JamesF

I don't think I could add anything or put it better than what loads of you have already said because I agree with pretty much everything.

However the really sad thing with B&B's decline is that for every awful period that gets absolutely slated, within five years it's looked on with rose tinted spectacles because it's so superior to what has come after. 

For me, it felt like the rot set in around 1999 when the show became hugely Amber centric. Then into 2000-1, Macy's death, Morgan's nonsensical backstory, Stephanie's abortion tea, Deacon/Bridget...it felt like the wheels were flying off. Yet looking back on a lot of that now, it feels like it would be a fun rewatch and at least it wasn't boring.

Over the past year I watched all of 2005-19 that the official channel had up (with very, very frequent use of the ff button). The Liam character signified where the show just became incredibly turgid. If you look at the 2005 material and some thereafter, there is some really great stuff but I tend to credit anything positive to Patrick Mulcahey. His scripts and characterisation glossed over a lot of the structural flaws.

53 minutes ago, sheilaforever said:

Unfortunately, it seems that we have hit a snag indeed. No new 1990 uploads for a while. But we thought so several times in the last 2 (?) years... and I think Videoland in the Netherlands is still continuing with the classics. So let’s keep our fingers crossedl!

Ah good to know thank you. I remember the odd hiatus before so maybe we'll be lucky and get them again at some point!

Just want to make sure I've not missed any uploads - have we reached a stop to the 1990 eps with 888? Completely understand we're reliant on the kindness of others but didn't want to have missed them if they are uploaded in the Vault somewhere I've not spotted them!

2 hours ago, All My Shadows said:

2000 Malibu Road was WILD, and I'm so sad it just ended like that. Does anyone know anything about the Lisa Hartman Black narration to wrap up the series? I'd love to know how they tried to tie it all up.

I can't remember the whole thing but I know that Jade and the cop ended up together, I think with the suggestion they had a baby. Perry wound up in a mental institution and Jade "visits her often". I remember thinking that was such a dark and almost comically flippant way to wrap up her cliffhanger.

I also remember Joy survived the lightning strike (I can remember Lisa Hartman's voiceover saying these things) but drawing a blank on Lindsey...

It was such a great romp of a mini-series. I'm not sure it would have lasted a 22+ episode season but it was an entertaining ride.

2 hours ago, Vee said:

Peluso was also a soap lifer, a child star who'd bounced all over, from Search for Tomorrow to a throwaway teen role on garish Paul Rauch OLTL that she still made crackle. Underrated star then and now. Be sure to watch her with Dinah Lee in the 1993 eps.

I certainly will be now, once I've finished the storyline. Good on her for getting on with her life in a new career but it's a crying shame the industry evolved in a way that there was no space left for her. She'd be great on B&B albeit I wouldn't wish that upon her these days.

I've just reached Edie Falco as a nurse tending to Steffi. This is really the gift that keeps on giving with those sorts of surprises.

As someone who never had the opportunity to watch Loving, the show has interested me for years. I've seen bits and pieces (the pilot, odd episodes on YT) and you've all managed a far better job than I could of articulating why it's so intriguing. Every single isolated episode I've seen feels like a completely different show. 

I've been wanting to watch the Loving Murders for literally 25 years and the timing of these uploads is an absolute gift for me to dial down anxiety and immerse in something. As a soap loving 10 year old in the UK, my first knowledge of the story came from a friend of mine bringing me back a copy of Soap Opera Magazine, I guess from around August. It was a snapshot of the story that imprinted on me because it bore no resemblance to anything I'd seen on a soap before - I was also a precocious Agatha Christie and slasher fan so it ticked all my boxes.

