As The World Turns Discussion Thread

[DRW50]

They did mention him at that time yes - I think he might not have been close to Ryder, I can't remember.

He last appeared at Nancy's wedding to Mac in late 1988 (those episodes are on Youtube under Oakdalian).

He was last mentioned in Lisa's 50th anniversary episode when they had Chris playing Don and Katie playing Lisa (which I thought was inappropriate and odd, but whatever).

I still wish they had brought Penny back for Nancy's funeral.

[Michael]

Oh yeah, I do remember the little mention during the special Lisa episode!

Thanks!

[soapfan770]

I think Don did indeed appear when Ryder first came to town. It was sort of like Grant's brief reappearance after Eduardo's death. I think Ryder had a sister too and that she was named after Nancy or something like that. I never much cared for Ryder it ended my faves Jeremy&Nikki and well turned preppy school girl Dani into a pathological liar and eventually Craig's lover.

[DRW50]

I was not watching during big parts of 1996 so I might have missed him. It was nice of Valente to bring him back...while dumping so many others Anyway, Valente was probably the last producer to give the Hughes family stories, as sad as that is.

I thought he was dull (and I always have), but Nikki and Dani never did a lot for me either. I did like Jeremy. I wish he could have stayed. I know the actor left for school but it was nice to have a quiet, thoughtful teen on soaps.

[Michael]

Those brief returns of Nikki and Dani in the 2000s were so weird. Nikki just felt like a totally different character, and they tried that little quad with her, Mike, Jen, and Henry for two seconds... and Dani popping back up and SLEEPING WITH CRAIG was horrible.

[soapfan770]

I enjoyed the later Andy/Nikki pairing the show did 1997/98 or so before Brewster left. The Nikki return was certainly off the chain, she really was a completely different character. Weirder too was Molly had just been recast after Kay jumped ship with that really annoying Christina Chambers actress, yet the actress playing Nikki looked, sounded, and acted A LOT like Leslie Kay and would have been a much better Molly. Weirder still is after several months of using her they simply wrote her out once TC came back from maternity leave. ATWT 2004 and Days 2007 are very comparable in both had a lot of potential yet the wrong, awful stories were told and Hoggie was fired by year's end.

Still can't explain Dani's split-second return. Sleeping with Craig and calling him DADDY my god. There are good reasons I didn't watch the show much '07-'09.

[DRW50]

There is more of the 1988 Laura story up, which was named worst story of the year by SOD. The backstory is so convoluted, although I'm not sure if that's the strike, or just Marland (Carolyn Crawford's murder was also convoluted). It's, in some ways, a fascinating story, because no one will believe any bad word about Bob or the Hughes family. Normally I would hate this, but since the Hughes really were moral and upstanding people most of the time, it doesn't bother me that much (are you listening, AMC's Martin family). Anyway, this means that a lot of mileage has to come out of a) Bob and Tom being too polite to tell most people what a nut she is b ) short-term recurring characters coming in to help drive her story. By the time of these episodes she had gotten into a somewhat bizarre relationship with her boss, Herb Petrie. Do you know if this guy or the woman who plays his wife had been on any other soaps? They both look familiar.

Laura is such an empty character, and a story similar to this (random crazy woman who seems nice at first, files a sexual harassment complaint against a good man) was playing out at AW at this time, but I do like some of the work from the woman who plays her (I think she was the mouse victim on GL before this). She does remind me of Kim Cattrall though.

This episode also has some fantastic moments where Craig's harem learns that he is still alive, and they all react, separately and together. Some wonderful work, especially from Lindsay Frost. I can never believe the Craig of later on who hated women.

Edited March 6, 2011 by CarlD2

[DRW50]

Continuing my journey through May 1988 ATWT - now on May 30. Laura is gone and with her exit was the revelation that she had been sexually abused by her father, a father she and brother Beau had idealized. This was some ugly stuff, and I believe the first of its kind on ATWT. Was this strike material? Or was Marland using this as a test run for Angel and Henry Lange? I really like how normal Beau and Pam seem to be. They're a nice contrast to the drama around them.

I also really like Jessica and Roy Franklin, who have a nice, easy chemistry. Did he want to leave or did they fire him?

Lisa sings "What'll I Do?" and I love Eileen Fulton but she sounded horrible. I wonder if she had any choice over songs because that did not suit her voice at all. She seemed to be singing quite a bit at this time - in most of the 86-88 episodes I've seen it was Lila.

Early Kirk is so different from the ha ha Kirk of later years. I like his early scenes with Iva, as she is so appalled by him. This is nice romantic comedy type of stuff, not her usual misery. I liked Ellie/Kirk too but I'm sorry that this had to end with more of Iva's agony.

Shannon continues to obsess over that Margaret painting, while her own painting seems like Elvira in a blue dress. Duncan doesn't want to marry her and she lashes out. Silly material but well acted by Swan and Reed.

Emily is sleeping with Tonio and genuinely seems to care for him, which surprised me, as I had always assumed it was just sex. I guess it was for him.

It's funny, because, as I've mentioned a few times before, I HATED Holden when I first started watching ATWT. It was not until his 1996 return that I started to like him more. I have almost wondered over the years why I ever hated him. But it is all back in full force thanks to these spring 1988 episodes.

- Holden marries Emily knowing what type of history she has (lying, sex, etc.)

- Holden profits from her money and goes into business with Tonio

- Holden then spends much of his time lecturing Tonio about immorality, when he's right in bed with Tonio!

- Holden goes on and on and on in every episode to Emily about lies, even though he lied to Lily for a year! Saying, "Now I know how Lily feels," isn't enough.

- Holden goes over to see Craig after Sierra "dies" and says he knows how Craig feels. Really? Talk about narcissistic. Lily didn't die.

