DeliaIrisFan

One thing I couldn't tell from the ratings while watching on YouTube was which week(s) in September/October those reruns of all the murder episodes aired. Am I missing something or was there not a significant decline in ratings during that period? And does anyone who watched at the time remember what those reruns were about? One of the comments on YouTube when the Loving murders were first posted said something about the sets(?) for The City not being ready yet so they had to stretch the conclusion out, but that seems unprecedented for the time—although perhaps a precursor to "A Daytime to Remember" when The City(?) was canceled a few years later. But the strategy with Loving was to air episodes only a few months old of a show that, well, had been canceled due to low ratings, which seems...daring. They also didn't seem to make a point of specifying when new episodes would resume, whereas I still remember Reba M talking about the debut of Port Charles nonstop. Although I didn't watch the full Loving reruns, just skipped around trying to catch "Stacey's" cute/cheesy cameos, so maybe I missed the announcements. Nancy Addison Altman's Debra was one character I don't understand why she wasn't a bigger part of the story. Nearly everyone else in town was a suspect at one point—including, literally, the butler—whereas one of the victims was her ex and two of the others were her in-laws, and nobody ever even questioned her, I don't think. Even after that amazing scene with Clay's corpse falling on her, thereby revealing to a cop that she was hiding behind his coffin for some reason, there was no follow-up. To my point earlier, though, I can see the (cynical) logic in not giving someone like NAA more to do at that time. I am (now) definitely not the age they were clearly targeting and, even with what little she had to do in these months, the idea of Debra enjoying her newfound wealth at the Alden mansion with the ghosts of her recently murdered former in-laws seemed way more entertaining to me than the stories they were foreshadowing on The City...

Well I can't argue with that. Actually, as thrilled as I was that the Loving murders returned to YouTube so I could get to see those last couple of episodes that I hadn't gotten to when they disappeared, the finale was a bit underwhelming compared to the murder story. And reading your post right after I watched them was timely, because "rushed damp noodle" perfectly described the swan songs several of the surviving characters who did not move over to The City got. Angie/Jacob/Lorraine/Charles were the only really interesting part, and of course Angie and Jacob were the last two to leave town for The City. In a way I would have rather seen Kate and/or Debra snap and kill their progeny (who were effectively abandoning them) than the contrived closure they got. I do want to emphasize I wasn't suggesting the network/writers/producers should have used the last months of Loving to backdoor-pilot The City. I was just surprised they invested so much energy (and promotion) into a story that was the opposite of that, for all its flaws. I agree it would be a delicate balance not to alienate Loving fans, but I'm not sure TPTB were expecting those viewers to keep watching...or cared if they did.

I wondered about the timing, not only in relation to Deidre Hall's story, but also (one of?) Erika Slezak's most definitive personality stories. Gwyneth was clearly Loving's counterpart to Viki. How long before this story did Gwyn become a "psychologist" (her training/credentialing seemed vague)? At times, it seemed like Loving was emulating both of those stories at once. For that matter, had Gwyn's paternity been a plot point before this that they decided to tie up at the end? Gwyn being confronted by her long-lost father just after reuniting with her long-lost, amnesiac daughter was a bit much. I had no idea Larry Haines played such a pivotal role in Loving's last episodes, but he too was very moving in these episodes. Given the multiple assisted suicide plot threads, I was expecting/hoping for a scene with Neil and Steffi before the end. Maybe that happened...I was still two episodes from the end?

