DeliaIrisFan

That's true, by 1982, characters like the Kirklands would have been old hat. I hadn't thought of 1981 as particularly bad, mostly because I don't think of RH in that year being a cohesive show... There was the beginning of the year, which just seemed like Labine and Mayer at their most burnt out (either from battling the network or just 7 years of writing the show in and of itself) and resorting to things like the Frank and Faith pairing, along with stuff like Kim and Joe thrown in to satisfy someone's agenda, but some bright spots like Jack and Rose. Then there was the writer strike, which was just horribly mindless garbage (petite Kim realizing she was pregnant for the first time when she went into labor, about three months after the kid would have had to have been conceived). And then the end of the year actually showed promise, with Kim leaving and the intro of Maureen Garrett and the soap within a soap plot, and even the Egyptian artifact story - which could have been an interesting infusion of new blood that took advantage of the NYC setting with that completely fictitious museum - but that all amounted to nothing. I don't think of those periods as being the same era, but you're right, not a great year for the show at any point, and that was when it had the best chance to capitalize on ABC daytime's higher ratings across the board. And then there was this, which is what really did RH in: the timeslot change. And my god, who had the brilliant idea that Jacqueline Dubujak and some himbo with a ludicrous soap opera cliche name would make those people whose affiliates were still going to be airing RH in its new timeslot tune in?

This feels blasphemous even to suggest, but I've wondered what might have been if any of the attempts to make Ryan's Hope more like GH, etc. in the '80s had been successful? At least from a commercial standpoint. So many soaps strayed from their roots and it paid off, at least initially. RH actually took place in NY, and some of the larger than life plots that soaps desperately tried to shoehorn into sleepy Midwestern communities in the mid-'80s would have fit in more readily on RH, in some ways. But nothing ever took off. The 1982 synopses got me thinking along these lines. The Kirlands (who really didn't last that long) weren't so different - at least on paper - from the Spauldings on GL, the Buchanans on OLTL, and of course the Quartermaines on GH. If anything, the biggest difference was that most of those shows went to an hour around the time that the new, wealthy families came on-board. The RH 1982 synopses just seem so off-kilter, because these new characters were sharing only a half hour timeslot with the eponymous core family. I wonder if there was ever talk of taking RH to an hour (I know Claire Labine was opposed, but I mean while she was away from the show). Would it have had to change its name to reflect a broader canvas? The Pat Falken Smith era in the mid-'80s is in some ways even more sacrilegiously intriguing. The material itself was awful, IMO. It was enough I could do when some of those episodes turned up on YouTube to watch enough episodes to see how Faith, etc. were written out. And yet, it's ironic that one of PFK's biggest contributions to daytime that still lives on to this day is the introduction of the Bradys on DOOL: a working-class, Irish Catholic family that later owned a bar (I know that part came much later and wasn't her doing, but still). She was at RH about a year before the timeslot change completely removed RH from the competition for healthy ratings. Actually, I think RH was comparable to DOOL itself ratings-wise around 1983 or so, when the NBC lineup had taken such a hit. And of course it was GH and not RH that was initially on the chopping block in the late '70s, because RH had higher ratings. Could the GH/DOOL formula that failed when it was foisted on RH have been successful there, with a few tweaks? What would have happened if PFK had successfully grafted a really overwrought supercouple onto the show, with a bona fide tie to the core family - the kind that could make the show # 1 in the ratings the week of their weding? I guess they tried that with Siobhan and that much-criticized Joe recast. And Yasmine Bleeth and Grant Show were along those lines, but ratings-wise, the bottom had already dropped out by that point, and it was enough of a stretch to start aging the grandchildren even in the late '80s, let alone earlier. Beyond Siobhan, the other Ryan siblings were a bit mature by the time PFK came along... The other interesting historical what-if is that James Reilly was on PFK's writing team at one point. If RH had continued in that vein, I wonder how close we came to seeing Maeve and Father McShane helping Dakota - who turned out to have been a priest in his mysterious past - perform an exorcism on Jill, after her torrid affair with Dakota on the bar at Ryan's made her vulnerable to Satanic possession and the Max character returned to make her his Queen of the Night? I'm not saying I would have wanted to see any of this happen, or that RH buying time so as to have a similar outcome to any soap on the air now would have justified it. The most I can think of is that there might have been a few amazing years in the early '90s or so, if Claire Labine had come back after the supercouple fad ended and had integrated the best of that era with her own material, as she did with GH. Even if RH had managed to survive into the 90s/21st century, which would have been a big if, for the most part, I think it was better off going out with its dignity. Plus, I got to see it at its best on SoapNet, and none of the shows that made the transition into the present era have ever made their tape vaults available, for whatever reason. I'm just thinking out loud. Early RH had some similarities to early OLTL and GH (the working class ethnic family and medical aspects, respectively) and both of those shows took such drastic turns in the '80s, etc. It's probably a mixed blessing that RH never established a successful identity apart from its creators' vision, but in some ways I really think that may have been more a result of chance than anything else.

