DeliaIrisFan

I for one am riveted. Plus intermittently guilt-ridden, usually every time someone mentions Carla or Sadie (in fact, I think I just watched what must have been one of Carla and Sadie's last episodes the other day). As you said, pretty much everything at Llanfair is sooo watchable, and not completely out there like in the latter part of Rauch's tenure. I would have loved to find a secret room behind a bookshelf in my house when I was Kevin's age, and Tina using Victor's 1.0 bugging equipment to listen in on everyone's conversations throughout the house like Magenta or Colombia in the Rocky Horror Picture Show is also quite fun. And you can tell it's all building to even more compelling drama. To your point, I do wonder if anything else outside of Viki/Tina's orbit was nearly as compelling, or if/when the show as a whole gels. Going by the credits, I am now well into Peggy O'Shea's material, and my general understanding was that she was responsible for writing the best material Rauch produced at One Life. Although I was surprised to see Sam Hall's name at the top of the credits in one of the earlier episodes, from the end of 1984; I didn't know he returned in this period. So far, with all the partial episodes, most of the other material I've seen has featured Becky Lee's plane crash/amnesia/long exit, Larry and Cassie involved in Roy Thinnes's gangster character's family, and the action-adventure stuff with David and Jenny and the Buchanans. The first two stories definitely seem like loose ends that are being tied up. But for the life of me, I don't understand how/if David's spy stuff and Asa's kidnapping connect to the rest of the stories. I will say that every Giulietta scene seems like a bad White Lotus rip-off that someone went back in time to make.

Oh, Anne came into her own during that time, for sure, including in her scenes as Marley. But I was rooting for Vicky, and at that point especially she was the twin I would have wanted any child starting out in this world to take after. Fair. Also, it is a cool name, whatever one may think of the character. (Was the origin of Marley's name ever explained on character? My best guess is Reginald wanted a boy who would be as evil as Jacob Marley from A Christmas Carol had allegedly been.)

Marley, really? I imagine these were people born roughly during Ellen Wheeler's first tenure? I always have to remind myself that she was originally a successful enough character for someone to think she should have a twin sister, before...everything that followed. I've seen all of Heche's run (at least once, thanks to SoapNet) and bits and pieces of the time Jensen was playing both roles, and I'm afraid I can't see naming a child after the character. I assume these were not Gen Zers born during Wheeler's return!

I know the Harpers were part of the Carolyn Crawford murder mystery, which is generally considered an unsuccessful storyline on Marland's part, but I've never heard much good or bad on the Sabrina/Tonio story that was happening at the same time. Both plots seem to have gone on for roughly the same amount of time (wasn't this cliffhanger of Sabrina being shot at by a sniper only a week or so after the conclusion of the Crawford story, with Frannie witnessing Darryl or whoever crash through the attic window?), and I can never seem to get into scenes from either whenever I start watching an early '90s episode. I watched more of Sabrina in this episode than I otherwise might have because I'd just listened to the Kathy Hays tribute interview and remembered Claire Beckman talking about Peter Boynton. Hearing her speak without the accent underscored how off-putting it was for me to have both actors who were clearly raised in the U.S. playing this geopolitical intrigue (plus the cringe factor of the fictional Latin American country). But it also just seems like the kind of material that GH or DAYS or OLTL would have been doing around this time - grafted onto Marland's ATWT. Is there something I'm missing?

I was feeling nostalgic recently and ordered a used CD of Soap Opera's Greatest Love/Wedding ??? (I don't remember which one in the series it was. I immediately downloaded it to iTunes, which thinks it's the Fifty Shades of Gray soundtrack, and I can't even find the physical CD now). One of the songs was called Dreams Today, which was apparently Joe and Siobhan's love theme. Does anyone remember this song, or when/for which Joe and Siobhan it was used? The composer credited was Earl Rose, who apparently joined RH in 1981 and stayed until the end. It was an instrumental piece, that didn't sound at all familiar to me. My best guess is this music was used for Marg and Roscoe during the 1982 SoapNet --> YouTube black hole (like I said, the song was instrumental, but based on the lore about SoapNet having to stop at '82 because of music rights, I was half expecting a full-on '80s power ballad). Unless Walt Wiley and Carrell Myers had a love theme? PS: If the record producer was going to include a Joe and Siobhan love theme, my vote would have been for Tichina Arnold covering Send in the Clowns. 😜 Or, one of Carey Gold's compositions from the show's peak.

