te.

The biggest issue with Laura's story is obvious - she's acting so nuts at this point that it requires most of the cast to play stupid. Only Jordan and Marie seem to be acting with a sense of logic; at least they are trying with Marlena still reeling from being stuck in Bayview herself. As has been said, if it actually was playing out like a black comedy it might've worked, but it's obviously meant to be taken seriously but the writing of the other characters reactions to Laura's actions doesn't reflect that.

I liked her on both Peyton Place and Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, but I was wondering more about her daytime stints since her time on DAYS seem mostly like a train wreck.

It's funny because having recently watching Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman and currently watching Peyton Place I sort of recognize the pacing from those shows - of course, Mary Hartman was a satire so they didn't need to go too much into the ramifications of characters actions and Peyton Place aired 2-3 times a week in prime time so they needed to pace it up a bit. For a daytime soap, here tempo makes little sense though. Was she actually successful on shows like General Hospital, Search for Tomorrow and Love Is a Many Splendored Thing and this break-neck speed is something she picked up from doing Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman or was she always such an erratic fast-paced writer?

Ron has posted the original Halloween episode that got cancelled this year:

Yup, in hindsight it probably killed both characters as long-term decade players (though I guess Mike did become one, but never could grow into a well-defined player because of the messy history) as it made both their and their parents history confusing. It's not often you get to say that later DAYS handled things better, but I do think they did handle it better with Will and that's what should've happened with Julie / David at least - age him up slightly if need to be, but don't necessarily make it age her. 2-3 years ok for storyline and child casting reasons, but not more. The worst thing that happened when they aged Will slightly was that they got closer to Sweeny's own age, so it wasn't noticable. And as you said - if they wanted a teen cast they could've brought in other Hortons plus just invented some characters to people like Maggie.

Yes, and it's worth to remember that Julie was 16 in 1965, so she should've been in her mid-20s when her now adult 18-year-old son was introduced. For comparison, it would've been like rapidly aging up Will to 18 in the early 2000s which of course would've aged up Sami as a result. It would've been incredibly short-sighted and would've drained years of story for Sami. I guess that's what they ended up trying to "correct" with Mike in the 80s by de-aging him, but the damage seemed done at that point and Bill / Laura were just off the canvas either way so it just became... even odder. Mike suddenly had a past that's just weird to talk about because it's practically impossible to reconcile any sort of time line.

Honestly, part of me just wonders if the SORAS'd Mike Horton in the 70s ever worked - nothing against Wes Eure etc, but it always felt like such a rushed thing that made it hard to write for him and the parents. Maybe it's my own bias against doing the drastic SORAS (as you can end up with weird Brady / step mother Kristen pairings), but it always felt ill-advised to do that so soon with Mike as it aged the entire Mikey / Laura / Bill crew considerably in advance. I guess I just prefer the Will / Carrie type of aging where it sort of happens in real time with slight jumps in age as the show moves on.

Awkward since Weiss's and Cirtchlow's Mike's were basically de-aged by a decade and it doesn't make sense timeline wise. Ironically, I guess Mike Horton is actually closer to his birthage on the show due to the constant adjustments to his age. I guess pairing him with Carrie in the 90s also made him seem a bit younger due to Carrie technically being somewhere in her 20s back then.

I've been really impressed with how much ratings info that TVTango contains - as an example they have most of the ratings for Second Chances / Hotel Malibu: http://www.tvtango.com/series/second_chances/episodes http://www.tvtango.com/series/hotel_malibu/episodes It really does seem like it had some momentum and its comeback as Hotel Malibu actually scored the highest rated episode of both series. Of course, it seemed to die off towards the six episode run, but I'm always dubious about when people claim these things. Models, Inc also seemed to garner some momentum towards the end of its run when it was placed with Melrose Place, but I guess at that point it still lost too much of the mothership's audience; the finale didn't do too badly considering it was placed with a weaker lead-in (Road to Fame... special) and had just been at a low of 5.2 a few weeks earlier: http://www.tvtango.com/series/models_inc/episodes

It's one of those details where you wonder if it's bad writing on their part or if it's something they came up with post-pilot.

