Santa Barbara Discussion Thread

[NothinButAttitude]

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[DRW50]

The Augusta/Dash story makes me sick, as does nearly anything with Tim Gibbs. What offensive trash. 

 

Marcy Walker, A Martinez and Judith McConnell did some tremendous work in that split personality story, especially Marcy. 

 

Even from that one short clip you quickly see just how miscast Eileen Davidson was IMO. Of course to be fair to her the dialogue and situation are embarrassingly trite. 

[Soaplovers]

 

In regards to Eileen, I just imagined she was playing another character...and not Kelly Capwell.

 

I truly think Eden leaving hurt the show....and that tells me that no soap should ever put their eggs in one basket.

 

There were uploads of the first 90 or so episodes on youtube.  You can totally see what is working and not working on the show.  Joe #1/kelly were a good couple...and i liked the Perkins family..but since the show started in the 80s.. people would naturally prefered the Capwells/lockridges...though I did like the start of Brick/Amy.  

 

 

[DRW50]

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[MichaelGL]

Who penned the Dash storyline? Just reading summaries and etc. sounds quite offensive, yet this is around the time the show won Outstanding Writing. 

[~bl~]

DRW50, wow you have some avarice towards Tim Gibbs. (No idea what he did, so please explain since off topic can you share at least when it happened.)

 

Individual episodes of Santa Barbara were extremely well written it was just the stories on whole that were offensive.

 

I agree that soaps shouldn't focus on one person or else they can get screwed. With Santa Barbara, they did have other people with story that weren't Marcy, but those actors ended up getting bogged down with recasts, making things not as strong.

[DRW50]

 

I don't have a huge issue with him as a person, I just find him repulsive to watch as an actor. He was one of the big factors in OLTL becoming unwatchable for me and I didn't care for him on AW either, other than toward the end, when he was checked out. 

[NothinButAttitude]

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[DRW50]

I wonder how fans at the time felt about Cruz having all these emotional cathartic scenes with a brand new character he was obviously supposed to become involved with. I can't imagine they were thrilled. 

 

Terri Garber was fun on ATWT but she is not suited for this role.

[NothinButAttitude]

 

I'm betting they (the audience) weren't that happy either. 

 

The more I look into this show around the 91-93 period, the more I realize why fans turned away. It had to be jarring to see a canvas that is about 90% filled with newbies, who no one cared about and about 10% of the canvas of characters that you do; however, it does not help that even those characters had new faces overtime too. 

 

 

[Wendy]

As a viewer of SB from its great to not-so-great years, I didn't like Terri Garber's Suzanne. She was boring as all get out, and I couldn't believe how utterly devoid of brain cells everyone had to be to NOT recognize Eden as fake Suzanne in a bad wig and glasses.

 

But with that said, I think Cruz with freaking Jodie Walker was a billion times worse. We're suddenly supposed to buy this past shared history with Cruz and the newbie hog - and, oh yeah, Cruz! Chip WASN'T the first kid to be sired and not originally raised by you! IT'S A GIRL! Bleah.

 

I loved the show until late '91, then Pam Long stripped it of its very identity until axing the show was a mercy killing.

[DRW50]

 

What did you think of Cruz and Kelly? 

 

I guess they kept up the whole thing of Eden in a bad disguise so we'd get the scenes in the clip above where Sophia realizes who she is. As powerful as those were it wasn't worth the other characters looking foolish. They should have had her gaslight Sophia and have no one else but Sophia see her. Then viewers could have wondered whether she was simply hallucinating Eden, as the family would have wondered as well. 

 

The other thing I take from the clips is that the Mason scenes suggest the Dobsons reset him back to factory settings, complete with lengthy monologues about the evils of CC Capwell. While Gordon Thomson can do a mean monologue, it doesn't really suit the character by that point. 

 

The dialogue in the Augusta and Mason scene was very good though. 

 

The writing for Gina also seems very uneasy...although maybe if I saw more of it I'd have a different opinion. 

 

What was it like watching Augusta at this time? She seems out of place. Was she out of place for all of Sorel's return?

[Soaplovers]

Even a writer like Pam Long (that was a bad fit for the show) did do a few positive things in the final months of writing the show.

 

When she wrote off Santana, she didnt kill her off..but had her leave town to start a new life in a successful attempt to break free of the past.

 

She also created Lisa, who had an axe ro grind against Lily...using actual history of the show.  She actually fit on the show.

 

While Gina was all over the place, she did have the bright idea to pair her with Lionel.

 

Everything else seemed a mess...but the show lost a lot of anchors and what she was doing to replace those anchors didnt quite work.

[Wendy]

 

UGH. Let's just say once A Martinez bolted for L.A. Law, I totally understood why. I think Cruz/Kelly were always sibling like until the Dobsons tried to make ED's (very miscast) version of Kelly work. And it made both look horrible.

 

Frankly, I think the Dobsons were well off their game by the time of their second round. Except for maybe that Capwell Dinner with Pamela. But I recall the Dobsons calling Mason/Julia star-crossed and wanting to redo the Mason/Mary vibe AGAIN with Katrina. Thank God that never happened. I like GT as Mason, but I think it really would have sent him backwards, not to mention he looked like Maria Ellingsen's father. And I think firing Carrington Garland's Kelly was a HUGE mistake. I never got what they had against her.

 

As for Louise Sorel, I recall reading she hated the Augusta/Dash crap. And who could blame her? I read she protested and walked or was fired. But I think it's just as well the show got the ax as I recall the show was headed towards not only Lionel/Sophia having had Channing [Brick Wallace] but that JW's Warren would actually turn out to be CC's with Augusta.

 

So, yeah, mercy killing.

[DRW50]

 

That John Beck character Julia was with in some of the clips above - was that the Keith recast? Or someone else? He looks and acts so stiff, I'm not sure why he was cast.