Awww As long as we're on the subject, I must concede my brain always goes to RH for a split second when I'm reminded there is now a congressman from NY (state) named Pat(rick) Ryan, who mounted a hard-fought campaign, and then had to do it all again three months later. It would make complete sense that the fictional Pat Ryan would have run for elected office in recent years (as a political outsider with scientist creds). And I can only imagine big brother Frank would be pissed at him for stealing his thunder, while simultaneously being the biggest threat to Pat's campaign because of his political baggage.

Thanks for sharing all this info about the Children of the Earth story - it's fascinating. As it happens, I've been watching the Margo Dorn murder mystery and there was an episode in which Deborah confided in someone (Derek? Steve?) that she suspected Eliot partly because of their shared history with the cult, which seemed completely out of left field from everything I'd seen of both characters up until then. It makes more sense that she was undercover. If the mandate from ABC/P&G was to end the story ASAP, I can't help but wonder why they would go to the trouble of changing who the cult leader was? And, in any event, why keep Eliot around as a reminder? It is telling that the "abrupt" ending in the wake of a real PR mess sounds more thoughtful than the way modern soaps have been dropping characters and stories left and right for decades, presumably just based on of focus groups or whatever.

Both Ed/Lillian and John/Felicia have been mentioned (separately) in this thread. Given the common denominator of JFP, I can't help but connect the two. Both were fairly similar in terms of plot and the obvious aim of restoring an attractive, middle-aged actor to leading man status, and both perhaps inadvertently gave the actresses playing the wronged wives Emmy-winning material. But I don't think JFP ever planned to repeat Maureen's death and fire Anna Holbrook, did she? In fact, Holbrook was one of the few actresses in their mid 30s-40s on contract at AW at the time whose name I have never seen mentioned in the rumors about those focus groups that inspired Frankie's death. It almost seemed like JFP, in her own way, genuinely learned at least something from her mistake at GL. If Ed's affair and the revelation had played out as they did but Maureen lived to kick Ed to the curb and start a new life a la Sharlene, the whole thing probably would have been a big success. Alas, the AW story had subpar writing from the start, and by that point the industry was radically transformed, so Holbrook was written out within months of JFP's exit anyway. Anyway, in terms of best-written affairs, I would love to see kinescopes or whatever of the story on Where the Heart Is with James Palmer's character having an affair and meeting his mistress at an Irish bar, which supposedly inspired head writers Claire Labine and Paul Avila Mayer to create Ryan's Hope. So much soap opera history there. Relatedly, I'd happily watch any Where the Heart Is, which by all accounts dominated this category throughout its brief run.

Thanks for the tag. I don't disagree about the word cloud, although I cannot deny that I associate the cliches in the upper and lower right corners more so with RH than with any other soap, for better or worse: Delia's "blindness" being the better, and Terry the Tumor being somewhat worse. I'm so glad Helen Gallagher and Michael Levin are still with us and up for it; I have no doubt sure we'll get an earful from them both, and I am here for it. Catherine Hicks was always my favorite Faith by a mile, and I don't know that she's spoken about RH in decades. I'm not sure Judith Chapman has, either, and I'm curious what she'll remember/say on the record about the original plans for her character/family and how that changed. And, of course, it's always a pleasure always to hear from the others—the keepers of the flame, as it were.

Wow, yeah it does seem to be one right after the other. I too immediately thought of his GL stint, and how soon this is after Jerry ver Dorn - I may watch some vintage Ross and Leo squaring off soon.

I was very sorry to hear about Michael Malone. I never got to see his first stint at OLTL in real time, but the rich and deeply personal remembrances that folks have posted demonstrate it was something special. Vee's side note about Claire Labine's efforts at OLTL reminded me that was the exact same time Malone was hired at AW, 25 years ago. Having been an AW fan as a kid and drifted away in the year or so before that, I remember being excited to read about Malone's experience, and looking forward to seeing what he would do with the show. By all rights, if those two formidable writers had been left alone to tell their own stories at their own pace, that should have been an historic time for both shows. I don't doubt that there still would have been some fans of each who didn't care for the material at all. That might well have included me when it came to Malone's AW if he'd succeeded in remaking it to the extent he did OLTL in a way that wasn't what I expected AW to be. Although, based on Victoria Wyndham's 25th anniversary episode, I suspect there would have been enough to hold my interest. If things had gone differently behind the scenes at AW and/or OLTL back in 1997, it also could have been so much fun to experience that soap era with access to the internet, and the ability to have meaningful discussions in real time about where stories might be going (well, it was still the internet, but at least there was no Facebook or Twitter). Alas.