I was two episodes away from the end of Loving. I never watched the show when it was on and honestly didn't have the highest opinion of it—and I am no fan of Esensten and Brown's writing—but I had always been somewhat fascinated by the idea that a soap deliberately killed off its core family on the way out the door, so I wanted to check this out. At first it was easier for me to keep watching to see how they pulled it off than it probably would have been on a show I actually cared about, and it's not like I'm going out much these days, so I kept watching. But I admittedly got hooked. Christine Tudor Newman (and others) made it work and actually made me care—cynical and Loving-averse though I may be, I have to admit I got tears watching Gwyneth's final scene. ("It hurts so much more when there's hope!") However, I can't quite agree that the story holds up—psychologically, among other things. And I struggle with the fact that some of the same problematic elements of he B-plots, like Laura Wright's character falsely accusing Ted King's of rape, and that always seemed to be a part of E&B's repertoire were baked into the murder mystery as well. Beyond the fact that I would be horrified if this story had happened on a soap I had watched with cast members/characters I was invested in, I still found myself wondering—even if I accepted what the network and writers were trying to do and their assumptions about the audience they were clearly seeking—what they were thinking. They obviously wanted a younger demographic for the new/revamped show, whom they assumed would want to watch a cast closer to their age, so why did they think that prospective audience would care about all the olds being killed off? Why waste all that airtime (during summer vacation) and all the money on those stylized promos, etc.? And even if the serial killer story had actually boosted ratings (with any demographic), would they really have stuck around? I definitely checked out The City a few times to see what all the publicity was about, and from what I recall it was so different tonally from Loving at the end that it's hard to imagine someone who only got drawn in at the end continuing. It also seemed like the characters who would go on to be featured on The City were at best supporting players in the murder mystery—if I'm not mistaken, the only one to make the transition to The City whose character was particularly affected by the murders was Amelia Heinle, and if memory serves she didn't even stay long. (I know LW's character was almost a victim of the serial killer, but that was like the same week of the aforementioned rape allegation and her child being stuck in a cave and almost dying, so she didn't seem particularly fazed by it.) From a business perspective, why not just leave the Aldens in Corinth with a few happy endings that didn't take up a great deal of airtime and use those last months to focus solely on the characters who would be featured on the new show? Not to mention, from what I remember the stories on The City, especially at the beginning, were so flimsy that it seems like it would have been a letdown for audiences of any age after what was at least an umbrella story that was planned months in advance and had such high stakes. Although that was certainly true for most soaps circa 1996. I was waiting to post this until I finished the show's run and possibly even watched the first few episodes of The City because I'm admittedly ignorant, and I really don't mean to seem like I'm sh!tt!ng on show(s) I never really watched in a forum meant for their fans. Did I miss the point? Could this setup for revamping Loving into The City possibly have paid off, at least the way TPTB intended? It's also mind-boggling that they went to all this trouble and pulled the plug less than a year later, but that was also a problem for more and more of these shows heading into the late '90s...and of course it only got worse.

PS: On that note, I meant to post this back when I first saw the pic from that mini-cast reunion to toast Carmen Duncan's memory...I just looooove knowing that she and Anna Stuart were friendly IRL. Iris and Donna never got to fight over anything important enough to become a truly iconic rivalry, but they sure gave it their all and were both so amazing. I like to think they had lots of fun off-screen.

Did Amy Carlson's Josie have many scenes with Carmen Duncan's Iris? They couldn't have overlapped even for a year, so I was a little surprised when I saw Amy in the photo Linda Dano posted from Carmen's "memorial." I initially assumed they shared a dressing room or something and thought it was lovely that they stayed in touch over the years, but then I was even more surprised when Amy commented on the reunion video on how different Carmen was from her character (not that Carmen was unlike Iris, but that Amy would have known one way or the other). I seem to vaguely recall Iris appearing for a nanosecond in a promo for Josie's return at some formal/masquerade party. Years later, I remember seeing the Snowflake Ball scenes for the first time on SoapNet, and wishing that Iris/Josie dynamic had continued when Josie returned in the form of AC...until I saw Josie's behavior with Iris and Lucas later on in that arc, and was not so disappointed they dropped that.

Thanks, @SFK! I have just gotten up to Buzz's debut in 1993 on YouTube. I had never seen his very first episodes and in some ways I was dreading them even more than Maureen's death. I did like his character back in the '90s and remember enjoying him with FH's Jenna, but I had heard that his fake accent, etc. made for a bumpy start. I also anticipated that I would not be able to separate what played out on-screen from what I have since read of the backstage dynamics, i.e., the initial decision to kill Maureen was meant to free up money in the budget to hire a soap veteran. (Whatever else, I will say again they should have taken another look at that budget after Beverlee McKinsey quit...and they probably would have found the money.) Buzz's intro has been...pretty much as I expected, although it's not making me hate everything surrounding him as I feared. One thing I have to point out, though, that I've never heard before: Justin Deas's first (full) episode was like a reunion of Phelps's so-called "Friends of Jill" that defied the time-space continuum. The actress who had a bit part as the woman Buzz was living with (before he learned Nadine was married to an oil magnate and took off to bilk money from her) looked vaguely familiar to me, so I looked her up on IMDB. JFP would go on to hire her as a love interest of Tim Gibbs's character on Another World, although the character lasted a few months before being murdered by the same serial killer who killed Frankie Frame. And, the actor who played said serial killer was also credited as a guest star in this very same episode of GL (playing the DA who replaced Ross after he resigned to be a senator). I suspect the part of Buzz's love interest was written as a woman of a certain age — it was insinuated that he met her while she was working at a VA hospital when he first came home from Vietnam — but the actress was clearly much younger than that backstory would suggest...

