te.

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.

I agree - as much as I adore Shannen, I don't think she's exactly innocent in all of this. Ultimately, I just don't think she's a team player - she skipped rehearsals because she thought it was more fun to stay out all night partying and besides that, she didn't need to rehearse, but didn't consider her partners in the scene who might've needed to. That's not great behavior and by all accounts people on set were actually the ones getting annoyed with her, while the writers/producers liked her because she acted what they had written. In that sense, I actually think SMG got done dirtier - by all accounts she showed up, did everything that was asked of her plus probably more due to all the action scenes and didn't complain. The worst thing she did was that she didn't make efforts to socialise outside the set and in hindsight we probably know the reason why.

To be fair, I rewatched the pilot of Charmed a few years ago and I thought it held up ok considering how much the television landscape has changed since then. Of course, a lot of the following episodes are monsters-of-the-week, so they wildly wary in quality but I remember liking seasons 1 thru 4 and stopped watching about halfway through season 5 because the Phoebe / Cole melodrama became too much. Then of course it seemed to completely go downhill the last few seasons (which the actresses themselves admit).

I really wonder what that poor writer made of the Salem Stalker storyline...

I guess it's confirmed who Craig's new beau is... (not that I ever doubted it)

Pretty sure it's Reasons and Stuff.

I loved Murder She Wrote as a kid and why wouldn't you? It was a great little show that managed to mix mystery, comedy and crime drama. I also enjoy PushingUpRoses (who is around my age) videos on MSW. To be fair, I'd say the biggest factor there is the fact that you can watch Murder, She Wrote in any order you please without becoming confused. That tends to be the strength of procedurals and comedies in syndication - with serialised dramas it's a lot harder to do that, especially as they aren't written like daytime soaps where they end up recapping a lot that's happened to reel in new viewers.

Shannen, ironically.

Yeah, they're setting up a murder mystery. I assume it'll kick in once the devil story is done.

Yeah, unfortunately Brash / Cwikly were too short-lived that we never really got to see where they were going with their storylines. Unfortunately, that was the start of the Higley Horror - she managed to run the show into the ground in a few short months that made them run to James E Reilly again... ETA: I read some of the recaps from Dena's first reign o' horrors and it was as bad as I remembered (March 7th-August 8th). Bo and Hope as bounty hunters! https://www.soapcentral.com/days-of-our-lives/recaps/2003/ Why they've gone back to her again and again is beyond me.

Robin Givens is an awful actress.

I don't think they needed a huge event as such - I think they needed to go where the viewers wanted them to go, which was properly do Pam versus JR and promo the [!@#$%^&*] out of their long-awaited feud and showdowns. It's like the re-tooling of Dynasty mid-season 6 - it was clunky as hell, but gave viewers what they wanted (Alexis, Blake and Krystle in a storyline together). I'm not sure people missed Bobby as much as the producers thought.

Oh, I agree. I don't think it would've somehow been well-written, especially as 90210 were moving into Melrose territory with fast-paced and bigger story arcs. I think it was probably better to just send Ray away, but Jamie Walters seemed to blame the show for effectively tanking his music career (though I don't really think his career trajectory would've been much different).

Honestly, most shows have some fall off from the premiere episode and in that respect falling 100k in viewers is minimal (not that it had much room to fall..). I'm worried though that ABC might end up pulling it if it gets too low as the ratings are pretty horrendous.

Well, I really enjoy it. It's very much an old school prime time soap though and I do wonder if that's just not a strong enough premise anymore. But oh well, I'll watch as long as it airs.

That and not going properly into Pam vs JR in the dream season. It's pretty much what the majority of the viewers wanted/expected. Yet, it was a bust because they just didn't want to write Pam as a strong female character and brought in the slightly bizarre Angelica Nero.