As The World Turns Discussion Thread

[Paul Raven]

The Dobsons re-invented Tom as this hip anti-establishment type ,which was completely different to what he had been previously (see Tom Tammi as Tom in the 79 eps online)

So they pretty much obliterated any references to his past and Carol was a casualty of that.

They obviously had a mandate from P&G to modernize the show and viewer's perceptions and decided that dropping the Hughes family as they had been was the way forward.

 

Chris and Nancy were sidelined and when contracts came up,Helen Wagner walked and Don accepted recurring.

 

Don was written out when his contract was up and Bob was given the awful Miranda romance.Lisa was also marginalised.

 

Jay was another old hat character the Dobsons dropped.I think the Dennis Cooney was dropped and Carol just referenced Jay for months until he was killed off.

[DRW50]

 

By 1981 Lisa was running a tiny book stand at the hospital, which always seems sad to me. 

 

I don't ever know how I'd feel if I got to watch full episodes but other than bringing in James Stenbeck and the Montgomerys I just don't like any of the changes the Dobsons made. Or P&G made them make, or whoever is to blame. The Brad character in particular baffles me.

[adrnyc]

Carol and Jay, for me, fall under the category of characters that I've heard so much about (and read about in the Soaps & Serials books) but I've barely seen them or really understand their place in the Oakdale canvas.  All I've seen is the '79-'80 We Love Soaps videos.  It's interesting to read everyone's take on the character of Carol. She did seem a little bland to me but, as others have said, you need some bland/regular characters on soaps.

[NothinButAttitude]

 

Wow. I always thought that book stand was just a small variation of Wade's. Glad you cleared that up for me. 

 

I didn't get the Dobson's obsession with Brad either from clips I've seen. He reads very pervy or skeevy to me. The scene where he saw Dee in a towel and was undressing her with his eyes was just gross. If anything, the character gave me Ted Bundy/Jeffrey Dahmer vibes more than a romantic leading male. 

[DramatistDreamer]

 

Was he the guy with the pornstache?

 

Must have been the Burt Reynolds effect. Coming out of the 70s into the early 80s, that thick mustachioed look must've been all the rage back then.

[SoapDope]

Yes he was. The actor who played him was in the very first Friday The 13th with Kevin Bacon. He plays the owner of Crystal Lake and hires the youngsters as counselors to fix it up. In the film he has a creepy scene where he is shirtless in daisy dukes and touches the face of Alice the hero of the film implying something sexual and she acts all weird. 

 

That thick mustache Marlboro man look was big then wasn't it ? You had Tom Selleck, Lee Horsley, Burt Reynolds etc...on TV and film

Edited September 3, 2017 by SoapDope

[DramatistDreamer]

Novella Nelson who played Detective Roy Franklin's mother has died. She was also a Broadway veteran who consistently worked in films over the decades.  She originally majored in biochemistry but during a speech class, she was asked to perform in a play and decided to switch her major to theater.  A great choice that yielded enjoyment for audiences down the road. 

 

Broadway Vet and Acclaimed Actress Novella Nelson Dies at 77

 

 

[adrnyc]

 

Oh, it most definitely was all the rage back then. I remember it well! My father fully embraced the look throughout the 1980's.

 

I wish I could see more of The Dobson's time so that I could understand it better. From what little I've seen of Brad, I do find him to be oddly creepy in every scene he's in. I would expect that we find out from him that he's a psycho killer at some point. However, it sounds as if he was more the leading man type. Wasn't he originally a seeming love interest for Lisa? Or was he just working her over to get info on the silver mines. (It *was* silver, wasn't it? My mind may be playing tricks on me.)

[DRW50]

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[Mitch]

 

 

The problem with the actor playing Brad..he was not sexy even in a...70s cheesy sexy way,  and he was supposed to be with... Lisa, Dee, Annie and Kim's niece all HOT for him (forgotten note on the actor, he was a dayplayer on GL when Reva first was introduced and he was the owner of the Beauty Salon that Reva had worked in...he was written and played as obviously gay,.though they never mentioned it and the actor was funny and good  in it and I can't believe they never brought him back to open a salon in SF and hang out with Reva...she needed a gay bestie who would bring her down a notch...)   I think the Dobbies thought that having guys be aholes was sexy and "modern," compared to the overly clean cut and stiff guys that populated Oakdale at the time.  The guys on ATWT were all business suit types and they were hard to tell apart but there is a middle ground.

 

I think Brad might have been their idea of a kind of Roger Thorpe character "sexual" and a user of women,  but then they brought James on (at first he was a perfect prince so I wonder if they changed things..)  They really were invested in the character, trying to tie him to Bob.. (he was the son of Bob's never heard of best friend) etc. I think they were going for a guy who used women (Lisa)  but was turned around by the "goodness" of boring Annie but still couldnt stop the sexual attraction of Dee from obsessing him. It was just written sloppy and it made no sense, they needed a really sexy guy to make it work. 

 

Yes it was a silver mine.

