Ryan's Hope Discussion Thread

[DRW50]

My parents are fans of Falling Skies. I didn't realize it was the same actor. Of course I've never seen him on RH, although after reading saynotoursoap's description I wish I had.

[DRW50]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1MNt9p0JLU

[DRW50]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lttgjFaOGQ

[DRW50]

Thanks to saynotoursoap.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ok9G0fIDC9U

[savonclassique]

RYAN'S HOPE was one of the great daytime serials of all time. It may have gone through a revolving door of writers in its last few years, but the quality of the show never wavered too much. It's a shame SoapNet never went beyond 1981; 1982-89 had some very memorable characters and storylines that were as good as they were in its first few years. SoapNet viewers who got used to RH in its first five or six years never got an opportunity to know characters like Leigh Kirkland (Felicity LaFortune), Bess Shelby (Gloria DeHaven), Maggie Shelby (Cali Timmins), Max Dubujak (Daniel Pilon), Jacqueline Dubujak (Gerit Quealy), Chaz Saybrook (Brian McGovern) and many others. It's unfortunate that ABC decided to treat the show like a redheaded stepchild by moving it to 12 pm in late 1984 and putting LOVING in its original time slot (a move to solely appease LOVING's creator, Agnes Nixon, who already had her AMC and OLTL in a back-to-back block in most markets). That move alone hurt RH badly in terms of ratings. Thankfully, almost 25 years after its last show, it is remembered fondly by many people.

[DRW50]

You have such a beautiful screenname.

I agree that I wish the show had had more of a chance. I also wish we could see the 1982 episodes.

[DRW50]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06pMROdm8rs

[saynotoursoap]

I agree. The Pat Falken Smith and early Tom King regimes were somewhat unbearable to me, but from 1986 on, RH was as good again. Claire Labine's final stint was even better than her first, as she avoided some of the clunky melodramatic plotlines that dragged down the early years. I particularly loved how she integrated the younger Ryans with the veteran cast and created so many colorful new characters such as Zena and Nancy Don Lewis. Her nods to history were good as well. I remember when Frank and Jill decided to have a mid-life baby after they imagined what great friends a deceased Edmund would have been with John Reid had Edmund lived. And when Lizzie exposed John Reid's affair on the wedding day to everyone in Ryan's Bar, Frank leapt to his son's defense, prompting a furious Delia to point out that Frank would naturally defend Johnno's infidelity since Frank had been an adulterer, too. Great stuff. I miss Claire Labine.

[KMan101]

I apologize if this has already been posted but I was just perusing YouTube for Ryan's Hope and found a poster, FreeFlyur has a lot of 1986-1989 episodes of RH up.

Edited April 14, 2013 by KMan101

[DRW50]

I keep meaning to watch those while they're still up (I think he or she has some 83-85 as well). The last few Soapnet years kind of burnt me out, especially 1981, and some of the stories like the Max Dbujack stuff make me wary, but i really should watch.

[saynotoursoap]

I have watched all of the videos on that channel, and as I recall, there is actually very little Max Dudbujak. Perry has a good chunk of 1983 which is mostly about Charlotte Greer, Leigh Kirkland, and the introduction of Maggie. Most of the material from 1984 and 1985 centers on the Jill/Frank/Maggie dynamic and later Maggie and Dave, with 1985 showing a good deal of Jill's amnesia and falling in love with Dakota. There are probably only fifty or so episodes from 1984 and 1985, if even that much. Perry seems to have more episodes (many consecutive or nearly consecutive) beginning with 1986/87, and that is when Claire returns. Claire pulls all the meandering stories and relationships together fairly quickly. I regret SoapNet not running those, and 1982/83.

[DRW50]

Thanks. The Max story seems so weird to me when I read about it, especially for Siobhan.

I think Soapnet only ran two episodes from the later years, one St. Patrick's episode, and the finale. It's too bad.

[DRW50]

I'd never seen this before. Who is this woman?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAL1I2lhKYc

[savonclassique]

I am probably one of the very few RH fans who enjoyed Pat Falken Smith's tenure as headwriter. I loved Max Dubujak; his daughter, Jacqueline, and Siobhan had a very intense feud in early 1984 that was well-written because it truly exposed Siobhan's vulnerabilities and brought Jacqueline's bitchiness to the forefront (considering how she was introduced as a spoiled little rich girl). The bombing of Ryan's Bar (which wasn't seen on Freeflyur's You Tube channel) set the tone for the backburnering of Maeve and Johnny for almost the entire year (not that I really minded, since my attention was focused mostly on the Dubujaks). The aftermath of the bombing did provide Maeve with one powerful scene, where she confronts Joe Novak's cousin, Lazlo Novotny, amongst the ruins and refuses his money to help restore the bar.

If there was one period of RH post-1983 that I wasn't crazy about, it was the latter part of 1985. Jack Fenelli went through a revolving door of lovers it seemed (Betty Sherman, Gloria Tasky, some anonymous girl who made a move on him). Despite a good storyline with Jill having amnesia and assuming the name "Sara Jane Hillyer", Marg Helgenberger (Siobhan) left the show, which resulted in the backburnering of Max. Ilene Kristen's return in the latter part of 1986 definitely rejuvenated RH.

Labine/Mayer's return in 1983 had two great storylines: Charlotte Greer and the romance of Jack and Leigh Kirkland. They were also respsonsible for bringing Bess and Maggie Shelby to the canvas, which definitely set things in motion. The addition of Sydney Price (Robin Greer) to stir trouble for Jack and Leigh was a nice touch, but unfortunately Leigh's character became wasted--not good. Smith had some good moments as a headwriter for RH; as for Taggart/King, not so much. A few bright spots here and there, but I don't think they truly understood the core characters much.

[saynotoursoap]

I understand how you feel as I enjoyed the generally reviled era of the Kirkland family.

Please, no one misunderstand. I enjoyed Pat Falken Smith (hereafter PFS) very much. Her work for Where the Heart Is I describe as marvelous, and she was second only to Bill Bell as the best headwriter of Days of our Lives. However, in my opinion PFS excelled at sarcastic, bitchy dialogue and strong psychosexual situations, neither of which lent themselves to the style and tone of Ryan's Hope. I think she failed at Guiding Light for the same reason. It is not that she was a bad writer, but rather, her inherent talents were not well suited for those soaps.

I agree that PFS had some very good moments at RH, if not truly memorable ones. I loved the very early part of her work, in the autumn of 1983, when Maggie and Roger schemed to make Jill believe that her wayward mother Elizabeth Hillyer was a wealthy, cultured woman sailing off to exotic climes. Bess came to Manhattan, and in order to keep an eye on Maggie, was hired as the Coleridge housekeeper with the in-joke name Betsy Traylor. Bess accidentally killed Maggie's blackmailing boyfriend, leaving Jill to defend her against a murder charge, all with no idea she was representing her mother. The fallout from that situation, particularly with a furious Faith packing her bags and leaving, was fraught with conflict and tension. The bombing of the bar was well-executed, as was a lengthy sequence in which Roger's sexual obsession for Maggie reached a boiling point. He trapped Frank and Maggie in Dave Greenburg's loft and attempting to harm them shoved a heavy scaffolding on top of them. The tense sequence reached a shocking finale when Roger fell down an out of service elevator shaft during a fistfight with Frank. I found the story highly original, exciting, and perfectly within character.

So, no, not all of PFS' tenure was bad. What bothered me the most was shifting the action away from Ryan's Bar to Dave Greenburg's deli. Many of the problems of that era were poor decisions made by Joseph Hardy, whom I did not care for as an EP. I recall him stating that the bar was blown up and would not be shown for a year because it seemed too old-fashioned and slow. So, what? He merely replaces the bar, a logical place for characters to converge, with a small Jewish delicatessen? Had he instructed the writers to blend the newer elements desired by the network with the veteran cast and familiar tone the core audience liked, they might have been more successful.

Edited April 14, 2013 by saynotoursoap