Survivors aired Monday @9 up against NBC Monday movie and Mayberry/Doris Day on CBS.

On 4/18/2026 at 6:10 PM, kalbir said:

Hotel was The Love Boat on land but a little soapier. I never thought of it as a primetime soap though.

Hotel actually got a bit more serialized in season 4 after Anne Baxter passed away, starting with an multi episode arc about who owns the hotel with Michelle Phillips as one of Victoria Cabot's scheming nieces. Whenever a multi episode arc would end, another one would begin so the serialization was never heavy. But it was there.

The first three seasons were very light, with the major thread being the will they / won't they with James Brolin and Connie Selleca.

Just now, te. said:

Hotel actually got a bit more serialized in season 4 after Anne Baxter passed away, starting with an multi episode arc about who owns the hotel with Michelle Phillips as one of Victoria Cabot's scheming nieces. Whenever a multi episode arc would end, another one would begin so the serialization was never heavy. But it was there.

Was "Hotel" still doing okay in the ratings, or had they begun to slide? If it was the latter, then they might've switched to more serialized storytelling in order to grab more viewers.

1 minute ago, Khan said:

Was "Hotel" still doing okay in the ratings, or had they begun to slide? If it was the latter, then they might've switched to more serialized storytelling in order to grab more viewers.

Hotel was always dependent on Dynasty, and that had begun its slide, so yeah, that might've been a part of the change.

But I think more importantly, Love Boat had floundered until it got cancelled in May 1986. I think they saw that the format was on its last legs, especially with shows like Glitter and Finder of Lost Loves not gathering any steam in the 1984-85 season (which were also variations of the Love Boat formula). That probably was more of a factor to the change.

(Season 4 is the 1986-87 season, so it's directly after Love Boat got canned)

Edited 32 minutes ago32 min by te.

8 minutes ago, te. said:

But I think more importantly, Love Boat had floundered until it got cancelled in May 1986. I think they saw that the format was on its last legs, especially with shows like Glitter and Finder of Lost Loves not gathering any steam in the 1984-85 season (which were also variations of the Love Boat formula). That probably was more of a factor to the change.

You're probably right. I mean, when you get right down to it, "Hotel" was just "The Love Boat" with mints left on all the pillows.

3 minutes ago, Khan said:

You're probably right. I mean, when you get right down to it, "Hotel" was just "The Love Boat" with mints left on all the pillows.

You can also tell the writers aren't really experienced with serialized writing because it's not like "plot thread A starts - middle of story (plot b quietly starts) - end story (plot b amps up)". It's just one plot thread that starts and stops within a few episodes. Then all of a sudden another plot thread starts and runs for another few episodes. It's quite clunky.