Santa Barbara Discussion Thread

[DRW50]

Thanks.

I started watching some of the story about BJ's abuse, and I thought Sydney Penny did a good job, although I didn't buy Kim Zimmer as her mother. At times it seemed like they were just reading off statistics, like the story lacked heart. The scenes when she revealed her abuse to Cruz and when Cruz confronted the guy (Frank, I think) were very strong.

[juniorz1]

Dullsville and didn't suit Santa Barbara AT ALL. Where is the FUN in THAT?

There was none.

For SB to be right, the following characters had to be in play with properly cast actors (aka the original or best stand in)

Eden, Cruz, Mason, Julia, Kelly, CC, Sophia, Lionel, Augusta, Gina, Keith

Therein lied the magic of the show. Add:

Ted, Laken, Robert, Ric, Santana (GALLEGO!), Kirk, maybe Craig, Brandon

Stir and Mix.

[DRW50]

So you think it was lack of interesting characters which made this more unsuited to the show than a dark story like Eden's rape.

[sungrey]

Hmmm... I'm going to say that the lack of interesting characters concept certainly came into play after, oh, say 1991. That's when the familiar dynamic of Capwells vs. Lockridges and all the other superb characters began to be back-burnered for the Walkers and other secondary people not connected with the core families.

To me, although Santa Barbara was still very good, that's when the show began to slide backward. Marcy's exit didn't help matters any and when A Martinez left in late 1992 the writing was on the wall. Was the cancellation already announced before A left?

[teplin]

I loved Cruz-Julia scenes. A Martinez and Nancy Lee Grahn had as much chemistry with each other as they did with, respectively, Marcy Walker and Lane Davies, it just wasn't sexual. And how nice to see a soap scene again that advances the plot while providing intelligent dialogue and real character insight.

[DRW50]

I think he left before it was announced.

Do you think if he'd stayed, and the show had gone on, that he could have survived without Eden?

[juniorz1]

Yes, quite frankly. If I had any mix of Julia, Kelly (GARLAND!), Eden, Augusta, Lionel, Gina, Mason, CC, Sophia, Keith (Deas) running the show and driving story, then yes.

The last interesting character SB created was Angela Cassidy and (TAH DAH!) She was a DOBSON creation. And she was perfect for the show, the best part of the final year, vastly underused, and the only rootable character left that could really rock and infect a story with some interest.

Not Zimmer and her family of Wrangler Jeans.

[juniorz1]

BEAUTIFULLY STATED!

However, with Eden gone, JULIA was ALWAYS the direction he should have gone in. They flirted once, sort of, for a brief sequence in the 80s and fans would have accepted Cruz with Julia before a badly recast Kelly. It's what I would have done.

It was the ONLY play to make with Cruz to keep your fans happy and provide years of story and a mess if Eden ever showed back up.

What they did was all wrong and it's why A wasn't there at the end.

[juniorz1]

Only if they paired him with Julia or Carrington Garland or Robin Wright were playing Kelly.

He wasn't gonna make it through recast soap star hell, that was for sure.

[juniorz1]

I LOVED 1986 the best. 1986 was magic.

1987 had A LOT of strong stuff too.

1988 faltered some. But Marcy Walker poured her HEART and SOUL into that rape and as a fan, it was ELECTRIFYING TO WATCH.

1989 started slow but ended strong.

I for one LOVED 1990.

The Dobsons came back in 1991 to a mess mostly created by Paul Rauch in the few months he'd been there. It was unbalanced.

1992 was ATROCIOUS from the moment I heard the name Pam Long on until the end.

[juniorz1]

And if you really want to know, it was Paul Rauch who really caused the problem with Louise Sorel. Augusta was flirting with Dash well before the Dobsons. By the time she got there, she was infuriated and I guess expected Bridget to be as infuriated as she was, as Augusta has long-suspected to been based on her.

I think Bridgette appreciated the idea of an Augusta/Dash flirt-mance as a sorta Joe Perkins redux, but I think she would have written it as Augusta just wooing him in order to get him to admit to raping Julia, if given the chance to write it that way, which they never did. Hell, Augusta was on her way in a new path anyway and Bridgette didn't take long to have Dash admit he raped Julia, as anyone who'd watched the show knew all along anyway. Julia was a lot of things, but delusional and confused about the confines of a LAW was never one of them.

