As The World Turns Discussion Thread

[adrnyc]

Phyllis Somerville!!!  I could not come up with my name to save her life. She was absolutely brilliant in everything she did on stage and screen. Interesting to hear she was also in '94 episodes (do those exist online? I don't recall seeing it during my watch through the periods of the show I never saw. And yes, how could I forget Sara Ramirez marrying Jack and Carly?! You're right that the NY soaps always had access to incredible talent.

 

Thank you for this! It's good to have the knowledge. As you said, it's part of soap opera lore and I've heard it mentioned so many times but didn't see it. I could swear that it even got into those "Soaps & Serials" novels from the 80s. I have the ATWT ones - read them probably 15 years ago - and I think that fake storyline made it into the book. Because I remember thinking "WTF is going on here? Why would they write that she fell UP the stairs? Did they make a mistake?!"

[vetsoapfan]

Ellen never let up on Susan, either.

Scenes like this add realism and relatability to the characters. Let's face it, some of us can hold grudges for life.

I'd pay to see that!

[Reverend Ruthledge]

No, the Soaps & Serials rendition of what happened didn't have her "fall up the stairs" but it was just as weird. In the book, she wasn't running up the stairs but was walking up the stairs with a tea tray and tripped. The ceramic tea pot shattered and she was stabbed with a shard of the broken tea pot. I think they were competing for the weirdest version of the accident. I never got the tea pot angle unless the writer was trying to make some statement about Liz being English and being killed by a tea pot. Soaps and Serials would change things up for no discernible reason. Sometimes they were accurate to what really happened and sometimes they just completely pulled something out of nowhere. What Irna really wrote was less sensational than all the future discussions of it. Liz was running up the stairs because Susan had left the baby gate open and Emily was teetering at the top of the stairs. When she fell, she landed on the sharp edge of the stairs on her side and ruptured her liver. She hovered a very long time at death's door before she finally died. The idea that she could fall hard enough to rupture her liver did ask the viewer to suspend disbelief but she didn't "fall up the stairs". If this was Days of Our Lives in 2024 then, yes, I'm sure someone could fall up the stairs. 

[cassadine1991]

One of the blunders was not bringing more of the Stewart family

[vetsoapfan]

There's a major difference between getting injured by falling as you are running up the stairs and "falling up the stairs," which is how various condescending critics and clueless soap "historians"  have described the scene. Just trying to make fun of the soaps, as usual, I guess. But viewers who actually watched know good the show was back then.
 

I had to give up on the Soaps & Serials books pretty quickly, because their glaring errors and "creative reinterpretation of history" drove me crazy.

The only soap novelizations which I've read, and which were reasonably accurate, were Another World I and Another World II, by Kate Lowe Kerrigan.

Edited February 28, 2024 by vetsoapfan

[P.J.]

LOL...she plays someone called Mrs. Beasley? The Family Affair kid in me giggles.

'94 is spotty. I fell down a rabbit hole trying to find out Carly's original origin story. Rosanna and Mike are annoying, and of course, just as we got to the point where Ro was going to find out Carly was her sister....there's a two/three week gap, and presto, Ro and Mike are back in Oakdale.

And I admit to using google. LOL.

[DramatistDreamer]

I am definitely in that group! Once someone gets on my “list” they usually stay there.

[vetsoapfan]

Yep, me too.

I've always said that it's better to actually BE alone, than to continue putting up with people who make you WISH you were.

[danfling]

The show should have had Ellen and Lisa both competing for the attentions of Edwardo (Nicolas Coster) when he returned to the show.

[adrnyc]

@Reverend Ruthledge and @vetsoapfan  Thanks for helping explain the Liz plot. I still have those books and should go back and read them again just for fun. Dying from being stabbed from the shard of a broken tea pot sounds just as kooky. I know distortions like that can irritated long time soap viewers but sometimes you just have to laugh!

@P.J. That about sums up my memory of '94. I would've watched that probably late 2020. I feel like '93 to '96 is pretty spotty. I have the 40th Anniversary ATWT book which has shortened recaps of years through '95 but it didn't really help much to stick in my head since I couldn't see it happen.

[Soapsuds]

Then I better watch out.

[NothinButAttitude]

Would Liz's fall somewhat along the lines of John's fall on the stairs when he learned of Margo messing with James? Because he hit his head hard on the stairs and watching it, I was shocked he survived that fall. 

[DramatistDreamer]

Or just ignore them entirely, lol, as if they don’t exist in your world.

It’s not you. Those folks know who they are.

[Soapsuds]

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[MarlandFan]

I loved Lindsay Frost's Betsy.  I wish the actress (and the character) had stayed.