I've now got about 20 episodes into the story and my reflections at random so far:

• I completely understand why @dc11786 or any long term fan would struggle with the story as a wrap up to "their soap". Initially I dug the relentless gloominess of the story and the curse of the Aldens. However the handling of Clay's death was so off. The physical comedy of it might have worked if it was a silly side story for Tess but the Weekend at Bernie's [!@#$%^&*] with the corpse felt like a slap in the face. Then vacillating back to the Alden funeral preparations and grief - truly bizarre.
• The Alden mansion set is stunningly beautiful. One of the best "mansions" I've seen on daytime.
• Ava and Kate are hugely watchable to me for completely different reasons. Kate really emanates warmth and that matriarchal archetype but without coming across as a total bore or cliche. Lisa Peluso is somebody I'm aware of but have barely seen in action before - I already feel like she'd be in the Susan Flannery league of actresses for me who I could watch do just about anything. Really charismatic and I find Ava really likable.
• I can't put my finger on it but aside from the Buck hotness, I find Darnell the most attractive in anything I've seen him in. Also, with the exception of Charles, I really appreciate that the black characters are all actual characters - multi faceted, different POVs, brilliant actors - not tired tropes. Pat is another character I am enjoying immensely even though she's firmly supporting.
• I can't believe Christine Tudor didn't go on to other roles after this, outside of daytime even. I presume this is a reflection on the era, how she presented physically in 1995 due to the way the show styled her. It's a crying shame. I've also enjoyed seeing her and reading this thread generally in relation to the Gwyneth character. One of those I wish there was a meaty bio for on the internet to understand her background and growth through the show.

It looks like they're working in the opposite direction - 2005 is patchy but they've uploaded pretty much everything from 2006 to date. A strange move but interesting development. I hold out hope we'll get more.

There's no geo blocking either which is a refreshing change.

I'm up to around episode 346 (I think) and the Angela story has just started. It is such a strange story...I get that it was most likely done to elicit sympathy for Stephanie but I can't imagine what the long term plan was. I know about the ultimate deception but I don't really buy (yet) that it was Bell's intention from the offset.

Susan Flannery continues to amaze me. Having only watched from the mid-90s onwards, I'm used to the bulldozer she became, always a hair's breadth from fury. This earlier version is far more nuanced and Flannery's exhausted resignation when she told Eric and then the kids about Angela was perfection. I've always been a Brooke stan but watching these early years does provide so much colour and texture to the later stuff.

Thanks that's interesting to know and reassuring I hadn't simply missed it.

The Logan stuff is important context to the set up of the show and I can't put my finger on what doesn't work for me. The casting is stronger than I'd expected but other than Brooke and to a lesser extent Donna, I don't really connect with them. I'm also very intrigued about the recasting of Judith Baldwin with Nancy Burnett. Judith set Beth up as a kind and strikingly beautiful woman who life hadn't been kind to; one you could imagine, when watching for the first time, might realistically win Eric's heart and take her place in the house on the hill. Nancy Burnett however just does not play that character.

15 hours ago, YRfan23 said:

Awesome!  can’t wait to see them! 

Add me to that list, I absolutely ate up the 1992 episodes.

I've just started watching from the beginning thanks to this thread and with some judicious FFing (mainly the Logans) I'm up to episode 50. I've always been a huge fan of Susan Flannery but her characterisation in these early episodes is mesmerising; to me she holds the entire show together. She's both terrifying (genuinely, not the cartoon slap slap 2000s version) and tragic.

I do have a question about Stephanie in these episodes though. In the first couple of weeks she received a phone call at home and did the classic soapy "I told you never to call me here" routine. Do we find out who the mystery caller was? I assumed it would be to do with "Angela" but it seems very early for that to have been factored in.

8 hours ago, Adamski said:

And I'm curious - what do wealthy Yorkshire women wear? Is it a less tacky version of moneyed Cheshire?

In essence, I'd say so from my limited observation  God knows moneyed Cheshire is a whole other universe...

I've only seen a few eps of this return so the Barbour look sounds exactly right and an updated follow on from her 90s style. But I saw her in some really unflattering outfits with false nails and her hair looking a bit Cheshire. I did see an episode where she "dressed down" after Moira shoved her in a mud mountain - it was  natural and understated.

Perhaps I've not seen enough to judge fairly. I do hope though that fans (and I guess the show) move on from the age related potshots. I've never thought of Kim as the kind of character who'd put herself in the position to invite cheap, low blows.

I dipped in again to see how they'd handle Kim's permanent return and dipped right back out again; there is nothing compelling or even logical about the way they're attempting to integrate her back into the show. Practically begging Cain for sex, nearly getting into a fist fight with fish wife Moira and propping up the bar at the Woolpack like an old lush. All while being presented as a femme fatale for the ages. It's so coarse and crass and lacking any kind of realism - not helped by her floating around the cardboard and glitter Home Farm set the rest of the time.

4 minutes ago, InLoveWithSoaps said:

I find Kim's face quite distracting still (it's all because of plastic surgery right?), and all the "she's OLD!!" jokes are wearing thin as well as her asking everyone she meets "and YOU are??".

It's third rate Footballers' Wives stuff and the styling does Claire King absolutely no favours. No wealthy, sophisticated woman who lives in rural Yorkshire dresses that way (even if they have come out of prison) nor does it correspond with the character as she was in the 1990s. The hair, makeup and nails make her look like a hard woman who spends half her life on sun beds and smokes 40 a day. Ironically, she actually looked better on Corrie when  she was playing exactly that kind of character.

I've had a chill out day  today and decided to binge through a load of the 1992 episodes posted up thread.

When I watched in the UK, episodes started from 1994 and although I've  gone back and worn out YouTube since then, I've never watched so many consecutive full episodes from before the time. I've watched a fair bit of 1987 but it's all a bit dry and lifeless as Bill Bell got a grip on what worked.

Having got to mid-December 92, it's such addictively trashy soap. Even though by my reckoning there are 5 or 6 fewer contract characters than there are in 2019, the show feels so much more expansive and varied. It also (in spite of being 100% pulpy entertainment) feels so much more like it exists in the real world.

I've always (well...bar 2018...) loved Sheila but she is such a shot of energy and the different dynamics with the other characters are fascinating to see play out. The Eric/Brooke/Sheila awkwardness feels way more modern than anything you'd see on soaps today. All trying to be adult but stepping on egg shells.

It made me reflect on the state of the  show today. Instead of lurching from one story to another and letting the show basically eat itself alive, I wish someone could take over with a long term view. Work out the ideal shape and size of the  canvas, types of stories etc and then get there. Ridge/Brooke/Taylor should be filling the roles that Eric/Stephanie/Jack/Sally fulfilled in 92, not repeating the same stuff they were doing themselves.

On the other side, Karen  just does not work as a character at all. Joanna Johnson is perfectly appealing but I've got no concept of what Karen's personality is supposed to be. There's also a gross scene with her insinuating to an icked out Bill that she's going to "do things" with Thorne in spite of being a virgin. This is in the same set of episodes where Eric talks earnestly with Ridge about whether he does or doesn't want to have a new sexual relationship. Guess some things were always consistent.

Zack and Felicia are zzz too but that story seemed to be finished up quickly. No one story dominates for weeks on end.

I sincerely hope for 1993 in the future because  from what I've seen, it's even better.

Thank you, it's been a few years since I've seen that stuff and still got me! That in itself links to comments in this thread - it gets me because I grew up with the show and those characters. 

Equally, I also used to absolutely love B&B and hands down class the Stephanie/Brooke BeLieF storyline in 1993 as some of the best soap ever created (the clips are in the US soap thread). It appeals to me in a completely different way. I was on the edge of my seat, I was willing Brooke to slap Stephanie back (thankfully she did) and it was immensely satisfying drama. But I cannot recall a time that show has ever made me even close to shedding a tear. That's not not its function for me or its identity. 

I got quite into Guiding Light in the mid-noughties, admittedly not an era that long term fans rate in any way whatsoever. The appeal was seeing something in US soaps that was a little more domesticated and "real". It also led me to a blog that posted classic GL clips from over the years with lots of explanatory detail on the context of the scenes. The material around Maureen Bauer's death (again posted in the US soap thread) made a really significant impact me in taking US soaps seriously as drama as opposed to popcorn entertainment.

