Contessa Donatella

You're the first person I've ever seen say anything good about Griffith/Malone 2.0. Good A variety of perspectives is good. He was at AW for 6 months & it was appalling. Mostly he took the 13 BOURBON STREET bible & tried to make it fit onto Bay City. Poor guy. [!@#$%^&*] Cancer. If only he were alive maybe he could help out JG at Y&R! Personally I suspect that Gottlieb was a really important part of that lightning in a bottle & she rarely gets her due. Have you seen YouTube clips of the Ryan Phillipe story & the AIDS Quilt? @ErrolJust an FYI, Lindsay Arnold was on #SoapTwitter yesterday looking for fan input on "Allie possessed" scenes for a reel she's putting together. She said she's auditioning.

Oh, wow, you just gave me chills! I wonder how many examples of lightning in a bottle we could think of. We know that when Linda Gottlieb & Michael Malone & Joss Griffith gathered at OLTL *the first time* it was there. Marland & Monty saw Genie & Tony & it was there (GH). Betty Rea interviewed Lisa Brown & had no job for her but knew she was lightning in a bottle & simply told the shows they'd have to write something for her (ATWT & GL). When Agnes Nixon created Rachel & Steve & Alice it was there (AW). As we've just said, Reilly 1.0 at DOOL. Somebody?

I think a third of DOOL fans reach for Aremid as a nostalgic touchstone & I reach for the Banks siblings & yet another group reaches for demonic possession first time of course. But, the sum of the parts is all Reilly. Anyway it seems interesting to me.

it's in the record books. Doug & Julie had TIME magazine & 16 mil watching their wedding & then L&L had mass media galore & 30 mil watching the wedding. And, like "Susan Lucci" "Luke & Laura" are household names. If this were an anniversary of DALLAS it would feature WHO SHOT JR? But, you bet the mag wanted purchases. It's business, not art. I think it's really unfortunate considering the stand Genie made just last month at TCA but it can't be helped. The juxtaposition of this with that is surreal.

I have NOT WATCHED these soaps: LOL, STORM, EON, RH, Y&R, SOM, TX, PSSN. The list of soaps that I have watched, all of the rest of them, is too long! When I was in high school & attending class, technically I wasn't "watching" but my mother told me everything that happened every day. The Hortons were discussed at the dinner table as if they were family friends. During college different people would be able to see one day & they would fill everybody else in. The seniors & grad students I knew all arranged their class schedules so they could see LOVE IS A MANY SPLENDORED THING. But, all the underclassmen watched DOOL & AW & the ABC fans watched AMC & OLTL. Then came work life but by then there were mags & you could read recaps. And, I bought a Betamax video recorder as soon as they went on sale. At that time I taped & watched & taped over 🤪 for the full NBC line-up GEN, AW, DOOL & SB. In 1985 I got an IBM PC jr & my first modem, 14.4K dial-up & went online & found other soap fans. With a lifetime of soap watching ongoing & meeting my soulmate through soap fandom, I now watch DOOL & GH but my favorite soaps are: (1) AW, (2) GL and (3) SB. If someone would just stream them I would watch them over.

Again!! Mucho thanks. You really are the best, you know.

Welcome to soap fandom! My mother watched ATWT on CBS & then switched to NBC to watch both DOOL & AW. So, that's what I began watching, too. Last year @victoriafoxton found this guy uploading to YouTube DOOL early stuff. I knew what the first storyline I remembered seeing was so then I knew what dates I had begun watching & it was the first week in August in 1977. Bill Bell was the HW for DOOL then & Pat Falken Smith was his second in command of the writing. At the time I knew nothing about the making of the shows! Of course, I didn't know it at the time but I now know it was classic Bill Bell, classic DOOL, iconic, one of soap's early great rivalries, etc. As it happens I just posted this story elsewhere yesterday & I'm going to post it here, too. It's long. But, it will give you a feel for soaps then. Susan and Julie was was one of those classic Bill Bell rivalries. They started out as best friends. Susan came from a broken home and was unhappy. Julie was dating a rich bad boy, David Martin, who her family didn't like. They were supposed to elope. Julie didn't show up to elope, David thought that Julie no longer loved him. David met up with Susan, they got drunk and had sex. As the way these things end up, Susan got pregnant. Tom Horton talked her out of getting an illegal abortion. Susan and David married with a plan to give the baby up for adoption after he was born. After giving birth, Susan saw the baby and couldn't go through with the adoption plan. This pissed off Julie who was planning to reunite with David after the baby was adopted out. Susan wouldn't give David a divorce and Julie started pressuring David. Julie saw a "moment" between Susan, David and baby Dickie that looked like David was enjoying his new little family and freaked out. Julie then used her feminine wiles to lure David away, seducing him and eventually starting a full blown affair with him. Julie convinces David to run away. Susan and David's baby dies. Susan goes temporarily insane and shoots and kills David. In one of the best soap trials ever Micky Horton brings his niece Julie on the stand and pretty much reveals her to be the town tramp, that she was planning to run away with Susan's husband and also reveals that she's pregnant with David's baby. Salem is in shock and Julie becomes the town pariah. Even Tom Horton is on Susan's side. Julie gives her baby up for adoption and leaves town. The baby is adopted by the Bannings. Julie returns to town and wants her baby back. Meanwhile Scott Banning's wife has died and Susan and Scott have gotten closer. So basically Susan is helping raise Julie and David's baby. Julie, once again, uses her feminine wiles and gets Scott into bed and eventually he marries her. Julie did all this because 1) she really did want her son back but she also wanted to 2) screw over Susan. Julie marries Scott and then renames the baby David. Susan, wanting revenge against Julie brings Doug Williams to town to seduce Julie and the rest is history.