Not sure if this is properly clarified in the pilot, but they're siblings and it's not a secret on the show to any of the characters. Maybe it wasn't made clear in the pilot. I will admit that the recap sections of the episodes are fun, because they made the episodes start with the legitimate son's wife do a prayer where she sums of the mess.

The first three episodes are on Hulu and I'll say that I liked episodes 2 and 3 better than the pilot.

It was... fairly predictable. I guess ok pilot, but I could see all those twists coming a mile away; I assumed they'd keep that final one for the season finale though. Could be a fun ride though for the next few months. I assume it has to overperform for Fox to renew it as they seemed dissatisfied with it enough to originally keep it until the end of the season.

Yes, I mean, the initial plot of the show was Meg running around looking for her internet buddy, so of course they had one.

Yup. While I think her original sentence was BS, so is this one. She did her time and hasn't done anything to violate her parole.

I think there were ways to "force" more interactions with certain characters - like Caitlin could've gone to school with some of the characters in her age group, certainly one of the Surf Central gang at least. Vanessa could've been more of a scandal/tabloid reporter, giving her a reason to interact with the wealthy Richards', certainly cover stuff like the Derek saga, she could've written a story about Maria giving her an in to interact more with Meg / the Torres family etc etc. Granted, maybe some of this stuff did happen - I only have the broadest sense of what happened on the show as I haven't really watched it since it aired except for an episode here and there. Either way, more could've been done with the interactions I think, but I also think it was missing that central hub where all characters from all backgrounds could bump into each other.

Ok, I ended up binging and I will say that I love the final episode of Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman. That final scene was fantastic.

I'm closing in on the final two weeks of the show and I think I've put my finger on what's the difference - season one had such a grip on where Mary would end up by the end of the season that everything seemed focused towards that. Season 2 has been a bit all over the place with some good plots and some not so great ones - the difference is that those not-so-great plots ended up dragging out because they were probably faced with the reality with producing a five-days-a-week show for nine months per year. Ironically, it feels like with Mary's exit arc that's been going on for the past few weeks has been the best the show has been since season one; mostly because they have a clear direction again. I wouldn't not recommend watching season 2 - it's not bad at all and has a lot of funny and soapy moments, but when you hit such highs in season one it just becomes a bit of a disappointment.

True. I think that could've been solved to have more of them live on that beach front walk where Ben and Annie (/Bette) lived and have locations such as Elaine's pancake house closer in proximity. Ultimately, there didn't seem to be a central "hub" where the characters could naturally intersect with each other like the square in Peyton Place as an example; it never seemed very natural for let's say the Richards to head to the Elaine's pancake hut and of course older characters hanging out in Ben's club wouldn't have been very natural either.

IIRC, they wanted to keep Virginia on in a recurring capacity, but the actress didn't want to sign such a contract. I imagine they wrote Elaine off because they figured that Meg's mom could fill the same role and at the same time adding more family to the soap. Plus, I don't think Leigh Taylor-Young came that cheap either.

It sounds like it was something some internet user dreamed up rather than a real project.

I'll say that I feel the show started picking up again after falling into a bit of a funk with Mary in the mental hospital. I'm enjoying yet *another* one of Mary's neighbours having topical issues.

Yeah, I can't quite put my finger on it, but there's something that's a bit off - maybe because season/cycle 1 was so focused towards getting Mary to that breakdown point and cycle/season 2 just doesn't seem to have that focus? ETA: I'm at the episodes where Gore Vidal stars.

Honestly, episode 130 is one of the best episodes of television I've seen - it's not only like a blow-out for every arc that's happened so far, but it's also a tour de force of Louise Lasser. No wonder people thought she was going insane. About 15 episodes into "cycle"/season 2 and something's a bit amiss. Not bad, but not as great as episodes 1-130.

I'm about at the end of the first "cycle" of episodes (1-130) and Mary's obviously going insane and at the same time being appointed The American Housewife Consumer (or something like that), Tom's an alcoholic, they have gay neighbors, Mary's mom an indian and Loretta's in some super religious group. It's a shame they've never released Forever Fernwood - ideally they would do a bundle of Forever Fernwood, Fernwood 2-Nite and America 2-Nite in a boxset, but I doubt the MH2 boxset sold well enough to justify the costs...