As The World Turns Discussion Thread

[Soaplovers]

I always thought that the Snyders were too isolated from the rest of the show especially in the later years. The first few years they were on the show, they seemed connected to the rest of the show.. but as time went on, that changed.

Perhaps they should have burned the farm down and moved the family into a house in town.

[YRBB]

The Snyders without the farm? I don't know if the Snyders or Marland would have been able to handle that!

You are right -- as far as I can tell, they have been woven into the existing canvas pretty well (which is what you're supposed to do) but I'm sad to hear that stops being the case later on. Thinking about it, they've been around for what? Not even a year? And they have SO much story (not to mention there are SO many of them). If Marland wasn't such a great writer, I don't know how horrible this would all come off. I do wonder how people felt about them then.

[Mitch]

I hated the Snyders at that time..(we knew as soon as we saw that kitchen the pace of the show would stop..) It DID seem another show when they came on and it looked goofy to see the rest of the characters waltzing around that kitchen (Lucinda did it to be overbreaing...) there is one clip of Lisa in full Lisa Make Up and Spangeld Dress walking around and it like WTF. ATWT didn't need a rural family it needed a more low income urban family to connect to most of the viewers and Marland wrote his farm family like they were from a bad 30s movie...(I grew up in farm country and most of the farmers were super rich...) Hated them and Marland's worst move with the goofy incest, etc.

Having Emma be Lucinda's maid or cook would have worked better in pushing the Snyders and the Walsh together.

Didnt they plan on burning down the farm at one time?

I think the incest reveal thing happened as he draaaggged it on and on and think viewer reaction and TPTB told Marland to "just get it over with," so he did. It almost seems he did it in a bit of a huff.

[DRW50]

They were going to burn down the farm in 1994, but the story was leaked to the soap press, so Laurie Caso dropped it.

It always made me sad seeing that kitchen in later years, with barely any Snyders and most of them long forgotten, so I wish they'd burnt it down.

I've always wondered if that was a rewrite because they didn't plan for Lily and Holden to be together initially. Either way, it did seem like too much at one time. Iva's story was so devastating (as she had also been forced into making porn while underage), I guess they may have felt people just couldn't concentrate too much on it, even though it haunted her for the rest of her time in Oakdale.

[DRW50]

They're never really THAT isolated from the canvas in Marland's last years. Iva had a lot of scenes at the hospital and with John and Andy and family, Ellie is still heavily involved in the Walsh business stories, and Holden's story ropes in Lucinda. Julie was also well-connected to Lisa and Andy. Seth was recurring by this time, Meg was rarely seen. The only one I'd say was isolated was Emma (whom Marland ALWAYS kept isolated for some reason) and Caleb, but Marland was working on that with having Caleb join the police force (which I did not agree with...).

I'd say they were more isolated early on, where I felt dizzy when Emma would go over to the Hughes house for a funeral. People (mostly Lily but others too) would come to them, like they were dignitaries. This didn't happen as frequently later on, aside from bits like Holden and Lily's wedding reception, when 3/4 of the cast packed into the Snyder kitchen.

Even the non-Snyders who suck up airtime on the farm, like Rosanna, are tied to Courtney and to Evan and to the Walshes.

I think the problem more than isolation is that it was just difficult to care. I didn't care about Ned, or Debbie, or Rosanna, or Hutch (Hutch is a lot of fun with Tess sometimes but that's about it). The Linc, Hannah, and Woody stuff was also isolated, and not all that interesting, but to me it doesn't take up as much airtime as Rosanna later would.

The main issue with ATWT in Marland's last few years is it's so densely packed. He managed to pull it off, and I do think if he'd lived he was having a clearout (as everything Carolyn-related was wrapped up at the end of 1992), but it's not something the show could have sustained.

Still, ATWT was in a decent place, as much as I sometimes may carp about cliched writing and so many damn scenes of someone walking in at the wrong time and seeing someone hugging. ATWT had so much bad luck (multiple deaths, Joe Breen having to leave) and the genre was in freefall, which meant it never had time to recover the way it did in the aimless, ponderous, schizophrenic 79-84 period. It's a shame, because late 1994/early 1995 ATWT is decent, minus Mike and Rosanna.

Edited February 19, 2015 by DRW50

[Soaplovers]

I always thought perhaps the Snyders had a diner, with them living in a house in the working class part of Oakdale. Would have kept them more connected to the canvas.

I didn't like that people went to the Snyder's for Christmas, everyone should have gone to the Hughes house.. the actual anchor of the show.

[YRBB]

Thanks! I think I agree that they could have found another way and a different setting to connect the Snyders to the rest that didn't involve quite such an ugly kitchen lol

That could very well explain why he seemed to be in such a rush to deal with all of that.

You might be right because I find it hard to believe he would actually plan all that incest/not incest/relatives/not relatives stuff from the very beginning. It does seem they probably wanted to do it but not make a huge deal out of it; still, pretty heavy stuff to just throw out there and move on so quickly.

