Rating the Replacements 10/96 Weekly

[Gray Bunny]

Yep, they pretty much pretended it never happened. I remember one point when they were talking about exes (not marriage-related), and Jack joked, "I thought *I* was your only ex".

As for DAYS during the second half of 1997 when Reilly made his exit, it was like night and day. I can't believe how different (i.e. BAD) the show became so quickly. Yes, we had the huge payoffs of Kristen's deceptions being exposed as well as Sami's, so of course the shift in stories naturally had to happen, but it just became... bad. We had:

Recast-Roman & Marlena getting close, even though Josh Taylor's Roman lacked charisma or chemistry with Deidre Hall.

Stefano, John, Kristen, and Hope in the plastic jungle looking for an orchid to cure an ailing Roman. I preferred having DiMera on the run from the law, not suddenly being pardoned for having the cure to Roman's illness running through his own veins. I suppose it was necessary in order to create new story that wasn't an endless circle of Stefano escaping from John, but I just thought having Stefano roaming Salem Place freely just looked odd.

Vivian and Ivan be-friending Jonesy, who first was nothing more than a sleep-deprived bum. We had Viv and Ivan dressed up as french fries, grasshoppers, and whatever else in order to make a living for themselves. Then they started hanging out with kooky Susan and the hijinks and silliness was just not funny anymore.

A refocus on NuJenn and nunuJack as they were on the run from the law and dealing with Peter, who instantly caught Jungle Madness and made him into a sweaty psychopath, plus Trent/Travis who was a supposed bad guy wearing way too much eyeliner. Everything from this story was just bad and silly, from them running out west to joining the circus to Jenn "dying"... just bad.

Billie getting hooked on drugs thanks to J.L.King's henchman. Creepy, boring storyline. I understand it was partially written this way to hide Krista Allen's pregnancy. But in the meantime, we had Bo getting closer to her while Hope completely swore off Bo or Franco to go to the jungle.

Austin, Carrie, Sami, Lucas, Mike, Franco, etc. were just meh as they refocused and tried to find new ways to have Sami thwart everyone else's plans in life.

I think this was also the time when they started using Crisco or glycerin or just a very soft lense to shoot the show which gave the show a different look and vibe.

(Admittedly, this was also a time in *my* life where there was a huge change: highschool!... but I'll chalk it up to pure coincidence. Conversely, Guiding Light was on FIRE during the fall of 2007 til early winter 2008)

[DRW50]

Thanks for the rundown. I remember some of that. I think mostly the Vivian silliness and the stuff with Kristen, Susan and siblings. I remember reading about the stuff in the jungle with the orchid and thought it looked good on paper. I guess it was much worse onscreen. Whereas, the Gina/Hope and submarine sex stuff sounded awful to me at times and I wonder if it was better onscreen.

[EricMontreal22]

I loved her, and the Three Witches of MacBeth story with her, Janet and Eric (!) all teamed up as unlikely friends was great.

I posted about this ages back, but here in Canada there was a very popular lottery ad campaign Lifestyles of the Filthy Rich and one of the characters (a cluelessly wealthy woman) I SWEAR was played by her. I could never get confimation, but she is from Vancouver, where the ads were filmed, and looking at imdb nearly all her post AMC credits were for Canadian and American shows filmed here in BC Canada, and I read something about her moving back home to look after a special needs son or something... Anyway I'd love to see her on a soap again but I guess it's not too likely. (She was Jackie Kennedy in the Watchmen--filmed in Montreal I think).

[DRW50]

She also played someone's mother, some warrior queen or something, on that flop Flash Gordon remake a few years ago.

[Gray Bunny]

After the initial "transformation" of Hope into Gina which was interesting, the whole story of her pining for John and doing artwork for Stefano was dreadful, especially during the sub-sex era. I think the story finally picked up and had interesting high stakes after Doug & Julie came to visit and broke through to Hope, and then the whole huge ball that Bo, Hope, Doug, Julie, etc. attended where Hope/"Gina" was an art thief; meanwhile, they brought on the *real* Princess Gina, stuck in a castle.

Even though it was totally unrealistic and ridiculous for the real Princess Gina to fly to Salem and have COMPLETE reconstructive surgery or whatever she did to make herself de-age 30 years in ONE day, I'm a sucker for an old-fashioned lookalike-takes-over-good-girl's-life storyline, so I liked the time when Gina was masquerading as Hope while Hope was stuck in the castle.

So all in all, I thought the first half of the Gina story was awful, but the 2nd half was quite entertaining for the most part.

[EricMontreal22]

Which was also (sadly) Canadian...