Another World

[Mona Kane Croft]

 

I completely agree with you regarding Rachel and her unexplainable return to lusting after Steve. Since 1975, Rachel's endgame was always Mac, and the audience knew it. The triangle was long over, but I think there was still energy in the Alice/Steve romance.  Had the recasts been successful, AW could have moved forward with two popular super-couples, Rachel/Mac and Alice/Steve.  I could see Steve and Alice growing into a relationship similar to Victor and Nikki on Y&R.  

 

I also agree that Steve's motivation for staying in Australia for so long was botched.  The real Steve would never have stayed away intentionally, with Jamie and Alice grieving and waiting back in Bay City.  They should have gone with severe physical injuries and amnesia, and Willis (the perpetual loser) could have played a role, since he and Gwen had moved to Australia just a year or so before Steve's return.   

[Paul Raven]

Great analysis. thanks for posting.As you say, Steve's return could have worked with better writing and motivation.

[j swift]

At the risk of repeating a blasphemous hot take on Alice from a few years back on this forum; I never liked her or her family (except for Pat and Aunt Liz). 

 

Alice was emotionally unstable and sexually stunted, yet her siblings considered her to be bonanza rather than a burdon.  Whether it was Steve, Elliot Bancroft, or Ray Gordon, Alice was always the consolation prize trying to be top banana. 

 

Alice tried to slut shame Rachel, as if Steve didn't play a role in their affair.  She was so jealous that Rachel had a child first that she tried to keep Steve from bonding with Jamie and demanded that he never have time with Jamie and Rachel together.  That resulted in Steve becoming so crazed in his need to spend time with his son that he conspired a fraud with Rachel's father in the custody trial and went to jail.

 

She was also snobby with Lenore about Rachel's desires to want Russ to provide a good life.  As if Alice couldn't understand why Rachel wouldn't want to live as a newlywed in her husband's teenaged bedroom, with her father-in-law, his sister, and two daughters.  Yet, as soon as Steve built her a house, she never wanted to give it up, despite the fact that Steve's son was the rightful heir to his property upon his death.    

 

Alice pretty much stole Sally from her parents family when they died because everyone in Bay City knew that she was desperate for a kid. After she got tired of raising Sally, she sent her off to a soapland school to grow up on her own.  Until Sally became a teenager and moved in with Aunt Liz (an honorary Matthews by marriage).  Then, when Alice finally returned to town in the mid 80's, she slut shamed Sally for having a child with David, while totally ignoring that she missed Sally's weddings to Peter, Caitlin, and Denny.  Later when Sally died, Alice never sought custody of her grandson and allowed Kevin to be raised by his ex-stepfather (who barely knew him) and his convicted murderer wife.  BTW,  for those who mourned Sally as gone too soon, she ate up a lifetime worth of plots in her five years as an adult on the show.

 

Also, I hate a soap romance where one partner tries to domesticate the other.  Alice's insistence on calling him Steven, when the rest of town called him Steve was the perfect example of her misguided attempts to change him.  She then pressured him to sell his football team in order to go into construction and employ her drunk brother-in-law.  Any relationship based on the false ideal that love can change someone's true nature is bound to fail in soapland.

 

Obviously some of this is written in jest.  But, in hindsight, Steve's stay in Australia makes sense if he was trying to avoid Alice at any cost.

Edited May 7, 2020 by j swift

[Paul Raven]

A lot of that is due to the attitudes of the time (a lot in fact hasn't changed) Creating an ideal man to rescue our heroine.

That's why the bad girls had so much appeal as they provided a glimpse into 'another world' not so hidebound by restrictive rules and values. Ostensibly they were punished but we still got to enjoy their antics.

[Xanthe]

 

Did Alice "slut shame" Sally? I don't recall her being around between the reveal that Sally was Kevin's mother and David Thatcher's murder, and she seemed to be nothing but supportive of Sally throughout.

After Sally's death, Aunt Liz took Kevin out of town, leaving Catlin at a loose end to protect loathsome Brittany. When they left town there was no indication that the Ewings also took Kevin. I have always assumed that Liz and Alice raised him.

[Mona Kane Croft]

 

Your feelings about this are valid, but I'm not sure they are healthy for soap operas in general.  This attitude goes along with the current (now long-held) soap opera trend  that there should be no good people or bad people -- that all characters should be morally ambiguous.  Ingenues are boring, middle-class core-families are boring, the villainess should be the show's female romantic lead, a barely-reformed anti-hero should be the male romantic lead, etc, etc, etc.  

 

That's been the philosophy in soaps for the past 35 years, and what has happened to the ratings?  I do think soaps require characters to root for, and the audience long-ago grew tired of being told they should root for essentially bad people.  Soaps need protagonists and antagonists.  The most prominent characters on nearly all soaps for the past 35 years have been a group of antagonists (with some exceptions). Good storytelling doesn't work that way.  It's perfectly okay for the good people to have flaws, and for the bad people to have some redeeming qualities.  But the audience wants to be able to tell the difference.  I think the ratings add validity to my point.  

 

 

Edited May 7, 2020 by Neil Johnson

[teplin]

 

And yet, like Drake Hogestyn, Reinholt was enormously popular. I remember hearing my aunt and her friends talking about sexy he was. I agree that Alice-Rachel was the main draw, but I think you underestimate Reinholt's appeal to a segment of the audience. 

 

[Khan]

 

Agree.  Granted, I wasn't alive to watch the Steve/Alice/Rachel triangle.  However, from what I have gathered over the years, George Reinholt and Steve Frame were VERY popular with AW's audience.  As one soap historian put it, the triangle was compelling, because Alice and Rachel each represented a side of Steve's nature.

[Vee]

IIRC Lemay said that too.

[Khan]

 

Is there anything Pete Lemay DIDN'T say? 

Please register in order to view this content

 

[Mona Kane Croft]

 

Yes, he never said, "I want to write a plot."  

[Khan]

 

LOL!  Touche! 

[j swift]

This is an interesting hypothesis that gave me pause.  However, what held my interest in the early Rachel/Steve/Alice triangle was that Rachel and Steve's motives (as the "bad people") were well explained.  One of the highlights of AW was that every talk-to in Bay City had some sort of Freudian ability to analyze Rachel and Steve so that the audience understood their backstory.  Ada was frequently explaining how Rachel was seeking the type of attention that was denied by her missing father.  John figured out that Steve escaped his family of origin and was trying to recreate a new family in Bay City.  So, their actions made sense and never seemed plot driven.

 

In contrast characters like Alice were never as well defined.  She was just a 'good girl.'  My humorous take on her is derived from the fact that she often got away with poor behavior because other characters defined her motives as benevolent.  However, in hindsight, her actions were often selfish and inconsiderate.  

 

My take on the characters of today is that their motivations are never as well defined.  I have no idea why Gabby on Days maintains a different set of values from her brother Rafe.  Modern soaps are filled with unidimensional citizens who engage in behaviors for no explicable reason.  Also, the lack of multigenerational characters offers little insight into the younger set thus there is therefore less investment into their lives.  

I'm not so sure about this because my addled memory was that Alice's return coincided with David's death and Sally initially hid the fact that she was Kevin's mother because she feared Alice's reaction.  Of course, the whole story was a retrofit that never gibbed with the history of Sally that we watched on screen.     

Edited May 7, 2020 by j swift

[Mona Kane Croft]

 

I think it's a mistake when people (LOTS of people) describe Alice as a weak character (or weak woman).  Alice was only weak in regard to Rachel and Steve.  Otherwise, she was a very strong liberated woman.   She was always strong with other characters -- helping Lenore and Pat through their troubles; standing up to Aunt Liz; going against Mary's dislike of Steve as a potential husband; plus, she was strong at work, as a nurse.  But Rachel's tenacity at pursuing Steve, and Steve's inability (or unwillingness) to shake Rachel loose, drove Alice to the edge again and again. That, and only that,  was Alice's achilles heel.   And I think that all makes sense.  Seldom in real-life is a woman (or a person) confronted with someone so determined to steal one's fiancé / husband / happiness / life.  Rachel's tactics were cruel and shameless, and I think that is enough to drive anyone nuts.  I certainly would have ended-up in the boobie-hatch, had Rachel Davis been my enemy.

 

This view of Alice as a weak woman also impacted the many failed attempts at recasting the role.  TPTB thought they were casting a weak character, which was a mistake.  Jacquie played a strong woman with one fatal weakness, Steve and Rachel.    

Edited May 7, 2020 by Neil Johnson

[BetterForgotten]

I liked quite a bit of what I've seen of Susan Harney's Alice. Obviously, I wasn't alive to see Courtney at her peak, but I thought Harney was able to play both toughness and vulnerability well. 

 

What was the main problem with her Alice? Was it simply because she wasn't Jacqueline Courtney?