beebs

Oh for sure! And that's the thing. Not a year later, Sam's back in Hollywood, and Marlena has forgiven Sam so totally that she's asked her to be Maid of Honour at her wedding! But somehow Donna isn't worth forgiving at this point, for much less horrific crimes?? It all just made no sense. I honestly think that PFS just saw what a terrible set of stories Sam had and just decided "nah". The twist of everyone thinking the Strangler got Marlena was too inspired an opportunity to pass up, and, in all fairness, watching what I have of Andrea Hall, she's not much of an actress. She would foul up her lines more times than she'd get them right. So unless they were gonna have Deidre do the double role, it hardly felt worth keeping both characters. The fact that we're only NOW at the point where folks are suspicious of death, suggests to me this community at large doesn't have a particularly high ratio of Mensa members, put it that way.

Nah, you're not the only one. Especially all because Sam was addicted to pills that impaired her judgment? Sam ain't THAT smart. It made Don look even dumber than he usually does. And yeah, they made up within a year. It was honestly stupid to me, because it felt like Ann Marcus refused to give that story any long-term fallout, and AFAIC, the breakdown of Sam and Marlena's relationship could've been GREAT, especially since AM introduced Marlena's parents and all. Marlena's tension between knowing that Sam only did what she did because her drug abuse, and the deep mistrust and trauma of being locked away falsely, could've been a GREAT story, but instead, we got....Donna.😬

Exactly how I felt reading through the monthly recaps during the Sam locks Marlena away story. I can just see how absolutely put off viewers would've been after years of Bell and PFS' brilliance to see that mess play out. Not to mention the fact that not only do they NOT look identical, but Sam's voice was markedly lower than even Deidre Hall's voice TODAY. How they expected us to believe that not only her colleagues of over a year, but her intimate partner wouldn't notice the difference beggars belief!

Yep! And Neil wouldn't let up, as he is wont to do. Basically just drove her over the edge (and into the lake?) One of her first episodes after her return in 1979 was the same 3-19-79 episode where Stephanie's in the hospital after trying to pan-fry her hands. But that's the only episode I've seen of hers. She comes off as quite likeable, from what little I see.

And I think at one point, she was so depressed by Neil's philandering, she walked herself into the sea to die by suicide. The hysterectomy was due to cancer so she had to terminate her pregnancy that was a WTD between Chris and Greg, as well. Yikes!

Oh that's been a pet peeve of mine for ages. Mitch Longley being the anomaly that he is in the soap world is yet another damning indictment of the rampant ableism in the industry.

I could see it. I probably also would have not made Paul a retcon secret child of John's from a period when he was front burner in story, but that's for another thread. I also think that they could have found a more organic way to make Will a bit more of a b!tch, almost as a reaction to Sonny. That volatility could have been exciting, and rebelling against Sonny's desire for domestication by sleeping around a bit would have kept things fresh. Hell, tie it to Titan, and bring on one of Sonny's brothers, and have Will hook up with him in an attempt to move up the ladder at work, while claiming he wants to "do it on his own without family help". Almost to justify his desire to sleep around in his own mind. He's Sami and Lucas's son, for God's sake. It's okay to give him SOME edges.