[juniorz1]

You wanna know what I think, what I really think, since she probably won't pop in and say it herself? I don't only think that NLG is a brilliant actress but also a brilliant woman. And haunted houses or not, she knew what she had in Julia Wainright and she knew that she was never going to have that again. And though she may have fought for airtime and better writing, I think she knew that she was gonna play that role to the bitter end, til the last possible breath of camera airtime that she could take as Julia Wainright. So no matter what they did or put her through, she wasn't going to let anyone take that away from her no matter what they tried.

So No. I think she never had any intention of leaving or giving up that role until she got to say her last brilliant line of the entire series. Like her or not, NLG was a lot smarter than some of the people who left for greener pastures, whether they had to do it for themselves or not. She knew what she had, it was hers, writing or no writing, she WAS Julia Wainright Capwell and it was the grandest, most identifiable fantastical role she would ever play in her life. And it was going to end on her terms.

Simply put, she'd still be there today with rarely a break if it were still around. She would have played Julia until she was 80 and they would have been foolish to allow someone so capable, brilliant, and excellent and unique go so long as she'd stick around.

NLG would have chained herself to that set if she thought it would have bought the show another 6 months just so she could play Julia for 6 more months. She was and is today committed to everything Julia and Santa Barbara.

It's one thing to be in a period of grace, excellence, and something that's never going to happen again in your life. It's another to know it while it's happening.

NLG was one of the few who knew and GOOD FOR HER!

[DRW50]

4/19/88 SOD, Chris Schemering reviews the show.

If Oscar Wilde were writing soap operas today, the result might be something like SANTA BARBARA. With its colorful characters, farcical situations, and witty, epigrammatic dialogue, SB is a comedy of bad manners one moment, tragic melodrama the next.

To give you an idea of its inspired nuttiness, in a single episode Gina Capwell - the real Wicked Witch of the West - poisoned Maon's Chinese dinner with lighter fluid, called Kelly a slut, and tried to set up Eden for murder by dressing up like her and pulling the plug on a comatose C.C. When Gina was kicked out of the Capwell mansion, she decided to leave with what she came with: nothing. So, in front of the entire family, she stripped off all her clothes and, in her birthday suit, slammed the door behind her.

Along the way, Gina has made love with Mason in a racing ambulance, cooked hot dogs on a hibachi at C.C. and Sophia's outdoor wedding, and - baking "Mrs. Capwell Cookies" - deadpanned to Santana, who was supposedly allergic to flour, "Doesn't that get in the way of making tortillas?"

This comedy of errors premiered July 30, 1984 and traced the lives and loves of four families: the powerful Capwells, the blue-blood Lockridges, the middle-class Perkinses, and the Andrades, a low-income Hispanic family. By the end of the first year, it was good-bye to the Perkins and Andrades (as well as a gaggle of insipid blonde beauties). Soon, nearly every pivotal characters had been recast.

After many false starts, the show made its smartest move, employing actors who had made strong impressions on other shows: Jed Allan as C.C., Judith McConnell as Sophia, Robin Mattson as Gina, Justin Deas as Keith, Kristen Meadows as Victoria, Marj Dusay as Pamela, and Vincent Irizarry as Scott Clark. The joke in the industry soon became: Soap stars never die, they merely move to Santa Barbara.

This terrific move has been undercut by the show's revolving door of new characters, who have been cavalierly written out before they - or the audience - could find their bearings. In the last year, we have bid adieu to Brian Bradford, Courtney Capwell, Hayley Benson Capwell, Grant Capwell, Lily Light, Paul Whitney, Jane Wilson, Caroline Wilson Lockridge, Alice Jackson, Gus Jackson, and Carmen Castillo. And why was the entire Lockridge clan - Minx, Lionel, Augusta, Warren, LakBrick - dismissed? Structurally, it left the show with only one core family - the Capwells - and no contrast. Secondly, it seemed downright self-destructive to get rid of Richard Eden 9Brick) after the actor's Emmy nomination, and the same applies to Nicolas Coster (Lionel), who received an Emmy nomination and the Soap Opera Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor.

