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ATWT: Your view on the Snyder family


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Didnt Tucker have one of Marland's long lost children..a teen who hated Heather? The last thing I remember Heather doing was being strangled by Doug Cummings as she found the "key," to the mystery. She was in a coma, then woke up and I think left town.

I do think it would have been more interesting to have one of the Snyder boys be gay, and causing tension...(of course, I would have wrote him as being a big old Ho which Marland would never have gone for!)

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Heather's next boyfriend after Tucker, Roy Franklin, had a kid sister, Nella, who didn't care for Heather. They seemed to be trying to let us understand Roy through his family, which was a good way to go about it, but they got very little airtime so it ended up where every time the Franklin father was onscreen he seemed to basically say, "Hi. Did I remind you that Roy's older brother was KILLED BY COPS and now Roy's a cop? Isn't that awful?" Anyway, I think Heather left the show in 1986 but I'm not sure when. After the attack, she supported Frannie throughout the Doug Cummings murder trial and she went to law school and got engaged to Roy. It's a shame they didn't do more with her. Then after she left Roy dated Jessica. Sometimes the black characters on P&G soaps were nebulous enough to I'm still surprised to see them years later, like Nella, still a supporting character in late 1988, played by another actress, Kasi Lemmons (who went on to direct Eve's Bayou). I think Marland did try with the black characters but in a lot of ways Jessica seemed to be the epitome of his ATWT vision (troubled but noble, hot on the inside cool on the outside, intelligent and driven but not greedy), so she really flourished through his writing and Tamara Tunie's amazing performances. I honestly don't think any other writer has ever gotten Jessica.

I got that vibe off of Seth sometimes, although that might be the mannerisms...

It would have been funny to have seen a Snyder cousin or nephew introduced and then paired off with Luke. Lily and Holden would have to go through the same "They're not related by blood...really, I swear!" stuff that people had to do for them.

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Thanks for that I had forgotten Roy Franklin. Jessica was a bore, I sooo wished Marland would have brought one of my fave good/bad girls back, Diana McColl! She and Duncan would have been HOT together.

Actually, come to think of it, I thought most of Marland's characters were bores...so I don't know why I watched the show so much back then. Even if the characters were bores the writing was good, and my old faves were still there and central to the action..but now I know why I liked GL more, disjointed and less respectfull of its core that it was..it had for the most part, GREAT characters who were good/bad and everything in between.

Back to the Snyders....the gay character should have been Holden with a middle aged coming out story. I am one of the few people who think this but I never was turned on by young stud Holden, but think middle aged Holden is smoking hot..despite the unfortunate hair.

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I don't know what happened with Brown---if she simply couldn't shake Iva (having played her probably three times as long as she'd played Nola) or if the horrendous writing at the time on GL simply didn't "get" the essence of who Nola was. My guess is the latter, but that "sad sack" Nola didn't seem that different from serious sad-sack Iva.

Now that I think about it---there are so many similarities between GL's Reardon's and ATWT's Snyders, it's kind of funny. Dad's dead, kids stuck slaving at the family business they long to be free from, Nola=originalMeg, Tony is probably a cross between Holden and Caleb, Mom practically refuses to date...etc.

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I thought early Holden was hot, even if they were trying a bit too hard to sell that. When his hair got closer to a mullet and he started to become colder, I didn't really have any interest, but he then got back some of his sex appeal in more recent years, in a suburban father type of way, the one who has a thing with a neighbor's wife.

GL did the good girl/bad girl character better than any other soap I've ever seen. Complex women are what drive soaps and GL had so many of them. Even in the dismal last years. That's what I miss most about the show. The men were always duller, aside from Roger, and Bernau's Alan, but the actors usually fleshed them out even if I hated the character (like Josh, couldn't stand him for a long time, but Robert Newman is great).

I definitely wish Diana had stayed around, I love some of the last stuff of her, when she has lost everything, she gave up on Steve, the baby she lost, she just wanted a business, then that's gone too. There's a great NYE 1984 scene of her wandering around her soon to be sold boat, all alone, in her evening gown, drinking champagne. I think Marland would have enjoyed writing for her, she reminds me a bit of his Barbara. If she'd stayed I wonder if he might have kept the McColls around.