Realistically, the stories I would want to see some of these characters in do play on some of these things, but I think if you commit to fleshing them out in terms of character and family, you can still be compelling beyond just the optics of the story at hand. Having Will have an affair with Paul on DAYS came too soon and the character changed too quickly, but it could have been done much smoother if they had played up Sonny's domineering side, trying to control Will's career (not wanting him working for a Titan company, fearing Will would get sucked into the family mess etc), and Will resenting the interference so much, and resenting Sonny's time he spent living "the gay life" before they met, while Sonny is the only man Will's ever been with. And that led to an eventual affair, and a messy divorce, and saw Will decide to party it up, largely to spite Sonny, who still wants to be with Will, but only on his terms, effectively trying to shove the genie back in the bottle. If you use the domesticated qualities in some of the characters as a means to conflict with the needs of others, it can be used organically without devolving into PSA or stereotype. But it requires gradual movement that daytime is completely disinterested in now. I'll go one further: Terry on GH. I sorta tossed an idea out there to a friend that I wished the show hadn't killed AJ off again, because I'd be down to see him and Terry get together, but not realize she was trans at first, and once he did, he attacked her, but Terry either killed him or severely wounded him. This could lead to a great story of Terry and Liz taking on the great Q money and power, and lawyers, in court. The trial could highlight the class disparity as well as flipping the queer issue of trans women being killed by partners on its head, and giving them something of a voice. Daytime has the room to do something like that, of course. If there was the interest.

Yeaaaah, we were discussing her DAYS run in the DAYS behind-the-scenes thread, and reading through the Daytime Serial Newsletter recaps from her run...it was one show she just did NOT get, and, while it may have played better onscreen, she messed up a LOT of what Pat Falken Smith had set up, and her pacing was...too quick. I'll let you judge for yourself, but the general consensus was that she was a bad bad fit. But yes, everywhere else, particularly in prime time, her work has largely been nothing but praised, and especially her turnaround of KL, so I still have to give her props for that.

That explains why I never saw it. Our cable back then was MacLean-Hunter and we didn't get Bravo/Showcase/Etc. until about 1995? I'll keep my eyes peeled if any more content comes out. I feel like Ann Marcus was, beyond her disastrous DAYS run, considered a pretty solid writer.

That does sound like an interesting plan. It sounds like her return wasn't entirely designed to be so short. I have to wonder what forced her back out so soon.

Yeah, saw that, though going through Capitol's credits from that period, and there's no mention of him that I see (though they could omit writers who aren't writing that particular episode, so who knows?) Just working on a little project for YouTube, and am looking for whatever info I can find.

Random shift in subject, but can we confirm if Reilly's first writing gig in soaps was at RH? I find it fascinating that he worked for so long under PFS in his early years, given what came later, especially at DAYS. Info pre-RH is hard to come by.

There truly rarely is. Bob was an exception, where his death truly only could've led to more story than him staying alive. Stephanie allying with Linda and Alex against Chris and Mary would've been a great set up, especially if Stephanie waited to shock everyone with the news that she was, in fact, Brooke, and had a claim to the estate, throwing her support behind Linda, and screwing Mary out of control. The rivalry between the sisters could've lasted years!

Fair, though there are ways to work around that. I had written in my DAYS '79 blog the idea that Harley had tried to attack Marie perhaps threw him off her and he died falling off the balcony, with Alex showing up the same moment, and Marie having a mental block of the events, thinking Alex did it. But there are certainly other ways that it could have been played and kept Alex around. From the sound of the whole Jessica storyline, they were really looking to soften him into 1981. I don't really think I can buy him as a romantic lead at that point, so it's nice they didn't totally shift him that way and completely have him lose his edge. Love the idea of Linda with Bill, tbh. And I think keeping Linda jockeying for control of Anderson after Bob's death alongside Alex, Chris, and Mary would've been a lot of fun to watch.

Right. Which was silly as well. Why not just recast instead of retelling the story again, minus Alex trying to sleep with his own daughter. I still am baffled by the mysterious dropping of Alex murdering his brother, among other things on Harrower's run. It did reek of interference in some cases, though I think dropping David and Trish's divorce case was down to the fallout of SSH and KS' fistfight. I have to wonder what would've happened had Al Rabin not come in to clear house, because it does sound like the Valentine's Day Massacre was his doing, not Laemmle's, she just got the unenviable task of having to refocus the show in its aftermath. And failed miserably.

