ATWT: Your view on the Snyder family

[All My Shadows]

Romantic fantasy can't happen on a farm or in a rural setting?

[Mitch]

I don't know, I think what bothers me about them, is as I mentioned, for all their talk of hard work, they were never freakin' working! Now that can be said of all the characters, but at least Bob and John are seen at the hospital, you see them working in emergencies, talking about medical care. Lucinda was always involved in a business deal, or talking about mergers. The Snyders, nothing. They were constantly standing around that damn kitchen, looking sweaty and not doing a damn thing.

I also think that what I object to is the kind of elitist romanticizing of a rural setting, kind of like Marie Antoninette playing on her little farm and milking cows for fun, (hmmm Lily as a latter day MA..can off her head too???"

[All My Shadows]

I think they never show a whole lot of work going on at the farm is because they'd need animals, they'd need space, they'd need all of the equipment, etc. A farm could have a place in a soap (because soaps don't all have to be about the same thing, and if they weren't for all these years, the genre might have still had a chance), but it'd have to be done with some real authenticity.

The elitist attitude about the Snyder farm, though, I def agree with. I can't see NB's Lily or Janet doing work on a farm at all. They visit the farmhouse and the pond. They don't visit the farm.

[Jay]

How did you make it through the Marland years, hating the Snyders?

[Jay]

What, would you have had some cornfield set, a tractor limbo? The characters carrying around pitchforks? (Oh, wait, I think they did carry pitchforks from time to time.)

Mind you, I'm not criticizing you, any of you. I'm kind of laughing with you. I've never heard a negative word about anything Marland did (I grew tired of "Who Killed Carolyn Crawford?", though nowadays I miss the [relatively] spoiler-free environment that made telling that long a story possible).

[Bright Eyes]

Emmerdale Farm, hello?

[DRW50]

They sometimes showed a bit of the farm but it was usually in the hay loft. Or you would hear about helping a cow give birth.

It seemed to me like they did try for the first few years to have more of a struggle -- Lucinda and Tad trying to steal the farm from the Snyders, Emma being overworked and being hospitalized. Is it wrong that I think someone at the show might have said, after Lily laid down cash, that the farm would now be a breeze because Lily would fund it? I'm surprised they never asked Rosanna to cough up, goodness knows they put up with a lot of her whining...

Mitch, I love your ideas about Lucinda and Nancy. I think that steeliness would have appealed to Nancy.

Do you read the ATWT tribute thread? I had some questions about a late 1984 episode, about Steve's father and his sister Juliet. I had not heard of them or had forgotten them or whatever. Do you have any memories of them or their story? Apparently Juliet dated Brian. If you do have time to answer here or in the other thread, thanks.

That episode also had some guy Jason Kincaid as Tom. He seemed like an odd fit.

[Mitch]

You never heard of anyone say anything negative about Marland's ATWT? You must not have read any of my posts : ) Dont get me wrong his ATWT was head and shoulders above anything before it (I mean the Dobsons on) to anything after it, and I wouldnt even say anything about it except that everyone acts, ,much like Agnes Nixon, that Marland walked on water..but both of them had their problems (hell, who could write a show day in and day out for years and not have some not so good things happening.)

I guess the whole difficulty with the farm set thing is that it WOULD look fake and stupid, and unlike unlike the hospital sets and Mona Lisa, a farm is a weird place for characters to gather at, especially since it was located outside of Oakdale at the horribly named "Luther's Corner." It would be weird to see Lisa or Kim drop by (did they ever???) All of the rest of the characters had professions that would lend themselves to being part of the community, such as doctor, lawyer, business owner, business executive..the farm was an insular world of itself, and not a good place for the characters on it to interact with the rest of the cast (hence all the Snyder kids became professionals to interact.)

Oddly, GL had the perfect format for a farm as they could have shown a real farm. I still don't know why ATWT, which incorporates more and more of the GL like remotes, doesnt film on a farm and have some hot sweaty hawtie as Emma's new contract farmer, with his shirt off at every chance.

Juliet and her father were Steve's long lost family. I think his father was a spy or something, and faked his death...I just remember empty graves and a remote. Juliet was boring as Brian and that didnt last long. It was a short term storyline that hit right before Marland.

[P.J.]

I'm not sure why GL was better suited to having a farm family than ATWT, since the most "rural" thing they ever had was "Reva Bend" which was set in the woods or Hart Jessup's rundown POS farmhouse.

And I don't get why the Snyder's talking about work somehow was more annoying than a hospital full of doctors getting one emergency every couple of months. There was always someone at the farm going out to gather eggs, chop wood or feed the animals. It was more a part of their everyday lives than other character's jobs. And honestly, other than constantly going "on location" and showing them walking around the farm, which no show has ever done, I don't see how anything could have been changed. And even if they had, trust me, they wouldn't have been dirty enough to convince me they were working.

