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beebs

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Posts posted by beebs

  1. 39 minutes ago, Khan said:

     

    I've always wanted a real, "Empire Strikes Back" moment where Stefano finally, FINALLY tells John who he really, really, REALLY is.  "Search your feelings, Pawn.  You know what he's saying is true."
     

    Then, John beheads his own father and removes the Phoenix ring.

     

    JER hated writing for DAYS, and he hated working for Ken Corday, too.  Those who don't believe me can watch the clips again and then decide for themselves.  ("Search your feelings, DAYS fans.  You know what I'm saying is true.")


    Wouldn't that be great? If only I could trust that another writer wouldn't swoop in and undo THAT "final final ending" a year later.

    I still find it so hard to believe that the same man who write GL in 1991-92 wrote such garbage at DAYS. Now, granted, I see traces of his style in 1992 GL (Eleni's incapability to just spit out the fact she saw a sex worker in Frank's bed in Paris is classic JER nonsense IMO), and acknowledge that his tendencies were tempered by his co-writers. But the fact you can immediately pinpoint when he took over as HW by the severe dumbing down of the dialogue within weeks of his arrival speaks volumes. 

    I still felt some of that warmth during JER's first run, at least at first, but I chalk that up to cast cohesion, and to the will of the cast to maintain that sensibility in spite of the writing. The second run was an extended middle-finger to every long-term viewer, without question.

  2. 15 hours ago, Khan said:

    I've always wondered whether the quality of the writing itself was the real issue and that the exodus of longtime favorites merely magnified the problem.

     

    Putting it another way...

     

    If the writing had stayed crappy throughout that period, but Ruth Brooks Flippen and Nina Laemmle had managed NOT to write anyone off who had been crucial to the show, would DAYS have been in better shape if/when Pat Falken Smith had returned?

     

    Similarly, if the writing somehow had improved during Flippen's or Laemmle's tenure, would the audience have been in a better position to accept the loss of certain characters?

    It's almost impossible to say, in retrospect. Watching this episode, the stories seem to be...okay, though not especially exciting. The big drama being Julie being shot at Doug's Club, and her friends and family being torn about whether it was a good idea for her to be there with Doug or not, and whether that put her at risk (wasn't this the riverboat club on the river or something? My memory for those details is a bit patchy), and the fire at Anderson that's suspicious and setting the business up to be ripe to be sold off for parts to Kellam Chandler & Co., who is also running for office at this time.

    That, and, if I remember correctly, Margo Horton's slow death from cancer were the three big stories at this time. It's relatively grounded in reality, of course, but it certainly isn't anything that would excite viewers when you consider what timeslot competitors like AMC, in particular, was putting out at that time.

    So, fan anger may have been strong at the slew of deaths during this period, but Bob's death certainly drove story at this time, so it was hardly a pointless death. I also think Bill and Laura leaving was for the best at that point, considering Laura's mental state by that time. But no, I don't think the stories were particularly bad during this period, though not exactly lighting the world on fire.

    Long story short, I think the deaths may not have hit as hard if there was strong enough story to fill that void, and, from the looks of things, there really wasn't, especially when you consider how shows like GH were making huge gains in this era with far more new faces than DAYS had at this point.

  3. Apologies if it's been shared already, but found a treat on the Internet Archive yesterday:

    A rare episode from the Nina Laemmle period. Looks like Sony isn't pulling episodes from Internet Archive (so far), but I'll remove the direct link, it's the 8/12/80 episode 

    I find it interesting how, despite folks' complaints about the excess of new faces introduced at this point, the focus is very clearly on the vets here. Any regular viewers from that era know whether this episode is an anomaly, or if Laemmle's changes at the show were more of a simple refocusing of the show around a slimmed down core of characters?

    ETA: My apologies, just realized the infamous series of deaths in 1980 occurred under Ruth Brooks Flippen, not Nina Laemmle. Oops!

  4. 1 minute ago, Khan said:

     

    Nah, @beebs, I won't bash the action-adventure '80's.  Perhaps they weren't as...sophisticated as the decade that had come before.  Nevertheless, I loved them for their ability to make me feel something other than boredom or disgust, which is a lot more than I could say for the decades that have come afterward.

     

     

    IA.  And the truth is, even when Mascolo was still alive, I was more than ready to leave Stefano and the rest of the DiMeras behind.  Between allowing them to continue to wreak havoc in Salem and the systematic destruction of the Horton, Brady and other clans, DAYS is now a soap without a real core.  And without that core, there's nothing to sustain the show even for a little while longer.

