All this talk about Ruth sent me off to youtube, and this clip cracked me up. Jill Larson is acceptable and has been Opal for 20 years, but nobody can touch Dorothy Lyman. I loved the line about what Ruth did with all her advantages in life.

I know what you mean. My grandma sent me the YouTube link, and I still haven't watched his funeral. And didn't they just reair it over the holiday?

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There is just something so special about a humorous character like DL's Opal, just lightyears away from a "funny" snark pot like Rex on OLTL.

Carl, I'm thinking about that Opal for mayor clip you showed me! (above)

Edited January 6, 201015 yr by SFK

LOL! This clip. The one thing I never understood about this show is that they make it seem like nurses were just minimum wage workers. Even when Gloria Marsh was on, she would always say, "I can't afford that on a nurse's salary." Nurses make a damn good living, it's hard work, but good cash.

Edited January 6, 201015 yr by Jonathan

He's amazing. I hope he doesn't ever leave the show.

It's easy to forget HOW good he can be.

He's a workhorse.

Wow, Opal was a hoot. Opal for mayor? OMG.

I was just watching this anniversary again, this was just perfect and managed in one hour to really do a good overview complete with great clips.

Carl, I'm thinking about that Opal for mayor clip you showed me! (above)

I never get tired of that clip. It's just insane. I can't believe they got away with some of what she said...and that campaign song

It's not Alexa Havins snubbing. It's image/likeness rights. They still are able to use Amanda Baker's image, hence all of her "Babe" photos around Wildwind.

That's not true, is it? So they had to pay to show Cliff, for example even though he wasn't on the show, etc but felt paying Alexa was too much?? I thought it was just the same reason they cut aroudn all clips of Mary as Ruth (which made me sad) and the other original cast members--I'm of two minds of it, would love to see more clips and images of the previous Liza, Ruth, even JR, etc, but I get why they don't

All this talk about Ruth sent me off to youtube, and this clip cracked me up. Jill Larson is acceptable and has been Opal for 20 years, but nobody can touch Dorothy Lyman. I loved the line about what Ruth did with all her advantages in life.

OMG! Naomi from Mama's Family was the original Opal? I never knew this.

As for today's show...

I like the concept but it was wayyyyy too heavy on current stuff for my liking (and this is coming from someone who has only semi-regularly watched this show since 2007). I want to see clips of Greg and Jenny and Cliff and Nina and all the classic characters that I've only read and heard about but never watched when they were around PV. Or even just more classic clips of people still on the show like Erica and Tad and Jesse and Angie and Adam. I mean for a 40th anniversary show I just felt like Erica wasn't on that much at all. In fact, it seemed like the two people that were featured more than anybody on this were JR and Babe(!!!) which was just kind of mindboggling to me. I mean, JR at least has been on for a while and is the spawn of some popular characters but the Babe they used was a recast only on four a few months. It was just a ridiculous. And then forcing JR and Marissa on us? Ugh.

The last thing that really bugged was the shoddy production values for all the title cards when Hayley came on to introduce a segment. What was the point of putting together the doc as if it was a school presentation put together on Windows Moviemaker? Isn't Hayley supposed to be someone professional talk show host? You'd think she could get some better production values and graphics... especially ones that don't include Lucida Calligraphy. This was a documentary, not a [!@#$%^&*] wedding invitation, Hayley!

It is.

But if TPTB script an episode THIS good to celebrate AMC's anniversary there's NO excuse for the regular writing to be SO bad.

Well yes but Pratt I assume didn't write a word of this It's not really his job (and thankfully this is more a sign of things to come

Not sure. But I thought that 10,000 episode was good too and un-Pratt like.

Right and Myrtle's funeral. I don't think these are the kinds of episodes Pratt really gets in charge of.

And so it begins.

HAH it was ALL ghost written by Agnes of course

I was not thrilled with this. Some actual clips would have been better, and as someone who doesn't watch these days but did tune in for the anniversary I think I would have rather seen some actual clips over these people talking over them.

Ruth Martin. Lee Meriwether, I appreciate your filling in as Catwoman, your role on Barnaby Jones, how beautiful you were/are, what a show business trooper you are...but I wanted to see a Mary Fickett clip. You are Ruth now and I am happy to see Joe and Ruth, but it would not have killed the show to throw in an original Ruth clip the way they made sure to work Phoebe, Mona and Myrtle in.

There was so much time devoted to Annie (whoever that is), Babe, JR, Ryan and people I don't even know who they are, but I would have preferred to see people from the last 40 years. This was ok, but compared to the previous anniversary retrospectives, it comes up woefully short.

Howabout compared to other anniversaries recently onother soaps--OLTL's with virtually no images from the past for example? I get your complaint and you admit you don't currently watch, but I also think in a way you weren't the audience--I get why, especially with the move, they wanted to live as much in the present and future as the past, and while a part of me is mixed on that I understand the reasoning for it and appreciated how they mixed it.

Nothing will compare to AMC's 20th anniversary retrospective in my book. They kept it very simple, focusing on what viewers loved and remembered most.

Well yeah but it also was much easier to do after "only" 20 years to focus on (so that even the characters from the 70s were fairly well known to all viewers), four original cast members on and healthy, etc. It also was, I've read, the first soap anniversary ep *ever* so...

Just thought about this: Erica spoke about Kendall, Bianca, even Mona, but not even her deceased son Josh . That was sort of wrong...I wish he could have been recognized by her, she could have had a breakdown during the death sequence of the talk show like Maria did over Julia, Adam did over Stuart, JR and Krystal over Babe....

It would have been better to have Ruth cry about Phil's death in 79 or something Honestly I liked Josh as a character and since they DID do the unabortion I wanted him kept around--hated his death with a passion and how it was handled but at this point, we had some good scenes with Erica grieving when he died and I'm fine with them basically forgetting it especially for shows like this. "And then there's Josh the son I thougth I had aborted who came back with his dad obsessed with me and then my beloved Kendall's husband gunned him down and gave his heart to her". Doesn't really work.

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I guess they had the fans' "best interests" in mind, but it seemed like they barely showed AB's face when they flashed back to Babe. Am I imagining this? Like, "If we just show the back of her head, you can pretend it's Alexa." .

I'm sure that was on purpose--ditto with the shots they had of Joe in B&W where they didn't show Ruth's face.