3 hours ago, adrnyc said:

This is one of those posts that just amazes me because, like any type of art, whether it be music, paintings, statues, television, movies...two people can watch something and have completely different viewpoints.

I agree with you that Sheffer did a number on the show - a number one! He took a dying, poorly written mess that Leah Laiman had done to the show, especially summer of '00, and in one week, turned the ship around to something much more enjoyable to watch.

While I disagree with your take on Sheffer as strenuously as I can, LOL, I acknowledge that tastes, perceptions and interests can (and do) vary significantly from person to person.

There have been films, television series, books and plays which were lauded by family members, friends and critics, but which turned me off completely.

There have also been films, television series, books and plays which I thoroughly loved and respected, which became some of my all-time favorites, while family members, friends and critics failed to find any merit in them whatsoever.

It boggled my mind to hear someone opine to me once that The Mary Tyler Moore Show was "boring and unfunny," but that Laverne and Shirley and Alf were "the best," and his favorite sitcoms of all time.

But...to each his own.

Probably the biggest challenge of any creative team looking to produce a mainstream hit is finding a way to appeal to the largest number of audience members, despite the to-be-expected, widely-varying opinions and tastes they will have. 

6 hours ago, DramatistDreamer said:

It’s something to ponder what you’re posting @vetsoapfan @DRW50about the writing that used to really keep us captivated and the difference between that and the latter years when the quality of storytelling took a nosedive. Sheffer’s writing seems to have left a legacy in some of today’s soaps and the storylines. Y&R (at least the last time I watched an episode) seems to have a closer affinity to his writing than to that of Bill Bell Sr. 

Don Chastain, referring to when he was writing SFT, once complained that the mandate from TPTB was always, "just copy whatever General Hospital is doing."

Executives are not necessarily creative people in any sense.  They are more apt to be "monkey see, monkey do" types, in the sense that if they believe a concept is working somewhere, they'll all jump on the bandwagon and drive that idea into the ground.

IMHO, that's why we've been burdened with the same tired gimmicks and mechanics on the soaps for the last several decades. They supposedly worked once, and everyone has been copying and using them ever since.

6 hours ago, DramatistDreamer said:

Not to bring in politics or anything but in other threads we often talk about the complicity of media in promoting scenarios and figures that are harmful to a healthy functioning democracy because it seems good for business and sometimes I wonder about certain aspects of (what once was) the soap media— did they promote certain toxic aspects (e.g. rapemances, etc.) because it was good for business? And were they also complicit in the deterioration of the genre?

Yes, and yes. The bottom line is making money, no matter how unhealthy and damaging certain toxic conventions of today's soap operas are.

Rapemances have always turned my stomach, but since GH made rape a glorious fairy tale ("Rape me, Luke!") instead of the degenerate act of violence it actually is, soaps have shamelessly been using it to titillate viewers, despite the harmful message it sends both girls and boys in the audience.

39 minutes ago, DRW50 said:

I do think they moved into encouraging uglier behavior because of the atmosphere created by Luke and Laura, although the biggest changes happened after the nihilism, misogyny and glorification of abuse under writers like Bob Guza became so prominent. You can see the hints like the fumbling attempts to make viewers care about Reid/David, whose washboard abs got more focus than the scripts. And then when Sheffer comes in this tilt to callousness becomes the norm. 

P&G was too morally pure in earlier years, but still, I'd take the executives that put their foot down on Edith Hughes and Jim Lowell being able to marry over the executives that went along with the hilarity of Craig mocking a rape victim or Craig having sex with the young woman he'd raised as a daughter.

Perfectly expressed, as always.

Soaps once had a moral compass. Making jokes about rape, and Craig have sex with the child he had raised, was just degenerate. And certainly not true to the "real" ATWT, which had been a huge rating success for so many years.

For the record, I found Frederick Bauer sleeping with the girl who had originally been raised as his sister to be quite skeezy as well. Papa Bauer would have boxed his ears!

Thanks for the tag as always @DRW50

I appreciate seeing the Kim/Susan scenes here a lot. I agree with the others it’s a criminally underrated rivalry with a long rich history, with of course a lot more to come, with only later fleeting moments like 2004 where boiled up again. 

I always loved the Barbara vs Shannon scenes too, just as epic in my book.