Another scene that I think belongs in this thread. A rare example of Corrie showing real heart these days; the whole episode was excellent:

I think that's probably the best work that she's done on the show; she also had some very meaty material a few years before where she revealed that she had helped her mother to die when she was a teenager.

I love the show and always will because it's "my soap", I'm the same age as it and grew up with it. I completely see its flaws and I'm lucky that there have been only a few periods where I've had to stop watching. The quality has never plummeted through the floor so dramatically that I think the damage is irreparable but there have been some very close calls.

That said, it is wildly inconsistent... if I take Jackie Woodburne as an example, I feel like she shines when she's absolutely committed to the material as above. She's phenomenally talented but unlike some actresses, she can't sell the hokey stuff and around 2005-6, the tone of storylines changed so dramatically for her that she became used to doing these heightened, campy performances and I think she enjoyed getting to play more of an edge to her character.

Her last great work I think was when the character was diagnosed with MS in 2007. There is one particular scene which I desperately looked for to post (but couldn't find it) where she is temporary blind but hasn't yet been diagnosed. She's in hospital for a CT scan and freaks out halfway through until Karl goes in to her. They'd been rather stoic up to this point and then both break down - I've not seen it for some time but it always used to have me in floods.

As for other soaps, ironically, I think many of the best moments are more difficult to track down online than they are for the US soaps. The Laurel scenes in Emmerdale are on my list so glad to see they've been posted. I'll ponder anything else that I might be able to find.

Edited: As if by magic, that's one of the scenes I remember vividly!

http://www.digitalspy.com/soaps/emmerdale/news/a868277/emmerdale-spoilers-kim-tate-return-confirmed-claire-king/

So there we have it... I'll pop back in to the show again when she returns but assuming it'll be Kim Tate vs the Dingles I won't be sticking around.

I've not seen a great deal of Joseph at all but can see why you'd feel that way because I can't bear any of those characters either   The Tates though are so iconic to me and when I read ages ago that they were being revisited, I had misplaced hopes that it was the start of building a next generation. Particularly because the show is not one to draw on history from that era and I thought there was so much potential in it.

Another side note and complaint, wtf has happened to the Home Farm set? It looks like it was designed and dressed for a school play.

Probably 2000, around when it went to five nights a week and Sarah Sugden was killed. I never particularly cared for that character (I found the actress irritating) but she served a clear purpose in the Sugden family. When she went, it felt like the start of a decline I guess. There was this air of transforming the show into something else that was more ITV cookie cutter. This was a period where I recall the whole drama slate on ITV becoming very basic and broad strokes.  

With Emmerdale this seemed to be through hollowing out the families, relationships and characters that had built up during the 90s (the building blocks of what makes a soap a soap) and replacing them with gimmicky, comedy characters. I remember finding Bernice really jarring in those days. I never liked the Dingles and they came to feel like the only stable family. 

I've kept tabs on and off over the years and the only period I actually enjoyed again was Gavin Blythe's era at the helm. The Wyldes, that Fatal Attraction story and Aaron stuff pulled me back in. It wasn't high quality per se but there was cohesion to it and soapy twists and turns that at least had some logic to them.

I remember finding the Emma Barton stuff ludicrous a couple of years ago but I watched that week and appreciated the audacity of it. At least it felt like they were putting in huge amounts of effort and playing it straight.

But this week...they've effectively shat on the memories of what I enjoyed when I loved the show. Kim is unrecognisable (I couldn't even call her a character), the story makes no sense and killing off Joe is insane.

I rarely feel truly sentimental about soaps and certainly never thought I'd feel so outraged by Emmerdale but these episodes are appalling. Story, acting, production. Absolutely everything.

