As The World Turns Discussion Thread

[Khan]

 

YES.  Especially the last part.  I STILL remember Marlena De La Croix comparing MW/Carly back then to a young Carroll Baker and agreeing with her 1000%.  MW/Carly was truly one-of-a-kind, and the fact that ATWT handled both actress and character so badly in its' last decade, never giving her material that rose above generic, is one good reason why AS THE WORLD TURNS turns no more.

[DramatistDreamer]

Whereas Liz Hubbard and Colleen Zenk seem to look back at their characters' periods as vixens/vamps with ambivalence, Melanie seems to embrace her character's unabashed sexuality, which I appreciate. When men play 'bad boys', I never remember any mentioning  regret or hesitation at taking on the role, why do so many women seem to do this? Perhaps it's a generational thing?

[Khan]

AFAIC, Liz Hubbard can go fly a damn kite.  Douglas Marland gave her the best material of her entire soap career -- stories and scenes that were miles ahead of the putrid mess the Pollocks typically handed her on THE DOCTORS -- and she has the nerve to trash.  Woman, please.

Edited January 1, 2021 by Khan

[DramatistDreamer]

Perhaps not. I mean, Eileen Fulton seemed to embrace her early 'bad gal' status. She was a pioneer!

[Khan]

 

Exactly.  Actresses like EF know that those kinds of characters are what get viewers talking, pure and simple.

 

Honestly, though, I take Colleen Zenk's ambivalence with a HUGE grain of salt.  After all, this is the same CZ who still thinks her on-screen pairing with Trent Dawson's fey Henry was money.  Need I say more?

[DramatistDreamer]

 

Perhaps Liz really wanted to be regarded as a heroine of some sort but the show was already chock full of those, Lucinda would've been lost in the crowd, lol. Also, there was no way that Lucinda would've been able to wrest the title from one Kimberly Sullivan, lol. Hays was fantastic at her portrayal of a heroine of a certain age by the time Lucinda came along. Lucinda had some of the spiciest dialogue and scenes in the show's history. It escapes me ad to why she fails to see it that way. Eric Braeden doesn't waste time saying "Well, they made Victor look very mean when they had him feed that guy rats".

 

In her defense, Barbara had been a heroine of sorts prior (so maybe that was what she was comfortable with?) but, by the looks of the character trajectory, the heroine characterization had sort of run her course after Gunnar departed.

Hillary Bailey Smith agrees with me that the transformation of Barbara to a vixen was one of the best transformations of a character on a soap. It strikes me as unfortunate if she doesn't want to embrace such a memorable part of the show and character.

Edited January 1, 2021 by DramatistDreamer

[DRW50]

 

I think part of it may be the longer you are in a part, the more you take the character into yourself and struggle with the different paths they take. For instance, Colleen complained at the time of the Gavin storyline because she felt her character was written as being too naive. 

 

In Liz's case, I've often wondered if she was still informed by her years as Althea and that's what she missed playing. That and the cycle of Lucinda always being punished for her wicked ways and then going on a loop for it to happen all over again. The problem was that Lucinda being healed, or whole, as Liz may have wanted, wouldn't have made very good soap. But I can understand why she may not have enjoyed playing that on a loop for 7 years. I will say that her unhappiness never shows onscreen.

[Khan]

 

Plus, that's just not where Elizabeth Hubbard's strengths as an actress lie.  It's one reason why I ultimately found watching TD reruns from the Pollocks' era on RetroTV to be such a chore.  Not only was the Althea/Nick/John/Cathy storyline so idiotic on its' face, predicated entirely on the ridiculous premise that a competent, professional woman like Althea was too stupid to see that her new husband was a total psycho, and too stupid to leave him the minute she found out, but anyone watching even for a few minutes could tell almost immediately that EH was too smart and too sophisticated to play such material convincingly.  I mean, you look at EH's disposition and whatnot and you just KNOW "long-suffering heroine" is not in her acting wheelhouse.  That's not what's gonna show her off at her best, or make people tune in and watch.  (Same goes, by the way, for my beloved Jane Elliot.  Give HER a story like the Kim/Dan/John triangle and even she wouldn't have been able to keep a straight face through it.)