19 hours ago, DRW50 said:

@DramatistDreamer @Mitch64 @Soapsuds @soapfan770 @Paul Raven @slick jones @MarlandFan @j swift @Forever8 @Khan @FrenchFan @OzFrog @All My Shadows @Vee @vetsoapfan @Reverend Ruthledge @Matt @jam6242 @P.J. @Liberty City @Xanthe

A very rare (partial) February 1987 episode has been uploaded, possibly most notable for an absolutely vicious Susan/Kim confrontation. They wrote Susan very differently in her brief return compared to when she became a permanent cast member again, and that may never be more apparent than it is here where she gleefully trashes Kim (and Bob in absentia) as hypocrites. My favorite part is when Susan says she did a lot of things but never slept with her sister's husband, to which Kim replies, without missing a beat, "Only because you didn't have a sister."

 

Thank you so much @DRW50 It's always great to see more footage from this era especially that hadn't been uploaded before. Courtesy of the oil painting showings commercial listing all of the cities I knew this aired on my local affiliate. 

The same YT uploader has uploaded an episode from October 31, 1991. 

 

22 hours ago, DRW50 said:

@DramatistDreamer @Mitch64 @Soapsuds @soapfan770 @Paul Raven @slick jones @MarlandFan @j swift @Forever8 @Khan @FrenchFan @OzFrog @All My Shadows @Vee @vetsoapfan @Reverend Ruthledge @Matt @jam6242 @P.J. @Liberty City @Xanthe

A very rare (partial) February 1987 episode has been uploaded, possibly most notable for an absolutely vicious Susan/Kim confrontation. They wrote Susan very differently in her brief return compared to when she became a permanent cast member again, and that may never be more apparent than it is here where she gleefully trashes Kim (and Bob in absentia) as hypocrites. My favorite part is when Susan says she did a lot of things but never slept with her sister's husband, to which Kim replies, without missing a beat, "Only because you didn't have a sister."

Thanks for the tag! Can't wait to watch.

12 hours ago, adrnyc said:

In melodrama, good characters are good, and bad characters are bad.  He wrote for what the genre is.

Complete antithesis of what soap opera was built on, so no, he didn't write for what the genre was lol

Right here at 1:08:49

 

Edited July 17, 20241 yr by All My Shadows

Another new upload from that channel. 

1 hour ago, All My Shadows said:

Complete antithesis of what soap opera was built on, so no, he didn't write for what the genre was lol

Right here at 1:08:49

 

Perfectly expressed, by both you and the legendary Irna Phillips.

To  me, Sheffer did not write the soaps in a way they were meant to be written; he wrote them in a destructive, modern-era fashion, a weak bastardization of the genre. Folks like Ron Carlivati are continuing on with that unfortunate practice today, and the soaps are worse off for it.

Randall Edwards recently let it slip the real reason Julie Ridley (Dr. Annie Stewart) exited As The World Turns. At the time fans and soap columnists were puzzled by her sudden exit. P&G simply said she was going to take two months off for personal reasons, so Randall Edwards took over temporarily. Then the change was permanent as Mary Lynn Blanks took over, and Julie Ridley never came back - the soap press saying she wanted to return to Atlanta

Fans have always wondered why Julie Ridley left so suddenly, never speaking to the media again and just disappeared. Now we know the reason why Julie Ridley left, as revealed by Randall Edwards in the new Ryan's Hope book - Julie Ridley was pregnant and not married.

It is not scandalous today - but back in 1982 being pregnant out of wedlock was considered a no-no. P&G being very conservative probably didn't approve of its leading lady being pregnant and not married. Irna Phillips wanted her character Kim to be a single mother, without getting married back in the day. P&G balked at that, which led to Irna Phillips getting sacked.

We don't know if it was P&G that asked her to leave, or it was Julie Ridley who wanted to leave. But that is the reason she left, she was pregnant. 

Edited July 17, 20241 yr by TheyStartedOnSoaps

On 7/16/2024 at 11:13 AM, DRW50 said:

@DramatistDreamer @Mitch64 @Soapsuds @soapfan770 @Paul Raven @slick jones @MarlandFan @j swift @Forever8 @Khan @FrenchFan @OzFrog @All My Shadows @Vee @vetsoapfan @Reverend Ruthledge @Matt @jam6242 @P.J. @Liberty City @Xanthe

A very rare (partial) February 1987 episode has been uploaded, possibly most notable for an absolutely vicious Susan/Kim confrontation. They wrote Susan very differently in her brief return compared to when she became a permanent cast member again, and that may never be more apparent than it is here where she gleefully trashes Kim (and Bob in absentia) as hypocrites. My favorite part is when Susan says she did a lot of things but never slept with her sister's husband, to which Kim replies, without missing a beat, "Only because you didn't have a sister."

 

Thanks!!

1986/1987 was my favorite season of Marland's run. The show was a solid #3 at this time. 

Curious to know - was there ever a time where all six of the Snyder kids (Seth, Iva, Ellie, Caleb, Holden, Meg) were on the canvas at the same time?

2 hours ago, TheyStartedOnSoaps said:

Randall Edwards recently let it slip the real reason Julie Ridley (Dr. Annie Stewart) exited As The World Turns. At the time fans and soap columnists were puzzled by her sudden exit. P&G simply said she was going to take two months off for personal reasons, so Randall Edwards took over temporarily. Then the change was permanent as Mary Lynn Blanks took over, and Julie Ridley never came back - the soap press saying she wanted to return to Atlanta

Fans have always wondered why Julie Ridley left so suddenly, never speaking to the media again and just disappeared. Now we know the reason why Julie Ridley left, as revealed by Randall Edwards in the new Ryan's Hope book - Julie Ridley was pregnant and not married.

It is not scandalous today - but back in 1982 being pregnant out of wedlock was considered a no-no. P&G being very conservative probably didn't approve of its leading lady being pregnant and not married. Irna Phillips wanted her character Kim to be a single mother, without getting married back in the day. P&G balked at that, which led to Irna Phillips getting sacked.

We don't know if it was P&G that asked her to leave, or it was Julie Ridley who wanted to leave. But that is the reason she left, she was pregnant. 

Thanks for sharing this. 

It's unfortunate to hear of such Puritan views, although 1982 was still the years of the Moral Majority. 

I can't say Ridley's work has blown me away (more often it puts me to sleep like much of that era) but she had been in the part for several years and was probably the most known Annie. 

I'm confused as to why IMDB has her in a 1970 episode. Did she briefly play Annie as a child? 

23 minutes ago, OzFrog said:

Curious to know - was there ever a time where all six of the Snyder kids (Seth, Iva, Ellie, Caleb, Holden, Meg) were on the canvas at the same time?

Aside from visits, I think the closest would be late 1988, when Holden and Meg were leaving, and Caleb and Ellie were brought in. I can't remember if there was overlap. And Lisa Brown may have been on maternity leave at this point.

Edited July 17, 20241 yr by DRW50

5 hours ago, TheyStartedOnSoaps said:

Randall Edwards recently let it slip the real reason Julie Ridley (Dr. Annie Stewart) exited As The World Turns. At the time fans and soap columnists were puzzled by her sudden exit. P&G simply said she was going to take two months off for personal reasons, so Randall Edwards took over temporarily. Then the change was permanent as Mary Lynn Blanks took over, and Julie Ridley never came back - the soap press saying she wanted to return to Atlanta

Fans have always wondered why Julie Ridley left so suddenly, never speaking to the media again and just disappeared. Now we know the reason why Julie Ridley left, as revealed by Randall Edwards in the new Ryan's Hope book - Julie Ridley was pregnant and not married.

It is not scandalous today - but back in 1982 being pregnant out of wedlock was considered a no-no. P&G being very conservative probably didn't approve of its leading lady being pregnant and not married. Irna Phillips wanted her character Kim to be a single mother, without getting married back in the day. P&G balked at that, which led to Irna Phillips getting sacked.

We don't know if it was P&G that asked her to leave, or it was Julie Ridley who wanted to leave. But that is the reason she left, she was pregnant. 

Over the last decade of being able to see various episodes from that era (because otherwise I have very sparse memories of the pre ‘83 years as I was too young to understand) on YouTube, I got a chance to see episodes with both actresses and I can only imagine how jarring it must have been to see the switch in real time. And to think, a few 3-4 years later, it likely wouldn’t have mattered that the actress was becoming a single mom IRL.

Ms. Irna Phillips was a very complex woman. Years ago, I did read about the battles that she and P&G had, including over the character and direction of Kimberly Sullivan. I realize that Phillips had the reputation of sometimes being something of a battle axe and I am in no way defending her treatment of Rosemary Prinz and Helen Wagner and others but when I read the book When Women Invented Television it was very clear that Phillips felt diminished by P&G, she felt that P&G didn’t believe in her and that she was constantly being undermined while feeling compelled to prove herself, over and over. I’m thinking that toward the end, it may have embittered her.

Edited July 18, 20241 yr by DramatistDreamer

@All My Shadows @vetsoapfan I have to respectfully agree to disagree with both of you and Irna Phillips. I've never considered here the be all end all opinion on soap operas, legendary as she, indeed, is.

Edited to add @vetsoapfan that I agree in that anyone who says The Mary Tyler Moore show is "boring and unfunny" is immediately not to be trusted. LOL

Edited July 18, 20241 yr by adrnyc

Had P&G listened to some of her early ideas about the genre, perhaps soaps would have gotten a little more respect and not been dismissed as trivial entertainment.