 

They had Lisa mention that the bookstore "annex" at Memorial was making a profit, so Chris would be happy. And then they burned down the bookstore, and she said she would rebuild but they dropped it. I can see having an excuse to have Lisa at the hospital getting into everyone's business, but they should have redone the original bookstore too and turned into a coffee shop, bookstore as those were just starting to get "hip" then., it would have been a good excuse for people to drop by..etc. The last time the bookstore was mentioned was during the horrible summer of 81 when Annie took it over (there was a funny scene posted here I believe where Lisa hands Annie a lock box of cash and then says.."here are the books there is the cash." Okay writers, you really didnt give a damn did you and Fulton is practically rolling her eyes at it.)

 

"Don was written out when his contract was up and Bob was given the awful Miranda romance."  An interesting note was that Wagner blamed Bunim and P & G for McClaughlin's health. She always said the minute he was taken off of contract he got sick and started failing. I know from Hastings and Hays there were comments on Bunim regime so if all these pros broke bad I think she was the JFP of her time.

 

 

Edited September 7, 2017 by Mitch

[DRW50]

 

That's interesting. I never can remember who got the criticism in that era as I thought some didn't like Freddie Bartholomew either. I think Bunim also got backlash at some of her other soaps (was she at Search?).

 

It's also interesting what you say with James filling the role Brad was supposed to fill as a pseudo-Roger type character. In a lot of ways James does seem to have the same narrative role as Roger over the years, the main difference being that Roger was a much much better written character and Zaslow also wasn't on GL at a time when the soaps were doing the evil cartoon villain stuff. I can imagine someone having him kidnap Holly, Christina, and Ed recast #45 and putting them in a shark tank or something. 

[adrnyc]

"Let go of her! Let go of her - she's your BABY!!!!!"

 

Holy Hells - but that just came out of the blue and shocked the hell out of everyone, didn't it? It was well worth the 8 month wait that it took me to get through the existing YouTube episodes of the story. I need to process. And I'm so upset that Craig is gone. I had no idea. I try to keep myself as spoiler free as possible so I didn't know he was leaving this year (1987 is where I am) but someone made a comment on one of the YT videos that said he would be presumed dead for awhile. And just when he and Sierra were finally together, too. (Not that I have a big investment in Craig and Sierra but I'm sure the fans at the time were upset. Or maybe they were just happy to see the two get together since they were probably aware that he was leaving?)

 

I think MB, EH, and LB all did fantastic work the day after. No wonder it was chosen as one of the 20 episodes on the ATWT disc set. Stellar soap opera work. Loved it!!!

[DramatistDreamer]

 

In reality that storyline stretched out for about two years, so yeah, that was a shocking moment at the time!

 

I can remember being riveted and rushing home from school to see what happened (I was also setting the VCR for my Mom, who had to work, after teaching myself how to program a VCR).  Not just the Lily maternity/paternity reveal but the entire year's worth of stories that unfolded up to that point, from the previous year. There were so many different storylines and characters in action, in wasn't just about couples, you got absorbed in multiple stories and characters.

 

I was a big (Craig and Sierra)Finn and Scott Bryce fan but for some reason, there was so much else going on that it all seemed part of the machinations of ATWT at the time, the show was losing important actors, I was probably just as confounded as to what was happening with Tom and Margo. When Gregg Marx left, I was not pleased, since he and HBS had such easy physical and emotional chemistry.  

I was only a kid (not even a teenager yet) when this storyline was happening, so I had no idea of the backstage happenings (I didn't read soap magazines or follow behind the scenes stuff), I didn't know that Scott Bryce had actually left the show-- it didn't feel final to me because there was an air of mystery about what actually happened to Craig and Sierra still believed that he was alive, so I was young and naive enough to believe the same.

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It was irritating when Sierra went missing, at almost the precise time that Craig returned alive but, at that point I was also somehow thinking that she'd turn up as Craig turned up. For some reason, at the time, Craig's subsequent relationships didn't feel permanent and I was able to make peace with Craig and Sierra finally reuniting and riding off into the sunset together. Honestly, I wished ATWT had kept it that way.

Edited September 8, 2017 by DramatistDreamer

[Khan]

 

Frankly, yes.  In fact, it's a big reason why I don't watch much television or movies these days, aside from reruns and old movies.  Lord knows I'm no prude, but it seems as if the entertainment industry is so much in love now with "edgy" and "dark" and characters who, if I'm being candid, I'd never welcome into my home under any circumstances.

[DramatistDreamer]

 

I don't watch a whole lot of 'industry films'. I think "world cinema" does a pretty great job of presenting people who seem very ordinary on the surface that have to do things that go above the average through circumstance. I find myself watching indie films from France and South Africa and New Zealand these days because it just really compelling stories about people that you quickly become concerned about because of how effectively the characters are written.

 

A lot of what we see in the industry (especially the U.S.) can often times be vapid and superficial. You often have to really dig to find the really good stuff.

Edited September 8, 2017 by DramatistDreamer