As The World Turns Discussion Thread

[Mitch]

LOL...I remember watching this episode! Sad but true.  I only was able to watch five minutes here but that has to be the DULLEST gala I have ever seen on a soap...there is like 10 people there.  I love that they threw Nancy and Chris a bone..I can see why Wagner left. they didn't even focus on them once, it was all on the kidnapper. Instead of getting rid of Nancy and Chris they needed to get rid of the directors and writers..the dialogue was terrible and the directions was very stilted. I can see why people were saying ATWT was out of date, but typical bone headed producers it WASNT because of the vets.

Barbara looks so young, and Dee is not as annoying as I remember her..she looks quite pretty here. John and Bob and Kim look almost the same as they did when the show ended. 

Yes, Cricket was meant to be a big character but the actress was porny and the writing just wasn't there. A few months in and she didn't have anything to do..so yes, I am sure they ump the tramp on Margo since Cricket was such a bust.However, Eric Holister was boring and despite his stardom later, the actor playing him didn't have much going..at least here. 

I am sorry but Velka Grey was a better Lyla, she looked like a former floozy that was rode hard and put out wet and was tough and gritty. Anne Sward was just...dull, and too young for Lyla.  The rumor is that Don H wanted his wife to play Lyla so he didn't get along wtih Grey.. I don't know how much is to the rumor as they did not hire his wife to replace her and I never heard of he and Anne having problems. David's obsession with his daughter is slightly...icky. And of course, speaking of icky ...herer comes Brad Hollister to creep around the corner. I don't remember , how did they explain how he could obsess over Dee but be in love with Annie too and marry her. And NO one in town sees him leering at Dee?  I think this was the Dobsons answer to the late 70s virile male but he just creeps me out.  And they had Lisa charmed by him when he first came on the show! The show was really WEIRD at this time.

[DRW50]

I hope you get to see the 1972 sometime. 

 

Yeah I find Dee more interesting here than I did in the 1979 material...she and Larry B work well together (on and offscreen...). 

 

I guess the idea was that Brad didn't love Annie. Unless he fell for her after this. Poor Annie is just so...well, she's there. 

 

I still don't know why Melinda had to be killed off for that triangle. I wonder if they had more plans for Lisa and Brad but got a bad viewer reaction or something. A Lisa/John/Brad/Dee quad would have been interesting. 

 

At least Lisa's hatred of John remained consistent (until the late '90s anyway).

[Mitch]

Just skimmed the episode...Dumb Dee, when Lisa of all people stops you and wants to have a chat about something, "Just as a friend," you say, "Oh, I would love to, but I am on my way to the bathroom."   Brad gets creepier and creepier..was that supposed to be sexy? Young James is smoking hot...it really does suck that they didn't give him any depth later on...he became a mustache twirling villain. I like the mention of his parents who must have been figured in to have more to play later on...and God Love Wagner who could do exposition in her sleep and still make it seem natural. I love Kim's annoyance with Cricket (shades of Kim to come..."Well she doesnt LOOK tired," ) but hate Nick. They should have made Ellen against the plan to buy John off (really David, you think that would work) and then be mad at David for going ahead with it..cause some drama for them. I also love Crickets bad dance that all the Euro Trash people are into..I wish some older guy would have asked her to join he and his wife to their room later..speaking of, none of Jame's sophisticated swinger set is asking him why the Holy Hell he is living in Hooterville?

[DRW50]

I feel like they tried to address this by acting like the hotel was a hip place and an example of a hipper Oakdale (wasn't someone marveling over the upstairs rooms or resting couches or something)?

 

I wish Kim and Bob had taken them to that "swinging" disco we saw in the 1978 episode. You can imagine the muted horror and snickering.

[Mitch]

Come on..you know that place only gets "hot," right before dinner time..(judging from the scenes of Chris just getting home from work and it is still light out and cut to...swinging couples on the dance floor!) .and then must close at 10 p.m.!

[SoapDope]

Strange to see little Wednesday Addams grown up and playing Cricket. Speaking of porny, Lisa Loring (Cricket) married 4 times and one of her husbands was a porn actor. Lisa was 15 when she married her first husband, had a child at 16, and divorced at 17. Her second husband was Doug Stevenson from Search For Tomorrow.

Edited January 27, 2016 by SoapDope

[Mitch]

I think that was what finally got her fired from ATWT....Didn't she blame that, but later she came out that there was drugs going on with the porn husband (I know..shocking!) It was weird she was even there, she had nothing to do and was boring...I think it was Bunim who kept her there and would comment that she loved her because of "All that hair," which is typical Bunim...(to think they kept her on contract and put poor Don McClaughlin on recurring...)

Also, the clip was during Fulton's hospital stay and she said she was laying there, and watching it and saw BVF and said..."She is wearing MY dress!" which made her get better quicker...(typical Fulton) so it must have been the scenes of the gala. Too bad Lisa was such a mess when BVF took over the second time as she had nothing to play. Luckily when Fulton came back the writers fixed things. and Fulton quit acting like an airhead all the time.

[DRW50]

The situation with Doug Stevenson (who seemed like a decent guy) and the porn guy (Jerry something - who was a trainwreck and wrote a nasty nasty tell-all about the porn industry...amazingly enough I think he still managed to go back for a while after) was a mess, and then her marriage to that porn guy was a disaster. Robyn Griggs got fired from AW 10 years later for even hanging around with John Wayne Bobbitt, so I can imagine how they would have reacted if Loring had done it while at ATWT. I guess she was pregnant with Stevenson's baby when she was written out of ATWT. The last I've seen of her is the 1983 Christmas episode I reuploaded a few days ago - she's heavily pregnant in it, with that awkward Ernie. 