Haha, thanks! I don't think I've ever seen Genovese's commentary on OLTL's Tina, or Paul Rauch's work in general. Come to think of it, other than several pieces on Ryan's Hope, which I only saw in reruns on SoapNet, most of what I've read by him was about shows I wasn't old enough to watch the first time around and have never been resurrected (Capitol, etc.). But it didn't matter, it was still just fascinating history. It's so hard to think of SOD being known as the hard-hitting soap mag - I remember when that was SPW, and then of course they merged and both began filling kind of the same niche. And, wow, JKG is on Facebook. I'm not that avid a user and I am not connected with any soap people - even those I've actually met. I guess I'm overly cautious about invading people's privacy, etc. But I'm tempted just to see his reactions to the state of the genre.

I'm always curious to read anything about Generations, which I wish I'd seen/been old enough to appreciate. I am ambivalent at best about catfights in soaps to begin with, but that behind the scenes article was a very interesting read. However, the main thing I have to add to this thread is that I heart John Kelly Genovese. Even when I vehemently disagree with him - like a scathing review he wrote of Ryan's Hope circa 1983, and the sequence with Jack and Mary's "ghost" in particular, which from YouTube I consider some of the most moving and beautiful material I've ever seen on a soap - I've always just admired the way he expressed his opinion and held soaps accountable for producing quality material, the same as any other creative form. And such a good writer...he could well have been reviewing any art form. I even bought a copy of his soap opera trivia book from the mid-'80s a few years back (one of those Amazon used book deals, where the shipping cost more than the book itself). I think this may be the latest piece that I've seen from him. I read something a few years back that he is (or was) still with us. Does anyone know what became of him? I really believe that, if he had stayed in the soap field, he could have been a powerful voice against the perception that soaps are these mindless pieces of trash that could be twisted around, with no regard for logic not to mention taste, to suit the agendas and the prejudices of the network higher ups. I'm assuming he was one of the first casualties of the collusion of the soap magazines in the dumbing down of soaps, so long as they got access to the lame spoilers that (their editors believed) were their bread and butter. But I wonder what would have happened if he had found a forum to continue expressing his opinions. For all I know, he had no interest in providing in-depth critique of what aired on soaps as we got further into the '90s, not to mention the millennium... Anyway, thanks for posting, Carl!

I think some critical bridge between Pat's first fling with Faith and their later relationship got lost in translation amidst the Faith recast(s). I'm not sure what would have happened originally, but I think it would have made more sense. I suspect that when the cast finally stabilized for a little while, the other pieces in the story were working - Delia/Roger, Frank/Jill (well, after 2-3 recasts), Seneca/Jill - and also MG's Pat and CH's Faith were both very likable on their own even if they didn't light the screen on fire together, so the writers kind of picked up the original thread as if whatever was supposed to happen to make us buy Pat and Faith as a couple had happened. Or maybe they genuinely forgot - it must have been hell launching a new daily show with so many cast changes, and doing such an amazing job overall. Pat certainly had more chemistry with Delia than he did with any of the Faiths, and him having genuine feelings for Delia would have been interesting. I kind of remember thinking (a decade ago) thet deep down he did. But she was at her most damaged at that time, and their marriage turned very ugly, and I think it's natural that any good between them would get lost after that. And, in the end, I loved Roger and Delia together so I wasn't too broken up about what might have been with her and Pat. One of the very first YouTube episodes from 1983 that Freeflyur posted has a scene of Faith reacting to his death, but that's it. When I first saw it, I think my main reaction was that it didn't sound like his death was nearly as weird as how some of Faith's other love interests died. I wouldn't say one-dimensional, so much as she regressed a lot. But, I could see how losing every emblem of having moved beyond the Ryans would do that. The St. Patrick's Day scenes where she framed Little John for shoplifting to get attention were painful to watch, but to me this having sex in the bushes of a public restaurant (with someone named Ox) sounds much more silly and completely removed from what Delia's character was about. I think whatever plans Labine and Mayer had for Delia when they returned in 1983 got lost in the tug-of-war with the network, in which it sounds like Ilene was a specific target for ABC. I think she was off-screen for something like 4 or 6 weeks that summer, even before Labine and Mayer were forced out and she was too not long afterward. From what I've seen on YouTube, it seems like when she did show up sporadically she was just inserted as a plot device in what was happening with other characters. Not the best material she was given to work with, but she did have a few very fascinating moments. I thought the scene where Delia met Charlotte Greer was extremely psychologically riveting: http://www.youtube.c...yer_profilepage The 1987-89 Delia stories were much more about her and gave her more of a chance to grow and mature (though it was surreal that the most obvious impetus for that maturity was that she was playing a grandmother - not to mention a mother to a son who looked like he was about 30). YES! Although she may have run into the same problem with the network as Sarah Felder - not being "glamorous" enough, etc. At least her track record as a star of another (higher rated) soap would have preceded her, I guess. Then again, she certainly could have played more glamorous if that's what they wanted - when she returned to GL a few years later, Holly was one of the most elegant female characters on the show. That timing was weird. Both Barry and EJ were kind of an awkward fit for the show, because their only connection to the Ryans was through their father, but Johnny didn't like him very much and he hadn't been apart of their lives until now. And after reading these synopses, you can see why Johnny would hate his brother! The stuff about EJ's childhood in here sounds really dark, and yet it was glossed over. The Ryans' only reaction to it was trying to minimize EJ's "shame" (over being abused?) instead of how Johnny was affected by the fact that he had a brother who was such a monster. In any event, had Barry and EJ's time overlapped, at least their relationship with each other might have helped add some other layers to the characters that their tenuous ties to the Ryans did not. I think that's what the thread is here for! Thank you again for posting these.