Seconded. I've watched this week because I've always said the only thing that could lure me back was Kim Tate. I cannot believe the tacky pantomime I'm watching... I might post more thoughts once the week is out but at the moment I'm astounded adults have been paid to produce what I've watched.

That Sheila/Sally scene is absolutely magic. A testament to Darlene Conley, Kimberlin Brown and the juicy soapy goodness that B&B used to be.

I was only around 13 when that aired and I still distinctly remember the thrill of those two characters interacting because I hadn't seen it before (and don't recall it happening again). 

Yet more reminders of the squandered potential the show has. 

Edited - I've just watched the clip of Sheila/Stephanie where Sheila asks if she never wanted to lose control when Brooke went after Eric. "I never wanted to attack her physically!"  At the time I just loathed Stephanie has a hypocrite but now I suspect it was just the start of the writing rot setting in.

I always expect the episodes to be butchered but each one is getting a 35 minute slot which, to me, suggests they won't need to cut for ads as they would with a standard 30 minute slot. I think generally ITV3 only edits if the material is unsuitable for daytime but I could be entirely wrong.

In a bit of unexpected news ITV3 is going to start airing repeats of Corrie from October, starting with Alan Bradley's first appearance in 1986. They'll be airing two eps a day and given the show was only on twice a week back then, they'll blast through fairly quickly.

I should imagine the eps will make their way online for those interested...

I was really surprised by how effective Josh's death was, particularly the writing and acting. I went into the week with low expectations and as soon as the explosion happened, I was taken aback by the intensity of the scenes to the point I was bawling my eyes out by the end of the death episode!

Terese, Imogen and even Paige really showed their worth. Brad...less so but there was at least some emotion there. I also enjoyed Lauren getting Terese to confront what had happened and the tears running down her face.

One thing that's been striking me recently (though I feel dirty for saying it) is how hammy Jackie Woodburne is becoming at times. I don't know if it's because she's not had a serious story for quite some time but she just seems a bit cartoony. The stuff on Monday where she accused Karl of flirting with Nene should have been a serious precursor to Sarah arriving but instead it felt like a comedy side story. I don't know, I can't put my finger on it.

There's a really good energy about the show at the moment and a freshness to the stories. Lots of variation, some good teen actors, intrigue around Ned and this new John Doe guy. I'm enjoying 90% of the show which is rare

Thanks for posting these, the BeLieF story is one of my all time soap favourites - a time when B&B was firing on all cylinders as delicious, trashy soap.

These scenes (and the following blow up after the masseuse etc) are such a rich pay off between Brooke and Stephanie. I don't think I've ever been as satisfied watching a fictional character (Stephanie) get what they deserved. Obviously it was all for nought given the way the show progressed and horrific writing for Brooke as a character but you don't earn moments like that in soap any more. It felt like the show was spinning on its axis and everything was exploding.

I've just finished watching what's available of Berrenger's and it was far better than I expected it to be, possibly because it was Lorimar as opposed to another Shapiro show. I'll post some random observations.

The main 'issue' I had with it is exactly as mentioned above in that there are just too many characters so it feels like stories disappear for episodes at a time or characters with potential just never really get going. That' definitely the case with Berrenger granddaughter Melody and her husband Todd - there are constant Macbeth hints about them and some interesting stuff where Melody pulls a nasty trick on her mother Babs, but it doesn't lead anywhere. I sensed by the last episode posted that a story was finally brewing for them.

However the upside to the number of characters is that it kept the show highly watchable and there were very few occasions where I was tempted to hit the FF button. The Shane Bradley character did annoy the hell out of me (mainly for being a homewrecker whilst self-righteously whining about everybody else). Thankfully the size of the cast meant that she was used appropriately. If this was Dynasty in the same era, she'd have been front and center constantly.

The production values are great - the department store sets look good, plenty of location shooting in NY and LA and some great party scenes for product launches etc.

The show really felt like it was hitting its stride by the last episode I watched. Babs, Gloria, Todd and Melody were moving into really interesting areas and I'd love to know what was planned.