As The World Turns Discussion Thread

[All My Shadows]

......."almost" universally praised. "Almost." Meaning not entirely.

I never understood why so many people need characters to talk about things that happened 20+ years ago. If it makes sense with what's currently playing out, then it's great, but anything else borders on gratuitous. What exactly was there to revisit in regards to Kim and John in 2010 considering they hadn't been in a relationship with each other since the 70s and she'd been married to Bob for over 20 years? If they hadn't resolved Kim and John's story after 30 some-odd years, that's indicative of bigger problems. The Kim/Susan feud was addressed during the 50th anniversary and then in that one-shot ep with Kim and Bob's "marital troubles" a few years later. Bringing that up again would just make both women look supremely immature.

ATWT screwed up a LOT in its last few years, but not having characters randomly discussing events from 1976 with little to no context isn't an example of that IMO.

[tune_in_tomorrow]

Fair enough opinion, AMS, and I should clarify that I wasn't hoping to see a revival of a feud or a rehashing of anything that happened 20 years ago but trying to make a statement that there were a lot of characters with a lot of history still on the show but many were given very little to do in the last 9 months following the cancellation announcement.

[Khan]

 

Another good choice.

[P.J.]

 

Because I think long-time viewers LOVE to get these nods to history, the same way movie or comic book fans love the easter eggs. Soaps sometimes have an infuriating amnesia syndrome that drives fans crazy. How many times has one mother of a missing/kidnapped/sick child heard "I can't imagine how you feel" from someone who we know underwent the exact same situation?

 

Maybe it didn't need to be a long "conversation" about something, but just some kind of an acknowledgement of history. Kim and John might have discussed Andy and Hope, or Barbara might have said she'd talked to Hal's sister for the first time in forever.

 

Specifically re: Kim/Susan, I'll have to rewatch the Divas on a Bus eppy, but I don't remember them bringing up Dan. I don't remember them bring him up during the Bob/Susan fling. And long time viewers always felt it simmering just under the surface whenever they got bitchy with each other. You don't know how much I would have paid for Kim just once to have shaken her head at Emily's latest debacle and chime in with something along the lines of "this would break Dan's heart to see Emily....(fill in blank)" and then have Susan explode on her.

 

I agree there wouldn't be a reason to bring up Tom's parade of ex-wives, or the Stewart quads, for example.

[All My Shadows]

And on that point, I completely agree with you, but the show had failed on that front time and time again over its last 5-10 years, so I guess by the time it ended, I just knew not to expect it. I wasn't entirely disappointed with the end because I didn't have too many expectations going in.
 

I agree with most of what you're saying here. Like I said, if it fits the story/scene/moment, then I'm 100% all for it. I'm a complete nerd for soap history just like most of us are, so I would never shake my head at a logical conversation about a character's history or characters' shared history. I agree with you about Kim and John mentioning Andy - one of my biggest pet peeves with ATWT was that once characters left, they were seemingly forgotten, even though they were parts of these huge families. It costs absolutely nothing to write in a mention of a character. By the late 2000s, though, soaps were no longer written in a way that conversations that are completely normal and commonplace in real life would also find their way into character dialogue. The more time you focus on stupid, complicated, repetitive plot lines, the less time you have to acknowledge impactful characters who are no longer on the canvas.

I wasn't referring to Dan in regards to the Bus episode. I assumed tune_in_tomorrow meant their 1990 feud over Bob, which was flashbacked and discussed in the Bus episode and used kinda cheaply for comic relief in the "OMG Bob and Kim are divorcing!" episode. I think it would have been petty for either Kim or Susan to bring Dan up after he'd been dead for so long, but I would've been okay with Kim bringing him up in regards to Emily.

All those are things that were NOT really happening much at all on this show anymore and hadn't been happening for a long, long time, though, so while I absolutely agree that it was ignorant of the show's great history, if I'm strictly assessing the finale and the weeks leading up to it, I can't really point at that as a big let down. We all knew that we weren't going to get much. Maybe GL's literal "come to Jesus" the previous year had gotten some people's hopes up, but I wasn't one of them.

[DramatistDreamer]

Looking at this picture from Finn Carter's FB page (never knew she had one, frankly), I realize that I haven't seen her in ages. I think this was taken over a year ago but she looks great here!

 

[amybrickwallace]

That is a great picture.

[Soapsuds]

She's aged very well.

[DramatistDreamer]

From what I'm guessing, it may have been a reunion for the cast and crew of Tremors.  

 

It would've been so nice if she had gotten invited back before the show ended (perhaps around the time that Julianne Moore returned) but with a different Craig, as well as that Gabriel character (that looked more like Sierra's ex-husband Tonio Reyes) it most likely would've been awkward.

 

Edited April 10, 2017 by DramatistDreamer

[Soapsuds]

I'm sure Goutman would have gotten MBE instead as Sierra.

[DramatistDreamer]

 

I'm sure you're right. ATWT was so disjointed. It was like several different shows in one. As much as I enjoyed seeing Julianne, it brought into sharp relief how glaring the contrast was between her scenes with the Hughes, which were at least mostly, recognizeable and so many other characters that I could care less about by that point.

[Scrapple]

I was just thinking how head writers can either make or break certain characters. Barbara Ryan was on the back burner when both Douglas Marland and Hogan Sheffer started their respective tenures. Both plucked Barbara from dullsville and injected new life into the character. Who do you think did a better job?

[NothinButAttitude]

 

Doug Marland hands down. Hogan made a mockery of Barbara. I was OK with the arc where she went a tad bit bonkers from the explosion and wanting to get revenge on Emily, Carly, and Rose; however, he had her doing stupid sh-t afterwards. Like Barbara bust Will out of a mental institution after he killed Rose. 

[DramatistDreamer]

The storylines in the mid-late 80s to early 90s wasn't just about Barbara but the characters she was involved in and there were such good stories to watch. 86 was one of the best years for Barbara dramatically, she was building Simply Barbara, juggling Fashions, being mentored by Lucinda Walsh, which caused a rift between her and Lisa, while sleeping with Lucinda's son-in-law, after she nearly wrecked Tom & Margo's marriage, tried to take revenge on Brian and Shannon, ended up being blackmailed by Tad Channing. We didn't just see Barbara scheming, we saw her working, designing, poring over every detail of her business.

Oh, and then we saw the lies come crashing down, as well as haunting her when she was falsely accused of murder, we saw Barbara fall in love and allow herself to be vulnerable (something Barbara had been loathe to do after past failure in relationships).

Barbara just seemed like a much more complete character back then. 

 

Under Sheffer, I'm sure it was a relief for Colleen to be active again and to have someone to actually write for Barbara but her character seemed to be written much more broadly, whereas under Marland, there was a lot more specificity.  Under Sheffer the humor was very broad, to the point of being slapstick, at times. I swear, once Colleen was doing an impression of Groucho Marx during that scene before she jumped out the window. It seemed a bit too cartoonish for my liking. 

Edited April 10, 2017 by DramatistDreamer

[cassadine1991]

Didn't MBE reappear toward the end as Sierra in between her DAYS stints?