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The Downward Spiral: Jumping The Shark


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Hey, Toups, how have you been? Wow it's been a long time. Can you believe it's been six years since we first started posting with each other? Can you believe that Tom Langan looks like Shakespeare when compared with what we have now?

I've taken to quoting what you said about Hogan and what he's done. Hogan Scheffer has managed to accomplish what no one else could. Not Gene Palumbo or Jim Reilly. Not Tom Langan, not Sally Sussman-Morina. Not Brash/Cwikly and not Dena Higley. Hogan Scheffer has completely collapsed the ratings, taken DAYS to last place, even collapsed their precious key demos and placed the show on the brink of cancellation.

Can you believe they got rid of Jack just when Steve and Kayla came back? The show finally found the ultimate way to humiliate us. I never thought that they could actually do that--but it was truly the final ultimate insult. And it totally destroyed S&K's return. Remember how I used to try to tantalize the "newer" fans by talking about S&K? It was cool. They were clearly an enormeous part of DAYS history that I thought was probably fun for fans, who never saw them, to think about and imagine what it must have been like back then. But look what they got. This is not the Steve and Kayla that I remember. Steve is acting like some sort of combination of John (the Pawn) and the REAL Jack.

Newbies never saw the real Jack either. The real Jack was killed by Victor in October 93 and died in Jennifer's arms.

Steve

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Hey man!! It's been a long time hasn't it?! It's always nice to see familiar name (even though you hate JER) from the Coffeerooms and your brief period at SON years ago. LOL

I wouldn't take it that far. LOL Langan was pretty bad.

Yup, I never expected the ratings to tank so badly under Hogan. Yeah, even with Palumbo, Reilly, , SSM, Higley, Langan, B&C.....DAYS was never this bad in the ratings and if they did, they always had the demos to back them up. But with Hogan, he tanked the demos too!

Yeah, it was huge mistake to get rid of Jack just when his brother returned! I never saw the "real Steve" so I can't compare what we're seeing now.

LOL I remember you always saying this.

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DAYS- Tom Langan becoming EP in 91/92 and deciding that the supercouples should be "thrown off a building". While the show rebounded commercially in the mid-90's and has had the odd decent period (Cwickly/Brash) since, Langan created an identity crisis which haunts the show to this day.

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Y&R:

It started when they had JT -- a boy with no real ties to anybody in Genoa City -- the object of every woman's lust.

Then they made Kay & Jill mother and daughter.

Then they started pretending Gloria was some kind of Kay Chancellor-style heroine.

And Phyllis became this uber-Saint, and they stopped writng MS in scenes with VR.

And they recast a lot of good actresses with a whiney valley girl, an ABC stalwart and a bobble-headed Australian urchin.

Then Brad became the show hero and killed people with his bare thighs.

But Y&R really JTS when Drucilla fell over the cliff into the CGI rocky river below.

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i disagree here. I really dont think HS can be blamed for days ratings.. at all. I think days fallen ratings is a cause of all the crap they have been throwing out now for 10 years. they have lost people over the years and it finnaly hit. An i am not that big of a fan of HS either - so im not defending him for that reason. Tho his Days are better than Days has been in so long.

awwww.... brad... bare thighs... :wub:

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AMC "jumped the shark" the day that Erica Kane's aborted fetus from 1973 was resurrected as 25 year old doctor. Coincedentially, or not so much IMO, his resurrection seems to have been the start of a faster, far more burtal and painful death, for an already dying AMC. :(

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I agree with you, Kylie. Dr. Josh truly is a cancer. I know people who refuse to watch AMC until that aborted fetus story is re-written & the aborted fetus is dead. His character must be killed off.

I think GH "jumped the shark" with the introduction of Casey the Lumina alien in 1987.

DOOL's has "jumped the shark" so many times that it is hard to keep track. They had Salem Serial Killer, Melaswan...

GL "jumped the shark" when Josh Lewis cloned Reva Shayne in 1998. :rolleyes:

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I'd say AMC jumped the shark many years before that. There shark jumping moment was when billionaire evil tycoon Palmer Cortlandt was reduced to selling fried chicken. 1990-1992 more or less was when AMC should have been canceled. It lost its mission statement.

OLTL I think their moment was sometime around when Cord and Tina left, but I think they lost the whole classic OLTL vibe around the time Delilah and Rafe left, Wanda disappeared, and suddenly the show was about Luna Moody and her new age hijinks.

GH is the easiest of the ABC soaps. The day Robert and Anna died is the day the show should have ended.

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OLTL turned itself around in with the additions of Linda Gottlieb, Michael Malone, and Josh Griffith.

GH was outstanding during Claire Labine's 1993-1996 tenure. Prior to Labine, Bill Levinson was doing a good job. It was Gene Palumbo & Norma Monty who lost focus.

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I liked OLTL arounf this time... I wasn't a fan of Tina by the end and I liked Luna.

After all that went down with Victor Lord, I would say him being alive was the biggest most recent JTS moment for OLTL for me. Though the Santi mess and Llanview becoming the murder capital of the world to support John McBain storylines are close moments too.

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Ah, Michael Malone's Luna Moody :D Those were the days.

Good thing you mentioned the Victor Lord nightmare. It was one of TV's most atrocious story. Poor Robin Strasser. She's been fed scraps for years. She has quit before, and I am sure she will quit again. She also publicly opposes those she dislikes and that is a big plus for me (re: JFP).

The number of characters who have been killed off on OLTL since 2002 is way too high.

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