Santa Barbara Discussion Thread

[victoria foxton]

These episodes aren't in Russian.  

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[pdm1974]

I started watching SB from the very first episode when I was in middle school until the last when I was in college. I was obsessed with the show and so sad when it went off the air.

 

I'm wondering what opinions others may have on why the show struggled to maintain a strong second core family beyond the Capwells. Families came and went over the years. The Lockridges were the ones that had a bit of staying power on and off, and I never understood why the writers had trouble creating story for them. I thought the Lockridges were a hoot to watch with the zany members of the family and their humor. I often PREFERRED them over the darker Capwell family.

 

I think the singular focus on the Capwells made it hard for the show to branch out in terms of story.

 

Also, my top missed opportunity character that should have been a mainstay the whole time was Santana. She had the rich history with the Capwells and the desire to desperately improve her social status.

 

Anyone else have thoughts on this?

[DRW50]

I guess the high cast turnover didn't help. It seemed like since nothing outside of the Capwells clicked early on with viewers, the show gave up. 

[pdm1974]

That could very well be one of the reasons. The Capwells proved to be the more popular characters, so they threw the majority of the focus on them. Still, they needed other people to interact with which proved to be a challenge.

 

The last year it felt like five new families were added and none of those took off.

[Wendy]

 

Like most, it didn't help that Santana was recast so much. And with each actress change, it seemed her personality changed with them. I would have stuck with Gina Gallego and tried to make her stronger and not so needy and weepy.

 

I am one that did love the Capwell family. Maybe BECAUSE OF that darkness. But I do agree they needed others to bounce off of. I would have tried bolstering the Lockridges. Jack Wagner was all wrong for Warren, IMO. I would have brought back John Allen Nelson (assuming he would return) and drop the whole "Lionel is not Warren's father" travesty. JAN even sounded like Nic Coster. I would have kept Shell Danielson's Laken, too.

 

And while Janis Paige was a lovely woman, she was far, far too young to be Minx. She should have been a Lockridge cousin or something. Cassie would be wiped out of Lockridge existence.

 

And while perhaps a blue-collar family was needed, I'm not sure how to fit one in. The only one that seemed to work was the Duvalls, and that went south rapidly with Christy accusing Ted of rape and Mary dying. (Both the Perkins and Walker clans were dreadful. And the latter, as far as I am concerned, helped kill the show since Pam Long seemed to shove them to the forefront while disregarding almost everyone else. Jodie as Cruz's retconned first baby mama was annoying as hell.)

 

Just my take.

[j swift]

 

As a characterization, not necessarily as an actress, I prefer the earliest incarnation of Santana as played by Ava Lazar.  From her appearance in the pilot in that wild costume, Santana could have been a viable alternative to Eden.  Even though Eden was introduced with a "past in Europe" and, she slept with a pilot then parachuted from his plane, she was more earnest and buttoned-up around Cruz and CC.  So, a nouveau riche, glamorous, sexy, party girl like Santana could have given Eden a run for her money.  Having only seen the weepy/needy character choices of Gina Gallego, (and her awful portrayal of drug addiction and mental health crises), she never seemed like a real threat to the Eden/Cruz relationship and Mason's attraction to her eluded me. 

 

Upon rewatch, after the earthquake (around ep 100), many of the characters change personalities based on the quality of the performer.  Gina takes on a lot of Santana's early traits,  Warren becomes less manic and more romantic, and CC becomes even more imperious.  Then, within two years, they're all recast or retired.  Early Warren bullied Ted Capwell and was frantically hiding buried treasure.  After the earthquake, Warren saves Ted, buys the newspaper, and becomes a nicer guy.

 

The ongoing thread of Brandon as a Capwell, (even after the Brick reveal) saved Gina as a character and (I think) doomed Santana.  Brandon had such an adorable relationship with Gina that if Santana tried to disrupt it, she would seem mean.  In the first year, Gina gave up her pill addiction, cold turkey, to be with Brandon.  Santana never made those sort of sacrifices as a mother without the threat of personal consequences.   Given the dramatic choice between Gina and Santana, I prefer Gina and all that she brought to the table.  Also, repeated references to Santana as the "daughter of the maid" would be out of place by the mid-1980s when soaps didn't want to deal with class issues.   Finally, Victoria and Chip took up most of the slack as a spanner in the Eden/Cruz saga making Santana redundant. 

 

 

I agree, she could have been Lionel's sister, and Cassie was her daughter, and the whole thing would have made more sense as to why she was never concerned about Brick and his son.  There needed to be Lockridge's, but I don't think they needed to only stick to the original Lockridge's. 

 

 

Cruz's family was always a legitimate foil to CC's wealth.  Even with their wayward father and brother, the Castillo's loyalty was usually contrasted with the divisions caused by wealth in the Capwell Family.

