Ryan's Hope Discussion Thread

[DRW50]

Thanks so much for reading them, and commenting! I type all that up but sometimes wonder if it just seems like blather. I'm glad you enjoyed.

It's been almost 10 years for me as well. Actually I think it HAS been ten years. I remember it was a few months before 9/11. My first episodes were when Siobhan (the real Siobhan) arrived, with her leg in a cast, and Finn McCool. I loved her from the start.

I'm not a huge fan of the stuff currently on RH, so watch sporadically, but I'm trying to stay attached, since this is it.

If they just make it a few more years, somehow, then they will surpass their ABC run. And all on only half the show's episodes.

I just hope this has helped the careers of the actors. I think it probably has, somewhat - I've always wondered if one of the reasons Ilene got OLTL was her RH glory being broadcast again.

BTW, if there are any particular actors you want to see interviews from please let me know.

[DeliaIrisFan]

Oh, wow, I hadn't even thought about the fact that it's been almost as long as the original run, but you're right.

I, too, loved Sarah Felder's Siobhan from the start. I'm really sorry we won't get to see any of her run again (then again, if someone in that position can neglect to have the red tape in order to shut down a whole cable network and they have to put it off for so many months after already announcing it, I suppose anything can happen between now and then). And I'm sorry you're not enjoying the current material. For me, they've just gotten into my favorite stretch of soap opera that I've ever seen, starting with Jack and Mary's wedding and Delia's affair with Roger (which I just missed this go-round). I'm hoping we make it to Delia's fake nervous breakdown (complete with her reading up on the symptoms in that heart-shaped bed, and doing her nails at her mother's grave while waiting for everyone to come find her) and Jack and Mary trapped in the basement of Ryan's Bar. If my memory/math is right, they just might. If RH had gone to an hour during this era and introduced original Siobhan at the same time of these stories, I would have been in soap opera heaven.

[SFK]

I don't remember if it was by chance that I caught that and recorded it about five years ago or if I read on SoapNet.com that her eps were about to begin. I never knew her, but Sarah taught Speech at my Acting school and a lot of my friends the year behind me had her. I wanted to show the tape to some of them. I for whatever reason had remembered her name prior to that and realized while looking through some old play programs that she was a speech coach at Arena Stage in D.C.

[DRW50]

I've heard about her teaching speech - what did they think of her? I hope she knows how many fans she gained when her RH run started on Soapnet. I hope she also knows she even made the We Love Soaps top 50 actresses list.

http://www.welovesoaps.net/2010/01/50-greatest-soap-actresses-36-sarah.html

There was something so real and honest in her performances. She was a very fearless actress. She also had effortless chemistry with everyone. I still can't believe ABC let her go.

[DRW50]

We will probably get to early 1978, at least, so that covers the end of Kate Mulgrew.

I like some of the material now, it's just some is so draining (Jack/Mary) and other material is full of the whole "This couple are fated to be and Delia is stopping them" stuff that I kind of roll my eyes at. I always thought the show should have really gone for Pat/Dee, since he only had chemistry with one Faith, and that was when they weren't really together.

I also liked Jill and Seneca. It's a shame that had to end so badly.

[safe]

She didn't need a lot of sympathy - and that's what made her sympathetic.

Although it was painful for her (and me LOL) to watch, she knew Pat had to find his own way - he had to learn his own lessons where Delia was concerned.

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Justin Deas and Jody Catlin's daughter Yvette Deas' website.

Yvette played young school girl Mary in flashbacks on Ryan's Hope in 1977. She is a figurative painter/artist.

http://www.yvettedeas.org/index.html

Edited June 20, 2011 by safe

[safe]

On the current Soapnet storyline of Jill considering an abortion – Nancy Addison felt that Jill would have had the abortion.

Nancy Addison/March 13, 1977

Edited June 23, 2011 by safe

[DRW50]

I always wondered about that. I felt like there was a very strong feminist pro-life view at RH - the only time a woman on the show had an abortion it was presented as selfish and irresponsible (Kimberly).

[DeliaIrisFan]

Oh, I don't know if I would agree with that...the thing about Ryan's Hope was that Maeve and her Irish Catholic dogma were essentially the moral center, but there were definitely cracks. A lot of things would have turned out a lot better for all parties involved if nobody had listened to Maeve, and the scene that sticks out most in my mind in that regard is when Maeve went and "rescued" Delia from an abortion clinic. (When Delia had no intention of having an abortion, just conning Maeve into pressuring Pat to marry Delia so she wouldn't try again.) And I have to say I was really impressed all over again with the episode that just reaired last week, in which Jill went to that abortion clinic. It didn't even seem like soap opera - it was basically If These Walls Could Talk, except twenty years earlier and a lot better. I don't know who could have watched that sequence with the teenage girl (who actually looked like a teenage girl) and heard her pitiful story and still think that any law passed by men should be able to dictate what a woman does with her own body, regardless of Jill's ultimate choice.