[Mitch]

No, I said that GL's "production," at the end was suited to have a farm, in which they did, ever since the early 90's with the Jessup Farm.

Always wanted Blake to inherit the farm near the end when they finally cut the Cassie actress and be at her wits end. Cur Matt Reardon to help her out on the farm and many shots of Matt sweaty and shirtless working in a field and Blake's panties getting in a bunch..(hey, it beats that oggly daughter of Harley's hanging out by a road all the time.)

I guess that I grew up in farm country and I know that most farms are run like businesses, and the Snyder Farm was like something from the 1930's. Believe me, Emma waddling down to bring in some eggs was not going to keep all those Snyders in their tight designer jeans.

As explained, the hospital is a natural gathering place for a small town, which is why they have been in every soap since Irna decided to spin some stories. The farm, not so much. I just think a farm is a dumb place to set a major part of a soap..though I do appreciate the nod to history (Grandpa Hughes was farmer, and Chris Hughes brother was still a farmer...hmm, they should have made the Snyders another branch of the Hughes family, the poor side, but then Frannie couldnt date that exciting man, Seth.)

[P.J.]

The Snyder farm is simply another household, which are natural meeting places. Other than four adult children living there at one time being ridiculous (but no moreso than Y&R's Abbotts, for example), the point isn't that they were all farmers, but that they lived there.

[NorrthCafe]

Yes and YES! She finds out her kids are trying to bleed rich kids Lily and Dusty dry and she gives them warmth and encouragement to get back on the right track. Her kids were only a little 'lost' when they behaved that way. Everyone else is just soulless, simply because she didn't raise them.

Poor Marie Wilson. She had big shoes to fill. I had a hard time accepting KMH as Emily Stewart after Melanie Smith. MS's Emily was vicious and vulnerable and made me want to love her as a character and hate her at the same time. KMH did a great job at just making me despise Emily -- and there's a place in that in daytime.

[Paul Raven]

From Soap Central

Betsy and Steve were finally happy, or so they thought. One day while driving, Betsy was in a terrible accident in Vermont. Distraught, Steve continued the search for his father but kept getting dead ends. Finally, a pianist named Juliet Hanover revealed the truth: Michael Christopher, their father, was arrested for selling secrets to the Russians and died in prison. Shocked, it was later revealed that Michael was indeed alive and was actually a double agent. After a reunion with his father in Amsterdam, Steve arrived in Oakdale to find out that Betsy was still alive!

Steve's dad Michael Christopher was played by Harris Yulin in the Fall of 84.

[Anastasia Beaverhausen]

I don't blame MW for what happened with Meg. Chop that up to awful writing.

I know this is a thread about the Snyders, so excuse me for diverting for a bit, but I've always wondered: As amazing as Marland's ATWT was, couldn't you argue that the emergence of the Snyder family resulted in the "death" of the Stewarts? Or were the Stewarts already being phased out by then?

Because I've always credited Marland for reviving the Hughes family, but I think the Snyders replaced the Stewarts, and maybe that was (at least partially) his doing.

I remembered SID doing a feature about how pretty much every character on the show (this was in 2002) stemmed from either the Hugheses or the Snyders. And I think it still, more-or-less, holds up today.

Just weird considering how the Hughes are considered the First Family of Oakdale. The Stewarts got pushed aside. Aside from Emily, Susan, and Alison, there's nobody. And it's been like that for quite some time... since Ellen left?

(Side note: what the heck happened to Tom and Emily's son? I'm surprised he was never SORASed. But then again, I think it's reflective of how negligible the Stewarts became and just how sorely undervalued the Hugheses are by TPTB)

[Anastasia Beaverhausen]

To me, it never seemed like the Snyders were "forced" upon us. Maybe that was part of Marland's genius. Because comparing their introduction to the Kasanoffs (YIKES!), which was a complete failure in my mind.

That just seemed like the show was being taken hostage by these strangers. And the funny thing that the current IIC attempted to do the same exact thing TWICE with the Norbecks and currently the Ciccones.

I think it's the sign of a bad HW when they can't write for characters that aren't their own creation. And that's really what's plagued ATWT since Marland's passing. Because even though he created all these new characters and families, Marland still wrote intriguing storylines for the characters already there.

I think the Snyders had an appeal because they were a very realistic family which counted the "over-the-top" nature of soaps. Also Marland was very good about integrating them with the rest of Oakdale. (Though I will say that once they were fully integrated, their rural "mystique" kind of died off in my eyes. We're supposed to believe that Holden remained a farm boy when he married one of the wealthiest women in town?)