I am just about a year behind in those early '90s episodes on YouTube - well, slightly less now, after I binged the episodes surrounding Maureen's death today. All of the cast turnover in 1992 had definitely taken its toll, although unlike some on this board, I always loved Liz Keifer as Blake and have enjoyed seeing her first months on the show. I know Ellen Parker's departure will only add to the bleeding of talent, but I must admit I'm also glad to get to see a year or so with Nancy Curlee back at the helm of the writing team. Watching full episodes now, I can totally see why Beverlee McKinsey singled Curlee out with praise in her exit interview. There was plenty of high-stakes drama as 1992 drew to a close - and I am inclined to credit Stephen Demorest, Lorraine Broderick, and Wisner Washam, not to mention the dialogue writers for staying (mostly) true to the overall tone that Curlee and Co. had previously set. But the intelligence in the writing declined noticeably throughout the year that Curlee was gone, while cliched soap opera plot devices and glimpses of the kind of misogyny I have come to associate with several of their collaborators in the decades since were cropping up more and more in the writing. The 1991 episodes were just sooo much better, IMO, and despite the loss of some major talent while Curlee was on leave, I recall there is a lot of good stuff still to come in 1993. Speaking of the writing credits, I started Googling Bill Elverman, who was credited with the other dialogue writers, several months ago. I was intrigued by several of the episodes he scripted (including the Alex/Mindy hair-pulling episode, and several others with strong material for Vanessa, Maureen, etc.) and didn't recognize his name from other work in the soap biz. He was on the writing team for at least a year, apparently right up until he died in 1992 - of AIDS, at 40 years old. He wrote an off-Broadway play that was reviewed by Frank Rich in the New York Times (not favorably, but this was a good ten years before his work on GL and I tend to think he honed his craft in the interim), as well as several other plays that sound interesting - what a loss. The recent discussion in this thread of Beverlee McKinsey doing a cameo on GH to keep her union insurance makes me wonder (hope) that someone working at GL helped Elverman get some work that would ensure he had coverage.

I have now watched all of Ellen Holly's interview, and I'm in awe. It is daytime's — and viewers' — loss that this remarkable woman and actress was not on OLTL and/or another soap up until the very last episode, but it's pretty clear the industry didn't deserve her in the first place. And just about every step forward that any of these shows has taken since then in terms of diversity or social relevance was ultimately wiped away, just like Carla's legacy on OLTL. I'm so glad Holly is alive and well (and clearly still well-versed in the details of everything that happened to her) so that she could say her peace and have it captured for posterity. The Rauch stuff is of course the most outrageous; while much of it has been printed before, it was still powerful to get to see and hear her tell her story in her own words. But the parts about Agnes Nixon and other sometime-allies were most revealing. There was clearly a ton of blame to go around, and a lot to chew on for white people such as myself who like to tell ourselves we try to do better. I will be thinking about EH's words for a long time to come.

