As The World Turns Discussion Thread

[DramatistDreamer]

 

Vandenbosch?  From what I can remember reading many years ago, she died of some type of rare illness at a relatively young age. Left behind two kids and a husband, I believe.

Edited July 28, 2019 by DramatistDreamer

[DRW50]

I think Terri also had an eating disorder in real life, which they worked into Frannie's story.

 

When she passed, the guy who played Jay left a comment on an article (or I assume it was him), which was nice. 

Edited July 28, 2019 by DRW50

[victoria foxton]

A decent episode. Nothing particularly earth shattering going on. I do like the teens. Who within a year would be replaced by Lilly/Dusty/Meg/Holden. I've seen clips of their spring break misadventure. Where Frannie nearly gets raped. It was all rather blah. I didn't know Frank wrote a best selling book. Or that Maggie & Brian were involved. Or that bad girls Diana & Karen were friends. I loved the cheesy SO VERY 80's video.It was silly 80's fun. Something Marland would've never dreamed of doing. Jay's fake running had me in stitches LOL.

Please register in order to view this content

Edited July 28, 2019 by victoria foxton

[Soapsuds]

Jay was hot!  It's too bad he left the show. 

[Khan]

 

Well, I give the soaps props for attempting to appeal to the MTV demographic.  And if used to advance story or reveal character, then musical interludes, for lack of a better word, are okay.

 

In that instance, however, the set up was wrong.  Were Jay and/or Frannie dancers?  Had they danced memorably together before this?  Otherwise, why is he fantasizing about dancing with her in a music video?

 

Also, there is a way to choreograph these things w/o making the Solid Gold dancers look butch by comparison.  I'm just saying.

 

 

This was during the Daytona Spring Break storyline, which was still part of the Mary-Ellis Bunim regime, I think.  (I can't remember who was head-writing the show at that time, though.  Maybe Tom King and Millee Taggart?)

 

 

That was perhaps the most in(s)ane part.  Is he running in place?  It would've better just to intercut the music video stuff with more shots of Jay's running on the beach.

Edited July 28, 2019 by Khan

[John]

Wasnt Jay still on when Julianne began as Frannie. I remember him dating a girl named Spree. Frannie didnt like her at all and Kirk was blind

[vetsoapfan]

 

 

UGH. This was aired under the reign of clueless producer Mary Ellis Bunim, who arrogantly thought she could "modernize" the show and bring in a new youthful audience. She was in charge for three looooong years and mismanaged the show the way Chris Goutman would years later. In 1984, I think the writer was Tom King, another mediocre presence in daytime TV for many years, who was never successful at any series which he wrote. Fortunately, six months after this awful episode was produced, Ellis would be fired and replaced with the wonderful Robert Calhoun. Don Hasting later proclaimed to the press that Calhoun returned ATWT to its true self.

[BetterForgotten]

It seemed like P&G and CBS panicked when ATWT lost its dominance in the ratings by the late 70's/early 80's. On the surface,  they probably felt like the "old formula" wasn't working anymore and couldn't compete with ABC. I guess that was true to an extent, but MEB didn't really seem to go about it in the right way...

Edited July 28, 2019 by BetterForgotten

[Khan]

Frankly, I don't think there's anything wrong with updating a long-running series in order to attract a newer or younger audience.  In the '80's, however, soaps' attempts at modernization often came at the expense of older fans' continued loyalty.  Either TPTB took for granted that they'd continue watching, or they wanted them to go away and never return.

 

Plus, and maybe it's just me, but I think the shows tried too hard to capture the youths' attention; and if there's one thing that teenagers and young adults hate, it's a poseur.  That's how you end up with misguided efforts such as Jay Connors' MTV wet dream posted above.

 

What I'm saying is, there's a way to court 'em without rendering yourself unrecognizable.  Look at Y&R throughout most of the '80's.  Even with the significant cast turnover at the start of the decade and the push toward new and younger characters, Y&R still felt like Y&R.

Edited July 28, 2019 by Khan

[Paul Raven]

Totally agree.

The thing with older shows is that there needs to be forward planning so the next generation of younger characters is ready to step up.

SORASING seems to be the go to plan but the problem is that it catches up with the framework in the end.

characters like Tom Hughes and Dan Stewart were played out when the should have in reality just beginning to take center stage.

ATWT introduced the characters of Alice and Debbie as Don's stepchildren to bring youth to the core families - even they were aged before being forgotten forever.

If the many children and grandchildren had been aged less drastically by the 80's there would have been several ready to step up and provide young stories that tied into the core.

Edited July 29, 2019 by Paul Raven

[Mitch]

Oh my God...I thought I remembered every bad episode from that era ATWT but I do not remember this one!

 

Jay was hot and it was funny that he looked so natural and skinny. Now the "hunk" would have huge pecs and abs and be totally cut. It was kind of nice that Jay, Frannie and Kirk looked like cute normal young people.

[DramatistDreamer]

 

The shows also should have been forward planning so that the next generation of younger writers had the ability to step up. 

Famous painters and master builders had art school trained apprentices that actually finished many of their masterworks so that they could move onto other projects (a practice that is still in effect today).  Why didn't the EPs/HWs do likewise?  Have them work under observation to see if they can duplicate each soap's "style" (and each soap did indeed have a signature style of writing) and cull the cream of the top to be in their writing rooms.  (And before anybody mentions ABC, this is not what ABC's Daytime Program did).  

 

 

And they did not rush to the alter and have paternity switch stories like the "young" adults on soaps seemingly do every other day now. 

[Scrapple]

Did anyone see the recent news about Finn Carter (Sierra) being arrested on felony charges? Her mugshot was a shocker. I wish I had the technical abilities to post those type of things , but I don't. So sorry for Finn, who I LOVED during the Craig/Sierra days.

[John]

its in Soap Stars where are they now

[DramatistDreamer]

There was a thread about the use of popular music in soaps, and I wanted to put this post in there but I honestly cannot find that thread now.

Reading the WLS blog post about this, I decided to look up the original blog post by the songwriter Jimmy Dunne who wrote "Nobody Loves Me Like You Do" that became Steve and Betsy's signature song, which Whitney Houston and Jermaine Jackson would perform on the show. 

 

There's a great backstory to the song that Dunne (who also made an appearance on the show during that story arc) that gives background on the song and the show's effect on the song (and vice-versa) as well as what it meant to have Whitney sing the song.

Also, did he say that he and Marisa Tomei (Marcy Thompson) used to date??

 

http://jimmydunne.com/remembering-whitney