Thanks for this. I definitely have never seen anything this detailed on the 1982 stories. A lot of it sounds interesting, if a bit off for Ryan's Hope. I don't know what to make of Mary Ryan Munisteri as a writer - in some ways, it's a shame that she seemingly was never really groomed to take over by Labine and Mayer, but rather stepped into that role without warning when they were pushed out by the network. Agnes Nixon stayed on in some capacity at both of her shows - at least for a while, in OLTL's case - while her sub-writers assumed progressively more responsibility. Munisteri did bring some new ideas, some of which sound like they could have added something to the show, and it seems like she did a better job of integrating the new elements with the existing characters than the mid-80s writers did (I guess she couldn't have done much worse). But with no one more experienced on hand to smooth over the rough edges, it must have seemed kind of jarring. I would so love to be able to see the scene of Delia arguing that faking a suicide attempt is proof of being unfit for motherhood! The irony may well have been intentional on Munisteri's part, as she was with the show from the beginning, but unless some nuance got lost in the recap, it seems like the fact that Pat was Kim's intended mark just as he had been Delia's when she herself pulled that trick never registered for Delia. I think it would have - not in a purely selfless or entirely rational way, and in fact maybe just to reaffirm her dislike of Kim as a way of justifying what she already was planning to do. But I guess the new writers were trying so hard to shoehorn Delia into some sort of Alexis Carrington-esque role that they overlooked her roots. I didn't realize Maureen Garrett's EJ stayed on for so long after her and Roger's aborted wedding. It sounds like she might as well have left then, if her material was as uninteresting on the air as the recap made it sound. It's too bad the character didn't work out, for a lot of reasons - none of which had to do with MG, who is one of the best actresses daytime has ever had. She came on as an ill-conceived character when the show already was on shaky ground, and then all of the backstage turmoil happened. She could have fit in really well with this company, I think, with a character that was actually integral. I'm glad Maeve and Johnny had something to do during this lost era when I've so often heard that the show was overrun by newcomers with few if any ties to the core family, but the dancing story sounds kind of isolated and inconsequential. I also had no idea Siobhan and Johnny clashed so badly over Joe. But even when Johnny was at his harshest here, it sounds like he still didn't bring up Mary's murder as a reason for hating Joe. The show really swept that under the rug at this time, trying to reinvent Joe and Siobhan as RH's answer to Luke and Laura. Anyway, I'm not sure the friction with Johnny rings true, though. Originally, of course, Siobhan had always been closer to Johnny while Maeve took exception to just about everything Siobhan did. It would have been more interesting if Maeve was the one who couldn't bear the thought of Siobhan reconciling with Joe when it was their relationship that got her beloved Mary killed, and Maeve went off to her dancing as an escape from her continued grief over Mary's death and her repressed anger at Siobhan for her involvement. The Mitch character and Karen Morris Gowdy's Faith seem like they would have been the weirdest couple ever. It could have been a fiery, opposites-attract dynamic, except I can't picture her sparring with anyone. I didn't realize that Seneca's mother appeared in the '80s. I wonder who played her? Probably not Gale Sondergaard. IMDB was no help, but they do have a record of another actress playing her after GS in the late '70s, which I do vaguely remember. I had no idea that Jill and Seneca ever were romantically involved again after their divorce either - I guess that explains why I think originally, the point was that Pat was someone who didn't quite know who he was, himself - he had always been the middle child, always in Frank's shadow but going with the flow and not actively challenging his family like Siobhan and Mary did, in part because of sexist double-standards but also in part because he was lost in the shuffle of a large family. I thought that was a believable dynamic and MG played it well. Then when Pat saw what a hypocrite his brother was and felt like he was the only one in the family who wasn't going to go along with whatever Frank wanted to do, he turned to self-destructive things to cope - first Delia when she was at her most toxic and then, when he got in over his head with her, to drugs. I do think the recasting hurt the character, or rather the fact that the character never fully moved beyond that downward spiral while Malcolm Groome was still in the role. Ilene Kristen and Kate Mulgrew also left around the same time, when that first cycle of contracts came up, and they too were recast - with different levels of success - but Mary and Delia both got a sort of closure with the original actresses in the roles. Whatever happened after the recasts (not much better than what happened to Pat as far as the Mary recasts, and mixed results with the Delia recasts) the original arcs could kind of stand on their own. Whatever growth the writers may have planned for Pat, the recasts weren't up for playing it, and then I think the show didn't know what to do with him.

OK, yes, I am remembering that now. Clearly, those episodes really didn't make as much of an impression on me. Like I said, SIobhan was just a completely different character post-Joe. SF and RM were amazing together and maybe Joe and Siobhan could have worked as a brief interlude. But she should have gone running back to Planned Parenthood (and become f--- buddies with the also now widowed Jack) after Joe died the first time - for good - and she saw how her experiment with marriage and family and tradition turned out. I'm really not sure where to put the blame for what happened to Siobhan, though, and the problems went so far beyond her stance on a woman's right to choose.