Thankfully, the Capwells are such a quirky, murky bunch of individuals that even when the show dumps so many melodramatic situations and pointless plots on their back door, they alternately keep us riveted with their resilience or in stitches with their furtive mischief. The powerful, sometimes bullying C.C., who has had three wives declared legally dead, has been finally blessed with an actor who can really cut the mustard. (And only Jed Allan could bring such sarcastic brio to a line like, "They ought to call my biography The Man Whose Wives Refused to Die.") Sophia is the actress of the family, self-dramatizing yet unpredictable. Ted (Todd McKee) is the Prince Valiant and Kelly (Robin Wright) is a sensual ingenue, whose lovers invariable end up pushing daisies. Eden (Marcy Walker) is the romantic lead, and her star-crossed romance with the Hispanic Cruz (A Martinez) is still probably daytime's most dynamic love story. The non-stop obstacles to their eventual clinch were often ridiculous (Cruz's espionage brain implant) and just plain mean (Eden thrown into a tank of sharks was nothing compared to her losing a baby she didn't even know she was carrying). But Walker and Martinez rise above the fray with all-out energy, humor and sexiness.

A recurring theme is the outsider looking in - "ambivalent" characters who act as catalysts to move story and create tantalizing familial and romantic conflict for all. The first of these characters was Mason (the always superb Lane Davies), the black sheep of the Capwells, whose envious and cryptic nature provided the city with a one-man Greek chorus, commenting dryly on all the drawing-room intrigue. With Gina mellowing (well, almost,), the baton of naughtiness has been handed to her sleazeball, aide-de-camp, D.A. Keith Timmons. As played by Justin Deas, Keith is such a greedy sweaty little weasel, one can't help laughing at his antics. With daytime's best romance (Cruz and Eden), funniest couple (Gina and Keith), and one of its most potent triangles (Victoria/Mason/Julia), you'd think SB would be set up for the big time. But the show is inconsistent in the quality of its long-term stories, daily scripts, directing. (The Wednesday episodes are especially weak). There are too few core characters for an hour show, and far too many people are introduced and run out of town.

Other technical credits are good. Unlike other Hollywood productions, the makeup on the men doesn't look like it was applied by Tammy Faye Bakker and the hairstyling doesn't make the women appear like Vannesa White clones of one another. And the MIAMI VICE--like scoring is urgent and stylish without being too overpowering.

With the carefully planned and executed Elena Nikolas plot - which included and affected all the core characters - SB was at its prime. (And Sherilyn Wolter gave the kind of performance Emmys were invented for; complete with helmet haircut and huge white teeth, coupled with all the cold, calculating passion that would scare the heck out of anyone.) Again, it was an outsider, whose motivations soon became crystal clear, making the drama become more complex and compelling.

The various parts of the story came together at Cruz's trial for her murder and the surprise testimony of Pamela Capwell Conrad, who everybody thought had jumped to her death off Manhattan's 59th Street Bridge. The November 3, 1987 episode, written by Patrick Mulcahey (Emmy-winning dialogue scribe for GL), was, simply put, the most thoughtful, witty, literate single episode of the year.

From Pamela's poignant entrance into the courtroom assisted by both of her sons, to a sight gag of Gina wearing an ostentatious black veil, to Keith's comment about Pamela's sudden wealth ("I thought she left New YOrk without a pot to puree in.") to Julia finding Mason drunk ("I'm sorry, I can't help it if I'm drowning. It's genetic.") to the tragic finale in which Mason alternately taunts his father and laments his status as the untouchable, unloved of the family, SB's writing, directing and acting finally came together in a coherent and entertaining fashion. The mask of tragedy and comedy had melded quite nicely into one. Unfortunately one story line or episode does not a serial make. As the slimy Keith TImmons asked himself once, "Why can't the course of trickery and chicanery run more smoothly?"

[KMan101]

Interesting review. Great read. TFP Carl!

SB is another soap I've always wanted to see.

I had no idea they lost so many characters in that time period. WOW. That's a LOT.

[juniorz1]

It was always like that KMan, almost every year. To the point where we just got used to and accepted it.

And I agree- FABULOUS ARTICLE Carl!! :D

And nope, I've never seen nor read it.