As The World Turns Discussion Thread

[juniorz1]

Can someone PLEASE post clips from the Susan/Bob/Kim storyline, ESPECIALLY Susan/Kim rivalry clips.

[DRW50]

You've probably already seen this but it's the only Kim/Susan scene I can really find.

I also get a strange thrill out of this scene as it's one of those where Bob is an a$$hole to Lisa! Usually he's very very patient with her.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VceFx_CQqF8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P146v7U1kEw

Edited June 23, 2011 by CarlD2

[juniorz1]

Haven't seen it- off to watch now! Be sure & use the link feature on clips that cannot be embedded!

[DRW50]

Thanks. I've never known how to do that. I just end up posting the link and then the video shows up.

[scherra]

0814ma on YouTube has a set of clips re: Bob confessing his affair to Kim. I wasn't an ATWT faithful but came across the scenes while looking up some GL stuff and enjoyed them, eg. Kim losing patience with Barbara, or Hal and Margo, John and Lucinda, Bob and Susan, iow lots of good stuff in the same ep.:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAc7sNJIlZA

[DRW50]

Thanks. It's funny I just watched those last week. I've been trying to make my way through ATWT from the earliest years on Youtube to up to about 1994 or 1995. I don't have the stomach for a lot of the show after that.

[DRW50]

Yes, whimsy is a good word. There's a certain lightness which is there even with very dark material (like everything with Josh/Iva/Lily - Lily ran away for a few months of fun). The lightness seems to have faded by the early 90's, and even the moments of hope are much more melancholy. Most of the characters have aged, lost some of their old cheesiness (like Duncan), and the younger characters like Courtney, Andy, and Paul, have their own struggles. The show also seems to become more and more earnest.

There's also more of a very harrowing type of emotional torment, which you can see in this nightmare/fantasy/flashback of Darryl's:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPhZ9pvY0PQ&feature=related

This clip has the type of melancholy that I notice more and more in the early 90's stuff. Barclay and Angel Lange talk about moving on with their lives. They will, but you know they will never entirely be whole...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ppu1HmfVcTY&feature=related

[Mitch]

I loved Tom's quote, "Well, nothing seems to be wrong with her back now." I wonder if the writers threw that in there as a joke or if they were as earnest as the material they produced and didn't get it.

I loved the days when the show revolved around Bob and Kim's house, and had everyone coming and going at all hours of the day and night, and calling,etc. Marland was great at having everyone be connected, even using a simple device as a phone call (and Marland's people were all calling each other constantly...) When the P & G shows dumped the concept of the action centering around one core family and home (Hughes and Bauers) they lost so much of what made them so special and really accessible. Anyone who watched for years and dropped it could get back in as everything was still centering around Bob and Kim and the Bauers...and the home sets gave new viewers a comforting intro to the show. The P & G shows became so cold after MADD.

[DRW50]

That's what drew me into the P&G soaps. It was so comforting to watch Bob make a Thanksgiving toast, and then in the summer, to see everyone out having a barbecue, with friends dropping by. There were no ugly feuds that couldn't be overlooked for those special days. It was a nice escape.

This is the type of thing soaps became so ashamed of.

[scherra]

My first exposure to soaps was on primetime (Dallas, Dynasty, Falcon Crest) then Santa Barbara, so after all that glitz and glamor of the 1980s (which I never cared for), Ed Bauer and his bald patch, Maureen and her kitchen just bowled me over when I came across GL in the early 1990s. I couldn't get over how it could be so sophisticated and grounded at the same time, it really opened my eyes about what could be done on soaps. It also set the bar too high for the follow-up regimes and the other soaps to measure up but I'd rather focus on the good things.

I was never as taken with ATWT but in clips like that, I can recognize what I loved about GL--the sense of community, the variety and richness of interactions, the restraint in the performances.

Edited June 24, 2011 by scherra

[Mitch]

Which was stupid, as I remember reading the Bauer BBQ was always counted on to spike the ratings. Remember when E & B forgot the BBQ one year because of San Crud!!!

[P.J.]

Yeah, it ended his relationship with her. Which at the time struck me as really ironic, since it was about the only lie she ever told on the show. My guess is their relationship lasted a year, give or take. I think she was even pregnant with their son MJ when he broke it off.

It was a really odd hook up---he'd been with her mother, and married to her worst enemy. Marland usually stuck to the "opposites attract" theory, and in some ways John and Iva were too alike---both kind of morose sticks in the mud.

By the time everything came out, I was definitely on Iva's side. Here she had sacrificed to raise this child who Julie really couldn't (saving Holden from a lot of misery, given his new marriage to Lily and the strain the family was already under given the Holden/Caleb feud after the ONS with Julie). It related to her issues so beautifully---having been adopted herself and not being able to raise Lily.

Iva had always been the one who got kicked in the teeth---she got shipped to Henry and Elizabeth's when money was tight, to get raped by Josh. She has to co-mother Lily with a woman who hates her. She has to "accept" her family forgiving Josh, to points (like her being in Meg's wedding party) that it's ridiculous. She loses Kirk to Ellie. Even Emma was very upset with her when the relationship with John came about.

So she spends a year or more rearranging her life to care for Holden's kid, loses John, at one point is raising two toddlers on her own, and when it all hits the fan, Holden basically walks in, demands his kid and she's just expected to hand him over without a word. (At the time, Holden was kind of an emotionless SOB, thanks to losing half his brain...)

I don't know if it was a stylistic change...but for a while, Marland's writing was really dark and heavy. You had the Crawford murder going on, Angel's incest story playing out, Lily got blown up, Hal was supposedly shot dead undercover, James was running around town....the bad thing (at times) about Marland was he wouldn't arbitrarily "happy things up" if it didn't fit the characters or story. He didn't really do camp, other than with Shannon. There was comedy, but it came in moments, not entire arcs.

[Soapsuds]

I remember the 4th of July Hughes BBQ did well in the ratings. It was the time when the paternity of Aaron was being revealed. It had huge ratings.

[DRW50]

TV Radio Mirror September 1960.

[soapfan770]

While I am posting Matt P. Smith's write-ups on short lived soaps from the 50s, here is Smith's extensive essay on ATWT he wrote. The last sentence makes me sad: