As The World Turns Discussion Thread

[Mitch]

True..she would have been worried about Lily's upcoming birthday! I wonder what Long could have done with Carly? I always wonder what Long could have done if she took over after Marland.

 

[DramatistDreamer]

The irony is that Carly and Lily ended up being incredibly poorly written in the last year's of the show's run. Lily was written as an incredible bore as well. 

[lilyredd]

Lily Snyder is a character I had the same thought from the first scene I saw her as I did her last scene: she is awful.  
 

I know writers can have preferred characters or favorites but they fall into a trap thinking that every character worshiping at the alter of their favorite will make that character shine brighter. Marland really overplayed it with Lily. Every woman of a certain age wanted to be her mother, all the guys wanted to date her (especially if their last name was Snyder when they should have recognized you don’t sleep with your niece- adopted or not), everyone liked her. Too many far more interesting characters were mired in the muck supporting her stories. The show would have been served with her exit for longer than a few months at the change of actresses. When she married Holden the first time, I wanted the show to ship them to Kansas to run that other Snyder farm. 
 

Frankly, even knowing how toxic Lucinda was with her kids, Lily was a crap daughter. Passive-aggressive and constantly whining about every little thing her mother did or did not do at every turn. It was not entertaining. Every time Lily disowned her, I wanted Lucinda to celebrate. 

[FrenchBug82]

Ironically, that ugly side of her personality was the side of her personality I found most interesting. Because it was real - off-putting yes but it was an actual personality trait and invited believable drama.

As you said, most everything else Lily was written was either bland or very very heavy on the character-propping. 
I fully understand the attachment to MB and had no problems with Lily being on the canvas but I completely agree with your assessment that she was overrated on the show itself and that the show would have done itself major favours by accepting her awfulness and playing into it.

Something of it peeked out during Luke's coming out story actually. A lot of fans said it sounded out of character - and I seem to recall MB being unhappy about Lily's reaction too - but it is one of the rare moments that felt true to how I saw Lily (and how you describe her) rather than how they had tried to sell her to us.

Edited June 2, 2021 by FrenchBug82

[lilyredd]

I loved characters like Lucinda -rich, complicated, weird, over the top, intense and bad. Like Dorian and Alexandra and Iris and Alexis. Just delicious and fun. Too often their stories, however, were just Lady Capulet retreads when stories involved their bland children. 
 

There are enumerable examples of Lily being awful in a quiet manner. The one that stands out is her telling Lucinda she wished she had grown up poor. The audacity of such ignorance with no blow back and the unwillingness of the show to call her out on that crap! My dad lost his hearing as a kid because he couldn’t get proper medical care and cannot afford new hearing aids right now because my mom needed dental surgery. It was such a gross statement.  Strangely, the show could have granted her that wish later. She dumped all the stock Lucinda gave her and got rid of her trust fund during the disaffirming her illegal adoption (another nonsense move- it was illegal nothing to disaffirm.)  While she would never truly know poverty, I would have enjoyed seeing her not be secure in her finances and for her mother to stop gifting stock to someone who did not appreciate it.

 

[Mitch]

They had Phillip Spaulding act the same way..however, Long and GL took the trouble to show that it was just a romantic fantasy (living as a poor writer) and not a reality that Phillip could have lived with for long, and he actually would get blow back from Alan...especially when he too wanted to revoke his adoption.  Marland seemed to romanticize his rural background...not only that, I grew up in Oakdale land (central Illinois) and most of the farmers I knew were not living hand to mouth or even in gentile poverty like the Snyders supposedly did. ..(though they seemed to time warp from the 1930s..) I agree..lets see Lily live poor for a year or two..like real poor, not working in a diner and not having any expenses poor.

 

it would be interesting to see why Marland was so fixated on Lily/Martha.  I can see why Kreizman fixated on Jonathon (he wanted to be him) or Harley (he wanted to sleep with her) but a late middle aged gay man's fixation on a teenage character (who wanst that much fun to begin with) was weird.

[titan1978]

As someone that came to the show after Marland, while I like Martha and think Lily had a place on the show, I just don’t get how central she was.  She can be so insufferable, and often not held accountable for it or even other characters discuss her behaviors but they end up on her side.  And every man still wanted her.  It’s confounding.