    I mean, I guess it's just not my cup of tea. I find myself rolling my eyes a lot at a good chunk of 80s DAYS, though I genuinely understand its appeal, and love the warmth and heart the show had during that period. But I will agree with you that there is a lot of that warmth that's been missing from the show since the JER era and that has been rarely seen since. 

    The only fitting end to Stefano would've been by the monster of his own creation. IMO, Kristen or André, killing him in a highly personal way as their final act of madness, would've really put a nice bow on the whole DiMera ordeal and allowed DAYS to move on properly from this mess of a family. Instead, the Phoenix stays rising over and over in increasingly insulting ways.

  5. 3 hours ago, BetterForgotten said:

    Even EON managed to beat the entire NBC lineup that weeks, wow.

    And even then, they STILL lost more than half of their lead-in's audience. That's a HUGE drop, no surprise that they were being dropped like flies from affiliates the time, sadly. 

  6. 4 hours ago, Forever8 said:

    Since Carly Schroeder is serving in the army now I wouldn't mind Brooke Newton (Ex Colby) from AMC to inhabit the role of Serena Baldwin on GH. 

     

    Have her come on to work with her mother Lucy to revitalize Deception Cosmetics and have her fall for Michael. Which itself will cause chaos because of Sonny once sleeping with Serena's sister Karen and feeding her drugs and convincing her to strip on the pole back in the day. Imagine Scotty seeing his daughter getting involved with a Corinthos. And throw in Bobbie for good measure too who could see both factors in this chaos too. 

     

    Kelley Missal as Christina Baldwin

    If the show actually cared more about their younger generation. I wouldn't mind Christina coming back as a medical intern along with TJ, and a few other recurring twenty somethings as a close-knit group of interns at General  Hospital. I would love one of her first scenes to be her looking at a photo of her biological mother who was a intern at the hospital twenty years ago promising she wouldn't end up like her. Have her be close to Lucy and Kevin too and have her a rocky relationship with her adoptive father Scott too. Perhaps she and Serena could have a somewhat rivalry because of Scotty always "Favoring" his biological daughter over her etc... 

    These ideas might actually get me watching GH again. So naturally they would do the exact opposite of what you just suggested. 

  7. Friend of mine and I have been talking about casting (largely for the DAYS fanfic, in my case, AW in his). Specifically casting actors for the legacy characters that have been long-missing from their respective shows, or who have been grossly miscast in recent attempts.

    So, having said this, if you had the choice to cast some legacy characters in 2019, or recast some that haven't worked on any show (past or present, since we've been talking AW and all), who would you go with? And hell, what direction would you take them if you did!

     

    An example I've been conemplating:

    Michael Roark as Jeremy Horton (DAYS)

    He could easily fit right into the Kiriakis business, having been a touch on the shady side back when he was on the show previously, and I could see him with any number of the women in the age range on the show, or hell, even give Kate a boytoy.

    Other ideas? Crickets? 😂

  8. 13 minutes ago, chrisml said:

    I just find it all depressing--the number of soaps on the air and how the ratings were compared to the crumbs they get today. I'm in such a nostalgic mood for the soaps lately. 

    I think that's twofold. Partly the lousy quality of the shows post-OJ/JER, and part the fact there's no actually DECENT way to aggregate how many people are watching now on all media. Do I think soaps are being widely viewed today? Not for a minute, but I suspect things are somewhat less dire than we are led to believe, there's just no way to measure it.

  9. 7 minutes ago, DramatistDreamer said:

    And I OOP!

     

    Thank God. I just got into London tonight and was dreading trying come or go after Halloween (I'm heading to Rotterdam between the 2nd and 7th, then back to London). 

     

    Already witnessed a fight between two old men over Brexit today, and I was dreading the border delays and seeing the infuriated Leavers trying to go back to their new homes in  Spain and wondering why they're no longer entitled to live there. 🙄

  10. 6 minutes ago, soapfan770 said:

     

    I know PC overtook AW briefly at one point if I recall right in 1998 but Beach never did, although it did come close to it during the Shockwave story. 

    Yeah, Sunset Beach never was ahead of AW, not even for a single week. Jason47's weekly ratings database confirms this. 

  11. 6 minutes ago, ~bl~ said:

    How is Rick Hearst defining legacy character. I thought that was a character typically born on a show or one who came on screen as a kid, and was a child of main characters. For example Alan-Michael Spaulding who he played on Guiding Light is a legacy character. I don't consider long running characters on GH like Bobbie as legacy as it doesn't fit the definition. 

    Probably using it interchangeably with "tentpole" character, which, in the case of Ric, makes somewhat more sense, but even then, I don't necessarily think TPTB at GH see Ric that way.

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