DeliaIrisFan

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.