 

And I usually like the normal characters just as much as the over the top ones.  Give me a Maureen Bauer any day.  Or someone like Laura on GH who straddles both lines.  From what I have read about young Lily and Marland’s writing for Laura on GH, they have very similar characterizations.  The only difference for me as a viewer is Genie, especially when she was younger, could and did play both the vulnerability and the volatility of Laura.  She could be awful and full of heart, sometimes at the same time.  Her life was more traumatic than Lily’s, but still similar themes.

Edited June 2, 2021 by titan1978

[DramatistDreamer]

Unfortunately, it seems like the fans, the Emmys were often too fixated on emotive OTT characterizations. Characters who had split and multiple personalities. The understated and the subtle never got the accolades.  Byrne winning an Emmy probably meant more pressure from the execs to dig in even more with Lily. Kathryn Hays, despite being consistently excellent was consistently overlooked for her nuanced performances. In what direction do you think P&G would nudge characters to be written in? Also let's not pretend that there wasn't a fandom for Lily and Holden. Their fans were likely sending piles of letters to the studio wanting more of them. Do you actually believe that wouldn't influence P&G? Do you actually believe P&G left Maryland completely to his own devices? That's not how it works. That's not how any of it works.

Edited June 2, 2021 by DramatistDreamer

[Bill Bauer]

 

I remember a great line from Lucinda, "Lily has always been enamoured with poverty from afar". 

[Forever8]

More Promos from the late 90's from Bold Restless 

 

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[DramatistDreamer]

A couple weeks ago, I was watching an episode with Andrew Kavovit and Ashley Crow and there was a scene where Barbara encouraged Paul to talk to Beatrice McKechnie to cheer her up since she knows how much Beatrice likes him and I could not help thinking what a relief they never brought Beatrice back in the show's final decade because surely some dimwit would have Paul sleeping with Beatrice.

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A reminder of how off the rails the show had gone.

 

Edited June 2, 2021 by DramatistDreamer

[DRW50]

 

Much as Lucinda loved Lily, and much as Liz Hubbard was close to Martha and that worked onscreen, I appreciated how Liz played up some form of awareness in Lucinda over how utterly ridiculous Lily was. 

 

(I'm guessing that line was a Liz ad-lib)

[P.J.]

 

Fixated...or just simply the actress he wrote for the longest? Every show in the '80's had that teen ingenue---the one no boy could resist, who's parentage was a fucked up tangle, and seemed to eat the show. YR's Cricket, GL's Beth, DAYS Hope/Jennifer, and before Lily, on ATWT it was Betsy. And as Titan said, you can draw a straight line from GH's Laura, to GL's Morgan, to ATWT's Lily. Although Marland certainly didn't create the sweet ingenue trope, he certainly fine-tuned it.

 

Not to say the focus wasn't suffocating, and certainly would've benefitted from a lot of come to Jesus moments (I don't think Iva ever even criticized her daughter), Marland certainly was writing for his audience.

 

Philip could and did cross the line between right and wrong regularly. Maybe because he was a man, it was more acceptable to the audience. 

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[DramatistDreamer]

 

Really astute assertion.

 

The movies did it too, during that time. A lot.

I am never sure who was following whom, but clearly there was a huge market for it in the 1980s.

 

You can also look at most 80s movies and see that same standard for the teen ingenue play out similarly. Even when you had the supposed outcast, a la Sixteen Candles, the viewer was always supposed to look at Molly Ringwald's character as if she were the ideal and everyone in the movie who disparaged her was just out of their minds. According to Hughes's POV (and the viewer, by proxy), Andy was the ideal and everyone else was just too stupid to regard her as such. Molly Ringwald and Jennifer Connelly personified the teen ingenue of the 80s.

 

I also agree with your assertion of Phillip and I definitely believe that scrutiny of a girl/woman character was/is far more intense than the men.  The list is long if things a male character can do/get away with that a woman character couldn't. This is probably the reason why so many women in soaps are reluctant to take on characterizations where they come out looking like the 'heavy' or the villain.