Jump to content

Ryan's Hope Discussion Thread


Recommended Posts

  • Members

Thanks for sharing your memories. It's so special to get to talk with your mother about a soap she watched when she was younger that you now watch.

'70s feminism had to be much tougher, and other than maybe Search for Tomorrow (where the Kathy character is mostly unavailable in '70s form), Ryan's Hope may be the only soap that delved into this. Jill is such a fascinating character, one I'm not surprised was polarizing with viewers. So much about her probably shouldn't have worked, especially when you think of all the backstory thrown at viewers immediately (a previous love affair with Jack, being adopted and never feeling at home in the Coleridge family, being Frank's "other woman" for much of the decade). Nancy Addison was just so special, and the entitlement and arrogance of Jill felt offset by her vulnerability (which was not the case for the rest of her family). 

Mary was also very important for feminist debates, and likely more popular with the audience, but I never really connected with her the way I did with Jill. Maybe because the inherent smugness of the Ryans felt like a wall. 

Sometimes I wonder if it perversely helped Jill as a character that she was lumped with a complete dud of a partner for a year and a half, because it humanized her - why are you sacrificing your dignity for this loser? 

@safe Thanks for reminding me of more Sarah Felder backstory. A great deal I had forgotten. I appreciate her sticking up for the Pat/Nancy story if it was struck down due to prejudice, but there was so much else wrong with that pairing (I say that as one of the few John Blazo fans). I suppose the narrative about Felder is just too easy to believe (and she never has spoken about her time on the show).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 2.9k
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

Top Posters In This Topic

Posted Images

  • Members
Posted (edited)

Yes, that was probably the case. In  the book, after Malcolm Groome (Pat) said he dated Kathleen Tolan,  he said he saw her theater work and found her to be  "compelling and charismatic actress"  In one of Ilene Kristen's many video interviews promoting the book, she also praised Kathleen.

Edited by safe
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

They clearly loved her offcamera. I wish I could appreciate her work more, but...I don't.

Thanks for telling me what Levin said at the end. I still don't think Carney was bad, but I guess he would always see them as not shining compared to Kate.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

Does anyone know what happened to her post-RH? She seemed to evaporate after she left the show. Which is why I can believe she said negative things about the show--maybe it got her labeled as "difificult?"

I thought she was a very good actress. I liked her performance as Siobhan. She had really good chemistry with Michael Levin. IMO, they were a bit gutless not to go for a Jack/Siobhan romance after Mary was killed off.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

Last I saw she was teaching acting (?) at a college, but that was probably ten-twenty years ago. 

She and Michael Levin had immense chemistry. This is one time where all the stuff about what was in character didn't matter to me - pairing them up just seemed like a no-brainer to me. The Joe pairing sapped Siobhan's spirit, and while I liked Rose/Jack, it was clear someone at the show did not.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

A few years after my grandfather and great aunt passed away, my grandmother married her widowed brother-in-law. You could have knocked us all over with a feather when they told us.

My point is: it happens in RL, a lot more often than people think. In the Jack/Siobhan case, it would have been super messy, which is exactly what you want on a soap.

Putting Siobhan with Joe forced them to write her as very naive and gullible, which seemed totally wrong for the character they initially introduced.

I liked Rose, too, but that story also got derailed by the stupid mob stuff.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members
Posted (edited)

One of the things that I found refreshing about Ryan's Hope when I discovered it on SoapNet was that for the most part, Delia was the only female character whose life seemed to revolve around getting and keeping a man, and it was clearly viewed as a character flaw. Because by the 2000s, I feel like fully half the female characters on the soaps at that time were obsessed with trying to snare some vacuous lunkhead. Up that to like 85% of them if we're talking Days Of Our Lives or Passions.

Edited by Ryan Mason
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...
  • Members

Tichina Arnold talks "Ryan's Hope" in a new interview this past May 2024

You played Zena Brown on Ryan’s Hope. Have you seen Tom Lisanti’s book Ryan’s Hope: An Oral History of Daytime’s Groundbreaking Soap?

