Ryan's Hope Discussion Thread

[Chris 2]

Daniel Hugh Kelly (Frank Ryan #3) appeared in “Star Trek: Insurrection”, the third TNG movie.

[~bl~]

And Catherine Hicks was in the whale movie. I think starting just with regulars and those in more than a few episodes would be a big list. For example I read an article about Colm Meaney where he said he was in NYC daytime and I was thinking which one and when… 

 

back to Ryan’s Hope I have to do my yearly St. Patrick’s day watch

[Chris 2]

I can’t imagine Faith Caitlin or Karen Morris Gowdy in the whale movie instead of Hicks. 

Please register in order to view this content

[applcin]

He was on OLTL in the late 80s. He was part of the Patrick London impersonating Bo Buchanan story as one of PatBo's henchmen. I have a little bit of him on tape from some stuff I had saved from that storyline. Actually, I found this link on youtube. You can see Colm starting around the 2:24 mark.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpDdP6blsqI


 

 

[Faulkner]

Andy Cohen in the comments says Michael Corbett was his No. 1 daytime crush in the ‘80s:

[DRW50]

A godawful human being loving a godawful story. What a surprise.

[Bright Eyes]

But it should be noted that Instagram page/poster is fantastic.

[Khan]

Don't get me wrong, I'm always fascinated by stories that pit mother against daughter for the same guy, because I've always believed that most mothers and daughters are competitive with each other by nature.  But, something about the Michael/Kimberley/Rae triangle in particular always struck me as being a little TOO tawdry, especially for Claire Labine and Paul Avila Mayer.

[DRW50]

The whole story was tawdry and desperate. I don't even remember if Kimberly was of age. To almost immediately have Seneca lusting after her took the story to a place it could never recover from. She always felt very badly grafted onto the show to me. 

Edited April 19, 2022 by DRW50

[Bright Eyes]

I've been watching various clips from an insta account I follow, and my God, never has a character given me more anxiety than Delia. Watching her makes me feel like I need to run to a therapist.

[DeliaIrisFan]

I've often wondered what the deal was with RH and the Emmys as the '80s wore on.  I know the show was in a bad way for quite a bit of the decade, but still.

Did RH not have affiliate clearance in area(s) where a critical mass of people in the industry lived after the timeslot change?  A part of me wonders if the last few acting nods were not entirely based on work on the show and/or during the eligibility period.  Helen Gallagher and Bernie Barrow likely had accumulated some goodwill, and I would think there may have been buzz that they were getting material again and making the most of it - deservedly.  It's nice that Helen won the show's last Emmy, anyway.  And I wonder if Tichina Arnold and/or Grant Show were more well-known for their other work by the time awards season came around.

I'm not saying the show deserved to continue its '70s Emmy streak, but there were quality periods/performances, and even Claire Labine's return later in the decade with really solid material didn't make a difference.  I suppose by then Santa Barbara had displaced RH in the hearts of writing Emmy voters as the "little soap that could," but was there no room even for a nostalgic nomination one year or another?  Especially after Labine/Mayer's back-to-back wins for their briefer return earlier in the decade.

On a related note, I wonder what would have happened if the awards ceremony had aired in 1984, when Pat Falken Smith was head writer but Labine/Mayer had been at the helm for most(?) of the eligibility period.  Would they all have attempted to take the stage (speaking of SB)?

[DRW50]

 

[Paul Raven]

Bernard sans toupee

It's interesting how soap actors were used in commercials despite being known to millions as a character.

A lot of viewers would have been like -Why is Johnny Ryan the pharmacist?

Primetime actors were not used the same way eg you didn't have Ricardo Montalban pretending to be a Chrysler salesman for the Cordoba or the likes of Cheryl Ladd pretending to be a housewife.

Just points out the different attitude to soaps and soap actors.

[dc11786]

re: Seneca / Kim / Michael / Rae

I haven't rewatched the 1980s episodes in several years, but I always liked the plotting in the story with Michael, but, if I gave it more thought, none of the characters came off as all that appealing. Seneca and Kim's initial "Lolita" storyline was off putting and Kim's other options (Sam Behren's Dr. Adam Cohen and Robert Lupone's director character) seemed older than they should have as well. The closest Kelli Maroney got to an age appropriate love interest in her first run was Paul Carlin's quickly dropped alcoholic rich kid Craig LeWinter.

Also, the story played itself in such a bubble. Jill was occasionally concerned about her friend and former husband, Seneca, and Jack occassionally intersected with Rae for professional reasons. None of the other significant ties (Michael in the Crystal Palace with Joe and Delia and Barry being Kim's manager) ever seemed to give the story enough connection to the other ongoing story threads. I actually felt it was smart during the Writer's Strike to have Kim run off with baby Arley to the Ryans' home because that was a way of bringing that story into the Ryans' realm. 

Labine and Mayer had shifted so much in their writing from their work on "Where the Heart Is" and "Love of Life" with the Ryan family that I do think that mother-daughter duo Rae Woodard and Kim Harris seemed out of place in the RH-universe, however, I think they were very much in the Labine and Mayer tradition. The frame of the story with Rae taking on Michael as her personal assistant and giving him a worldly education while Michael and Kim snuck around seemed to be grounded a bit in the Meg, Caroline, and Rick story that Labine and Mayer wrote on "Love of Life." Not just because of the mother-daughter being after the same man, but the whole older woman exerting her wealth over the man to keep him in her grip (Meg, I believe, was funding Rick's business venture, the Beaver Ridge complex). Also, elements of the story also seemed to be grounded in the machinations of Liz Rainey Hathaway from "Where the Heart Is" with the young girl from a troubled home using her past to manipulate her parents while also involving herself in a triangle with a father-son duo. The difference with those two stories and the Kim, Michael, and Rae story is those other stories were connected to the main thrust of the story. The RH story played out in its own  universe. 

 

[DRW50]

@dc11786 I hadn't thought of it before but you are probably right - this does  seem more like a story they would have done on one of their other shows (if any of that content was available for us to see).