te.

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

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...

Denise Alexander (Susan) is in the August 1966 batch of the episodes uploaded. I can definitively see now why she had such an impact with the audience and the early years of the show. I'm surprised that she never resurfaced on the show.

It's nice to have seen what I gather is the first big "week" in DAYS history - ie Tony breaking it off with Marie and her attempting suicide. It's frustrating to know that Sony is sitting on all this material and not allowing it to be released even if Corday wanted it to be.

I made a playlist of those recently uploaded clips in airing date order: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZ5NXpr_PzNjvtUPu9kC2JSJ2QRWG4zMW I expect the channel to be nuked before I have a chance to go through them all though.

The Colby's did originally have Dynasty II: The Colby's in the title. Apparently one of the suggestions was originally to have Dynasty air two times a week with focus on different sets of characters (at least I'd assume that Joan, John and Linda wouldn't have agreed to a schedule forcing them to film twice as much). It might've worked considering how many amazing characters they had that went underused like Dominique and Caress. The original suggested title for Beverly Hills 90210 was Class of Beverly Hills (which ended up being the pilot title). In hindsight, nothing having the word "class" probably helped them transition out of school eventually.

It seems so insane now to put a youth oriented show on Saturdays, but I guess NBC really wanted to try out something new since it initially replaced JAG in the timeslot (which of course ended up being cancelled and moving to CBS). They also later tried Freak and Geeks in the Saturday 8PM slot before giving programming up Saturdays up in 2000.

I imagine it was like early Beverly Hills 90210 and Melrose Place with episodic plots - from what I can gather the series starts with Robin Lively's character applying to the school to get with her boyfriend (I believe that was Matthew Fox) at college. The episode announcer said that in the episode that I recorded a part of that she and her boyfriend were secretly moving in together. It also makes it sound like their relationship is the "main" storyline that stretches out during the series.

Seems like Part I & II have the same ending credits so managed to capture this clearer image without a subtitle blocking the bottom of the screen:

Here's screen caps from the ending credits in Part II: