ATWT: Your view on the Snyder family

[Soapsuds]

Ellie was boring...such a bore! I dont know if it was the actress Renee Props or they way Marland wrote here but I just didnt like her.

[Quent]

I loved how Marland created the Snyder Family. He didn't force these characters on us all at once. He built them in slowly, one by one. By the time Iva was introduced, we knew Holden and Emma very well. All were tied into Lucinda and Lily. Seth came next, as the "sensible" Snyder , compared to Holden the Rebel. Seth was connected to the Hughes Family via Frannie, so we cared about him. Meg was next, and was the arch-rival to Lily. Marland took a long break before he gave us the two remaining family members. Yet we always saw Emma talking by phone to the unseen Caleb and Ellie, so viewers felt like they knew them when they finally appeared on camera.

I think each writer wants to try their hand at creating a legacy family, but most times they don't succeed. Remember the Kasnoffs? And if ATWT wasn't ending, you just KNOW we would be seeing the Ciccones moving front and center. But Marland had it right. Create new characters slowly, and link them to characters we already care about.

[DRW50]

Looking back I should have been more upset that she kept getting involved with Iva's exes (wasn't she with both Craig and Kirk). I don't know, I liked her with Kirk, at least for a while. Then again I liked Kirk with almost everyone, aside from that kind of dull woman who last played Sam.

That's true. The Ciccone stuff was just ridiculous. Here's this sister no one cares about. Here's their crooked uncle and father. Here's a bunch of other horrible non-acting relatives.

The way he set up Caleb and Ellie was very smart because when he knew Meg and Seth were leaving the show he could just bring in already existing siblings instead of having to suddenly invent new relatives.

Even though they were on the show at different times they still seemed like a believable family to me.

I think they kind of tried that with Jack, Brad, and Valerie Perrine, but they recast Brad so much that it lost the initial power the scenes with Park and Nick K had. Then when they brought Brad back with Austin Peck didn't they totally rewrite his relationship with Jack?

[Soapsuds]

That was Sheri Alexander who last played Sam. She replaced Brooke Alexander for unknown reasons. I prefered Brooke over Sheri.

[DRW50]

I know there was some rumor Brooke didn't know her lines or something, was that her?

I loved Brooke Alexander as Sam. She had a certain laidback quality but she worked very well with Craig, Emily, Lucinda, Kirk, and Phillip Bosco, who was so great as her father figure/fellow con artist.

[AS THE WORLD TURNS]

The only Ciccone that I can deal with the most is Janet's sister Terri. I can sometimes deal with Janet and even less now of Liberty since Sarah took over. Janet's aunt, uncle and brother were horrible as hell couldn't stand nether one of them.

I hope that's just a rumor, but put a spoiler tag just in case.

The only Snyder's I've seen were Meg, Jack, Holden, Aaron, Brad, Emma, Seth, and maybe even Caleb. I can't really say anything about Seth and Caleb cause I hardly even seen them. I like Jack, Holden, Aaron and Brad except for Meg and Emma. I liked Meg back when she came back to town in 2005 but after awhile I couldn't stand her. I did like when she went crazy that was better then having to watch Peg 24/7. I don't hate Emma, I just don't like her that much. This past Tuesday was probably the only time in a long time that I liked Emma, but I guess cause that was probably because it was most likely her last episode. I don't know for sure.

[Paul Raven]

The idea behind creating a large family (having other members waiting in the wings when the original actors leave or the original characters are plotted out) also creates the problem that along the way the whole thing becomes unwieldy and certain members are neglected and forgotten.

The whole family is never seen onscreen at the same time,so the whole concept of a large loving family isn't realized.

Marland may have,in time weaved the various Snyders back into the story but subsequent writers had no interest in keeping those characters onscreen. Hence the disappearance of Ellie and lack of interest in Seth etc.

This problem is not limited to large families like the Snyders.The decision never to bring back Frannie,Andy and others spotlights the fact that there is no-one in charge saying 'these are the core characters that must be remembered and brought back when possible'.

The same thing happened with the Reardons on GL and the Hortons on Days.

Maybe the Snyders should have consisted of Emma,Holden,Iva.Meg and Seth or Caleb.

[Jay]

The Snyders were a core family by the time I started to watch (1989), so I never had any sense that they had taken time and space away from any other family. It occurred to me over the course of time that Emma's brood comprised more non-step- and non-half-siblings than any other family in Oakdale (I have no idea if that is true any longer), and I found that interesting.

Anyway, I love Emma, to me the great earth mother and farm goddess. If her kids were a little fucked up, I just chalked that up to "well, it is a soap opera." The Iva-Julie-Andy-but-not-Holden baby story is one of my all-time favorite soap stories. As well as anything that pitted Lucinda and any Snyder.

This is more general, but I loved the way Marland did recap on his stories nearly every single day, in those Act Two gossip scenes that took place at M&W, the Mona Lisa, or the Snyder Farm Kitchen (including the essential Snyder Farm Kitchen Eavesdropping Porch). Gossip is the perfect way to do recap. It pains me to see someone get on the Snyder Farm Kitchen Phone nowadays when there's no one sitting on the Snyder Farm Kitchen Eavesdropping Porch who can have eaves dropped on them. What a loss.

I miss Michael David Morrison, too. Graham Winton never did anything for me. I never completely understood why they didn't have Michael Park take on Caleb's ID instead of creating a Snyder who wasn't Emma's son. It just dilutes things. And there wasn't anyone playing Caleb then, IIRC.

The Snyders I miss the most are Julie, Iva, Ellie, and Heather Rattray's Lily.

The present-day Snyders I like most are Luke, Emma, and perhaps the new Lily.

[P.J.]

Yes, when Peck was recast as Brad, the entire relationship between Jack and Brad changed. Other than some lip service to Brad having been married to Carly, his past was completely rewritten. Gone was the hustler/con man/ex-convict. He was just a first-class schmo, loser and drifter. Goof off with a capital "G".

I think Jack wasn't recast as Caleb because that character had been played out. It would have been hard to envision Michael Park as older than Holden, or saddle Park with Caleb's complete history.

I don't know why recasting Ellie was never considered, but I would guess that Meg was recast because at the time she was immediately hooked up with Dusty, with who she had a history.

Ralph isn't Janet's uncle. He's a family friend. But I agree---the Ciccone "family" is uber-annoying and poorly conceived. Barbara Bloom obviously loves Julie Pinson, and thanks to a confluence of factors (Martha Byrne's departure and Maura West's pregnancy included) conspired with Fate to saddle us with "Juicy Janet".

[Jay]

Really? I think of Jack and Holden as being the same age, give or take a year or two. Was Caleb older than Holden?

[P.J.]

Yes, Caleb is older than Holden. Holden is older than Jack. (Jack talked about admiring his older cousin and crushing on the slightly older Molly when he first arrived) IRL, I doubt there's more than a couple of years difference in age between Jon Hensley and Michael Park. MP will be 42 on July 20th.

The order goes, Seth, Iva, Caleb, Ellie, Holden and Meg.

[Jay]

Wow. Even Ellie is older than Holden. I always assumed Holden came third, after Seth (who has hardly ever been on during my stay in Oakdale) and Iva. Well, it only took killing the show for me to find out.

[Mitch]

OOHH, Rattray's Lily actually had a fan??? : )

I love your nickname for Snyder Family Eavesdropping Porch! While it got ridiculous (EVERY secret anyone ever had was discovered by someone overhearing it..) I miss it to this day. I remember the guy who wrote the Civil War, book and miniseries was a big fan of ATWT and during Marland

s time he gave an interview about how he and his wife would stop what they were doing midday to watch ATWT, which they called, "Doorways," as someone was always standing in a doorway and overhearing a secret.

And a big agree, Marland knew how to recap like no ones business and it was seemed completely natural...(well in the context that his ATWT characters were constantly rehasing and talking about their "feelings," )

[DRW50]

Ken Burns was a fan of the Marland era? That's neat.

Heather Rattray was the first Lily I ever saw so I might have felt differently otherwise but I always liked her Lily. I think that something about her, both the coldness and the fragile princess vibe, suited Lily very well, and some of her stories, like Lily's miscarriage, really got to me, whereas most of the time with Byrne in the role I just wanted someone to shake Lily (the only time I really enjoyed her Lily was her marriage to Damian -- and the period in 98-99 when FMB/Broderick tried to turn Lily into more of a mother figure).

I wish that there was more study of soap writers because while my eyes glaze over at some of the pseudo-intellectual studies that came out in the early 80s, I would love to see some detailed analyses on the differences between Marland and his shows. Like with GL and ATWT; to me his bad girls on ATWT were never as malicious as they could be on GL (Vanessa could be just nasty under Marland's pen, and Carrie was...in a league of her own), the Snyders seemed more heartfelt than the Reardons, and had deeper pain, and the fantasy sequences which Marland loved at GL seemed to dry up after what, a year at ATWT? I guess there were the somewhat cringeworthy nightmares/fantasies Duncan and Shannon had when Colin Crowley was around but I still don't know if that was writers strike stuff.

I also wonder if Marland made it a condition at ATWT that therapy and healing would be a major emphasis without network interference. Both GL and ATWT during his time had heavy focus on trying to understand damaged people and helping them get better or at least not demonizing them (as he took great pains to not demonize Douglas Cummings, or Andy Norris), but I know he quit GL because they wouldn't let Carrie go through a lengthy therapy process.

[Jay]

I think he was talking about Shelby Foote. http://www.nems360.com/view/full_story/2481052/article-Documentary-filmmaker--South-is-all-about-the-story

Or see p.878 here, under "Television": http://books.google.com/books?id=rl5_5u3tiRkC&pg=PA878&lpg=PA878&dq=Shelby+Foote+atwt&source=bl&ots=8L5qmbxVTq&sig=wEWvUL5Auu8Z7llG_ccJN9f06EI&hl=en&ei=32YzTO3YGcT7lwfdhYy-Cw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5&ved=0CB8Q6AEwBA#v=snippet&q=as%20the%20world%20turns&f=false