As for Nancy, I think she was an amazing actress (and person from all I've read/heard about her) and I admire how she brought her feminist perspective to that character and I suspect I would have liked Jill a lot more if she had been more like Nancy, but Jill was not Nancy. Jill was a mess! She couldn't really be without a man for ten seconds, and she couldn't be without her world of privilege and the hypocritical social stigmas that came with it, at least for very long. That scene that re-aired a week or two ago in which she consulted an old family friend who was a gynecologist who wouldn't perform the abortion for her because "the law may change, but the old standards remain" was really creepy...I half expected him to give her advice on which brand of cigarettes to smoke while she was pregnant, as long as he was talking about sticking with those old standards. And that was the world Jill came from. But, she was portrayed as having a better life because of the gains that true feminists like the real-life Nancy made happen for women, and she was a pretty groundbreaking example of a female tv character who had a prestigious profession and clearly was as good at it as any man.

So, I could buy Jill making the choice that she did. I could have seen it going the other way, too, and really Jill was one of the last soap opera heroines who should have had one of these paternity stories (not just because of Roe v. Wade but also DNA testing, which surely wasn't that far behind, not to mention AIDS). Also, plot device or not, they did say Jill physically couldn't handle the pill and I have heard anecdotally from women of that era that the pill was a huge step forward for women for many reasons, including that it was more effective at preventing pregnancy than condoms.

Edited June 29, 2011 by DeliaIrisFan

[DRW50]

I guess what I remember with abortion on RH is that every female character, no matter how independent or feminist they were or how they felt about abortion, always chose to keep their child, if it was presented as a choice not motivated out of bad reasons. Even Siobhan, who worked at a family planning clinic and fought with Maeve about birth control and abortion.

I'm not criticizing, because I never felt like the show was saying being pro-choice was bad, or immoral. I just notice that every strong female character on the show during Labine's run seemed to end up having a choice about whether to abort a child and choosing not to do so.

Not to get off topic too much, but did you know Dick Clark was thinking of producing a sitcom for John and Sandy Gabriel? They would have played rival villains on soaps. It might have been entertaining, and I know Sandy was funny on AMC.

[DeliaIrisFan]

I'm trying to remember Siobhan's abortion choice...was that when she actually had the baby, with Marg Helgenberger in the role? I guess that would have been in the lost 1982 episodes that never got reaired on SoapNet and were completely skipped over in those YouTube episodes that were posted from the 80s? I never saw those episodes. Or was she pregnant before that, with Sarah Felder in the role, and miscarried or whatever? I'm having a vague recollection of that. Either way, that was such a weird time in general for the show, with all kinds of competing visions, etc. After Joe, Siobhan essentially was a completely different character, sad to say, but I don't think that was any writer's decision so much as a network directive to make her a generic ingenue. Even before characters like Siobhan started blatantly changing into different people, there weren't that many abortions on other soaps, even after Erica Kane, were there? Except for the series of heroines who went insane from the guilt after having the abortion...and compared to that, I think a woman truly choosing to have the baby because it's what she wanted is a more empowering scenario to depict.

And I don't think any character besides Kim had an abortion? Am I blanking?

[DRW50]

No it was just Kim.

Siobhan was pregnant in 1980 and after some brief doubt over Joe's life (or Tiso's life, at the time she still thought Joe was not in the business) she chose to keep the baby. Then she had a miscarriage after being kidnapped and escaping. Michael Pavel was one of those who kidnapped her...which the show forgot because he was a hot piece of tail. Ugh I hated him.

[DeliaIrisFan]

OK, yes, I am remembering that now. Clearly, those episodes really didn't make as much of an impression on me. Like I said, SIobhan was just a completely different character post-Joe. SF and RM were amazing together and maybe Joe and Siobhan could have worked as a brief interlude. But she should have gone running back to Planned Parenthood (and become f--- buddies with the also now widowed Jack) after Joe died the first time - for good - and she saw how her experiment with marriage and family and tradition turned out. I'm really not sure where to put the blame for what happened to Siobhan, though, and the problems went so far beyond her stance on a woman's right to choose.

Edited June 29, 2011 by DeliaIrisFan

[~bl~]

Michael Pavel's involvement was eventually remembered, but for a time they totally ignored it. That was part of his write off and how Jack knew that Michael was involved with the set up to destroy his writing career.

[DRW50]

They did a number on Siobhan, and poor Sarah Felder too. Rarely have I seen such an undiluted example of a writer's vision (Sarah Felder), and a network's vision (Ann Gillespie). How they stumbled onto Marg Helgenberger, who seemed to marry ABC and TPTB's visions for the character, I don't know.

The 70's had Erica, Kate on Somerset (although her abortion drove her crazy too), Kathy on Search (who aborted for career reasons and only wanting one child)...I might have missed someone.