I don't think it's quite fair to say that the writers intentionally had Delia (or any character on RH, really) stagnate/regress to generate plot for other characters. And I completely disagree with the notion that Ilene intentionally played against the scripts to keep Delia from growing. On the contrary, she was reportedly exhausted from playing Delia as she was originally written — she has said in print that was why she left the first time. But, yes, when she was playing Delia, Ilene went all in, including when the character went to some ugly places. Love her or hate her, to me Ilene's indelible mark on the role was largely what set the character apart from countless other soap villainesses. As far as the writing, I would say that RH — at its best — was more focused on characters evolving and changing than just about any other soap opera in history. In the first few years of the show, it seemed clear that Delia was doomed to eventually alienate the Ryans and have to stand on her own, and there were hints that she would be able to survive — thrive — without them. I think getting her to that place was treated as at least as important as the havoc she caused for everyone else along the way, and as far I'm concerned they delivered the payoff. That said, aside from jarring recasts and/or network pressure, I think Delia and other characters on RH tended to evolve while maintaining some core of who they essentially were as characters. And yes, when the new lives they had built for themselves were threatened, they sometimes regressed back to some of the bad habits they thought they had outgrown. How very human... To me, though, Randall Edwards was one of those jarring recasts. Unlike some of the others, she was a good actress, with lots of charisma and screen presence, and often one of the brights spot during her time on the show, but I had to accept that she was essentially playing a different character. Not only was it impossible for me to believe that her Delia had done some of the worst things in the character's past, but I never bought that she even grew up in New York let alone in abject poverty, with no exposure to much of anything that she could aspire to beyond what the Ryans and Coleridges had. Delia discovering a knack for commodities and (later) running an upscale but niche boutique as she became more worldly were plausible enough, but owning (a thinly veiled version of) the Tavern on the Green, the premier restaurant in NY? This wasn't the Mona Lisa in Oakdale — I never believed the real upper crust of NY high society would have dined in Delia's establishment, or that she ever would have wanted to spend her time sucking up to people 100 times more snobbish than the Coleridge sisters at their worst. When Ilene reprised the role and the shows' creators returned with a (short-lived) mandate to bring the show back to basics, I think there was a certain logic in having Delia lose everything and seek solace from the Ryans, and temporarily get caught up in old patterns. But based on everything that's available of 1983 on YouTube, this didn't actually move anyone else's stories forward — by this time, Frank and Jill were facing an even bigger threat. Delia having Frank on the brain again at this time actually led to one of my all-time favorite scenes of hers, though, when she first met Charlotte Greer — who knew all about Delia's (legitimate) grievances against Frank and appeared to be pushing all the right buttons in an attempt to get Delia to believe that Frank had also married and jilted Charlotte. Lo and behold, though, Delia saw right through Charlotte. She also seemed to see something of herself and the toxic obsession that she had where the Ryans were concerned for so long, and was visibly horrified; not long after that, she gave up the ghost where Frank was concerned. Alas, this coincided with Ilene's illness and what has been reported about the networks' desire to push her out because of that, so very soon thereafter she just faded into the background. But I really doubt that was the intention on the writers' part, let alone the actress's. Fortunately, Ilene came back again and the show mostly did right by Delia by the time it wrapped.

I don't think the revelation that Sharlene had been abused was generic, per se — I don't know that too many other shows had gone there by that time and, if I'm not mistaken, Sharlene's story was probably the first time the issue of child trafficking was addressed on a soap. But generic is a perfect description of virtually everything that came afterward. Of course, Sharlene's abuse resulted in a split personality, and of course the psychiatrist she visited to treat that became obsessed with Sharlene's husband, and then she was presumed dead when the psychiatrist tried to killer her and the trauma from that resulted in a whole new personality...

I thought Matt and Donna were great together. (That was also just about the only time I had much use for Matt's character, incidentally.) Anna Stuart is a treasure and still imbued Donna with such vitality...she had been through so much and deserved a man who could keep up with her. Watching the reruns on SoapNet many years later, it was clear that Swajeski could tell a story that had momentum and ultimately led somewhere, although Sharlene's personalities was one of many, especially as her tenure went on, that I found too cliche-ridden. The biggest problem with Swajeski, from my perspective, was that she could seemingly manage only one three-dimensional female lead organically growing and evolving as a character at a time (usually she was played by Anne Heche). Nearly everyone else acted solely to move the plot forward. After Swajeski left, there was some lovely, character-driven material for Donna, Rachel, Felicia, etc., who had all foundered under Swajeski. Iris's relationship with Steve Fletcher's character was an attempt at this, and on paper it should have worked because both actors were so talented. However, the show was seemingly so desperate for an engaging narrative that by this point they were dusting off Swajeski's old stories, e.g., Sharly and Evan Bates. I will never understand why Lorraine Broderick, who had more experience than head writer Peggy Sloane, was playing second fiddle to her at this time. I am certain if it were an equal head writing partnership, Broderick would have at least developed some big umbrella story to complement the quieter material some actresses were finally getting to play. Other than Matt in a towel, about the only good things in this episode were Iris's decanter and creamsicle suit. I remember that outfit...in hindsight, probably a knockoff Chanel, but still fabulous and totally apropos of its time. I hated how this story ended for Iris, and the OJ Simpson trial playing out in real life at the same time only underscored how poorly researched her (fictional) legal troubles were, but on the plus side we got to see more of Iris and her still decadent lifestyle that summer than we had in years. Once Iris was gone that fall, the show started going darker and darker, and Carmen Duncan's Iris being discarded and never heard from again proved to be the canary in the coalmine. Characters/actors over 40 who had been there for any number of years were increasingly treated as disposable over the next five years.

