Another World Discussion Thread

[Contessa Donatella]

To me, he was her best romantic pairing!

[Tisy-Lish]

I remember them showing a map of Michigan during one of Rachel's adventures, and you are probably correct here.  But the map may have been used in 1978, when Sven kidnapped Rachel and characters were searching for her. They had no idea Sven had hidden her right there on the Cory estate.  So that's just another possible sighting of the infamous map.  

[DRW50]

I put that down more to how badly written that period was than anything else, similar to how the only ideas for Rachel were blindness and amnesia.

[Contessa Donatella]

Robb, another fan confirms. He says Rachel was given a day pass for a funeral & instead went on the lam.

[Tisy-Lish]

Even though I can firm a map of Michigan (that included Bay City) was used on the show, I still never heard Michigan referred to in any of the dialogue -- ever.  So the map doesn't really make it canon, in my opinion.  That map was probably supplied by the prop-guy, and he might not have even told TPTB that he was going to use an identifiable state map.  On the other hand, there were hints that it was in Michigan, with references to cold winters, etc.  And on Somerset, a nearby city was Lansing.  But I don't recall Lansing ever being mentioned on AW, but perhaps it was.  

I do wish TPTB would have made AW's canonical location in Michigan.  First, because many fans already believed it was in Michigan, and because eventually putting all the remaining P&G soap opera cities in Illinois was silly and pointless.  Variety is the spice of live, my dears.  

[Contessa Donatella]

Irna wanted to use cities around Chicago to represent the cities around Cincinnati, where P&G's international Headquarters are, so it was by intent. 

Here's the YT

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[Tisy-Lish]

But Irna did not put Bay City in Illinois. She left it vague.  Bay City wasn't mentioned as being in Illinois until the early-1980s, when Julia Shearer mentioned she was traveling to Bay City, Illinois.  Now, I do agree Irna likely wanted most of them to be somewhat close to Chicago and Cincinnati, but Michigan is adjacent to both Illinois and Ohio.  And Cincinnati is about 5-hours from both Chicago and Bay City, Michigan.  And Bay City is also about 5 hours from Chicago.

Not trying to argue, but we all have our wishes.  I just would have preferred Bay City be in Michigan for the reasons I mentioned in an earlier post.  It didn't happen, so I can't cry about it.  LOL. 

[chrisml]

I had always heard 1985 was a rough year for the show.  A shame as we hear so much about bad producers and how they ruin a show. It would have been nice to see a good producer exhibit great results.

The 1990 episodes currently uploaded bring back a lot of memories. I really enjoyed the Sharlene/Sharly storyline and Holbrook was fantastic.  Another example of someone overlooked for her superlative work although the Emmy voters would later rectify that. I also got a kick out of Taylor Benson and how she tortured Sharlene. I always wanted that story to go on longer than it did. 

I'm again reminded how the Amanda/Sam/Evan story just collapses when RKK left. I don't know what the writers were building to (if anything) but that storyline is a dud now.

Cali Timmins was perfect as Paulina. Seeing her again makes me even madder that she was replaced with Judi Evans. 

[Contessa Donatella]

As far as I know it's true that they wanted Judi all along & she wasn't available at first.

And, it honestly doesn't matter to me. No preference. 

But thanks for the geography lesson. It defeats me.

 

Edited Wednesday at 09:09 PM by Contessa Donatella

[watson71]

1985 was a rough year for the show.  Paul Rauch had a disastrous end to his 12 year run as executive producer in early 1983.  Allan Potter, AWs original executive producer, returned to the show in 1983 and stayed until the end of 1984.  He truly turned the show around quickly.  He made the show watchable and entertaining again.  When Potter’s retirement was announced P&G was going to transfer Mary Ellis Bunim from ATWT to AW. Instead, she went to Santa Barbara to work with the Dobsons again.  This was when Schenkel was hired and made one bad choice after another.  

[vetsoapfan]

In the early years, both Bay City and Somerset were said to be located in Michigan, about an hour's drive from each other.

In a long-ago news report about the backstage goings-on of the show, the host opened the segment by giving historical facts about AW, including Bay City, Michigan, as its locale. The clip is, or at least was at one point, available on Youtube. I watched it twice.

Somerset, the spin-off sister soap, was also acknowledged to be in that same state. When Heather Lawrence was told by her mother, Eve, that they were moving there permanently, Heather complained about not wanting to go to that, "dreary little town in Michigan."

On a talk show once (it might have been Merv Griffin; I forget), Audra Lindley spoke about her career pre-Three's Company. She said, "I was on a soap opera for years called Another World. It was set in Bay City, Michigan...." And then she elaborated on her antagonistic character of Liz Matthews.