I remember I enjoyed her rapport with Charles Keating. Maggie was, at least initially, a good choice to be on Team Carl/Rachel when most of the family was opposed, since she had been so young/out of the country during most of his evil deeds. Maggie and Tomas weren't bad for a teen couple. That triangle with Angela was horrid, though. Then, once that finally ended, they recast Maggie and, yeah, the character became unrecognizable in every sense. Both of Robyn's replacements had success afterward so in hindsight it wasn't even their fault. If they wanted to take Maggie in that direction and make it plausible, it could have been interesting if they tied it to Maggie's aforementioned alliance with Carl. He could have encouraged her behavior, which could have caused friction between him and Rachel, etc.

So sad about Anne Heche. I was a year or so late for her original AW run, but I'm so glad I got to watch most all of it on SoapNet. Those clips above are great. I have no words. And the news about RGW...I had no idea she was ill, but I always had a soft spot for her characterization of Maggie, if not the stories (the writing for the character got so much worse after she left).

Speaking of the Locher Room, that was a lovely tribute to John Gabriel as well. I was finally able to finish it on a rainy Sunday afternoon. Several of the guests commented on having had few scenes with him, but of course once I thought about it, I remembered Nancy Addison and Diana van der Vlis have both been gone 20 years or so. Seneca's story with Jill did overlap with both Delia and Rae's relationships with Frank. To Ilene Kristen's point about Seneca being too smart to get involved with Delia, he was too smart even to work with Delia or Rae to keep Frank and Jill apart, whatever he may have worked solo to do. There were some interesting Rae/Seneca scenes post-Kimberly that made it onto YouTube, fighting over Seneca and Kim's baby. I recall one really good one even made it into the St. Patrick's Day marathon that SoapNet would air every year. That was a nice story about JG reaching out to LS after she was let go. For some reason, I thought Rae and Seneca were both written out around the same time—right after Labine and Mayer's departure—but I guess Seneca stayed on for a while as the generic doctor? I can't imagine him interacting with any of the new characters from the mid-'80s.

I mean, Muenker appeared on a ton of soaps, including on several as different characters in different eras. I'm sure she has a ton of stories to tell if she wants to go there. Wasn't it her Marianne on AW who had the abortion story (that was somehow tied to Harding Lemay's plan to have the character's brother come out, which the network vetoed)? As far as RH, Muenker was there for the waning Kirkland era, right: after Catsy, Hollis, et al had been written out, while Leigh was being introduced? I'm not sure she ever shared a scene with Haskell or Jones. I doubt she'll have much to say about a relatively brief role, almost 40 years later. I would be curious to hear (what if anything she knows/remembers about) why they recast the role, only to write the character out altogether a few months later. Was that always the plan? Did Mary Page Keller want to leave (I don't believe she started on AW until a little later) or were they "taking the character in a new direction"? And, if so, was that intended direction how Muenker ended up being used: as someone for Leigh to talk to for a few months when she didn't know any other characters, and a short-term spoiler for Pat and Faith? At least, that's all I remember of her from what's available on YT.

I think Labine probably enjoyed writing for the adult versions of the children of the characters who were front and center in the show's early years. She probably would have never aged them so drastically herself, but once it was done she seemed to have fun with it and got to incorporate some of the characteristics/hangups she presumably always assumed they'd have because of who their parents were. Semi related to the issues with Rae/Kim and Michael and their lack of connection to the rest of the canvas, I think the introduction of a character like Dakota was both too late and a wasted opportunity to connect the Ryans to the types of characters the network wanted on all their soaps in the '80s. (It was also dreadfully written from what I've seen and I can't for the life of me understand why they had to tack on the amnesia cliche too, but that's neither here nor there.) Playing the long-lost younger Ryan son card a few years earlier and having him been raised by a wealthy family like the Kirklands would have instantly grafted them onto the show, and they could have mixed it up with characters like Kim/Rae.

Thanks for the tag - looking forward to reading it.

