Jump to content

juppiter

Members
  • Posts

    2,500
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Posts posted by juppiter

  1. I'm watching 1995 Days right now and absolutely loving it. I really think 90s Days may be one of the best soaps of all time.

    Unlike today when all of the soaps are basically the same, the show has a definite unique feel to it. I love how infused with religion it is. There are so many moments of people talking about their religion, like Alice deciding Gina is Hope because her bible opened up to a specific verse that day.

    They do such a wonderful job blending all of the generations and using their vets while also mixing in compelling younger actors. Ali Sweeney is just a force of nature as Sami. Her obsessive love for Austin is so well done and doesn't feel weird -- Reilly would go back to this well often (for example, Theresa on Passions) but I think Sami's the archetype of that character. When she drugs him, it's definitely a trashy moment, but they sell it so well that it doesn't feel as trashy as it should, if that makes sense.

    Days was definitely pushing the envelope with the storylines they told -- Sami drugging Austin being a prime example of that. But they blend the traditional with the envelope pushing so well that they always manage to sell it.

    The sci fi aspects like Marlena being possessed or Stefano playing mind games with people do not feel gimmicky at all. It feels very organic to the storyline and just what is normal to happen in Salem.

    Another thing I have to complement Reilly on is how damn good the day to day episodes are. There are ridiculous moments of delay in the pace, but it never feels that way, it always feels like the plot is moving and little things happen everyday that feel important even though they really aren't. He also does a great job of playing out all the beats and keeping a lot of characters involved all at once -- he is perhaps the most effective writer I've seen do this, perhaps even better than Marland.

    The one weird thing for me was seeing actors different from the ones I'm used to...

    Patrick Muldoon as Austin -- I didn't like him on Melrose Place and I don't really like him here. Austin Peck's Austin Reed was perhaps the dumbest soap opera male of all time, but in such an earnest, innocent, and endearing way that it circled back to likable. I can't wait until he shows up.

    Lisa Rinna as Billie -- I love her. What a likable character. And she actually looked stunningly beautiful back then... shame what she has done to her face.

    Robert Kelker-Kelly as Bo -- Actually I really like him in this role. He brings an intensity to it.

    Deborah Adair as Kate -- She does nothing for me. I want my Lauren Koslow.

    Mark Valley as Jack -- He seems like a different character than Matt Ashford's Jack, but I really like him. There is something so 90s about his characterization that is appealing.

    But yeah, 1995 Days was firing on all cylinders. I really wish NBC would make all of 90s Days available on streaming. I'd pay good money for it. It totally holds up.

  2. It was never consistently good, but it used to have like a 2 week period every 6 months or so where it was must-see TV. But it could never sustain anything because Bradley writes like he has ADHD. I pretty much gave up after one of the Sheila returns where she had a daughter (Erica) and they kind of just dropped it with no payoff, and I gave up for good for good when Susan Flannery retired.

    On 2/16/2021 at 10:11 AM, Marquise said:

    For me B&B was good up until 2005 may be. I lost interest after Susan Flannery left and lost interest in whatever story is happening with the recast of Ridge (2012) and Thorne (2017).

    It cannot be exaggerated how awful the recasts are. I can't even tune in every once in a while like I do with DAYS because the B&B recasts immediately repulse me.

  3. I watched season 5. The first half was pretty bad. The second half I actually thought was pretty good. I'm sad to hear that they apparently don't keep that momentum in season 6.

     

    I just hate Jake/Alison as a couple so much, though they got more tolerable as the season went on. I'm glad drunk Alison came back. I really love Alison as a character, though I think CTS acted her butt off sometimes to make up for writing that wasn't all there.

     

    The Michael/Kimberly/Megan storyline makes no sense and drags on and on forever. Kimberly really leaves with such a whimper that you don't miss her at all when she's gone.

     

    They really wrecked Jane's character, to the point where I was relieved that she left. I definitely see what someone said upthread about them forgetting about the relationships that made the show great. Jane leaves, and Michael doesn't even get to say goodbye? WTF? With the way everyone is in their little storyline bubble, this feels like 3 or 4 disjointed shows.

     

    They brought on Donna Mills as Jane's mom for four episodes and gave her absolutely nothing to do. What a waste of Donna Mills.

     

    Sam is fine. But she and Billy together just seem like one of those couples that the writers put together because they don't know what else to do with the characters.

     

    I love Taylor. She's absolutely insane and Lisa Rinna is so fun in the role. Kyle is also a good addition.

     

    Laura Leighton was the MVP of the season. She ties everything together and finally bringing Sydney into the D&D world is magic and she's so good that you wish they'd done it 3 seasons earlier. It's so nice that she finally has a man that really loves her and how DARE they kill her instead of giving her a happy ending? It's so cruel.