I'm way behind on these 1991-92 episodes, but I have really liked what I've seen of Samantha so far — I barely remember her from what I saw in the '90s — and it occurs to me that Sam could have easily stuck around and played Julie's role in the "youth" story. And it would have been much richer: Ross's history with Roger went back much further than Mallet's, and it would have been way more interesting to see him grapple with his ward dating Roger's son than Mallet raging. Of course, Sam was established as an adult by this time and I couldn't see Ross "forbidding" her to see Hart even if he could legally stop her, but there were other, subtler ways that Ross's objections could have caused friction. Really, the whole dynamic with Hart would have been different for Sam vs. Julie, but I dare say I wouldn't have missed the whole naive ingenue angle. This also would have directly linked the younger crowd to the Jean Wetherill mystery, etc. And, Sam had a history with Dylan that would have added some more texture a bit further down the road.

Awww...Leslie Charleson was the subject of a question on tonight's episode of Jeopardy. ("Leslie Charleson has played a doctor on this show for 40 years.")

ABC had just bought the show, and their other soaps were enjoying record ratings featuring characters/stories that were not very Ryan's Hope-esque. They seemed to be pushing the types of things that worked on those shows onto RH. Also, co-creator Claire Labine said in interviews later on that she was burnt out at this point, and in hindsight wished she had told ABC she wanted to take a year off. However, she was afraid they would further upend the core of the show in her absence to make it more consistent with the rest of their lineup...and later in the decade the network demonstrated that her fears were not unjustified. It sounds like it was a vicious cycle. From what I remember of Barry on the SoapNet run, he didn't bother me, but he wasn't exactly a classic, beloved character, either - in fact, I barely remember some of his stories. Honestly, the only thing I recall about his wife was that I read at the time those episodes were reaired that she was played by the actress who had sung "Dance Ten, Looks Three" on the original cast recording of A Chorus Line. I can see why they might have felt a need to expand the stories beyond the original core ensemble of characters, and at least Barry was distantly related to the main family, but...

Would it have been considered slumming it at the time for an established, in-demand soap actor to join a new show as a recast, because if Phelps really wanted Marcy Walker on GL, it seems like it would have been a no-brainer to bring her on as Mindy? Or were they that gung ho about pairing her with Robert Newman, so she couldn't have played Josh's niece? If the latter, I also wonder if she was already taping (as Tangie) when Jordan Clarke left, because especially if the writing was on the wall that Billy was going to be written out, they should have scrapped the idea of hanging this new hire they were so invested in on a pairing with Josh and gone with Josh and Vanessa instead. I didn't typically care for his character, but that might have actually been worth watching. And, again, Walker could have just played Mindy.

The Ann Gillespie video was fascinating. By the time we got to 1981 on SoapNet, I can't say I enjoyed Siobhan, but I'm not sure how any actress could have done a better job playing the character as she was being written/directed, especially during the writers' strike. Alas, there was no other soap heroine like Sarah Felder's Siobhan, and I suspect there was a mandate to water her down. That said, I don't think I even realized AG was the same actress who had played Kelly's mother on 90210, and I will say she created a completely different -- and very memorable character -- there (I even went back and watched her big episode on Hulu). And she didn't seem to be playing herself in either role. So, clearly, she's a phenomenal actress.

These clips are so great to see, having loved so much of what was to come shortly after this. Based on these scenes, I have little doubt they were testing the waters for Mallet and Mindy, or that Phelps was responsible for quickly moving him out of her orbit to make way for Nick (was there anyone else on canvas remotely in his age range who had been on the show during Lujack's run?). While I can't say I'm a fan of her overall career as a producer, I'm actually not outraged at this point. I did like Harley and Mallet together a lot in the '90s, and I think it's interesting in hindsight that Phelps not only kept him around and gave him a frontburner story with another leading lady, but he ultimately became as good a "friend of Jill" as just about anyone. It's not exactly what I might have expected, based on the worst horror stories about her. Granted, especially back when there was so much more money to go around in soap budgets, I doubt there was network pressure to sacrifice on 20/30-something white, male lead to make room for another...but still, it's interesting. I also wonder if Mallet and Mindy were originally supposed to get together after Mindy/Roger and Francesca/Mallet inevitably ended badly, or what. I seemed to recall when Derwin gave that aforementioned speech at the Soap Opera Digest Awards years later, the announcer said that he'd been nominated before for "hottest couple" or whatever it was called with Francesca, and IMDB confirms this. I can't imagine they were that popular as a couple, based on what I've seen, and I do recall Digest always tried to be "fair" by giving an equal number of noms to each show. But still, that suggests the show was promoting them heavily as a couple, at least at one point? And, if Francesca had stuck around (and Nick never existed), where would that have left Mindy? Were Roger and Mindy ever presented as a viable "love story," even before Curlee, et al took over?

I remember when these episodes first aired on SoapNet that I also thought this was an interesting subject matter — one which couldn't have realistically taken place on just about any other soap. Unfortunately, I had absolutely no interest in Kim, and couldn't really take seriously a story that featured a parade of day players going on about what a great actress she was... On a related note, I have often thought over the years about how RH might have successfully managed to branch out beyond 1-2 core families by tapping into the theatre and other aspects of the show's New York setting. Reading in the interview above that Eleanor Labine-Mancusi's life inspired some of Ryan's stories in the show's later years was interesting, because I always thought Ryan should have foundered between the kinds of careers that Eleanor mentioned she had worked in before going back to the family business, as it were. An art gallery would have been an obvious choice, perhaps leading to various characters getting involved in an adventure involving a theft of a famous painting or some such thing, although a karate studio would have been so hilariously '80s (but that probably would have led to accusations that RH was borrowing from popular movies again, in the era of The Karate Kid). I'm not sure if Ryan as a conduit to more escapist stories on the "other" side of town would have ultimately worked much better than it did with Kim, but it was a thought.

How lovely. Thank you for posting. I hadn't realized that Eleanor was quite so young when she started writing for Ryan's Hope, or that it was public knowledge at the time that Claire was consulting before returning full-time as head writer. I still wonder how that arrangement came about, given how far off the show was from her and Paul Mayer's vision at the time, from what I've seen. I don't understand why ABC bothered — kind of like when Harding Lemay consulted at Another World for a nanosecond a decade or so later, with virtually no evidence onscreen of his involvement. (Ah, the days when even the lowest-rated soaps had consulting budgets that would seemingly have rivaled the total set design budgets for today's shows.) Then again, maybe the network actually thought RH was returning to its roots after the Pat Falken Smith regime — which I suppose it was, comparatively speaking, but... Would it be ghoulish to speculate as to whether the "Terry the Tumor" story was the byproduct of Claire and Paul and the oxygen tank's writing session? She did say they were struggling to come up with a story for Pat and Faith in that situation, after all...

It's so bizarre how soaps keep cropping up in the coverage of this surreal election: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/16/nyregion/trump-won-the-election-but-3-manhattan-buildings-will-lose-his-name.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0 "Linda Gottlieb, a resident who started the petition, was elated. 'We won,' Ms. Gottlieb, a film and television producer, said. 'We used the power of protest to say that we don’t have to accept the spread of the man’s influence into our very homes. To me, it feels like a cleansing of the place where I live.'” I'm glad to see Trump's "brand" already becoming a liability in business (not that it matters, as he's now guaranteed a pension that will be even further above and beyond the resources that most of us will have in our golden years, after he and the congressional Republicans get through with Social Security and Medicare). But I couldn't imagine wanting to live in a Trump building at any point since he started slapping his name on things, based on the reputation he's had for decades, and I think a lot of people are going to have to deal with a lot worse under a Trump presidency. We all have to come to grieve/protest in our own way, though. Per my earlier post, the obit said that Claire Labine passed away on Election Day, not a few days later as was earlier reported. I choose to believe that she went to the polls and voted for a female president, came home to take a nap, and passed peacefully in her sleep before any returns came in.