Wow, 25 years...I feel old. PC occupies a weird place in my heart. I was rooting for the Labine GH spinoff, but GH was still watchable when the decision was made and I was totally on board for a Lucy-centered spinoff. Unfortunately, there were clearly not enough closeted, unpopular teens with nothing better to do in their free time that summer than watch an extra half hour of GH. Even I'd stopped watching GH by the time PC actually premiered, it had gotten so bad...and I gave PC a few weeks at most. The late '90s on ABC soaps was such a fascinating moment in hindsight (at the time it was mostly frustrating), and PC was case in point. So many resources available: for primetime episodes, relatively high-quality marketing, casting. And the existing vet cast who could be strategically utilized after not getting much airtime for a while were nothing to sneeze at either. But even when those budget windfalls got allocated for good things, nobody who knew what they were doing was ever empowered long enough for all that money to pay off. PC had a good cast and some talented people behind the scenes. My teenage self would never have admitted the latter, but the Cullitons and Riche probably had good ideas and clearly were trying their best. In hindsight, they were clearly too overworked churning out 1.5 hours of TV a day to come up with a long-term vision, let alone fight for it. And hey, PC was the last half-hour soap to premiere, and the last soap to premiere, period, that wasn't Passions (of course, you couldn't make up the fact that PC ultimately went off the air plagiarizing Passions if you were trying to come up with a really esoteric parody of soaps at the turn of the millennium).

I've often wondered what the deal was with RH and the Emmys as the '80s wore on. I know the show was in a bad way for quite a bit of the decade, but still. Did RH not have affiliate clearance in area(s) where a critical mass of people in the industry lived after the timeslot change? A part of me wonders if the last few acting nods were not entirely based on work on the show and/or during the eligibility period. Helen Gallagher and Bernie Barrow likely had accumulated some goodwill, and I would think there may have been buzz that they were getting material again and making the most of it - deservedly. It's nice that Helen won the show's last Emmy, anyway. And I wonder if Tichina Arnold and/or Grant Show were more well-known for their other work by the time awards season came around. I'm not saying the show deserved to continue its '70s Emmy streak, but there were quality periods/performances, and even Claire Labine's return later in the decade with really solid material didn't make a difference. I suppose by then Santa Barbara had displaced RH in the hearts of writing Emmy voters as the "little soap that could," but was there no room even for a nostalgic nomination one year or another? Especially after Labine/Mayer's back-to-back wins for their briefer return earlier in the decade. On a related note, I wonder what would have happened if the awards ceremony had aired in 1984, when Pat Falken Smith was head writer but Labine/Mayer had been at the helm for most(?) of the eligibility period. Would they all have attempted to take the stage (speaking of SB)?

Wow...I had been away, and my news feed was inundated with other things, and the algorithms probably don't even know at this point that I have/had an interest in soaps. I've felt sad about the other daytime vets we've lost in recent months, some of whom I only came to fully appreciate more recently thanks to that immortalizing YouTube. But I actually do have decades' worth of history with Jerry ver Dorn as a soap patriarch, so this is more personal. He was a great actor, for sure, and he and that cohort he worked with at GL most consistently for all those years really elevated the genre; Maeve K's quote, which I could hear her reading in my head, really reminded me of that. I had watched OLTL on and off by the time JvD came on, and in hindsight I don't understand the approach they took with the Clint recast. Especially since it seemed like all Clint had to do was overcome his homophobia (although of course TPTB would have had to overcome their own) and be back on track to being the kind of compassionate, wise tentpole character that Jerry had played for 25 years or so, which I'd assumed was what they hired him for. Maybe there was a payoff to Clint's turn to the dark side that I missed during one of my off periods. In any event, as always JvD did everything he could with the material, and at least he got to be a part of one long-running soap's finale. On a more personal note, there was a time in the '90s when my closeted adolescent self thought Ross as well as Roger and Ed were all so handsome—and I sort of envied Blake, at least as far as having them all in her life in different, bizarre ways. (Plus Alan-Michael on the side, and a mother as fabulous as Holly to fight/conspire with.) A big part of me still does. I know that is weird to say right now, but going by some of the bawdy anecdotes, I can only hope Jerry wouldn't take offense.

Well, that was terribly produced and scripted, but I do miss when soaps mattered enough for anyone to bother with such promotional vehicles.

Speaking of McTavish, I finally finished watching all that's available online from Natalie in the well to the resolution of Will's murder for the first time. Given everything McTavish subsequently did in her career, it's fascinating to watch what I believe were the first characters she officially created: Angelique, Galen, Gloria, and Stephen Hamill. I have to imagine at least three of them did not work out at all as planned. I actually wonder if Gloria, the only one who ended up lasting, was even intended to: I kind of got the vibe early on that she was originally going to be the victim of a less far-reaching whodunit, maybe limited to the Cortlandts, and they changed it to Will when the actor left. In any event, I was surprised by how much I liked Gloria. The actress/character were wasted in later years in such unfortunate stories, from what I saw—somehow I still remember even her scenes from the ads for that Maria/Erica baby switch story, when I wasn't watching the show, were like nails on a chalkboard—but she was about the most riveting part of the show for a good month or two after everyone discovered Natalie was alive. And I'll be damned if I didn't feel for Gloria in the rape story, manipulative and problematic as it clearly was. With Angelique I was actually expecting the worst, given the general concept and how short-lived I knew she would be, but surprisingly I thought she had her moments. (Sometimes perhaps unintentionally hilariously, like when Angelique still couldn't speak and was just watching all the teeth-gnashing at WildWind after she was wheeled into the party, but I'm not sure what more any performer could have done with that.) I assume Angelique was meant to last longer and they cut their losses, but I also suspect the triangle they were setting up with Dimitri and Erica when the uploads cut off was originally intended for Dimitri and Natalie. Am I wrong, or did Angelique just vanish for weeks after her intro, while Natalie dropped Dimitri with barely a second glance, and Dimitri showed no inclination of wanting to reconcile with Angelique at that point? Did Kate Collins announce she was leaving right then? As for Galen and Stephen, I am guessing they were meant to be long-term romantic leads? They weren't terrible, and I'm not 100% sure if Stephen/Dixie was cut short more to make way for Tad's return than for any other reason, but it foreshadowed McTavish's challenges making "good" characters compelling/dynamic. I had heard of Galen but had no idea she was actually recast in such a brief time period, so I was as surprised as most viewers would have been 30 years ago, but the character still didn't take. To be fair, I picked these four characters even though I know McTavish must have had a major hand in creating Dimitri, and I actually think Lucas Barnes—Terrence's father—pre-dated Angelique by a day or so. But Broderick and Washam were still credited above McTavish in Dimitri's first episodes, and I really doubt Lucas was intended to stay on the show longer than he did, or move beyond a supporting role. (Although if the actor were interested, they absolutely should have kept him around and given him more to do!)

Yeah, honestly, it wouldn't surprise me that much if they were floating some of the same names as potential Iris and Vicky recasts.

Ah, so ~ 1 week before CD's last episode aired. I love how the question/possible responses were phrased as though the writers/casting director still had months to plan next steps. But, that would have been my next question—which other actresses were they teasing? Even if write-ins were an/the only option, Kate Collins at least looked/comported herself someone like Iris as portrayed by CD; and she had been on a popular soap just a few years before. KC may have just won a plurality among the sliver of respondents who chose that (younger recast) option, which could have been due to name recognition more than anything else. I'm not sure the majority of her fans at that time would have even read a soap mag poll about AW all the way through.

Wow...what was the date on that issue? I'm stunned that SOM had enough lead time to run this poll via whatever technology was available at the time—presumably a 900 number—while her on-screen exit was seemingly so slapped together. I always assumed negotiations fell apart midway through that storyline in which Iris shot Carl halfway across the country from where her ~ 2-day trial+sentencing ended up taking place. My recollection is that SOM was not in the top tier of soap rags when it came to cutting-edge journalism, which wouldn't have said much to begin with, so a part of me wonders if these three options were basically dictated by someone in PR at NBC/P&G. If so, the phrasing of the third option makes me think they were already seriously contemplating leaving Iris in jail indefinitely, and maybe provides a window into how TPTB thought the ending was an appropriate swan song for the character. Although I can't imagine P&G at the time would have actively encouraged speculation about BM's return, post-GL, even if they might have secretly been open to the idea... Regardless of who came up with the wording, how gross that hiring a younger actress, specifically, was one of the other prescribed options—and without even an alternative for an age-appropriate recast if BM wasn't interested. Still, how awesome that only 10% voted for that, especially when you consider how few things poll at 90% these days.