 

BTW - from Nick to Ric to Cassie, the number of characters that just disappeared off the canvas seems particular to Santa Barbara

Edited January 6, 2019 by j swift

[Wendy]

 

Good point. And I liked Cruz and I liked Ric. (Didn't buy the later story of Ric not being a Castillo.) I forgot about their sister, Carmen. But, yeah, fleshing them out more would have been good.

[pdm1974]

Characters came and went sometimes with lightning speed on SB. One of favorites that I thought should have stayed around long-term was Minx's long-lost daughter Cassie. The character had such an interesting backstory, and the actress was great playing the slightly unhinged character.  Not only did she have the Lockridge tie-in, but she could have been a great ongoing villain.

[Wendy]

I really liked the Ric/Kelly flirtation. But then the show did the whole Kelly/Robert/Quinn thing with a side of Eden and Cruz marriage crisis and Ric was basically wasted thereafter.

[j swift]

Santa Barbara had an issue throughout its history (regardless of executives or writers) that they would focus on a single event (like a trial or out-of-town adventure) and they lost focus on the rest of the town.

 

Ric Castillo felt like a writer's rough draft of Robert Barr.  He was European, a bit of schemer, and married to a rich neurotic.  So, it made very little sense that when he settled in Santa Barbara he had no money or power of his own and was always someone's hired goon.  The Paris episodes introduce Ric with a lot of potential that gets lost once he arrived in the States.  For example, the entire thread of Ric's wife's rich French family was never mentioned again once everyone got back home.  

 

Nick Hartley's disappearance is the most notable to me.  I never cared for the characterization or his overwrought style.  However, Nick had a family, he was close with Kelly, and stories revolved around his character.  I guess Pearl made him redundant as a charismatic, non-sexually threatening, male sounding board for the Capwell girls (I found Pearl to be the most irritating

guy in SB and was glad when he disappeared). 

 

One more observation from my re-watch - despite all of the talk about class, The Perkins had a larger set than The Lockridges.   

Edited January 9, 2019 by j swift

[j swift]

Also, as I'm watching the Spanish subtitled episodes on YT it occurred to me that it was dumb not to dub the soap in Spanish for the Mexican television market, given the Latino cast.  Sub-titled dramas do not rate well in Latin countries.  However, they were dubbed in French and Russian, according to the postings, but not in Spanish.

[pdm1974]

Developing the character of Ric was definitely a missed opportunity to expand Cruz's family. There was that blink and you missed it storyline with the Richards family were it was revealed that this old, evil, rich man was really Ric's father, but that went nowhere fast. Also, I thought it was odd that Cruz's sister Carmen was never mentioned again.

[j swift]

When we reviewed the 1990 SOD, in the classic SOD thread, it revealed a sad fact.  The actor who played Harland, Ric's father, was hired the week after the writer who created the story was fired.  So, in retrospect, he was doomed.  As a result, he was out after his first 13-week cycle.

[pdm1974]

Ah, that explains why that family came and went so fast. It could have been interesting if it had been allowed to developed. It definitely gave Cruz's mother an opportunity for a storyline of her own. I remember the daughter, too...Tawny. She was never given a chance to do much either. It felt like the entire story for this family got wrapped up in about two weeks. It was definitely an odd time story-wise on SB.

I always thought the set for the Lockridge house looked tiny especially compared to the one for the Capwells. Did the Andrade family have their own set in the beginning? I read somewhere that in the show's bible Rosa had other daughters in addition to Santana and Danny. It would have been interesting to see one of those brought on especially when Rosa returned towards the end.

 

I always liked the relationship between Rosa and the Capwell children, especially Mason. She had been the surrogate mother to all of them after Pamela disappeared and Sophia was thought to be dead. It would have been interesting to see if Rosa's children had any resentment regarding their mother having to spend so much time raising these rich kids.

[j swift]

It was Minx's house that Augusta and her kids moved into once Lionel went on his treasure hunt.  However, Augusta's bedroom set was remarkedly lacking in any sense of the character's personality or style.

 

 

This is an interesting question because Santana mentions growing up in the mansion, so I assumed that Rosa and her kids lived in the servant's quarters.  However, when Ted and Danny go off on their adventure to Hollywood, Danny is living in an apartment in town that he shares with Rosa on her days off (even though he is in high school and could use more supervision, after all, he does disappear from town).

 

Either way, given that the Capwell's always had more than one maid, and they had a sister from the local nunnery working in the nursery (according to the writer's-strike-killer-nun-saga), and Kelly and Eden were always a bit oblivious to Rosa, it is possible that they weren't that close.

Edited January 10, 2019 by j swift