Pardon the intrusion, as I'm not sure where else I could possibly express this that anyone would begin to understand the connection...and I gather that this post would be deleted anywhere else on this site. Reading news today that former head writer Claire Labine has passed — after not thinking about our old soaps in days — was kind of the exclamation point (at least, I sure hope it wasn't another comma) at the end of a truly miserable week. My 16 year-old self would be crying out in horror, "Sweet jesus, not Claire!" upon learning that the writer who brought us the stories and characters that she did is no longer with us just after Donald Trump was elected president. My allegedly grown-up self isn't taking all of this too much better. Watching Ryan's Hope in reruns on SoapNet as a young adult after I'd all but given up on the soaps that were on the air at the time brought me some welcome escape in those early years of the Bush administration. It was a small comfort, but this news quite viscerally took me back to those dark days. I hope it's not presumptuous (Ms. Labine did make her political persuasions fairly explicit in the press, and I think they were somewhat implicit in much of her writing) to say that I hope she was able to cast a ballot this week. I'd just rather not think about this strong, intelligent, trailblazing woman presumably(?) learning about the outcome of this election in what would be her final days, though. As I posted in the main thread about this news, RIP.

I kind of loved when she said that, though... I think FMB, like so many others who came and went from various soaps in that period, had experience that could have benefited these shows, but wasn't empowered to effect lasting change. She had her strengths and weaknesses, like anyone else, but I'd have rather seen her (and her initial writing team's - Stephen Demorest and Addie Walsh were no slouches) actual vision for ATWT have played out for a reasonably measurable period of time than what followed.

Full disclosure: This was actually around the time when I first watched ATWT on a daily basis (for about a month)…if only out of boredom with the shows that I had been watching. I read the hype in the early online forums about the changes underfoot at ATWT, after hearing how shockingly bad the show - which I had previously thought was an unsinkable institution, based on its longevity and what I saw while flipping channels and in awards show clips - had gotten in the year or so before, and I tuned in. I remember that year on the Soap Opera Digest Awards - which back then still aired in primetime and were a big to-do - ATWT opted to forego the usual montage of the "highlights" from the prior year that each show typically put together, set to some Celine Dion or boy band hit of the day that completely drowned out any dialogue. Instead, they aired a couple of recent scenes (which had aired since I had started watching) and then cut to a taped speech from Behr herself, addressed to lapsed viewers, basically saying "this show hasn't been itself lately, but, see? We're fixing it." I was impressed by that. But, yeah, even I only saw Rice-Taylor once or twice and then, when Batten came on, it was a true WTF moment. To be fair, soaps - especially in the past two decades or so - don't really offer the time or direction for even promising actors to play characters with completely different accents, etc. Batten did have her fans on OLTL, which I had not watched when she was on so I can't speak to. I was surprised, though, to read earlier in the thread that this was Behr's doing, personally. Were she and Batten really personal friends? To my knowledge, they'd never worked together previously, so I always assumed MADD made that happen. Even so, though, soaps with strong long-range stories have withstood ill-advised recasts. I still feel like this misstep was only emblematic of ATWT's larger problems.

In hindsight, 1996 is often talked about as a markedly bad year for daytime, but it wasn't until 1997 when it (should have) become apparent that the solutions that had worked in the past were failing across the board to improve soaps that were struggling creatively. I remember at the time Logan and the handful of other serious soap commentators would run these messiah-narrative pieces about newly hired figureheads periodically, and then within weeks or months they would be harshly critiquing those same folks' work (often fairly). This MADD interview is actually not too far off from the (also very fascinating) interview that Logan ran with Jill Farren Phelps just a few years back, when she took over Y&R. But, to my knowledge, nobody ever analyzed collectively/longitudinally how it could be that hiring new writers and/or producers failed repeatedly to fix the fundamental problems plaguing most/all of these shows over the long haul. In retrospect, the problems had to be higher up, and I don't know if the soap press had gotten to the bottom of it and called it out, some of these shows might have at least gone out with some dignity, instead of a race to the bottom.