I'm trying to remember Siobhan's abortion choice...was that when she actually had the baby, with Marg Helgenberger in the role? I guess that would have been in the lost 1982 episodes that never got reaired on SoapNet and were completely skipped over in those YouTube episodes that were posted from the 80s? I never saw those episodes. Or was she pregnant before that, with Sarah Felder in the role, and miscarried or whatever? I'm having a vague recollection of that. Either way, that was such a weird time in general for the show, with all kinds of competing visions, etc. After Joe, Siobhan essentially was a completely different character, sad to say, but I don't think that was any writer's decision so much as a network directive to make her a generic ingenue. Even before characters like Siobhan started blatantly changing into different people, there weren't that many abortions on other soaps, even after Erica Kane, were there? Except for the series of heroines who went insane from the guilt after having the abortion...and compared to that, I think a woman truly choosing to have the baby because it's what she wanted is a more empowering scenario to depict. And I don't think any character besides Kim had an abortion? Am I blanking?

Oh, I don't know if I would agree with that...the thing about Ryan's Hope was that Maeve and her Irish Catholic dogma were essentially the moral center, but there were definitely cracks. A lot of things would have turned out a lot better for all parties involved if nobody had listened to Maeve, and the scene that sticks out most in my mind in that regard is when Maeve went and "rescued" Delia from an abortion clinic. (When Delia had no intention of having an abortion, just conning Maeve into pressuring Pat to marry Delia so she wouldn't try again.) And I have to say I was really impressed all over again with the episode that just reaired last week, in which Jill went to that abortion clinic. It didn't even seem like soap opera - it was basically If These Walls Could Talk, except twenty years earlier and a lot better. I don't know who could have watched that sequence with the teenage girl (who actually looked like a teenage girl) and heard her pitiful story and still think that any law passed by men should be able to dictate what a woman does with her own body, regardless of Jill's ultimate choice. As for Nancy, I think she was an amazing actress (and person from all I've read/heard about her) and I admire how she brought her feminist perspective to that character and I suspect I would have liked Jill a lot more if she had been more like Nancy, but Jill was not Nancy. Jill was a mess! She couldn't really be without a man for ten seconds, and she couldn't be without her world of privilege and the hypocritical social stigmas that came with it, at least for very long. That scene that re-aired a week or two ago in which she consulted an old family friend who was a gynecologist who wouldn't perform the abortion for her because "the law may change, but the old standards remain" was really creepy...I half expected him to give her advice on which brand of cigarettes to smoke while she was pregnant, as long as he was talking about sticking with those old standards. And that was the world Jill came from. But, she was portrayed as having a better life because of the gains that true feminists like the real-life Nancy made happen for women, and she was a pretty groundbreaking example of a female tv character who had a prestigious profession and clearly was as good at it as any man. So, I could buy Jill making the choice that she did. I could have seen it going the other way, too, and really Jill was one of the last soap opera heroines who should have had one of these paternity stories (not just because of Roe v. Wade but also DNA testing, which surely wasn't that far behind, not to mention AIDS). Also, plot device or not, they did say Jill physically couldn't handle the pill and I have heard anecdotally from women of that era that the pill was a huge step forward for women for many reasons, including that it was more effective at preventing pregnancy than condoms.

Oh, wow, I hadn't even thought about the fact that it's been almost as long as the original run, but you're right. I, too, loved Sarah Felder's Siobhan from the start. I'm really sorry we won't get to see any of her run again (then again, if someone in that position can neglect to have the red tape in order to shut down a whole cable network and they have to put it off for so many months after already announcing it, I suppose anything can happen between now and then). And I'm sorry you're not enjoying the current material. For me, they've just gotten into my favorite stretch of soap opera that I've ever seen, starting with Jack and Mary's wedding and Delia's affair with Roger (which I just missed this go-round). I'm hoping we make it to Delia's fake nervous breakdown (complete with her reading up on the symptoms in that heart-shaped bed, and doing her nails at her mother's grave while waiting for everyone to come find her) and Jack and Mary trapped in the basement of Ryan's Bar. If my memory/math is right, they just might. If RH had gone to an hour during this era and introduced original Siobhan at the same time of these stories, I would have been in soap opera heaven.

Awww, I wouldn't say that. I think she played the concept of Faith as she was originally written, but after she had crashed and burnt and then healed and come out of it a stronger person. I guess it was a very '70s idea that a few months of therapy could really repair a person who was that damaged so completely, but it was "hopeful" (no pun intended) and I think where the character came from was always incorporated into her stories. Plus, maybe in part because she reminded me physically of Sandy Dennis, I always thought a little bit of the repressed crazy was still there, somewhat beneath the surface. Also, Faith stayed remarkably down-to-earth and mousy considering they cast an actress who would go on to play Marilyn. I could totally buy that Pat should have gone for Faith and he'd have been very happy, but he got bored - whereas Delia walking around the Ryan household in various states of undress throwing herself at him made him completely horny and her pretending that she couldn't cope without him gratified his male ego. (I'm not saying this was pretty, but it was believable.) CH's Faith was just about the only one of Delia's rivals whom I genuinely felt sorry for (Jill and Mary could be so self-righteous and hypocritical). But not too sorry, because I knew that Faith was together enough that she didn't need Pat or any man, and as heartbroken as she was, she knew that she didn't, as well. Incidentally, I've just started watching this (presumably last) go-round of Ryan's Hope on SoapNet, and I'm really glad that I'm getting to see CH's run as Faith one last time. While I had every intention of tuning back into OLTL and maybe even AMC until the end, and I do feel very sad that those shows are going off the air, the idea that these 35 year-old episodes of RH that I've already seen at least once will never air again on TV after this year actually has had at least more of an immediate impact on me. Incidentally, I can't quite believe that it's been over 10 years since I saw these episodes the first time SN rebroadcast them, but I'm enthralled all over again. Incidentally, thanks for posting these articles. All very interesting - even Michael Hawkins, who was pretty sexy when he wasn't fumbling over his lines.

From what I've seen of this show on YouTube and the old WOST site - especially that horrendous final episode - and everything I've read about the various phases it went through during the revolving door of writers and cast members, I can see how people would have watched this show but never really fell in love with it to the point that it was their favorite show. It seemed like everything it tried to do had already been done - and done better - on another show. The spy/mystery stuff that Slesar tried to do had already been done better on Edge of Night; the soapy young love stuff had been done before on so many other shows, often even with actors instead of models being cast; and sadly even the political stuff was done better on Ryan's Hope, which wasn't even set in DC and had to keep coming up with political scandals to wreck Frank Ryan's latest campaign so he could stay on the show! And then of course the laughable nonsense at the end involving the made-up Middle Eastern monarchy to which the blonde Irish hunk was the long lost heir to the throne, culminating in the show's longtime heroine facing a firing squad, had never quite been done on a soap because it should not have been done. Too bad...this show seems like it had so much potential. The DC setting should have been better used, because the initial concept for the show, with the feud between two political families dating back to the McCarthy hearings - has anyone before or since on a soap ever discussed the McCarthy hearings? - was really groundbreaking. From what I know of John Conboy, it seems like he was the wrong producer to realize a groundbreaking concept, though, because he seemed to prefer style over substance. Why wouldn't they just come right out and say that the McCandlesses were Democrats and the Cleggs were Republicans (McCarthy was a Republican...it seemed pretty obvious) so they could do genuine political stories with depth that actually pushed the envelope? CBS primetime was successful at the time with political shows like Murphy Brown and Designing Women, which featured characters openly and frankly discussing politics every week and the audiences loving them. And why on earth did a show set in DC (OK, I know it was a fictitious Virginia suburb of DC, but close enough) in the '80s not have any black characters? It seems like this show just took the worst cliches of soaps and transplanted them into the DC political setting, and the writing and acting were not consistent enough to compete with other shows that were already doing it better.