 

I do wonder if Marland ever wanted to bring Cricket back. I swear I never heard her or Maggie mentioned in any episodes I've seen of his era. In late 1993 she's mentioned, as Craig or Lyla say she's pregnant again or something like that. 

I love that story about Eileen. That's so her. She's lucky that BvF never really found a foothold as Lisa in her more permanent stint. 

 

How long exactly was Bunim with ATWT? It's funny that she all but invented the term "hair model" in your description...

[Mitch]

Bunim came in..what fall of 81 I think..after the disaster of that summer when, after the Dobsons got fired in the spring, the show went through headwriters who had no clue what the show was about, and then the writers strike, and tons of new boring characters, like Aunt Connie, and Nick's boring step daughter Sofia, and the new head of Memorial who was gasp..Asian, but had no storyline and James dealing in stolen antiquities which somehow morphed into the drug ring..and Annie a surrogate for Carol and Steve....Obviously the show was so bad they even hired the Dobsons back, and they did better with a more cartoony ATWT.  I think she left in 84?

Fulton should be happy as she was the one who helped made a muck of Lisa before she left, dying her hair that hideous shade of red (she admitted she did it to get attention) and making Lisa a ditzy dope (again she admitted to get attention and she was bored..) and I am sure Von Furstonberg was easier to deal with then Eileen. I still feel that Marland would have wanted the original back though.

[DramatistDreamer]

Wow, thanks for posting that 1972 episode, @DRW50 !  Susan involved with yet another Doctor, quelle surprise.  Her entanglements with the Whitecoats go even further back than I thought!

 

So was Dan telling Ellen that he intended to have an open marriage with Susan?  That sure seemed to be the implication.  I don't imagine that either of them would just live together as roommates, co-parent and then remain celibate while dating other people?  To see him discussing this with his Mother, I guess1972 wasn't as conservative an era as I'd imagined it would be.

 

So this means Betsy's mother Liz had been involved with both Stewart brothers, Paul and Dan?  But Dan is still Betsy's father right?  Was Betsy's paternity common knowledge at this point in the show's history?  I ask because of the scene where Dan tells Ellen that Emily is a Daddy's girl and is as much his daughter as Betsy is Paul's, I was assuming he meant that Paul felt that Betsy was as much his daughter as any biological child but I admit this confused me a bit.

 

I don't feel like anything was lacking in watching a 30 minutes episode.  If P&G had any interest in salvaging the show, I feel like scaling back to 30 minutes in the late 90s would've been a great idea, but we know they had no interest in saving the show.

 

I'd love to see a video podcast interview with Marie Masters, where they show her clips of this episode while she comments on it.  Kind of like how the DVD extras section where a director, a writer or actor provides commentary on a specific scene with anecdotes on what was going on behind the scenes during the time period.  Actually, I'd love it for any number of the show's cast during certain storylines.  P&G would probably sue if this were put online though.

Edited January 27, 2016 by DramatistDreamer

[DRW50]

I think viewers knew, but the characters didn't at this point. 

 

The whole thing with Irna is that she returned horrified at the amorality of Liz/Dan/Paul/Susan, but her own writing was very amoral, as she wanted to have Kim keep her baby with her sister's husband, rather than be "punished." You can see that split here, as the arrangement that Dan is talking about is startling for a soap of this period, or any period. I assume the idea is to show that he and Susan were in a loveless marriage, one that had to end, but I was still flabbergasted. 

 

I love your idea of a podcast video with Marie. I just want someone to have interviews with some of the old guard while they're still with us. I'd love to see Marie's reaction to that material. Or Pat Bruder's for that matter. 

[SoapDope]

I wish Marie Masters could see that and comment. I hope someone out there unearths some more vintage material from the late 60's or early 70's, especially Kim/Bob/Jennifer.

 

I know it was common practice then, but it is so sad that P&G wiped their vintage material. I wonder if the episodes when broadcast new, ever had a "muddy" appearance to them since they kept reusing tape ? I read that Johnny Carson's show looked that way then because of that practice. Kind of like a VCR tape degraded over time with re-recording. They said Johnny wanted to pull some stuff one time and was told what had been done to the early footage and went ape crap.

[Mitch]

I want to know what pact with Satan the ATWT vets made that they aged so damn well!!! Masters looks the same always, Hastings and Hays look similar, Fulton, Larry B....let us all in on your secret.

[DramatistDreamer]

AsTheWorldStillTurns has uploaded a few of the Brock Lombard storyline videos that I don't think have been uploaded anywhere else.  Even though, I think we all know how the storyline concludes, I find it interesting to watch episodes that show how the mystery is resolved.  Hopefully there are more videos to come that will fill in the gaps in this story.

 

@DRW50 and everyone else, thanks for answering my questions about the 1972 episode.  I really do wish our ATWT vets could be interviewed by video podcast while watching an episode and commenting on what was going on in a particular scene and behind the scenes.  If only...right?

Edited January 30, 2016 by DramatistDreamer

[All My Shadows]

I just happened upon the new 1972 episode (plus some AW goodies), and I have to say that I thought I'd NEVER get to see anything from the Dan/Susan era! What a fantastic episode! Marie Masters was in her prime, yet it was still quite obvious that this was the same actress and character that we were watching 35 years later. Such a treat!