No, I didn’t know there was one! I’ve got to look for that! Ryan’s Hope was my first professional role [as a TV series regular]. Then, I went to All My ‘Kids’ [AKA All My Children as Sharla Valentine], too!

What did you learn from doing soap operas?

I learned what not to do. By that, I mean back then, we had teleprompters. Actors were known as “not the best” because they’re on soap operas. I say no, it’s not that they’re not good actors. They are. It’s that they’re reading teleprompters. I trained myself to remember my lines.

Did anyone take you under their wing and show you the ropes?

Yes. Michael Levin, who played Jack Finelli. Bless his heart and God rest his soul. [Editor’s note: the Daytime Emmy-nominated actor passed away on January 6 of this year at the age of 90.] It was because of him I got on the show. Michael insisted I get the part. He fought for me. He told me, “Tichina, when I saw your audition, I wanted you to get the role.”

https://www.tvinsider.com/1134502/the-neighborhood-season-6-finale-toni-braxton-marty-courtney-baby/

In 2022 she said about Michael Levin

“I've been blessed to have been around a lot of people who saw my potential and Michael Levin's one of them. I did a soap opera called Ryan's Hope years ago when I was about 17 years old and they didn't want me because I just didn’t have the soap opera look,” Arnold said. “I was a dark-skinned Black woman with crooked teeth. You didn't see that on soap operas, but it was Michael Levin's storyline and he said, ‘Tichina, I had to fight for you. I had to fight for you because you know, the network didn't want you, they wanted someone else.’ And I said, ‘Why did you fight for me?’ and he said, ‘When you came in and auditioned, you just lit up the room. I didn't want anybody else after I saw you.’ That gave me a lot of confidence.”

https://www.uptownmagazine.com/entertainment/tichina-arnolds-secret-to-longevity-is-being-able-to-put-her-ego-to-the-side

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

I'm surprised it took me this long to get into RH. The soap is so damn good, I am just as obsessed with the Ryan's as Delia. The Ryans are a great family unit and seem like good people. I wish I had a family like that.

This show has so many parallels to BTG. Frank's mystery is very similar to Martin's. Both are my favorites on each show.

adding more thoughts soon once I get a consistent watch going. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members
Posted (edited)

Part of a newly uploaded episode said to be from August 1984. If so I don't think any of those were around. 

The show really seems like a stranger at this point.

Grant Show sans shirt...naturally.

At around 15 minutes they use the music cue that they had been using from the earliest days of the show. When did that stop?

Please register in order to view this content

 

Edited by DRW50
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members
Posted (edited)

 

Great watch !  I'm reminded how far the show had moved away from the Ryans during this period…Not a trace of the Ryans.  This episode bares no resemblance to the original Ryan’s Hope.

Traci Lin is much more compelling than I remember.  Wonder what she would have accomplished if she had stuck it out...

Scott Holmes is much more appealing here than on ATWT.  His Tom Hughes was always kinda sour.

Grant Show sure did come along way.  His biggest talent here is his chest.

Cali Timmins Cali Timmins Cali Timmins…What a star !  I really enjoyed Maggie as the show's heroine.  I wish she had done more work after she left daytime.  But she found love on RH with Geoff Pierson -- that’s probably better than a career.

Edited by gimmetoo
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Unfortunately, your content contains terms that we do not allow. Please edit your content to remove the highlighted words below.
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.