With all the talk about boring characters I'm kind of surprised he got rid of Brian. Before Marland, Brian was set up very much as a dull, stalwart, future leading man.

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I can't remember if Lisa Brown ever said this herself (she may have) but a lot of people seem to feel no one ever got Nola but Marland, even her 83-85 stuff (I still wish I could see this "Nolaerobics"...) I don't know if that's true or not but even when Nola had some comedy early in her return it was wacky hijinks mixed with excessive bitterness. The problem was since most of the viewers had probably never seen the Nola/Vanessa feud, it just came across as Vanessa, who already had a lot to deal with at the time, having to also deal with this harridan.

Knowing now that Peter Simon forced the show to kill the planned Nola/Ed pairing at least makes it more understandable why Nola had nothing to do, but all those months where she had no purpose other than to trash Quint were just unbelievably sour and depressing.

I still think that there was a chance, with a new writer or producer, but then Rauch came in and got rid of Quint and the only story Nola got was the unspeakably horrible stalking Buzz story.

Even with the Iva-esque wistfulness and resentments still there, those last few days of Nola, which mostly seemed to be improvised, felt truer to her than anything in her 95-98 run. Maybe if they had just let Lisa make up her own stories all along...

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I felt that Long and whatever her fellow writer was at the time "got," Nola..but then they just lost interest in the Reardon family, which was odd, Nola and Tony had big story going into 85 then nothing..(dont let me remember that they got rid of hot ass Tony to just have a cheap copy in Frank Cooper..Tony Reardon would never wear highlights in his hair like Cooper did.)

Simon was a dumb ass for killing the Ed/Nola, it could have been good and a perfect solution for having a new Reardon in the Bauer kitchen. I think an older, more mature, but still fun and sassy Nola would have made a great Bauer matriach, and offset Simon's Eds own dourness. After that neither he nor Brown had story and the Bauers receeded into the background. But the show was even dummber for letting an actor dicate story. "Shut the [!@#$%^&*] up and go do your job!"

Nola and Buzz could have been good..she would have been the one woman to tell HIM to STFUP. But the stalking was dumb (and really, who would stalk Buzz Cooper???)

Loved the last day of Nola..."It looked better when we had it,",,oh honey you got that right!

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LOL...all thanks to Dusty. I wish I had the time or patience to learn to make a banner, but my guy Dusty takes care of me.

And since my issues with Janet are well known...I won't tell you what my reaction to Julie Pinson's win was. :)

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I happened to view a youtube episode from July 1985 and another from November 1985... I noticed that the Snyder's were heavily featured in the November episode that I viewed and not in the July episode. My question from long-time viewers is how did you react to this new family taking center stage so quickly (i.e. in the November 1st episode on youtube was mostly Snyder centric... Emma having conflict with daughters Meg and Iva.. Holden and Lily doing their snippy exchange, etc).

Plus, I noticed in the credits on the July episode that the headwriter was Susan Bedsow Horgan and that Harding Lemay was listed as creative consultant. How was the show received before Douglas Marland had taken over? The show seemed fairly balanced and interesting. Were Harding Lemay and Susan Bedsow Horgan the interim show runners until Douglas Marland took over?

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I think that the show was seen as being in good shape when Marland arrived. The show had had big ratings the previous year with Steve and Betsy getting married, and although that was gone, the Bob/Kim reunion seemed to be well-received by fans, and Nancy and Chris were also brought back after being banished by Freddie Bartholomew or the Dobsons or whoever. This was also the early days of Craig and Sierra, who were a popular couple.

Soap Opera Encyclopedia credits Susan Bedsow Horgan and Cynthia Benjamin as headwriters during this period. They are credited with "giving Lisa, Bob, and Kim their first real stories in years."

Too bad Horgan didn't go back to ATWT as a headwriter instead of being a not all that great EP for OLTL in 1995-1996.

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