 

And Penny!  My God!  Penny [!@#$%^&*] Davis!  Even Lucinda, who often thought the moon and stars hung on Lily's happiness, would have slapped the [!@#$%^&*] out of Althea for putting up with that thot of a daughter!

 

 

I could see missing the initial romance between Nick and Althea, but the John Morrison b.s.?  If that's the kind of stuff EH missed playing, then maybe she should've hightailed it over to AMC at some point and made her services available as an Anne Tyler Martin recast.  At the very least, they might not have killed off the character in that car bombing.

Edited January 1, 2021 by Khan

[DramatistDreamer]

 

That's fair, it's probably not the easiest task to keep the writing fresh material for a character that had so much screen time for at least half a dozen consecutive years. Liz did get a really juicy, meaty role that many actresses half her age will never get.

If anyone has a true reason to genuinely complain about a character trajectory, it is Eileen, whose character would get crumbs toward the end.

Edited January 1, 2021 by DramatistDreamer

[Khan]

 

If anything, he'll say, "Well, if he hadn't been busy trying to steal my wife....".  For Christ's sake, you're not an actor so you can play Leslie Howard in "Gone with the Wind" for the rest of your life.  You want your audience to sit up and pay attention just by entering the room.  Otherwise, you're in the wrong, damn profession.

[DramatistDreamer]

For as much as I like Susan Flannery and appreciate the class she brought to early B&B, the show positioned "Stephanie" as a cold, calculating, somewhat asexual woman "of a certain age, which could've been Lucinda's fate, under someone else's pen. That was usually what women in that age group had to work with on soaps.

Edited January 1, 2021 by DramatistDreamer

[Khan]

 

And Eileen, like Liz, had a character who practically wrote herself, if the writers and producers had ever bothered.

 

[titan1978]

It is strange how much she disliked Marland’s writing for Lucinda.  She had it made for a soap star of her age- love affairs, kids to manipulate and fret over, a career storyline and stuff that was just about her.  And none of it seems like they are trying to keep her young and in stories that are not appropriate.  Look at poor Marlena on DAYS- they had such trouble moving her from romantic heroine and show lead to mature woman.  They literally didn’t know what to do with her several times in the 2000’s.

 

As far as Colleen Zenk- maybe what she hated was being on the losing side of the the stories as vixen Barbara.  The rooting value was for HBS’s Margo to reunite with Tom.  Barbara had been chased by all the men up to that point, now she’s chasing.  Maybe it was more of a vanity thing than she cares to admit.  She also loved being bad during Hogan’s time as HW.

[Khan]

 

To a certain extent, they're STILL having trouble.  It's not 1984 anymore.  Marlena is too damn old to keep being abducted by supervillains, or keep fighting aging ho's like Kristen and "Gina" for John's, um, affections.  Especially when the woman -- a psychiatrist, by the way, who should have more sense than she does -- has children, grandchildren and maybe even GREAT-grandchildren who could be positioned into those kinds of stories.  Again, is that the kind of [!@#$%^&*] EH wanted?  Because, I guarantee you, if ATWT had ever subjected us to Lucinda being put through that sort of wringer, no way would we have kept watching.

 

 

Well, there's being bad, and then there's being [!@#$%^&*] crazy.  You might be able to sustain a character on the former, but the latter gets old REAL fast.

[DramatistDreamer]

 

Just the other day, I was reading a post complaining that Melody Thomas Scott was practically being shunted off to the background on Y&R these days-- I think MTS would probably appreciate a role that gave her something legit to do, something that showed more than one superficial side to her character. Something that showed some type of complexity or depth. Lucinda never wanted for complexity. Also, would Hubbard rather have the type of writing that Sharon Case had to endure a few years ago?