As The World Turns Discussion Thread

[NothinButAttitude]

Thanks! I'll go look them up soon! I didn't know that they had brought on more of Steve's family besides Nick and Frank. But wasn't Shannon brought in for Brian soon after Juliette?

[DRW50]

Juliette, then he was with Barbara, then Shannon.

 

It looks like the uploader took those down. The channel you've posted from seems to upload some episodes others uploaded first so they may put them up. If not I'll try to find mine and reupload eventually.

[NothinButAttitude]

Thanks! I've always found it odd how easy it was to find anything of ATWT post 85. Anything before is a challenge and that's all the stuff I wanna see. 

[DRW50]

Yikes at Ellen Dolan's hair.

 

Edited April 4, 2016 by DRW50

[Khan]

Ah, the Eighties.

[P.J.]

Some time after Hoylrod's firing, Goutman or Sheffer gave an interview implying SH couldn't play the "dark Paul" they wanted to write. What a joke. Inability to convincingly play emotion never stopped them from writing it for Hunt Block for five friggin' years. LONG, LONG years. Hoylrod fit in so well with all his tv family---ugh, it still pisses me off TIIC chose to chase the ABC fanbase and hire Howarth.

 

If Rose had stayed the six-month character she was originally written as---I could have dealt with MB's little vanity project. (I mean, one of ATWT's top ten funniest moments is Holden incredulously asking "that's your REAL voice?" when he finally figured out he wasn't sleeping with his wife of umpteen years) But three years of bad red wig and horrid accent? *rolleyes* Who went from smarmy little showgirl grifter to Oakdale's newly anointed Saint? NO thanks.

 

And, IMO, it permanently damaged the character of Lily. I mean, I get that you can only be kidnapped so many times. But it's like the writers forgot who Lily was. Because Rose was so over-the-top loud and colorful, Lily became this meek little, dirt-brown wearing frump. Lily didn't wear colors again (I swear) until Noelle Beck took over the role.

[slick jones]

I was okay with Rose to a point, but shafting Holroyd was a mistake. For me, he and Kavovit were the only "Paul's" I liked. I wish Kavovit had stuck around, because his friendship with Andy was one of the best male friendships in daytime.

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[DramatistDreamer]

The loss of Brian Bloom and Andrew Kavovit were not good for the show down the road, although I felt as if Kavovit's loss was felt more sharply at the time because the character seemed to have a good amount of story left.  Interestingly enough both Dusty and Paul were integral to Andy's life at one time or another and within 4 years of both characters being gone, the Andy character seem to flounder, especially once the marriage with Courtney ended.

 

PGP made so many wrong decisions, it often seemed like they went out of their way to damage what possibilities they had to put together a good quality show in those last 12 years or so.

 

I think those moments when Paul's plane was going down, it was obvious that Scott Hoylrod was capable of playing a darker more complex character.  TPTB just wanted to shaft him so they could bring in Roger Howarth who was hammy as hell!  I guess hammy was what Sheffer and Goutman were looking for in a male lead.

 

Speaking of ineffective leading men,

 

I'm trying to see what Marland saw in Rex Smith.  I'm watching the whole intrigue of the aftermath of the Carolyn Crawford murder and the paternity of baby Jennifer and it seems to me that the Darryl Crawford character is the weakest link in that entire storyline.  It makes Frannie look bad because I'm trying to assess what a more mature, professional Frannie would see in Darryl?!  Babs had a ONS but Frannie married this guy?!  Once Barbara left town, I felt like skipping most of Darryl's scenes, even the ones with Frannie in them because they are blah and repetitive.  I was trying to analyze what could've gone wrong with the character (besides underwhelming acting) and I think that there was too much story being absorbed all at once by a relatively new character.  Marland seemed to do the best with new characters when introducing them on a modest scale, not overwhelming us w/a newbie, having them even tag onto an umbrella story with other characters where they are secondary or tertiary, letting us get a feeling that we know the character before springing them on us as a leading character.  

Edited April 5, 2016 by DramatistDreamer

[P.J.]

Yeah, Kavovit left in the early '90's, and they didn't recast until like '96, with that horrid model/actor dude. I wonder if it would have been that long if Marland hadn't died.

I truly believe Hoylrod would have made Paul's fall a lot more nuanced and interesting. There's a scene like in his first week where he totally goes off on Jack and Carly in Babs' hospital room (he came back after she'd been burned in the boathouse explosion), that really made me sit up and say "whoa". Howarth, for all his rage-induced screaming, always comes off as a little boy throwing a tantrum to me. The one thing I get is that Howarth fit better with the leading ladies they ultimately chose for Paul. Hoylrod made Byrne look like a cradle robber, and god knows what he would have looked like with either Hensley or Marie Wilson.

 

Ironically, Hoylrod might have fit better with anyone playing Lucy, which they kind of toyed with a little bit before Peyton List left. Now, talk about Craig's head exploding---Paul screwing Lucy might have done it.

 

Smith was pretty much blah in the role, but part of that is the horrid Carolyn Crawford "mystery", which IIRC, got screwed over by the writer's strike. It did make Frannie look stupid, because wasn't she marrying Darryl a few short months after Carolyn died? Smith was never going to set the acting world on fire, and you really have to wonder WTF they were thinking casting him.

