As The World Turns Discussion Thread

[Soapsuds]

She was…her marriage to Steve was the second highest rated wedding only behind Luke and Laura.

[NothinButAttitude]

Yeah but many of you longterm ATWT are debunking that on this thread. I thought the whole Stewart family was beloved as they were second to the Hughes but again this thread and recent posts say otherwise. 

[Soapsuds]

Hey…i loved the Stewart family….LOL…..Betsy and Emily were my favs…..

[Mitch]

Personal opinions vary! Betsy and Steve swallowed the show whole, even Marland said that...but I think a lot of people remember the second Betsy, Meg Ryan's version was brain dead but people must have loved them.

[NothinButAttitude]

You are right b/c most other stories from that time (with the exception of anything involving James) was forgotten and irrelevant. 

[DRW50]

There's no doubting that Meg Ryan was very popular as Betsy. Not immediately (she said that at a fan event the guy who played Steve asked everyone to raise their hands if she was their favorite Betsy, and pretty much no one did, as Suzanne Davidson's Betsy had been very popular with fans), but in time. Even now I've seen people talking about how they loved her. I wasn't watching at the time so my experience is mostly just clips and episodes.

 

As for the Stewarts, I think they were important to viewers, but were marred by poor writing, lack of depth, and many, many recasts. The only Stewart kids who seemed to have something of a following were the Dans (mainly John Reilly), Ryan's Betsy (I preferred Lindsay Frost but I get the feeling many viewers always preferred Ryan) and Jacqueline Schultz's Dee (who was, IMO, very poorly written - Schultz eventually quit for that reason). And then I guess Emily, to a point.

[NothinButAttitude]

I like LF's Betsy from what I've seen of the two. I just feel that she isn't as shrill and she actually have ambitions. She has a life outside of Steve. 

[SoapDope]

I was watching as a kid at this time and recall how popular Meg Ryan was becoming as Betsy. I remember when she left the show they did the car accident with the hitchhiker and then her face in bandages for months till they were removed and Lindsay Frost appeared. Betsy then had to find her way back to Steve. I also remember liking Marisa Tomei as Marcy a lot. I also liked Terri VandenBosch ( had to look up her name) as Frannie even though she was short lived.

[Scrapple]

Lindsay Frost was a good actress, but she had ZERO chemistry with Frank Runyeon's Steve. (In many ways it was similar to when Martha Byrne was replaced as Lily...good actress, no chemistry). It's a shame they just didn't have Steve and Betsy ride off into the sunset, instead of having Steve rot in a Greek jail and Betsy...come to think of it, whatever happened to Betsy?

[DRW50]

Betsy moved to Wisconsin or somewhere with Seth, then Seth came back a year or two later. 

 

http://soapcentral.com/atwt/whoswho/betsy.php

 

This gets some stuff wrong, as these profiles often do (she never "tried romance" with Tad Channing, who was dead by the time Steve left town).

[Soapsuds]

Betsy did return two times I believe played by different actress. My favorite Betsy was Lyndsey Frost…..

[DRW50]

Something Sallows (Linday Frost wasn't available) and then Jordan Baker. I don't really remember the last one. I thought making Betsy a deadbeat mother, and everything they did with Dani over the years (especially the shameful, sick return in 2009) was a terrible idea. 

[slick jones]

Tracey Sallows.  Lindsay Frost was the Betsy I'm most familiar with, I just caught the tail end of MR.  I think her accident was one of the first episodes I had gotten home early enough from school to watch... Never rooted for FRs Steve. All I remember was him yelling. He was decent on Santa Barbara, though...

[NothinButAttitude]

That's something I wanna forget too. Pairing Dani and Craig was gross. It was like when GL paired Mallet with Marina. In both cases, both men were father figures to the girls in a sort. Craig thought he was Dani's dad until otherwise, and Mallet being Marina's godfather. 

 

And Dani's return only got worse when they had her try and come for Chris, who was her uncle sort of. Betsy was Kim's surrogate daughter, making Dani her granddaughter. And watching Dani push up on Chris was nasty. They squandered her return. 

[zanereed]

I thought John Colenback (the first adult Dan Stewart) had a pretty strong following, especially during the late 1960's/early 1970's when the Dan/Liz/Paul/Susan saga was in play. I still think it was a mistake to kill off Dan in 1979.