Ryan's Hope Discussion Thread

[allmc2008]

I wish all writers had to follow the Marland Rules. Marland stated that you had to tie new characters into the show's canvus somehow NOT tie a character from another show to your show to make a character on your show work.

[John]

John Reid Ryan (Ash Adams) Today. No way he is YOUNGER than Ava

AMEN

[Khan]

Well, at least Ryan's Bar looked good.

[John]

yeah it looked like t did on AMC as Krystal's bar. LOL

[Khan]

Could Delia have had a child before Johnno? Yes. Could that child have been fathered by someone else? Yes. Especially if it occurred one night, let's say, when Pat and Delia had had an argument, and Delia had sex with a guy (who turned out to be Jerome) in order to "punish" Pat. However, I have a hard time believing Delia would not at least have been tempted to pass off the child as Pat's in order to hide her ONS and keep her tied to the Ryans -- which, after all, seemed to be her whole reason for living. If she could have faked blindness in order to hold onto the guy, she could have pretended Ava was his daughter as well.

[DeliaIrisFan]

I don't know what that was, but how disappointing...

It was nice to see Ilene again, and her scenes would have been touching and meaty had she been playing just about any other character. Contrary to anyone who dismisses her performance these past few days as Roxy with a different name, to me she was actually playing a completely different character than the time(s) she was given virtually the same script on OLTL. But while I actually think Ilene did everything in her power to make this character seem like Delia, it was really hard to believe when she was being written as the antithesis of Delia: unable to manipulate anyone successfully, selfless maternal instinct...who was this woman? I'm not sure that Delia could have fit into any soap that wasn't RH, but she certainly could not be shoehorned into any soap today. The real Delia would be at least five times savvier than any current soap character, and RH made it very clear that being a mother did not magically cure the type of personality disorder that Delia was consistently portrayed as having, like most soap "vixens" are redeemed by having children - it just made her more dangerous, because she had a helpless child to neglect.

And now that I've seen all of this, I'll go out on a limb and say that this doesn't fit the RH timeline, at all. I tried to make up potential explanations in my mind for why Delia would hook up with this man: She was on the rebound from Pat, and maybe the timing didn't quite work to pass the kid off as his... But then I looked up the guy who had played Victor Jerome originally:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0043484/?ref_=ttfc_fc_cl_t1936

So, when Delia was barely out of that Catholic schoolgirl uniform she wore in all of those flashbacks they showed, she was having a clandestine affair with a 40+ year-old man (with mob ties)? Why would she pick him, and why on earth would she have been doing it under Maeve and Johnny's noses at Ryan's?

Also, no explanation for how/where Delia carried the pregnancy to term without anyone finding out. So much of who Delia was at that time was shaped by having never really seen the world beyond her neighborhood. Realistically, there was nobody in Delia's life at that point who had anything remotely resembling the resources to send her "away" except Maeve and Johnny. And while I could see them helping ship her off to Ireland to work in a Magdalene laundry or something - they could be extremely harsh when their fragile sense of morals were flouted - there's certainly no way they would have kept quiet about it while she trapped both of her sons into marriage.

But even beyond writing Delia out of character and doing damage to RH's carefully constructed history, the worst part for me may have been that it was really depressing to see what became of Ryan's Bar. They could have done a lot worse in coming up with miserable outcomes for Delia and others who were not seen. I can't help but remember, though, how the Ryans - while not perfect and arguably completely dysfunctional in their own right - were so welcoming and joyful and exuberant that they made customers want to come into that bar in order to feel like they were having the kind of fun they only wished they had with their own families None of that was on display in the set that was being called Ryan's Bar. The one "Ryan" (by marriage) who was working there greeted customers with her tales of woe, and it's been reduced to a sleazy bar where mobsters took their jailbait molls. In some ways, that's more disheartening to me than if we were told Ryan's went out of business and became a Starbuck's.

Edited October 30, 2013 by DeliaIrisFan

[Khan]

Maybe Victor Jerome threatened to hurt the Ryans, either financially or otherwise, if she didn't continue the affair? I dunno, it's the best explanation/justification I can come up with. *shrug*

[John]

She had Ava before marrying Frank. Were Dee & Pat together before she married Frank, which would have been b4 the show started

[John]

Yeah I bet taht would be Ron's justification but I doubt we will ever see Delia on GH again

A To The Men

[DeliaIrisFan]

Yes, Pat was Delia's first love, to the extent that she was capable of love, especially at that point. He was her *first* at any rate, but he broke up with her when he started college or med school because he didn't want to be trapped in a relationship, and she set her sights on Frank. Pat always took Delia's side when she had problems with Frank, and it was implied that on some level he married her against all reason because he wanted to succeed where his brother had failed.

[John]

How I would have done the GH's Ava Jerome is RH's Delia Reid Ryan's daughter. I would have made Ava younger than John Reid Ryan as I said before however,remember when Ilene left in Nov 83. Frank had set up that job & Dee left town and then Robin Mattson became Delia in June 84?


Well I would have wrote/rewritten that Dee had an affair with Victor in summer 83 but found out he was dangerous and ended things. Then in Nov 83 she learns she is 3-4 months pregnant. She tells Frank. Both are worried that Victor could hurt Johnny that Frank sends out of town on a ruse she got a job. Dee has the baby in spring 84 and meets up with Matthew crane. Matt learns of her story & helps get the baby adopted to protect Ava. He then falls for Delia and Matt & Delia plan to marry. Delia sees as a way to get money.

She then returns to RH in June 84 (Robin Mattson as Dee) married to Matthew just how it appeared on screen

Edited October 30, 2013 by John

[cassadine1991]

http://www.totallykate.com/labine/interview.html

http://www.totallykate.com/ryanhope/labine.html

[dc11786]

It's disheartening to see so much space given to Ron C.'s fan fiction.

I've been rewatching random episodes from 1987. The show was so sharp and lively. In particular, I love Johnno's attempts to get Lizzie back from Ben. There is some nice conflict for Jill, who loved Johnno as a son and had only recently met her brother, Ben. In one scene, Johnno stops by Jill and Frank's place and talks to Jill about not wanting Owen to go through what he went through growing up. It was really nice to see that written by people who were there when it originally happened. Does anyone know if Jill and Frank's penthouse/apartment in the late 1980s is the same set as Rae Woodard's place? Structurally, it looks like an updated version of the same set, but I'm not sure if it's the same.

Anyway, there were some really nice scenes at Deja Vu where Johnno thanked Delia for keeping Lizzie on after their breakup. I think Delia was a better mother to an adult Johnno then she ever was to Jadrien Steele's Johnno. There was one really well written scene where Delia suggests to Johnno that he try to gain custody of Owen in order to keep himself in position of power when it came to Lizzie. In response, Johnno politely dismisses his mother's suggestion saying he didn't want to use his child in order to get what he wanted. Ilene Kristen plays it with a bit of regret having Delia recognize that she did this all of Johnno's young life.

It's interesting to see the development of the Shelby family. I didn't realize how prominent they were in the 1980s and basically usurped the Coleridges by blending with them. I think its rather successful, but I did enjoy the dysfunctional dynamic between Jill/Roger/Faith.

[Cheap21]

well they did tie Ava to the shows canvas as well by making her a member of a recently resurrected family from GH's history. It's that history which is driving her current story

[John]

Flashback Nov 5 1985-DJ & Ryan: Christian Slater Yasmine Bleeth
http://youtu.be/DwZSMeSwlDA