     

    I might eventually watch season 6, but I've got some other shows I want to watch now, so maybe not for a few weeks.

  4. On 2/3/2021 at 9:32 PM, Vee said:

    Someday, when they put Knots Landing up on streaming, I'll give it a real shot. It remains the undiscovered country for me but so many people I respect view it as the gold standard for classic primetime soap.


    Knots really is one of the best shows of all time. Writing, acting, music, everything. And the longevity of it means they could write things on levels that most shows just can’t. And I may be the exception, but I love the first three seasons. 

     

    anyway, I’m watching season 5 of MP and... lol. It’s not great.

     

    The Sydney/Jane/Richard/Sam stuff could have been fun but it’s just missing something. They maybe needed more camp and they needed to do a better job making Sam the straight man in all this — it is kind of bizarre that she’s putting up with all this considering she literally just met Jane and Sydney five minutes ago. 
     

    I HATE Jake and Alison together. It doesn’t make sense that Alison wouldn’t forgive Billy. It doesn’t make sense that Alison is still working at Shooters. 
     

    the Peter trial storyline and Peter now having a backstory or changed identity or whatever is a snooze. I don’t think Jack Wagner should have come back after his initial arc in season 3. He’s just boring and I’m not buying any of this. 
     

    Matt being on drugs is fun. Doug Savant is a really good actor. He’s definitely playing things that aren’t in the script by seeming strung out even when he’s not supposed to be. This show doesn’t deserve him. 
     

    Lisa Rinna is weird and obsessed but seems like she might be fun later. We’ll see. 
     

    I can see what someone said above about the show forgetting the relationships that made it great. 

  5. I just rewatched Melrose seasons 1-4.

     

    Season 1 is a forgotten gem. I love how fresh and young it feels at the beginning and it's a bit more realistic how they portray the young characters trying to make it in L.A. I actually liked Sandy better before she lost her accent. It's funny how in the beginning Michael and Jane seem the most removed from the group. Billy/Allison are a totally rootable couple. The 90210 crossovers at the beginning are so painful. If they were going to talk about nothing but the Jake/Kelly age difference, they should have found a better way to spinoff.

     

    Seasons 2-3 are clearly the golden age of the show. Anything with Michael/Jane/Kimberly/Sydney is just amazing. That has to be one of the legendary soap opera love quadrangles, because it's just so messy and amazing how these four people constantly cause each other such misery. The backstory with Allison being molested didn't feel like a retcon because it explained Allison's behavior. Any time Allison became a drunken mess was always fun.

     

    There is an obvious huge drop off in quality between seasons 3 and 4. They just shouldn't have had Kimberly blow up the complex. It was such a Moldavian moment and it wasn't worth it. It sidetracks her in a mental hospital for half the season and puts her in Peter's orbit and out of Michael's. Jane gets in Richard's orbit and out of Michael's. So we lose the core of the show which should have always been Michael/Jane/Kimberly/Sydney and the terrible things they do to each other. And Jane becomes kind of a villain, which I know Josie Bissett wanted, but it just doesn't fit. Brooke lost her bite and just became whiny.

     

    Should I go on and watch 5-7? I don't think I've ever seen them. I don't know if I want to continue. 4 was kind of boring.

  6. 51 minutes ago, All My Shadows said:

    And this was a part of the bigger problem - the show did not tell many long-term stories in its last five years. No slow build-ups, no very deliberate attempts to touch on every possible emotion attached to an event, no satisfying climax (whew, calm down), no lengthy period to pick up the pieces afterward, none of that. It was an endless cycle of cartoon villains who came in and terrorized the town for a month or two before heading out and relationships that happened because...they just happened. Part of what made it frustrating for me was that this was a soap that was known, more than any of the others, for being so slow-moving, so deliberate, so life-like in how things developed.

     

    And this is why you guys sometimes talk about storylines and entire characters/recasts from those last five years and I don't remember them at all despite the fact that I watched until the end. They really totally wrecked the show. Only the fact that the cast was so great kept things together.

  7. On 7/24/2020 at 6:11 AM, DRW50 said:

    I see that after that washed up con artist Kellyanne shamed Democrats for having a remote convention, as did the GOP in general, they have now mostly ditched their convention.

     

    https://www.politico.com/news/2020/07/23/trump-convention-380996

     

    Meanwhile, Trump is so petty that while nearly 150,000 have died, he paraded around a token (who was not wearing a mask) we were supposed to love because he is a baseball player. Good for you, you're a token who can swing a bat and who worships a hatemonger and a murderer. 