Something else regarding ATWT that I noticed was when I was looking through a few of the "what's hot in soaps/who's who of soaps" type of publications in 1981, ATWT had some of the least coverage and least expense. In one, ATWT was barely covered, and in the other, which covered all the shows, the only shows that had no color, glossy pictures were ATWT, The Edge of Night, and The Doctors. They finally threw a glossy picture of Eileen and Bob Hastings on the back page, like an afterthought. Was ATWT really that far down in the public mind in 1981 or was this just a coincidence?

[DRW50]

I was looking in a 1994 soap magazine - and I know this has been mentioned before - but they talk about the Dobsons being rumored to go to AW, which didn't happen, so then the magazine was saying they were rumored to be returning to ATWT.

Was this ever actually any type of possibility?

I wonder what they would have done. I actually thought the show turned itself around by early 1995, and that the changes made by Valente were unnecessary, but I wonder if the Dobsons might have managed to reinvent things in a way that would have kept some of the old ATWT, which seemed to be destroyed in the mid/late 90s and never returned.

[BuckyB12]

Don't know about the Dobsons but 1995 ATWT was still good soap, in spite of Valente. Through 1995 the show was still being written by people who had (I think) worked directly with Doug Marland and knew how things should go. I always think of '95 as having the last really big umbrella story in the Marland style, Lisa's malpractice suit against John following Eduardo's death, which involved nearly the whole cast in one way or another. That was followed by the Orlena Grimaldi drama with the trips to Malta, and the Rosanna/Mike/Carly triangle was playing out that year too. One big difference, if you watch a '95 episode next to a '93 or '94 is that the number of characters per episode drops significantly, which is due to Valente.

Everything goes way downhill in January 1996 with the arrival of Stern and Black, which brings a real break with the past. The plane crash kicks the Umberto Malzone mess into the center of things. Several well-loved characters were gone by the end of '95 (Andy, Julie, Caleb, Larry, Duncan, Shannon, etc.) and the characters that replaced them were mostly pretty awful ("supermodel" Zoe, anyone?). The payoff to John's revenge on Lisa was fun to watch but the whole storyline did make Lisa look pretty dumb, and it was followed up with Martin Chedwyn, which was even worse.

After that bad year, things just never really got back on track, but I think the problems of the later 1990s were more attributable to Mary Alice Dwyer-Dobbin than to any particular set of headwriters (it wasn't a writing decision to recast Connor Walsh with that OLTL woman in Jan. 1997 - that's when we knew that things were not going to get better just because the hated Stern & Black were gone).

Edited March 11, 2011 by BuckyB12

[DRW50]

I always give most of the credit for 1995 to Caso and Culliton although there might have been someone else before Culliton. Carly was a real live wire who finally made the boring Rosanna/Mike interesting. Eduardo's death and the lawsuit by Lisa was a great story that utilized all the history of the Hughes and Dixon families. Claire Bloom was chilling as Orlena. Even smaller stories like Dawn's death, Kirk and Sam's love story, Jeremy's adoption, Julie and the ransom money, and Jef/Emily were good.

P&G took the changes too far and destroyed any progress the show was making. Every single thing that had been working was ruined and they also seemed to have no idea that Maura West might be leaving, which killed the story as she was the main thing in it. If they had backed off then ATWT might still be on today.

The only thing I can praise them for is they used the vets they didn't fire, and they got rid of Rosanna. That was about it.

Edited March 11, 2011 by CarlD2

[DRW50]

Does anyone know if Marland intended for Emily/Tonio to sleep together? Or was that strike material? Emily seems to have genuine feelings for Tonio in the strike episodes, which seems off to me - I don't think she would fall for Tonio, not at that point in her life. Did he plan for Emily/Craig?

I also wonder if Marland planned more for the Emily/Holden marriage. Then again, he did create Angel, and she was waiting in the wings by the time Emily/Holden were done.

Watching some of the August 1988 episodes over again I realize that Spencer, the Robert Tyler character who mooned over Lily and worked at the stables and pretended he knew Dusty, was talking on the phone to Kirk and they seemed to have some secret plan. Was that dropped? And did the show expect Dusty to return quickly? In the August episodes they talk like he will be back soon. Surely they knew Brian Bloom wasn't coming back?

Edited March 13, 2011 by CarlD2

[P.J.]

I think any "secret plan" Kirk was hatching was about wooing Lily, the boss' daughter. I believe at some point, he admitted that to Iva (or his ex-lover, Addie). I don't remember him conspiring with Spencer, but I do remember Craig having the feeling he knew/had met Kirk before he came to Oakdale, which I don't think was ever explained.

[DRW50]

Thanks!

Did they ever explain why Dusty (offcamera) said that all he knew of Spence was something awful had happened to him?

I also wonder if it was Marland or the scabs who brought in the recurring players like Duncan's servants at that time, like Sofia Landon. I know Marland wrote her out of GL. I loved her on GL so kept wondering why she didn't have more to do at ATWT.

You can see that his outlines were probably in place but some of that material was a bit overheated, especially the whole Holden/Josh and Holden/Caleb rageathon, complete with Lily yelling and gasping at Holden every episode. Then Beau overnight becoming a jealous type.

You liked Kirk/Iva, right? I wonder why that didn't work out - I mean why they show broke them up. I did like Kirk and Ellie but it was nice to see Iva having some fun for once. Later on I feel like her misery overwhelmed her. At this point she still had a chance. There's such a poignant moment when Hank Elliot tells her that he finally learned to like himself, and she says she wishes she knew how he did it.

[DRW50]

Showreel for the first and by far the best Brad Snyder. I wonder what might have happened if he hadn't had to leave the show. He was so hot. He looks a lot like Pa Barton on Emmerdale.

(There's some sort of weird pseudo-bondage clip in there so it might not be safe for work).