Santa Barbara Discussion Thread

[Beach Climber]

Oh the other thing I recall with Lane is that he wanted Mary to stay as his true love and to be more unsure of Julia. We saw that to an extent with the constant push/pull and aggressively pursuing her when they weren’t together but being more commitment phobic once she was all in. I even remember someone asking him about GT’s Mason in an interview and said he liked the performance but he wouldn’t have played Mason so hopelessly in love with Julia with GT did. 
 

To be fair, I think he’s subsequently softened his stance on that. I’m not sure how others feel about that pairing but I think they needed Mason to be obsessively in love Julia to remain viable. It was toxic enough for Julia to stay with him without adding in Mason’s ambivalence or feeling caged in by her. 

[Marissa Gallant]

I'm rewatching the scene where Augusta finds out that CC bought the paintings. She smacks Mason. CC says, "She's somewhat high strung isn't she?" Mason replies,  "I wouldn't mind seeing her strung a little higher." And I'm rolling. And then Lionel finds out that Mason knows. This show had some great moments. 

 

 

 

[Soaplovers]

GT's Mason had the Shakespearian quality that LD's Mason had..but he played the in love aspect of Mason toward Julia much better.

I look at it as Mason finally letting go of Mary by the early 90s.

And like I said before, seeing Julia's first 18 months on the show pre Mason has been a treat.  She interacted with a larger group of characters, focused more on her career, and seemed to have more agency as a character in her own right.

Once Julia/Mason started, her stories were more tied to him..and she didn't freely interact with the other characters as much.  It was like she was tied to him and his needs without any agency of her own.

That never improved even when she and Mason broke up between 1990 and 1992.

[amybrickwallace]

Yeah, it did help that GT's Mason didn't have the history with Mary.

[Marissa Gallant]

To be fair, there weren't as many characters for her TO interact with. From the brief bits I've seen with GT, I do like him in the role.

I also do think that the show struggled with wanting to keep women in the role of other half far too often. They never completely knew what to do with single women. It falls into that odd couples are boring if they're together and other problems with this. I'm sure there were many interesting things they could have done with the women.

Amy could have been a reporter ala Hildy Grant, hard hitting and the smartest person in the room.

Augusta had so many possibilities. Catapulting her gambling skills into serious cash and running a business to give Capwell Enterprises and Armonti a run for the money. Or heck, even a shopping mall empire.

Sophia could have had an All About Eve type of storyline.

Kelly could have not been an eternal damsel in distress. Sorry that got old. Some sort of Artist story.

Laken or someone could have been a doctor. Heaven knows that with the number of times people were in the hospital, they needed a full time doctor! 

The show started to bust boundaries, but they always held back from really showing the barriers that were toppling in the 80s.

[amybrickwallace]

Those are all great ideas!!

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[Liberty City]

Lane Davies, if I recall, has stated he kept the character of Mason emotionally unavailable after Mary's death in all of his other relationships.

[j swift]

With regard to the female characters interacting and becoming more independent, although the writers occasionally revisited Kelly and Eden's relationship during the Robert Barr story, I think as an audience we generally missed an understanding of how the female characters felt about one another.  Think about how much time was spent on Mason and CC's relationship versus any exploration of Kelly, Eden, and Sophia's interactions.  Even CC and his brothers got more of a complex backstory than Gina and Summer.

I would have liked more details on Santana's relationship with the Capwell girls, given that they grew up together in the same house.  I also would have appreciated more time spent on Julia's feelings about Gina.  As well as Kelly's response to Amy, or any of the women in Joe's family.

I recall how much fun it was when Julia and Victoria bonded the summer when Mason was kidnapped by Elena's thugs.  There were scenes when they commiserated rather than their usual fighting and it was refreshing to see two women in Santa Barbara develop a friendship.  Of course, that bond was broken as soon as Mason returned.  But, it was fun while it lasted and given the positive critical reception it got from the soap press, I think it was a shame that we didn't get more female friendships on the show.

I think the worst example was the dissolution of Julia and Augusta's bond after she was assaulted by Dash.  We hear that the actors were displeased about the story, but personally it felt wrong to break up Julia and Augusta given their long history of supporting each other through various crises. 

[amybrickwallace]

We got to see a little bit of Eden's feelings of betrayal about her mother when Sophia returned to town in very early 1985, but they were dropped in pretty short order. Though to be fair, CC and Ted's relationship was never gone into that much either.

[Soaplovers]

I think Kelly/Amy stayed close all the way through spring 1986...but it felt odd that Kelly was flashback to Peter, visited Joe's grave..yet never told Amy?

Also, when Amy died...I don't think there was even a scene with Kelly dealing with it.  You'd think with a tie to Joe dying would have impacted Kelly.

Also, Eden being Channing and shooting Sophia didn't make sense.  It should have been Kelly..due to losing several years with Joe because of Sophia.

[amybrickwallace]

Well, when Amy died Kelly was in hiding after being accused of killing Dylan Hartley. (Of course, Robin Wright was off filming The Princess Bride.) Eden had a throwaway line about having to contact Kelly wherever she was to tell her what had happened to Amy, but that was about it.

Yes, Kelly had stayed close to Amy after Joe's death but I wondered why Amy didn't feel any resentment towards Nick when he and Kelly became a couple. Of course, Nick was introduced after Joe's death but Kelly really did rush into a relationship with him. It would have been refreshing to see Amy resenting Nick for taking over Joe's place in Kelly's life so fast and completely after what had happened to her brother. It would have felt a bit more...like real life.

[Marissa Gallant]

Real life doesn't make good Hollywood drama. Or at least that's what they think. I never fully understood why Brick pushed Kelly away after he found out he was her brother. They were so close that she was his best man. But suddenly he hated her? Weird.

And the lack of female friendships always felt weird. Other soaps had female friends. We got constant rapes, serial killers and women pushing away the men they love. Mom and I used to call it Stupid Soap Opera Woman Syndrome. 

I loved this show because it got so much right, but they missed SO many opportunities because they always wanted to concentrate on the next big stunt. When you have an earthquake and serial killer rapist in your first year, it's difficult to continually top that.

[j swift]

At the risk of repeating myself, the lack of details on Sophia's backstory, or her relationships with her kids, was a huge missed opportunity.   You mention Kelly, but what about Ted?  He was a baby when she left, and barely had any reaction to her return.  All three kids had the same response, shock, anger, and then forgiveness after the Channing murder reveal and Sophia's breast cancer.  It was as if they all experienced it the same way, and I think it was a time when the writers could have explored the differences amongst the kids in order to define their characters.

Sophia really intrigues me.  She was primarily known for her beauty, given the number of scenes through the years when she would descend the staircase and CC would gasp at her good looks.  However, who was this woman that captured the heart of CC, Lionel, Grant, Craig, TJ, and the Count (I won't count Ken because he was a con)?  Certainly she had more tricks in her bag than just her blonde hair and the ability to look great in gowns.  Men were willing to kill for her, they bought yachts for her, and pined for her when she was thought to be lost at sea.   Think about her good fortune that after being swept off a yacht in Santa Barbara she wound up in the Italian Riviera married to a Count, who left her his fortune, despite that fact she was a bigamist; that takes some talent.  I mean when Eden got amnesia she wound up in a shoddy cabin with an unstable war vet.  In retrospect, Sophia could have been used like John Black on Days, where her backstory was fodder for various plots through the years.  In my imagination, Cassie would have made more sense as Sophia's stepdaughter by the Count, out for revenge and a piece of the inheritance, versus being a Lockridge, (and it would have avoided all of the Warren incest retcon).   At the very least we could have met her family, who seemed to have never been informed that she returned from the dead.

[Marissa Gallant]

You can spin that broken record with me all day long. I love Sophia and agree with everything you said. I've never understood if the Count knew she had another husband. They were fuzzy on that timeline. When the Count died, how much older he was than Sophia. Marcello was about his stepmoms age. But yes, there could have been more about the missing years. Heck, Cassie could have been Marcello's daughter! That would have been interesting. She was certainly beautiful and glamorous. They even established that she was smart. But luck did play a factor in her life. It was luck (or bad luck) that caused Marcello to find her on the beach and abduct her. Lionel loved her like no one he ever loved. Maybe she was just great in bed. Her early scenes with CC are certainly steamy. That can be pretty important to some people.  Lol. 

[j swift]

That's funny because it was kind of established during the making of Stephen Slade's movie that she wasn't a great actress, so maybe her other skill served her well in Hollywood...