. In typical later season Kelly style she managed to be utterly unlikeable throughout. On Melrose Place you had a character who was an IV drug user and scam artist hook up with Jake in the early episodes - she later returns and reveals she had contracted HIV and gave Jo and Jake a scare. Jake promised to totally keep in touch with her but was never seen again. DoorMatt had a boyfriend Jeffrey (Jason Beghe) who was retired from the military after contracting HIV. He was so boring even DoorMatt couldn't stand being in the same storyline. Both shows had random "mind if you wear THIS" type of condom scenes.

Absolutely. It was like they decided that hero Bobby couldn't fall in love with some common harlot, so they changed April's character entirely and transplanted her original personality into Michelle (who seemed like she'd be more fit for Melrose Place, but maybe that's because she reminds me of Josie Bissett). It would've also been more interesting to see a more fiesty April deal with the events leading up to her untimely end.

Dynasty (and The Colby's) was honestly the worst with handling at handling the subject of rape. They really did treat it as a "sweeps" stunt where women got a bit weepy afterwards for a bit.

I think the issue for prime time soaps with issues like addiction, homosexuality or mental illness are that they're character arcs rather than something that can just come and go. Part of the difficulty is of course that a lot of these shows changed writers, but even if they didn't they still only planned the shows season-by-season. Early on in Falcon Crest it was implied that Julia was nibbling away at the bottle, but of course the production having issues with Abby Dalton on set and deciding to make her Carlo's killer, they just decided to make her garden-variety crazy instead.

I think the issue with giving an alcoholism storyline at that point is that they quickly had to have her develop it and then quickly "recover" when like most addictions it's something that takes years to come to a realisation that it's a problem at all, much less go sober. I thought Sue Ellen on Dallas and Alison on Melrose Place were decent attempts (for the genre that is, neither were kitchen sink realism) - Sue Ellen struggled with it for years before finally becoming sober (and even her relapse on NuDallas was among the better storylines they did). Alison's high-strung character being dealt blow after blow with the Keith drama, spiralling for a bit but at that point realised she had an issue with drinking too much (but didn't go sober) and then later completely losing it in season 3 felt like a logical long-term character arc for her.