Oh, thank you!! Wed. & Th. then. 🤷‍♀️ Great looking that up for me!!! You're a peach! 🤔🫵🫰👏 Thursday, yes, I guess it was just what Sarah Horton was wearing on Friday, or maybe nobody was on Friday!! LOL Anyway, that's the outfit, thnks for getting a shot of it for me!! 🔊NOW HEAR THIS Victoria Foxton is tops with video clips & pics!

Does anyone just happen to have a picture of what Wendy was wearing Friday? TIA.

Guess what's coming out Tuesday?! That's right, the brand new 60th anniversary cast photo! 🤔🫵🫰👏I can't wait!

I hate the "one room the size of a big closet" Kiriakis mansion & that hovel that J&M live in & have company in! Ugh.

Balance, pacing, use of personnel, these are things DOOL does not do. And, we're left with the mess, which they do, do. I am so mad that we only see Salem's Angels every 8 days that I could spit, which is just not ladylike. Every third day we should be in that great white space in the sky. Are they nuts?!! This is their big draw right now! And with soaps these days it *is* now or never. We could all get disgusted & just quit. Then where would they be?!! Back in the day we moaned & groaned because we only got to see Abe & Lexie on Tuesdays & Thursdays! Gee, twice a week. We had it good & we didn't even know it!!

Classic Bill Bell written DOOL story of Mickey, Laura & Bill. Laura married Mickey. Bill got very drunk one night & went to the hospital, where Laura was overnight, and found Laura & forced her, raped her. Bill cried a lot. Laura told him she could turn him in. But, she didn't. So, Laura became pregnant. Mickey was sterile & the only people who knew that fact were Tom, his father & head doctor, and Laura and now the audience knows. Mike was born. For 8 years that secret remained hidden. Then Mike had a medical emergency from an accident & they discovered that Mickey couldn't possibly be his father because of blood types. (Wesley Eure was playing Mike & had been SORAS'd so it may have been more than 8 yrs in soap time.) Mickey fond out about the long ago rape & went & got a gun & shot Bill. Then he got amnesia & wandered off into the story that became Maggie's farm. Believe it or not, later on Bill & Laura married & had Jennifer Rose.

Yeah, it's considered a rule for writing soaps, also things to catch up things that have happened. I think they are not as bad now as they were in the good ole days. But, anyway, I just posted in RIP:IM thread about a DOOL death. One of the actors who played Nikki Alamain, very young, just 34! Yikes.

I just finished watching GH on Hulu & I could've kissed Willow! "Not everything is about you." Perfect line & delivery to Nina at one of those moments! It was so typical on yesterday's show, as soon as she learned Willow might not have much time left, she thought of herself. "I can't lose her."

Personally I loved Johnny's speech with all of that soapy exposition stuffed into the dialog!! And, besides any computations & reckoning, I think the show seems somehow different. Sex & skin is a part of that.

Oh, yeah, playing family secrecy! Thnx!!

Wow, slick Ava. If it's not too long, why did she kill her?

I wasn't watching so this may be garbled or even garbage, but I thought she killed someone named Connie. [shrug] Here: When Sonny’s girlfriend, Connie Falconeri, was murdered, she scrawled “AJ” in blood, which many assumed to mean A.J. Quartermaine was her killer, but the initials actually stood for Ava Jerome! When A.J. confronted Ava, Sonny walked in as he was strangling her and joined in the fight, ultimately shooting A.J. dead!

New Year's Eve too! Allow 2 days for Feb. 14, 2 days for 12-25 & 2 days for NYEve. A good list that would be a corollary would be emergency boink babies. EX: GL Beth & Philip in a plane, crashed in the mountains, thought they were gonna die, so had sex.

OH! That's right. Nick said time & space were different. Thanks!

The best I can tell the Salem Angels died in January & it's been 4 days since Marlena died & now it's Valentine's Day. I am so confused. You?

We only see that one room!! They eat there. They visit there. Alex works out there. WHAT Mansion?! It's one room the size of a large closet.

Well, I hope she's still got a job because she's about to have to move!

The Canadian fans were amazing! If only their viewing had counted in ratings, huh? I was on an e-mail discussion list in 1998 that was dominated by Canucks! They could not understand the show being in trouble. They got AW & Y&R only & AW was their fave. Does anyone have any interest in character creation? I read yesterday that Richard Culliton created Marley and Wallingford. I've been trying to list Lemay's creations. Long list!