[DRW50]

I thought Smith was decent enough. I believed him as a reformed playboy with a hint of darkness. I believed that he loved Carolyn. While it was absurd that Frannie would so quickly fall for him, Frannie had been a very stagnant character, mostly enlivened by MES' own personal charisma. She was more of a plot point than a character (she had been for most of Julianne Moore's run too). The chemistry between Smith and Stuart made me believe it enough to stay interested in the story. 

[victoria foxton]

I've been watching post Marland ATWT from 1993-96. ATWT  still had plenty of life. But there's a dullness and predictability.The best stuff from this period was Damian breathing some life to Holden's and Lilly's played out love story. the whole John vs Lisa saga.The plane crash with Damian, Margo and Sam. The introduction of Carly. John publicly humiliating Lisa during there lavish engagement party. The worst the boring Kasnoff family, The introductions of Zoe. Sarah,Diego, The whole convoluted Kingsley-Malta saga which ran for yrs. Emily's rape by Diego. All the soft core porn love scenes with Mark and Connor at the treehouse of sex. The Martin Chedwyn saga with Lisa. The teens were badly used and written out. Nikki Munson was the only one of the teens that managed to last 3 yrs. Paul and Dusty weren't just badly recast their personalities were completely changed too. Poor Andy was written out and never brought back. In hindsight maybe it was a good thing that Andy was never brought back. I did enjoy Mr. Sheffer's first year on ATWT.  But it was clear he had disdain for ATWT's rich and vast history.  Where the late Mr. Marland reveled in ATWT's rich and vast history.   The last 17 yrs of ATWT the quality started going downhill year after year.

Edited April 5, 2016 by victoria foxton

[Mitch]

LOL..I know I am in the minority but you gotta admit McCouch is hot...though I never really watched him as Dusty, as I didn't give a rat's ass about the endless, Dusty/ Rosanna/Craig/Carly/Jack/Katie..okay I have no idea if they were in each other's stories or how long but that is all I saw when I would turn the show on...two of those characters ..(pick any two) talking, in a room alone, very brightly lit with pastel tones...talking, talking, talking.  Plus, I never really liked Bloom's Dusty that much so...but I just don't know if..when they bring in these soap *stars* they don't just write new characters for them. Wasn't he murdered and then I watched a few months later and there is he was..I mean,Dusty is no James/Roger/Phillip that he was important enough for a murder story when he wasn't dead.

Granted I hated Howarth...(that promo above is hilarious...I love when they tried to be hip and were anything but...) but I hated just seeing that mug on the cover of Soap Opera Digest..I do think it ridiculous that they made Paul into "Todd" ...they totally forgot the guy practically grew up at Bob and Kim's house even with all the James/Babs drama.

And Rose was the only time I ever liked Byrnes.

 

Edited April 5, 2016 by Mitch

[Khan]

If Goutman and Sheffer were so eager to bring Howarth (and his fanbase) to ATWT, that would have been one thing.  But I always believed they would have been better off creating a new character for him -- even one who, down the road, might turn out to have some surprising ties to established characters -- than to bring him in as a recast of a pivotal character in some attempt to make longtime fans care about him.  It's so cheap and obvious whenever a soap goes THAT route -- and IMO, it hardly ever works.

 

As for Darryl Crawford and everything else associated with the Carolyn Crawford story...you know, as much as I admire and respect Marland's body of work on this and other shows, I must admit, in hindsight, that that might have been the point where someone (either at P&G, or at CBS) needed to admit Marland was burning out.  Even Julie Poll admitted (years later, in some interview for SOD, I think) that Marland had changed his mind about the story's direction about halfway through, which was something he rarely did.  

 

Someone needed to sit the man down for a discussion about his future with the show.  Maybe he needed to move over to one of P&G's other shows -- AW, perhaps, or even back to GL -- or maybe he needed just to stop working for awhile and then determine where to go next.  Who knows?  He had been working on his own soap, after all, so there were no guarantees he would have stayed with WT much longer, had he survived heart surgery.  Either way, though, I feel like Marland, by that point, had given WT everything he could and needed to move on.

Edited April 5, 2016 by Khan

[victoria foxton]

Sadly there never was a worthy successor to the late Mr. Marland. I do agree he was burned out by the tail end of his run.

[vetsoapfan]

The problem is, hammy Howarth was like a bull in a china shop, and lacked the ability to bring nuance, depth, and charm to the role. He portrayed Paul as a loud-mouthed, nose-flaring, simple-minded slug. Grayson McC's version of Dusty was also one-dimensional, boorish, greasy, and had no chemistry with anyone on-screen. Craig Montgomery, who had been so complex in Scott Bryce's hands, turned into a campy caricature under Hunt Block, and all three of these once-vibrant, wonderful characters were destroyed by atrocious writing and inexplicable casting mistakes.

At the time, the team of Stern and Black, who were hired to headwrite ATWT in 1996, were roundly condemned as being perhaps the worst writers ever to disgrace the show. Disgruntled viewers should have waited before making any definitive judgment on that, LOL. Our poor ATWT was later taken over by the likes of Hogan Sheffer, Jean Passanante, Leah Laiman, David Kreizman, and Lloyd Gold. As dreadful as Stern and Black were, they were (IMHO) marginally better than the scribes who followed them.