Another World Discussion Thread

[AbcNbc247]

Thanks! I had forgotten

[Soaplovers]

I never thought about it before, but original recipe Nicole was exactly like Vicky.  Misguided, impulsive and full of spirit.

 

Vicky did end up filling the function of Nicole...so I can see why the character was adjusted changed. 

 

The 2nd Nicole seemed like a good idea...wise, logical and learning from her mistakes...which the Love family could have used.

 

 

[j swift]

I just re-read the 1980 synopsis of AW and it was really good.  The Janice/Mac/Rachel/Mitch story had its climax in March (so odd to think of time when soap climaxes didn't have to coincide with sweeps weeks), the drama with Pat, Cecile, and Phillip at Brava seemed like a fresh new situation for old characters to thrive, and Kit Halloway as a Patty Hearst prototype was intriguing. For those unfamiliar with the story, Kit came to Bay City to get away from the press attention she suffered after being kidnapped by left wing radicals.  Elena, Cecile's mother, recognized her from the society pages and outed her to the rest of the town.  Which then caused a rift between Mac and Pat about publishing a story about Kit in Brava and further blowing her cover.

 

I was a Joey Perini fan, and I recall that AW botched the landing of the Halloway family by bringing in too many of them too soon, and eventually both the Perini's and the Halloway's were all written out, but I like when soaps dramatize stories that were ripped from the headlines.  The Halloways were sort of the Loves 1.0; an earlier attempt to establish another wealthy family in town beside the Corys.

Edited September 24, 2020 by j swift

[amybrickwallace]

 

When on GL, Cass did say that he was still happily married to Lila. It was mentioned in SOD. If I can find that article, I'll post it here.

[Franko]

Thank you. For some reason, I got really concerned about Cass' happiness.

[amybrickwallace]

 

No problem!! The article in SOD was about soap couples who had married and what ended up happening to them. I have it somewhere and will definitely post it for you if I can ever find it.

[KMan101]

 

I can see what you mean.

 

IIRC, and I may not, I feel like Jensen didn't want to stick around. And Oakdale didn't really need Vicky, I suppose. I can see how they ultimately came to the decision.

 

And like @victoria foxton said, Jensen was making appearances (as ghost Vicky) in 2001 when she landed the gig on GH.

 

I'm guessing if Jensen wanted to, and ATWT wanted her, they could have resurrected Vicky but they ended up offing Jake so it didn't really matter. Kind of a shame though after what their characters meant to AW.

Edited September 23, 2020 by KMan101

[teplin]

 

Trust me, it reads better than it played out on screen. 

[Mona Kane Croft]

 

I completely agree.  Compared to what Lemay was writing 18 months earlier, 1980 was awful.   The entire show was falling apart.  Tom King was reasonably good at writing for the characters Lemay left behind, but the characters created by King were insipid and did not fit on AW. King would have been wise to keep as many of Lemay's characters as possible (since he knew how to write for them -- sorta).  But instead, he jettisoned about a third of the old characters in favor of his own creations, which the audience didn't care about and never warmed-up to.  

[amybrickwallace]

Didn't Tom King begin as HW just as the 90-minute time slot began? Talk about being thrown into the deep end of the pool!!

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Jensen Buchanan would have been better off staying at ATWT rather than going to GH. Her character was horrible and she had absolutely no chemistry with A Martinez, who played her love interest. But then, 2001 was a crummy year altogether for GH.

[robbwolff]

I think Lemay was head writer when the expansion happened. He was replaced by King in May 1979. According to the AW home page, King joined the writing staff in 1973.

[watson71]

 

King returned as headwriter in August 1995 and held various positions on the writing team until AW went off the air in 1999.  Lemay was a story consultant in 1995-96, however I'm not sure how much input he had on the storylines givenwhat we saw on screen was mediocre at best.  King's best writing during his return was probably Ryan's death, but even that was tied to the Justine storyline.  King's worst writing as headwriter in 95-96 was the entire Cass is really Maggie's father storyline.   That storyline really rewrote the history of the show and was an insult to long time viewers of AW.

[RavenWhitney]

King left AW a few months before the show went off the air.  When I was in college in NYC I met Joe LeSeur who lived in the East Village. He was at that time an embittered gay man who drank a lot but he gave me several hot off the presses scripts he wrote. He wrote the same day each week.  I had several scripts at the time that hadn't yet aired. I'd record them on my VCR! and follow the dialog.  The scripts were seriously altered. Joe's dialog was not played as written.  A few years later I took a soap writing course taught by Barbara Seiger who had been a script writer during the Tom King / Soderberg years along with Joe. She taught the first class around an excerpt of a breakdown Tom King had written which was the day Rachel was convicted while on trial. Barbara trashed Tom and said the breakdowns were full of errors and un researched ideas. In the breakdown she handed out, there's a hand written note for her to look up what kind of crime Rachel should be convicted of and how many years she would get. I still have the breakdown in the attic I think (along with Joe's scripts).  Barbara said that NBC and P&G regularly dictated story turns to Tom and Robert. I don't believe they did the same with Harding. Tom was well liked by the execs because he was more compliant even if not a brilliant writer.  When I look back on Tom's 1980 he maintained a lot of Harding stories but improved on some things.  To me the last truly watchable period that also had lasting impact was the brief Soderberg/Purser years 82-83. Their creations and stories resonated till the end.  The casting was first rate, the show looked gorgeous.  But NBC had to install nobodies Culliton and Tomlin from Texas because why? Because they had also installed Long at GL.  I think all of these writers probably got their start during the 81 writers' strike and the execs always swung between new/untested blood and veterans and tried and true hacks.

[j swift]

So, I'm re-reading the history and my memory escapes me on a couple of issues related to my favorite AW leading man, Robert Delaney.

 

1).  I've totally conflated Olive Randolph and Olivia Delaney.  On the Another World homepage, it mentions that Olivia came to Bay City to track down her husband Robert.  I recall Robert being married to India in Somerset and then Lenore and Iris, so where does Olivia fit in the timeline?

 

2).  What caused the breakup of Robert and Lenore?  I know there was a tell-tale scarf that lead to the revelation of Walter Curtin's guilt in the murder of Wayne Addison, and I think Walter died in a car crash soon after it was revealed, but when did Lenore find out that Walter was guilty?  And why does it say that she left Bay City to protect Wally from Walter's guilt?  Finally, Lenore and Pat were close, but what was her relationship like with Iris and Rachel?

 

3). I recall that Larry helped Clarice raise Cory, her son with Robert whose existence drove Iris to nefarious deeds.  What were the circumstances that lead to Robert finding out that he was Cory's father?  Did he contribute monetarily to Cory's upbringing?  How long were Robert and Clarice involved and how would you characterize their relationship (a fling, a rebound, or was there any sense of them being destined for each other).

 

BTW Cory Ewing and Wally Curtin would have made excellent legacy returns later in the series, such a shame that they were neglected by subsequent writers.

Edited September 25, 2020 by j swift

[AbcNbc247]

1) Robert was said to have married Olivia after he left Bay City, after he divorced Iris.

 

2) Robert had an affair with Carol Lamonte. And I think Carol started investigating into Walter's past, which is why Lenore decided to leave. 

 

3) I think Clarice kept her pregnancy a secret from Robert at first because of Iris' threats and she eventually told them. I don't think they were a couple for that long either.

 

And you're correct about Cory and Wally. Why they didn't age Cory at the same time that they aged Nancy, I'll never know.

Edited September 25, 2020 by AbcNbc247