Finally, even Google has its say:

"Yes, Somerset, a township in Huron County, Michigan, is relatively close to Bay City. It's located to the north-east of Bay City, and the drive is generally less than an hour. The two towns are linked by the Saginaw River and Lake Huron, according to a local information source."

The two towns, whose names at least exist in real life, were always said on-air to be close to each other and separated by water. The opening logo of Somerset even had a visual depiction of this.

Why TPTB at P&G later changed AW from Michigan to Illinois, who knows? Maybe they just made the arbitrary/pointless decision to set AW, TGL and ATWT in the same state. Maybe those in charge were just ignorant of the facts and didn't care about consistency and continuity.

Remember this is a company which mandated dropping the article THE from The Guiding Light and The Edge of Night in order to "modernize" the shows and "attract a younger audience." (If anyone can explain the irrational logic of that loopy decision, let me know, LOL.)

So, yes, Bay City was originally set in Michigan. There is a real Bay City in that state, just like there's a Genoa City, Wisconsin on Y&R and a real Genoa City in the real Wisconsin.

Retcons and historical inaccuracies are not uncommon on soaps, alas.

Out of curiosity, were you watching in the late 1960s and early 1970s? Michigan was mentioned, on-air, more than once back then. I kept extensive scrapbooks of all my favorite soaps at the time (yes, I had no life, LOL), and I made notes of trivia like this, characters' addresses and telephone numbers, birthdates of babies, etc.

Edited Wednesday at 11:21 PM by vetsoapfan

[j swift]

It seems like the obvious downside for future writers was that if a real news event occurred in Bay City, Michigan, then the audience would wonder how it would affect Rachel and Iris.

Whereas, a soap set in a larger city like Los Angeles or Houston can avoid everything but weather events by saying that our characters were on the other side of town (like B&B did during the LA Uprising of 1992 - although not literally).

IRL, I recall a huge snowstorm that hit Manhattan in the 1990s, and the papers with filled with stories about actors and crew having to spend the night in various television studios because the trains shut down early.  Which led me to question if we know of any natural events like storms or tornados that effected production?

Remember when Port Charles, NY had to have an earthquake because of sets destroyed by a real earthquake in LA?

Edited Wednesday at 11:16 PM by j swift

[Tisy-Lish]

Yes I was watching AW during that time, but I was very young.  So might have missed the references you mentioned. The late 1960s and early 1970s would have been during the Nixon and Cenedella head-writing eras.  Assuming you are correct, I'm quite surprised (and disappointed) Harding Lemay did not continue the Michigan references.  Especially since he was raised in a far northern region of a northern state, very very near the Canadian border. And I know he loved writing (either directly or indirectly) about his upbringing in that region. Perhaps no one in the studio ever told Lemay about the Michigan connection.  Who knows??  But I'm sure Lemay would have had a field-day playing all those Michigan references, which would have made his AW even more believable and relevant than it already was.  Such a missed opportunity!!

[vetsoapfan]

I don't believe Lemay was the one who negated the fact that the show was originally set in Michigan. Aside from a few curious character mutations, he did seem to care about the past. I think AW switched the local to Illinois in the 1980s or later.

I don't think TPTB always knew or remembered the past well enough to give new headwriters full accurate information, anyway.

Lemay wrote a story about Pat Randolph killing a predator named Greg Bernard who was targeting her daughter. The writer referred to a teenaged Pat killing her boyfriend (Tom Baxter) by stabbing him, as she later killed Greg. But in reality, Pat had shot Tom with a gun, so TPTB were lax in knowing or correctly relating established facts to the current scribe.

Is the specific murder weapon of a long-gone character a vital component 15 years after the fact? Probably not to most viewers, but for those who had been watching way back when, little mistakes like this can be grating.

I'm not devastated that AW changed Bay City's home state along the way, but I see this as another grating point that a little research could have prevented.

Soap viewers have loooooong memories, LOL!

Edited yesterday at 01:08 AM by vetsoapfan

[Tisy-Lish]

Yes, the locale officially switched to Illinois in the early-1980s.  But I was watching daily during the entire Lemay era, and I'm fairly confident Bay City was never referenced as being in Michigan in any of Lemay's scripts. Agreed, Lemay did care about AW's past -- and used the past as subtext for many characters.  But it is unfortunate he chose never to mention (or perhaps was unaware of) the Michigan connection.  So by not mentioning it, this may be when that connection was lost for TPTB.