     

    Yet the media is still more interested in replaying propaganda images in Portland, a "new tone" and whispers about narrowing polls - anything for four more years. 

     

    What is a "token"?

  8. 7 hours ago, prefab1 said:

    This is going to sound mean, but I feel like the show is clearing out some of the dead wood. Characters like Eric, Hope, and Rafe have been taking up a lot of airtime for years, but the show has labored to write interesting storylines for them, because the characters themselves are a little stolid. There are plenty of characters on the canvas who behave in more dynamic, unpredictable ways and can generate drama through their own character flaws and conflicts. 

     

    I agree. No big losses thus far.

    7 hours ago, prefab1 said:

    This is going to sound mean, but I feel like the show is clearing out some of the dead wood. Characters like Eric, Hope, and Rafe have been taking up a lot of airtime for years, but the show has labored to write interesting storylines for them, because the characters themselves are a little stolid. There are plenty of characters on the canvas who behave in more dynamic, unpredictable ways and can generate drama through their own character flaws and conflicts. 

     

    I agree. No big losses thus far.

  9. 2 hours ago, soapfan770 said:

    Hahaha one of the weirdest things about about Passions was aside from Juliet Mills, Kim Johnston Ulrich and “We’ve got Susan Lucci’s daughter!” is that Passions premiered without any big name star in any of the roles. I recall Maureen McCormick from the Brady Bunch was the original Rebecca but she left not long after that. Once Andrea Evans was hired as a recast coming off as Tawny on B&B, Passions finally started finally  hiring name actors/stars for roles (Robin Strasser, Amelia Marshall, Christopher Douglas, Kathleen Noone, Leigh Taylor Young, Kristina Sisco, Blair Redford, John Reilly, David Bailey etc) to often mixed to disastrous results.

     

    So I heard the most generic song in a hotel lobby a couple of months ago, an absolutely hilariously over the top ode to the sound of sunshine, whatever that is. And it just made me laugh. I've been watching a lot of Passions recently and it reminds me of the television show version of that. There's something so generically late 20th century/early 21st century America about it, and the lack of big name actors definitely plays into that.

  10. I'm more bullish on DAYS than most of you. I think it's basically as good as a soap can be in 2020 considering budget issues and executive meddling.

     

    But darn, losing Lauren Koslow would be a huge loss. They could just use her right... She shouldn't be a sidekick for Abe. Give her a younger man to romance her and a scheming woman to feud against, and we're cooking with gas.

  11. 5 hours ago, Brolden said:

     

    I have the exact same problem. I started with the 'smaller' one before CBS got separated off, which only has 1989-1994. What I do, is I make sure I have a lot of time if I want to get to it, then I use 'ATWT' as a search term, and spend about half an hour scrolling all the way down to the end, so I can spend about an hour or so working my way upwards. If I accidentally mis-click, I have to start all over again. It's a ridiculous pain in the ****, and it will be much more difficult when I get to the 'larger' CBS version.

     

    I'm also not crazy about the nickname thing going on, which make the recaps impossible to read as well. Still, it's the only way I know of to read episode recaps from the early 90s, as well as authentic audience responses. 

     

    My focus is currently on retrieving these recaps and storing them on my pc. I'm planning on 'translating' these recaps (using regular character names) at a later point. I also hope to use them to help identify episodes and complement the full episode list I created. But it's a lot of work.

     

    If you or anyone else finds a better way to navigate this site, I'd love to hear it. 


    there would be a nickname decoder post once every few months. I remember Juicy = Lucinda. Can’t remember any others at the moment. 

  12. 23 hours ago, Brolden said:

    Actually, I've been working my way through the RATS group, tracking ATWT posts (which were authentic audience responses). As I've made my way through 1990-1992, there was a very clear consensus that Heather wasn't well-liked in the role and I came upon many posts of people hoping Martha would be back (long before Heather left). Granted, that's just a portion of the total audience, and I didn't get to MB's actual return yet, but I get the general impression MB was liked in the role.

     

    Can you please tell me how you're navigating it? I would love to re-read some things. I don't know why Google bought a usenet archive and then made it so freaking difficult to use.

  13. 7 hours ago, te. said:

    The actress who is playing Gwen is killing it. Honestly, they've found three solid actresses in Claire, Allie and Gwen so they should keep them around, daytime needs more young blood and they're all fun to watch.

    I agree. I enjoyed all three of them today. Ciara/Ben are unbearable. I really need Claire to completely ruin their wedding. 

    3 hours ago, AlexElizabeth said:

    I freaking love Gwen. I hope she sticks around.

     

    The writers can't honestly think people like Ben. He is so damn annoying to watch.

    He has great abs. 

×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy