Another World Discussion Thread

[Contessa Donatella]

 

 

 

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Janice Frame is Evan's mother. Janice & Mac were together. Janice was up to no good. Mitch was helping her. She was slowly, little by little, every day, POISONING Mac. She was almost successful. In St. Croix, Rachel & Janice began what was literally a physical fight. They fell into the resort swimming pool, continuing to fight each other. Somehow, I guess Janice had it on her, there was a knife in play but Rachel kept Janice from stabbing her & got it away from her & they continued to struggle until Rachel stabbed Janice, which was a death blow. Mitch did a 180 & helped Rachel get Mac to the hospital. He was so weakened by the poison he could not even stand unassisted. It took both of them together to walk him to the hospital but it did save his life. 

The St. Croix remote was SO beautiful, but so dangerous & scary. Also action-packed.

Hooray! Maxim's backSo, I just got home & this is what I found waiting for me. I wrote this several hours ago. I guess I neglected to hit send.

Edited May 5 by Contessa Donatella

[Contessa Donatella]

So, Maxim, at this moment in time Evan is under the (mistaken) impression that, for no good reason, Rachel murdered his mother, in cold blood, and his ulterior motive for coming to Bay City is to get vengeance for this wrong that was done to his family & him. 

Now, Rachel never murdered anyone. Janice had the knife on her & she pulled the knife on Rachel in the fight they were having. The reason they were fighting was because Janice had been poisoning Mac.

So, this sets out the difference between the Frame family version of events & reality as the rest of us know it to be. Also no one in Bay City knows Evan is Janice's son. He goes by Evan Bates, not Frame.

[Xanthe]

The thing that I am stuck on is that the in studio scenes in Egypt started airing in mid-October. It seems very strange that they would have planned to have a couple of weeks of studio scenes airing before they started showing location footage. Normally even though some scenes in a remote-infused storyline are in studio, they would start airing a mixture of studio and location footage at the same time. I suspect they had put Arizona in their back pocket well before the Achille Lauro (hence Hawk arriving in September) and possibly moved up the Egypt in-studio action so that the remote Arizona piece unfolded during November. The Achille Lauro may have been the final straw but I would bet it was not the first time they considered the risk.

I have found one somewhat contemporaneous reference published on October 19th but pinned to an October 7th* "diary entry" mentioning that the location shoot in Egypt had been changed to Arizona.

"International terrorism has its effect on daytime drama, too. Another World producers had scheduled an elaborate and expensive location shoot in Egypt this fall, But with the serious military attacks and hijackings going on, they decided to play it safe. They are going to Arizona instead. The cast members involved were disappointed but understood the decision."

*Undated, but specified as the Monday before Melody Thomas's wedding to Ed Scott. But of course it's possible that the first draft referred to Egypt and was revised after October 7th to mention the cancellation before it went to press. But even making the decision the week of October 7th seems tight to get the Egypt scenes to air on the 17th/18th.

I would love to find something from a daily news cycle that would be clearer about the dates.

[j swift]

I did not recall how contentious the interview turned out to be until I re-read it.  In retrospect, good on both of them for allowing it to be published, it is remarkable to read this type of honesty in a soap magazine.

http://www.anotherworldhomepage.com/chat85.html

Edited May 5 by j swift

[bongobong]

Thanks for posting this, fascinating read. It's clear how ambivalent Wyndham is about Justine. IMO, it reads like she agrees that the end of the storyline was bad, but reading between the lines I think she thought she was doing good work for the meat of it....which was not the case. As bad as the writing for most of that story was, it was truly made worse by her embarrassing performance. After the story concluded she kept falling back into Justine ticks, when she wasn't phoning he scenes in. Not to play Freud, but was it to tr*ll her critics?

 

[j swift]

It’s a recurring tension in Daytime: the willingness to take risks can fuel a show's longevity, but the actresses themselves often bear the long-term consequences of audience backlash.

[Contessa Donatella]

I know that VW thought it sounded like a good story when it was pitched to her.  I know that by the end of it she thought it was positively awful. I suspect that if we were to try to pinpoint when that changed, we might be pretty accurate. But, agree to disagree about her performance,  which of course, is never a big deal. Specifically, I do not think she phoned anything in. And, I attribute her slight accent from a certain point  on, to COUPLETS not to Justine. 

 

Edited May 5 by Contessa Donatella

[Efulton]

That was an incredible interview.  I cannot imagine it ever happening with a performer currently on a soap.  I remember being extremely disappointed in Michael Malone.  I wish we had all of the backstage scoop on where things went wrong with him.

[DRW50]

It was an extremely rare interview even then - I was shocked when I read it (as mentioned I'd forgotten just how far in she went). You could see how hurt and annoyed she was.

I'm surprised he thought she came up with the baby story herself. She and Charles Keating did a good job with the material but it was absolute hokum. Even if they loved Carl and Rachel (and clearly they did), I don't see them coming up with stuff that, frankly, read like Geocities fan fic.

Malone was clearly hobbled by NBC and P&G, but re-using so many of his old stories and his soap bible instead of actually coming up with material suited to the characters or show did not help.

It was also fascinating reading her comments about Rachel being in her, fighting back against the writing, and how she had to try to mediate. Reminds me of Marie Masters talking about how hard it was to say goodbye to Susan when she'd been with her for 40 years. That subject is always compelling, that duality. And it reminds me of Eddie Drueding's comments a year or two earlier about Rachel losing her drive. Clearly Victoria saw her the same way.

Edited May 5 by DRW50

[Contessa Donatella]

For the record, VW thought having the twins at their ages was absurd & who wanted that story, was some group of fans, who wanted her & Carl to have a chance at having children together. Not any fans that I knew of, but supposedly they existed. 

[j swift]

This interview actually reminds me a bit of Kim Zimmer’s press during the infamous clone storyline on Guiding Light, or Deidre Hall during the possession story on Days. All three were seasoned daytime veterans who made it clear they valued airtime for their characters, not just being part of a romantic pairing. It seems that idea was part of the pitch behind these bigger-than-life plots.

They all took big swings in their performances. When I read Kim Zimmer’s memoir, I thought she captured it best — she wanted to be respected for being willing to take those risks. To paraphrase her, she knew it was ridiculous for Reva to think she was pregnant after menopause, but she still threw herself into those scenes and made them real.

That’s what really struck me about Victoria Wyndham’s interview too. She responded like a real person. It felt like she was telling Michael Logan that she knew Justine — and a geriatric pregnancy with twins — was totally preposterous, but that she still deserved credit for trying to keep the show alive and entertain the audience. And honestly, I think that's more than fair.

Logan is looking for a reductive answer for who is to blame.  And, she's telling him to accept that they were all well-meaning.  Which is not a defense of bad storytelling.  But, I understand that she's frustrated because she interpreted Logan's critique as a lack of commitment, and she wants him to know that she was committed! (maybe not for the best, but committed).

[Contessa Donatella]

Me, too!! 

[Paul Raven]

This is a common theme with long running actors and preposterous storylines.

Firstly they may relish the chance to play something different after years as that character-Ok I have an evil twin, possessed by the devil etc-at least it's something new to play.

Secondly, no matter how dumb the plot it keeps them frontburner and valued to the show and the audience. Better than being a talk to.

Thirdly, as VW stated in the end they don't have the power to dictate story and too much complaining can backfire and set them up in a negative light. Not a good position to be in with your employers.

So they just buckle up and give it their all or act out the script till it's over.

Edited May 5 by Paul Raven

[chrisml]

Michael Logan is being disingenuous. He knows who's to blame in these situations. Not only does he know how daytime works, but he also wrote about all the BTS shenanigans at the P&G soaps leading up to the Justine story. I will give Victoria Wyndham this: she went all out in the performance. She didn't half ass the performance. Let's also not forget that it was Michael Logan who was publicly calling for the firing of JFP when she on GL but says nothing about that in this interview or in the articles. My guess is that someone at AW didn't like Wyndham and was giving Logan the gossip and he was writing his column with that tea.

[DRW50]

@Maxim Great to see your mini-reviews again. There are a number of clips on Youtube of Janice's slow mental breakdown, especially as we go into January 1980. Christine Jones is just superb. She played the hell out of that role.

Something which isn't referenced as much later on is how Mitch pushed Janice's doubts and mental instability for his own ends...until suddenly he didn't want to anymore (I guess he caught on with the audience and the show became wary).

I don't want to post a bunch of clips, but this one has a very good confrontation between Rachel and Janice.

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This has a good scene around 7 minutes in where you can see Janice struggling internally with her need to identify herself so much by the men around her, all of which helps lead to her crackup.

 

Edited May 6 by DRW50