  • Recent Posts

    • This is the perfect way to encapsulate the situation. So many morally-reprehensible stories were foisted on the show and its characters in ATWT's dwindling years. Rape should never be used as a cheap plot device or in a way that degrades the victim. Jack's sexual assault was another heinous example of how nasty the the show's tone had become. The fact that people like Hogan Sheffer, Ron Carlivati, Jean Passanante, Charles Pratt, Dena Higley, etc., somehow end up winning awards for their material, decimates the credibility and integrity of the awards, IMHO. Soaps used to have a solid moral core and did not originally wallow in the gutter, rolling around in filth and depravity just to be cool, hip, campy, or whatever else modern-day PTB aim for. Thank you. Cruelty, degradation and misogyny are not components which lend themselves to successful soaps, which have always been predicated on warmth, family bonds, and providing a comforting haven for their audience. The genre has been crippled because the cynical and ignorant executives in charge understand neither the shows nor what the audience wants to see.
    • Beverlee was on a whole other level from Kim. It's not like they were in competition with each other. I get the feeling that Kim had a slight problem with the super-professional, serious cast members who just wanted everyone to be prepared and do the work, as she seems to like having fun on set. (She's made a few cracks about Chris Bernau being like that). Bev was definitely one of those. But they didn't work together that much. Yeah, they made her manic and also much weaker. She always had a vulnerability, but wanting to kill herself over that guy? No way. Not only that, he didn't leave her! She insisted he marry Maeve. When they did the tribute to Bert/Charita, the compilation of scenes with her showed how much the cast had been almost totally turned over in a relatively short period of time. Nearly every shot was of her by herself because most people she had worked with had been fired, left or been replaced. I assume they couldn't show her with people who hadn't been replaced, like Don Stewart, Elvera Roussel, or Robert Newman because they would have had to pay them for using their clips. It's dreadful to watch. Like she had no connection to the current show.
    • Please register in order to view this content

       
    • A little too much focus on Chad and Cat today but I enjoyed the episode. I have a feeling that Jennifer’s gonna get dumped on though, even though I think that her anger is completely understandable and justified. And honestly, Ron is finally gone; Abigail can come back now.  But, welcome back, Anna! It was nice seeing Carrie have scenes with her mother. Christie Clark and Leann Hunley have never really had that many scenes together and to see them have them now is really nice. I’m glad that both of them were there to comfort Marlena too. Their words were definitely the thing that Marlena needed to hear. Btw, with all this talk of Noah, does it mean that he’s gonna be introduced soon? Amy, revealing that John changed her flat tire many years ago seemed a little random though. I would rather she have said something about how everybody in Salem knows of John Black because of how he was always such a hero. But at the same time, her story also showed what a great guy John was.  I liked Kate’s scenes with Philip too, and her promise to get back at Xander for what he did. And since we didn’t see JPL in the bed, did he need some time off or something? And yeah, everything involving ‘One Stormy Night’ still seems very Ron-like to me.
    • The second photo featuring the late John Spencer is from the Law & Order episode, "Prescription For Death", which was the (second) pilot/first episode all the way back in 1990! He played the father of a daughter that had gone to the ER for a mere sore throat but ended up dead because the doctor on call was drunk and had given her medication that she had an adverse reaction to, after receiving some other medication. So, he will always have that great distinction in addition to The West Wing. (The first pilot, "Everybody's Favorite Bagman", was filmed in 1988! The show was offered to CBS, but they passed. In syndication, it is oddly placed as the sixth episode of Season 1. And Roy Thinnes played DA Alfred Wentworth there. When NBC picked up the show two years later, Thinnes declined to return, and that's how we got Steven Hill's DA Adam Schiff.)
    • exactly. I can understand schadenfreude if it were real, but a lot of this is just an engineered distraction.
    • Days of our Lives S60E204 – Thursday, June 5, 2025 Okay, today’s episode was kind of boring. It was nice seeing Jack and Jen back, but they wasted an entire episode on Jen chatting with Julie - one scene would’ve been enough. Also, why didn’t Jack and Jen go comfort Marlena? And wouldn’t a flashback with Jack, Jen, and John have been great? Maybe something from the Cruise of Deception era? Bottom line - it feels like once John’s memorial is over and the returning fan favorites leave Salem… the show’s going to be dull again.
    • Everything with Elon and Trump is a stunt. If people, and the sycophantic press, are talking about their "feud," they are not talking about Republican plans to gut Medicare, Medicaid, and the ACA. 
    • I can't fully remember, but I don't think they tried to get Beth Chamberlin back. I think Laibson/McTavish likely saw Beth as old news and wanted to move Philip on; either that or have her return only when Philip was closely tied to a new woman. Thanks as always for these recaps. I think I had stopped watching around this time and mostly kept up by reading in the soap magazines. Bridget's degradation was horrible to watch, as the character had grown so much over the years and was clearly regressed just to be a foil for a "hot" couple viewers had zero investment in. 
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy