8 hours ago, Soaplovers said:

Slesar's biggest misstep was keeping Raven on so long.  While popular, it really diluted the crime and mystery format by having her be the lead.  

Raven was the closest thing EON had to a 'star' a la Erica, Viki etc

And Nicole had been on for many years as a lead from late 60's thru late 70's.

13 hours ago, VelekaCarruthers said:

And other than very few casting misses during the Slesar era (first Kelly, Chad, Jim Deidrickson when they were under pressure to go after the youth demo with model types to match some of the other soaps in the early 80s) all the performers were good to most excellent.  I always thought the first Nicole replacement (although I like some of her scenes when I watch now) was a big misstep. Too young, too different.  The second recast was somewhat better and also a capable actress.  They cast real actors, most with stage experience. Contrast that with GH under Valentini...

The "youth mandate" hurt TEON (and most soaps, IMHO). Since the very beginning of the genre, fans of all ages have made it clear that they love soap characters of all ages. I have never understood how TPTB can be unaware or (just as possibly) indifferent to this fact.

Replacing Maeve McGuire with Jayne Bentzen was a serious blunder. Not only was she a whopping 18 years younger that McGuire, she was a painfully wooden performer. Rona Barrett's Daytimers magazine posted a comment: "Although well liked by her cast-mates, most feel she should have remained a model." Ouch. Nicole never again attained the immense popularity the character has garnered under McGuire. It was like replacing Jacquie Courtney on AW with some of the dreadful actresses who somehow ended up in the role of Alice.

Lisa Sloan was a better thespian that Bentzen, fortunately, but neither Bentzen nor Sloan ever felt like the "real" Nicole to me.

Getting rid of Mandel Kramer as Bill Marceau was another slap in the face, but at least the character of Bill was hitting a believable age to retire from the police force.

As you pointed out, some of the "model hunks" hired by the show simply weren't well cast. I personally found Derek Mallory to be...icky and completely unappealing, but the majority of the performers hired over the years I watched the series were quite good.

The original leading man, Mike Karr, was recast twice, and the show really lucked out there. All three of the actors chosen for the role were fine.

Nicole's character needed to be retired after Maeve quit the second time.  It was a perfect opportunity bring in someone new for Miles.  Erwin Nicholson had guts hiring Dennis Parker. Henry's material for Derek was uneven although I liked the Jinx story with the former Somerset actress. I thought she shouldn't have been killed off. She fit great on the canvas. Dennis Parker did his best but he was a 70s porn star and once known it was hard to watch his straight love scenes. Erwin hired so many out gay actors though. Good for him.  Henry was absolutely right to keep Raven on and front and center.  The problem was that, in the name of story and mystery, he killed off her mother and she had no other family.  In my mind, the main thing Lee Sheldon should have been forced to do was write additional backstory and bring in character related to Raven.  Alicia Van Dyne and/or Shelly should have been related to Raven or one to Raven and the other to Geraldine.  I thought the actress who played Shelly had potential and loved Chris Weatherhead.  She was Lee/Erwin's best actrees/character and she was never put on contract!  

Yes, it would have been interesting for Raven to discover a brother or sister tied into a mystery plot.

I've always wondered about Nicholson -working at Edge for many years, how he adjusted to Search. After that he must have retired. 

And the fact that there he was never replaced. No other P&G show kept a producer for that length of time.

9 hours ago, VelekaCarruthers said:

Nicole's character needed to be retired after Maeve quit the second time.  It was a perfect opportunity bring in someone new for Miles.  Erwin Nicholson had guts hiring Dennis Parker. Henry's material for Derek was uneven although I liked the Jinx story with the former Somerset actress. I thought she shouldn't have been killed off. She fit great on the canvas. Dennis Parker did his best but he was a 70s porn star and once known it was hard to watch his straight love scenes. Erwin hired so many out gay actors though. Good for him.  Henry was absolutely right to keep Raven on and front and center.  The problem was that, in the name of story and mystery, he killed off her mother and she had no other family.  In my mind, the main thing Lee Sheldon should have been forced to do was write additional backstory and bring in character related to Raven.  Alicia Van Dyne and/or Shelly should have been related to Raven or one to Raven and the other to Geraldine.  I thought the actress who played Shelly had potential and loved Chris Weatherhead.  She was Lee/Erwin's best actrees/character and she was never put on contract!  

Most of Dennis Parker's porn was with women. I do think he had believable chemistry with women, like Raven, but I am still surprised he managed to be cast. I guess the porno chic era helped.

Not quite to do with TEON but you can listen to all of Henry Slesar's plays for the CBS Radio Mystery Theatre here https://www.cbsrmt.com/writer/4-slesar-henry.html

Apologies if someone has previously posted this in the thread (or a different thread). Not trying to steal anyone's thunder.

4 hours ago, daysgoby said:

Not quite to do with TEON but you can listen to all of Henry Slesar's plays for the CBS Radio Mystery Theatre here https://www.cbsrmt.com/writer/4-slesar-henry.html

Thanks for the link, @daysgoby.  I'm always eager to dive into more of Henry Slesar's stuff.  He was such an amazing writer, capable of writing just about any kind of story, but always written with real intelligence and wit.

WOW

AND, if anyone on here can get to NY Public Library: Kim Hunter donated a bunch of scripts and notes from her career. May include 7 Edge episodes.
https://archives.nypl.org/the/21326

Edited January 28Jan 28 by VelekaCarruthers

Some info (perhaps most of you already know about it) about the ending of the show.  I did not know about the USA network. 

That excerpt stated that upon leaving Edge, Slesar went to work on Somerset, a blatant mistake.

Henry worked on SOM and EON concurrently.

That sort of falsehood permeates a lot of texts about soaps and allows for these sort of errors to be accepted as facts.

On 1/2/2025 at 7:02 AM, daysgoby said:

Not quite to do with TEON but you can listen to all of Henry Slesar's plays for the CBS Radio Mystery Theatre here https://www.cbsrmt.com/writer/4-slesar-henry.html

Apologies if someone has previously posted this in the thread (or a different thread). Not trying to steal anyone's thunder.

This is GREAT! Thank you so much for alerting us to this material.

8 minutes ago, Paul Raven said:

That excerpt stated that upon leaving Edge, Slesar went to work on Somerset, a blatant mistake.

Henry worked on SOM and EON concurrently.

That sort of falsehood permeates a lot of texts about soaps and allows for these sort of errors to be accepted as facts.

Plus, Slesar worked on TEON until 1983, and Somerset was cancelled in 1976, sooo no. HS did not go over to SOM "after" he left TEON.

The endless errors we find everywhere are so annoying. 

1 hour ago, Paul Raven said:

That excerpt stated that upon leaving Edge, Slesar went to work on Somerset, a blatant mistake.

Henry worked on SOM and EON concurrently.

That sort of falsehood permeates a lot of texts about soaps and allows for these sort of errors to be accepted as facts.

Thank you. I thought I was misunderstanding the author and perhaps he had left EON at some point and worked on Somerset and had come back to EON. I was hoping the USA thing was correct because I hold out hope that those episode will show up at some point.

I always remember what Henry Slesar once told Soap Opera Weekly: "[After EON, I went to work at OLTL], with the caveat that I not turn it into a crime show; yet, at the time, they had two murder mysteries running simultaneously, with two different murderers."

Edited January 31Jan 31 by Khan

The part about having episodes all the way from February 1978 made me wish more of those had been made available by P&G. I guess that must not have been true.