Another World Discussion Thread

[DRW50]

A shame the Ben/Thomasina tease didn't go anywhere. 

I didn't know until last year that they brought Thomasina back a few days before Quinn was murdered. I guess it's nice that they got those last moments of happiness but then you remember they never would have brought her back if they weren't going to kill Quinn off.

[AbcNbc247]

Yeah. 

The hot, poor bad boy with a chip on his shoulder but with a heart of gold was a common soap trope in the 80s 

Please register in order to view this content

[Xanthe]

I blame Mitch.

Please register in order to view this content

[Contessa Donatella]

Yeah, I was fickle. I abandoned baby watch & just tried to think of really well matched pairings. Yeah, they sent Carter & Thomasina away far too soon for my way of looking at things.  I REALLY liked them & they were rare being both young & African Americans. 

[bongobong]

This would be a weird comment to make about the face of the show if it wasn't damn accurate. In the 90s she was mostly confined to her own orbit with her daughters and Cass, aside from a few stories.

Her relationship with Rachel was pretty weird too. A case of tell not show. They seemed to be there for each other at big moments (weddings, funerals, etc.) and proclaim how close they were, but rarely interacted outside of those. I only remember one storyline they had together - the Lucas lookalike - but that was more about their significant others' animosity if I'm remembering correctly.

In hindsight, it was pretty strange how little Rachel, Felicia & Donna - all around the same age give or take - had to do with each other for the last decade. The actresses were all top-10 in longevity for the entire show and made it to the finish line, but never meaningfully mixed it up at the end. Even Donna dating Rachel's son didn't lead to many interactions between those 2. I can understand JFP's reasoning for getting rid of Donna, even if I didn't agree with it (she was my favorite of the 3).

[Soaplovers]

In regards to Sam and Amanda... both of them were immature and crappy people.  She was a spoiled daddy's girl while he had a chip on his shoulder.  Both were stubborn and pigheaded... and I'm thankful I've resisted wearing the 2025 lens of assuming women are empowering and men are toxic.... when quite frankly both men and women could stand to be a little less toxic (in real life, of course).. not on my soaps where toxicity should be the norm.

[Xanthe]

Felicia and Rachel were suddenly represented as friends when Mitch came back to Bay City in 1986 in order to try to add tension to the storyline of Mitch and Felicia getting together. I suppose we are lucky that Margaret DePriest didn't eliminate Felicia as she did Quinn and Maisie for being outside the "core families" of McKinnon/Love/Cory.  

Felicia was more antagonistic when she was first introduced. She brought Carl to town not knowing he was Donna's ex. She was carrying on an affair with Cass while he was sneaking around with Cecile behind her back and was livid with him when she found out. She was resentful when Cass signed Julia to Winthrop Publishing. She was friendly with Lily though IIRC.  

  

[DRW50]

I don't believe JFP wanted rid of Donna because she was isolated. She wasn't any more isolated than most characters on the show at that point. JFP just couldn't live out her fantasies with Anna Stuart the way she could with Linda Dano. She degraded the character instead, as happened to Donna under a number of regimes. 

Donna, Rachel and Felicia were never characters who were all over the canvas. Felicia probably had the most reach of the three, as she ran restaurants for a decade, but they had their own spheres. 

Rachel had a large role in Felicia's alcoholism storyline, as Felicia tanked her relationship with Cory Publishing and then her drinking caused her to start a fire at the TV studio, meaning Rachel had to fire her from her talk show. Rachel was at Felicia's failed intervention.

Felicia and Donna had some back and forth during that strange period where Donna was dating Cass. 

[Soaplovers]

I remember this funny bit with Donna in 1989 or 1990 where Michael had asked Donna why she didn't have a female friend and/or really any friends.  I laughed when he mentioned how she was close to Iris, but backtracked by saying 'ok that was my fault' when she gave him the looks that could kill look.

I remember there was a bit where Donna then tried to befriend Rachel and I believe Felicia in separate scenes with the two both looking at Donna in bewilderment.  It didn't seem to work.

After Felicia and Lucas married, I do remember a few scenes between Felicia and Iris where they were being nice yet throwing subtle shade at one another.  Then Donna would come into the scene and then it seemed as though Iris and Felicia would both focus on their annoyance at Donna. 

I do recall Felicia did get silo'd into her own orbit at times... and that Lorna and Jenna had more interactions with other characters outside that orbit.. moreso than Felicia.

I think the isolation of  Donna/Rachel/Felicia became more pronounced/obvious once Iris was written off the show and JFP came into the EP position in 1995.   Even after JFP departed.. the isolation of characters into bubbles continued until the last few months of the show when Amanda started interacting with Cindy, Paulina resumed interacting with Rachel/Amanda, Vicky/Lila began sparring again after being in separate orbits for over a year, etc.

[bongobong]

Interesting, I didn't know the origins of their "friendship."

Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against Linda Dano or Felicia, but maybe the show would have been better off if they killed off Felicia instead of Quinn and built around her. Correct me if I'm wrong, but weren't OLTL & ATWT pretty white at that time? Of all the stuff they threw at walls during that time to see what stuck, appealing to Black viewers seemed like a no-brainer. Especially since NBC had success at that time in Primetime with The Cosby Show & 227. Even in the mornings with Bryant Gumbel on Today. Of course, didn't have to be an either/or.

I didn't mean to convey that Donna's isolation was the reason. Rachel, Felicia & Donna were all rich, 50ish brunettes whose characters started bleeding together by that point. Granted, mostly due to the bad writing of the writers she hired. Of the 3, getting rid of Donna would have been by far the easiest as VW had the most longevity/caused the biggest uproar; and Dano was the face of the show to the industry (and her favorite of the bunch).

Thanks for the info of the alcoholism story. It was right before I started watching so I've only seen the clips of the intervention.

Don't remember Cass & Donna at all. Was it last year of the show before he got with Lila? I was mostly checked out at that point.

Edited May 8 by bongobong

[DRW50]

IIRC, there was fan outcry when viewers realized Donna was going to be killed, although someone more in the know might have a better idea. Donna was always more popular with viewers than she probably should have been, which I credit Stuart for. I do agree she would have been easier to write out than Felicia or Rachel. 

Cass and Donna dated briefly during the Malone run (late 1997).

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

AW should have invested much more in Quinn than they did. All the pieces were in place for her to, at the very least, have a steady build in importance the way Jessica did on ATWT at that time. AW had moved away from usual patterns by bringing Henrietta and Quinn into the show to diversify the canvas. What always bothers me is the comment an AW person gave to SOD after fan complaints over Quinn's death - essentially, they did not know Quinn had any fans. Says it all.

[Xanthe]

The Cosby Show recorded in the same studio in Brooklyn.

AW had had more black characters for a few years after Quinn first appeared. Not all of them lasted a long time, but we had the Morgans (Bob, Henrietta, RJ, Mary Sue), Quinn's brother Ed, Abel Marsh and his twin Leo Mars, Roy Bingham, Lily, and finally Carter and Grant Todd.

[chrisml]

I wouldn't want to see Felicia or Quinn or killed off. Felicia kept some of us going during some of the bad patches. P&G were not going to invest in Quinn or a family for her especially not with MDP as headwriter. AW had all the potential and P&G allowed it go by the wayside even before MDP got there. P&G and NBC never cared. Look at the indifferent way the Lawrences were written. P&G and execs knew Quinn had fans. They just didn't care and had pretend amnesia. It's reminiscent of the whole Maureen debacle on GL.

There should have been outcry at the idea of Donna being killed off. It was an idiotic idea. The same way with Frankie. JFP should never have been allowed to waste so much money on that ridiculous hospital set and the new opening she lifted from ER. I did like the closing theme so there's that.

[Contessa Donatella]

There was a huge outcry when we learned that JFP intended to off Donna.

[DRW50]

Long ago, this Rachel fan channel uploaded a number of clips of Rachel with Felicia during the alcoholism story, and this one in particular stands out for me. 

Please register in order to view this content

And then you have this scene, which is the dark mirror of the above, especially the final moment:

Felicia started out as camp bitch on a very dreary show (with Cecile being the only somewhat fun character around that point) and then got into a lot of comedy. Some of the comedy was very stupid, but many viewers still felt drawn to it, to Lily, Cecile, Cass, Felicia, Kathleen, Wallingford. There was a vibrancy which Dano fit well in, her fashions and melodrama parodied in a gentle way. This was missing in some of the long-suffering parts she'd had on shows like ATWT.

By the late '80s, especially after Wallingford's death, those times were gone, and Donna Swajeski added further misery to Felicia with the Gold Street backstory. Luckily, after a bit of time the show found a good framing for this new twist on Felicia. The stories with finding and losing a love from her past, learning that a woman she hated was the daughter she'd spent years searching for, sinking into alcoholism, they all fit into the type of material suited for the '40s and '50s screen goddesses. 

When Dano tried some of this old weepy type of material when she went back to ABC, it mostly fell flat, as the atmosphere wasn't the same and her character always felt shoehorned in. It worked perfectly at this period on AW because you had Iris, you had Rachel, you had Donna - you had a number of tough-but-vulnerable women of a certain age, most of them grandmothers by this point, but still trying to find love, find themselves. This is what AW could have had earlier if they hadn't dumped Pat and Alice, but better late than never.

This is an approach you saw more often on British soaps than on US soaps, which for a number of years respected women in that age group. Both UK and US soaps have done away with this, both countries having the ladies devolve into perpetual ingenues (with added doses of endlessly self-aware camp in the UK) or just being shipped off entirely. 

You could even see that on AW with the treatment of Iris (shipped off, never to be mentioned again, too old to return), Donna (repeatedly humiliated and crippled), Felicia (regressed into degrading herself with married John), Rachel (mother to newborn twins, put into lengthy periods of trauma through her new relationship with Carl). 

Edited May 8 by DRW50