As The World Turns Discussion Thread

[anthonymolchan]

They were great together. Barbara was way too high maintenance for any man. You know Henry divorced her a$$ after about a year. 

And, here’s an example of what I was talking about…

[SheenaSoaper]

Speaking of Emily, I really wish that Marie Masters could do a Locher Room. I haven’t seen anything about her in years!

[prefab1]

Admittedly, I was a latecomer to ATWT (first becoming a regular viewer in 2000). But I really liked KMH's Emily. I thought she was a very specific kind of neurotic professional character, and I loved her prickly relationship with MM's Susan. I will say I don't think the show did her any favors after Hal died, stranding her in storylines with several of the show's dullest characters: nu-Paul, nu-Meg, and nu-Dusty.

I actually quite liked one of her last major storylines, when she discovered she had a grown-up biological son with Larry named Hunter. But then Hunter just sort of disappeared, and the story fizzled out, which was pretty typical of the late Goutman years. 

[adrnyc]

Put me in the LOVE KMH camp. As a poster alluded to above, her detractors seem to come from people who first experienced the 80s Emily actress. And that's often the case with soaps, myself included. I enjoy the original actor so much that I just never take to the recast.

However, KMH played Emily far longer than the original - for almost 20 years - and when she had great material, she was great. I get the sense she didn't like playing the whiny oh-woe-is-me Emily which was all the material she got from about 1996 until she took over the Intruder in late '99/early '00 and got to play a stronger kiss-ass woman who didn't care what anyone thought of her. (Some would call that a bitch but, if a man was in that role, he'd just be called a smart and savvy businessman.)

Her relationship with Hal was great. The transformation was done realistically and I thoroughly enjoyed those years the best out of all. Once the writers decided to break up those two, they went back to writing Emily half the time as whiny and pathetic. I preferred when the writers made her stronger.

[Michael]

I thought Emily/Hal was a really interesting pairing. And I think KMH played that version of Emily very well! It might not have been what people wanted from Emily, and the writing got pretty gross at the end, but I thought she embodied that character effectively.

[j swift]

Search YT for Edwyn Sanchez, he posted an AI enhanced episode of ATWT and it is beautiful.   

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[Paul Raven]

A full 1973 episode that looks fantastic in color.

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[DRW50]

Melanie Smith was very difficult to replace, but as KMH did last for a long time, she clearly managed to do so. I preferred Melanie, but the main issue with Kelley is I just think she was horribly written for most of the time. Initially the writing wasn't horrible, it's more she was not the right choice, but over time the writing genuinely became awful, and unplayable, with a few exceptions (I think her pairings with Chris and Hal worked and got to take her in some new directions).

[vetsoapfan]

To me, there were some weaker writers on ATWT in the 1980s pre-Marland, but starting in 2000, the advent of the show's associated with Hogan Sheffer and Jean Passanante, the quality plummeted and remained in the toilet for the show's remaining years. It's amazing that so many actors were still able to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. I just don't think KMS was one of them.

[adrnyc]

I know this board has very strong opinions about Scheffer's reign which run the gamut from brilliant to the nadir of the series. 

I'm one of the fans. 2001 - 2005 are, imo, the second best years for the series. The first being Marland. 

As The World Turns won Daytime Emmy Awards for Best Drama Series in '87 and '91. However, it wasn't until Scheffer came along that it won again...in '01 and '03. Plus it won for Best Writing Team in '01, '02, '04, and '05, an award it had never managed to win before and didn't again.

When Scheffer left and Passanante was the main head writer (along with various other co-head writers) the show began to seriously tank. However, it wasn't just the writing. The budget was gone. The sets were made to be smaller or destroyed. There was all that weird hand held camera directing for a while. Scenes that were obviously shot in the hallway where the series was filmed. I think '06 - '10 is a roller coaster. There are some storylines I really enjoyed and some that were eye-rolling. Looking in the rearview mirror though, I can see that the actors, writers, directors, and crew were working their best with what money they had.

[DRW50]

KMH's Emily was a harbinger for the lack of dignity many characters would face in the last decade of ATWT. On paper, many of the stories given to Melanie Smith's Emily could have been extremely sleazy, but she was treated with respect and understanding in the writing. By 1996 the show went from often not knowing how to write for KMH's Emily to giving her outright reprehensible material. There were breaks from this treatment, but not enough, with even those breaks often being poorly written or just used to make her look even worse (like her grotesque rape story turning into her using her rape to destroy Margo's marriage). 

By the last years I don't even know what the hell they were doing. Wasn't there some kind of mother-daughter whoring story with Emily and Alison? Wasn't Emily getting beaten up by johns?

Whenever I think of how they wrote for KMH's Emily I'm reminded of Pauline Kael's quote about Ann-Margaret's '60s movie persona - calling her "dirty" and saying the people who made the movies "knew what men wanted to do to her." 

Even as much as ATWT started hiring softcore actors in the mid/late '90s, the Emily treatment was on a whole other level. I have never known what audience they thought they were going to be attracting.

Edited 14 hours ago by DRW50

[vetsoapfan]

This is the perfect way to encapsulate the situation.

So many morally-reprehensible stories were foisted on the show and its characters in ATWT's dwindling years. Rape should never be used as a cheap plot device or in a way that degrades the victim. Jack's sexual assault was another heinous example of how nasty the the show's tone had become.

The fact that people like Hogan Sheffer, Ron Carlivati, Jean Passanante, Charles Pratt, Dena Higley, etc., somehow end up winning awards for their material, decimates the credibility and integrity of the awards, IMHO.

Soaps used to have a solid moral core and did not originally wallow in the gutter, rolling around in filth and depravity just to be cool, hip, campy, or whatever else modern-day PTB aim for.

Thank you. Cruelty, degradation and misogyny are not components which lend themselves to successful soaps, which have always been predicated on warmth, family bonds, and providing a comforting haven for their audience.

The genre has been crippled because the cynical and ignorant executives in charge understand neither the shows nor what the audience wants to see.

Edited 8 hours ago by vetsoapfan