[DRW50]

I felt like we did see quite a bit of the Hughes home around Christmas, so it didn't bother me that much, but I do think some points of time were very Snyder-heavy (especially the years where they had multiple rooms in their house, although I liked that we got to see more than that damn kitchen).

[YRBB]

I'm glad I'm not the only one who feels that way!

[Mitch]

The only good thing about that kitchen is that in the first year or two it actually had a bathroom with a toliet we could see..meaning someone actually took a crap in Oakdale..(excuse me Luthor's Corners..was that supposed to be a town or what??Sounded like hell to me...) I wanted someone to actually be taking a big mean dump in there, while someone comes in the kitchen and starts telling who the baby daddy is, who they have been sleeping with, all you would see is the voice over with a close up shot of the dumper with the patented "Oh MY GOD!" look on their face. A twist on a Marland cliche.

[Khan]

I feel bad, because I liked seeing the Snyder kitchen. But I also liked seeing the Reardon boarding house on GL.

[DRW50]

I have been saving some of the last of the 79-80 clips to slowly watch, mostly with my mother, who was a fan back in the '70s but didn't watch much by the end of the decade.

I always wonder how fans at the time must have felt about seeing this weird-ass hippie man come out of nowhere to suck up airtime and aimlessly wander around in the woods like one of those ponderous programs you used to half-watch on PBS while you were waiting for your real shows to come on. He has no charisma. If he'd been brought in as a love interest and foil for Lisa, that would be one thing, but knowing he was supposed to be the main love interest for Annie and Dee (ATWT's only young heroines at this time) and one of the main faces of the show - it's mindboggling.

And the Joyce flashbacks are just surreal and...downright baffling as we get to the point where she's thinking back to being half-dead in a car and having some woman go on and on about family problems. They come across as planning to take her in a cabin and torture and kill her.

I did laugh WAY too much when that woman told her, "You've got quite a gash."

That's what Ralph Mitchell said!

No wonder people were flocking to ABC.

I liked seeing it too, as I did the Bauer kitchen on GL, but I just didn't like seeing it as the main room for all those years. I was happy when we got to see a parlor for a while there in the mid-80's.

Edited February 19, 2015 by DRW50

[YRBB]

:lol: OMG I am dying. I just can't. I (almost) want to see this now!

I do too! There is something sort of comforting and cozy about it and I don't necessarily want it gone forever. But, at the same time, it's just so damn ugly, it doesn't help that everyone is always there (especially since, like Mitch mentioned, it felt really surreal for some of the characters to be in it--so out of place) and, if I'm getting tired of it with so many episodes not available, I can't even imagine on a day-in, day-out basis....

[Soaplovers]

I think once Marland died, no one could really write the Snyders properly and the family should have been phased out. Unlike the Reardons on GL, I never got the sense that the Snyders were a nice family and seemed more toxic then loving to me.

I actually liked the Reardon's kitchen and the bar/boarding house setting. It was a better way to connect the family to GL and keep them connected.

I think the Snyder's living on a farm with that ugly set (which survived till the end sadly) isolated them in a way from the rest of the show. I just couldn't see characters just popping by for a cup of coffee.. nor could I see them just popping by the other houses for a cup of coffee/gossip.. etc. It would have been better to have them live in a working class part of Oakdale.. and Marland could have still had the whole haves vs the have nots.

Perhaps have Emma being a single mother living in the family home, struggling to keep up with payments because of hard times.. and maybe have a greasy spoon type of diner, or bar, for the Snyders to run.. maybe by the hospital perhaps. Maybe where the doctors/nurses go when off their shift. Maybe they would have always gone there.. just wasn't seen or mentioned much.

Just my two cents.

[Mitch]

LOL..thanks for giving me the coffee spit up of the day! The show was a real mess with this transition, but I never liked any of the Dobson's work on ATWT...they just didn't get this show. I know tastes are different in the late 70s but I could never understand how anyone thought the Brad actor would be the hot leading man of ATWT! Especially since he was such an ass (not a smart move to have your supposed leading man rip off Nancy and Chris Hughes!!)

It seems the Joyce story was started with Marland...(he has Nancy and Chris going to SF...so I could see him having Joyce hiding around corners and following them..) and the Dobsons ddint know what to do with it...it started as Joyce disruping Don and Mary's life and then they just disappear and its Joyce vs. Lisa for Grant round 6,000. Then Joyce faking an illness to catch Grant...(this right after another woman had done the exact same thing..) and then...Joyce just leaves town and Grant disappears. Weird stuff. Then the Dobsons turn around two months later really and have Nick discover that his wife is really alive so then we have Kim battlling a bitchy ex wive..again! I never got where the Dobsons were supposed to be such genius..they just seemed to keep things afloat.

The only time ATWT jelled under the Dobbies was when they focused on their limited amount of characters...(Tom/Margo..Babs/James...Betsy/Steve...John/Dee....) everyone else just stood around and did nothing.

Interesting idea of having the Snyders low level hospital employees. Kind of interesting to see that other people then docs and nurse work at hospitals..Emma could have been head housekeeper. To tie her in with people and the Hughes family.