As The World Turns Discussion Thread

[Soapsuds]

 

 

 

[VanessaReardon]

Those episodes have been around forever. 

[Soapsuds]

Here's James calling her a whore and attacking her after finding out ahout Emily and Paul.

 

[DramatistDreamer]

 

Well, that bedroom sequence was actually really brutal. Greta's slap was quick and easy to dismiss, James brutalizing Emily was not.

[DRW50]

Thanks to @YRfan23 for finding this and having the right date. From about 1 hour and 29 minutes on you have a partial episode from May 25, 1992. Mostly focused on the fallout of Scott being revealed as Lisa's son. My favorite scene in it is probably the brief scene where Andy tries to joke about Frannie living in luxury, only for her to become defensive - one of the few times that Frannie feels a bit more human and less like a plot device. 

 

@DramatistDreamer there is also a jazzy version of the theme in the Margo/Lisa airplane scene. I'm not sure I've heard it before (probably have and just forgot). I think you noticed a different version of the theme in a 1986 episode too.

 

 

[DramatistDreamer]

@DRW50^^That theme sounds like it could be the same saxy variation on the ATWT used years ago, in the 80s, except in this scene the music is fainter, as if an echo, I guess the situations are completely different, so they tweaked the versions to suit the mood.

Was Joseph Breen cast because they wanted a Gregg Marx clone?  I just noticed the resemblance, particularly in hair and styling.

[Mitch]

 

Comparing ATWT to GL at this time..the show was so damn stuffy.  I love Bob and Tom having drinks in their suit and ties like it was 1972, (Holmes makes Tom such a prig in this) and while I love them finally deal with the fact that Lisa used to be a bitch on wheels...Tom as a kid kind of knew it as she left him to be raised by Nancy and Chris for a while. Lyla has a lot of nerve with her attitude after her own lying for years about parentage (usually Marland was better with  history) and isnt Oakdale in driving distance to Chicago?? A big plane flys from Chicago to Central Illinois.

[Soaplovers]

 

Of the P & G soaps, GL seemed the most energetic and less stuffy of their soaps in the 80s and early 90s.  

[Mitch]

True, which made it unfortunately easy to go off the rails, but I do remember around this time I just got fed up with Marland's ATWT while GL was going great guns.  He was so good at plot and structure, and usually history, I just wish he had someone to give the show energy and fun. Oakdale is a damn earnestly boring place there.

 

[DRW50]

 

I think it was missing a young dynamic female character, similar to Meg or Melanie Smith's Emily. Around this time, other than Tess (who was not a main character and wasn't around that long), you had a lot of dull and cloying younger women. 

[Forever8]

Who would you have thrown into be that dynamic young woman?

[DRW50]

 

I would have recast Emily earlier and found a better actress than KMH. I also would have cast another actress as Sabrina and emphasized a harder edge to the character during the Tonio storyline. The storyline shouldn't have been as much about the quiet and solemn daughter being lured from her family by a creep living out his hero-of-Montega years, it should have been about a broken woman who had never really felt loved or accepted questioning her life and becoming more aggressive in her actions, even if it put her in conflict with Bob and Kim. I think they also should have expanded one of the younger women we saw floating around Oakdale in this period - Kira, maybe, or different handling of the nice-but-forgettable roles like the Native American girl who boarded with Lyla.

[Soapsuds]

Even though ATWT was my show I thought GL was a better show in the late 70s and early 80s. GL became real fluff in 1986 and IMO never regained that edge/spark it once had. ATWT became the better soap and was reflected in the ratings. I really can't point a finger as to why GL veered off. I could've been that a quite few of characters were fluff. 

[victoria foxton]

I think GL did recover. 1989-93 the show was on fire. GL veered off when they gutted the cast. A lot of the new characters were duds.

[DramatistDreamer]

If GL had the more dynamic stories during that time, ATWT certainly had the more dynamic young cast because their actors were ALWAYS leaving! It's certainly good for the actors but bad for the show.  Imagine having to write around that level of instability. Regardless of what people think about Meg Ryan nowadays, she was probably not easy to replace. Imagine having to replace Julianne Moore!  Gregg Marx was part of a supercouple when he left. And TPTB were likely relieved when HBS and Marx clicked, having replaced another highly popular couple in Margaret Colin and Justin Deas.