For sure. I honestly think that some of the departures were for the best (Nina Laemmle needed to go and FAST, Liz Harrower could've used a co-HW to give most of her stories some more direction, and Ann Marcus really needed someone to reign her in and SLOW her down), but in each case, they left as some interesting story directions were happening, and it's frustrating to see so many of their ideas get nixed midstream. Personally, I understand why they would redirect some of these Julie stories to Marlena, since there was already perfectly good conflict set up in Doug/Lee/Julie that you didn't really need to add another angle to it. Liz Harrower left so much of Lee's backstory dangling that she was pretty much a blank canvas until Laemmle finally gave her a backstory. I do have to wonder if the initial intention was to set up a quad with Kellam and Julie, and Lee and Doug, or if they were setting Lee up to be involved in Liz's story (remember Lee was sleeping with Liz's actor husband in Paris, a thread that, once again, was never revisited).

He just sorta...vanished back to France to hide from his shady underworld boss at the end of 1979, so his girlfriend Mimi came to Salem a couple times in early 1980 to harass Trish about some diamonds she'd taped to the bottom of her desk or something? And we never heard from him again. As for MF's Mary, yeah. It really made no sense. Tomlin/Lisanti did her SO dirty that I honestly think that, combined with the lousy recast, made PFS decide the character was too damaged to keep around. Unfortunate, really.

Something like that. I appreciate Mary as a character in one regard, because she's so complex, and so many possibilities. I still kinda wish they'd gone further with pairing Mary to Steve Olson in an attempt for him to get at Anderson (a plot he cooks up with Linda, of course), it would've been a much more interesting story than Steve's antique canes filled with diamonds. Going back to what we were discussing with Melinda Fee's Mary, it's almost as though they wrote her Mary as an entirely different character, because it makes so little sense to me that she would fixate on a slime like Alex when Chris, who she patched things up with, and continued to care deeply for, was right there. You can say a lot of things about Mary, but she was never stupid. Until then, that is. But absolutely she could be a stick in the mud, yes LOL

LOL, not QUITE. They had a fight over his relationship with Amanda when he came to her place to pick up the rest of his stuff after their breakup, and as he drove away, Mary ran outside and threw a bunch of his clothes at the car in a rage. Chris lost control of the car and hit her.

I mean, he was pretty popular with Barbara Stanger's Mary (though that was never gonna work considering how much the two actors loathed each other), and I recall someone mentioning his pairing with Mary Frann's Amanda was beginning to take root when Mary Frann quit an they scuttled her back to Chicago and her tw@tty husband Greg. But...other than that...yeah, he never really did, did he?

I actually think that's not a bad idea, truly. Y&R's indifference is GH's gain, and Liz needs her father.

So apparently this episode was September 22, 1981 (according to Shawn Stevens's description), and from what I've gathered online, the strike ran from April until July? So this is a couple months post-strike, I think, so from the looks of it, Chastain is HW here.

Many Canadians did, but obviously we also carried some on our own providers, I'll still mention what I recall: AW - not sure when but CTV carried the great majority of the show's run all the way to the end. Texas also seems to have run in Canada, and was highly successful. GL - Global picked up for the last years after Passions ended. EON - Aired on CBC for a number of years (probably the majority of its run), but not sure if it ran until the end of the series or not. I know SFT was remade into a radio soap on CBC in 1958, starring Corrine Conley (Phyllis from DAYS) in the Jo role, and it's quite possible the episodes still exist (I'm sure it would cost $$$ to unearth them, though).

I think they started together, Bo was definitely gone by then. Then the rape happened AS Dena was going on sabbatical, starting about Feburary 2016, and it was Beth Milstein who was filling in from there until September, then Griffith got the boot, and Corday kept Dena and paired her with Ryan Quan for the next year, which is when Jungle Madness Pt. 2, Deimos-o-rama, and Eli & Valerie were introduced. My timelines aren't always perfect, though, so I'd have to look to be sure. Thing is, Higley is still listed as co-HW throughout this period, and how much of it was planned with/by her, just executed in her absence. So, I still count it as her, for the most part.