Almost everything in these clips is too high-intensity and too atmospheric, to the point of being forced (ugh Ty Treadway). The scenes with Rae and with Haver work because they're slowed down, so you can see the horror.

I think Malone needed someone to rein in his temptation to just go for style and artifice. I guess that was Griffith in the first few years of their OLTL run.

I know you aren't a big fan of Linda Dano, but I do think she was very effective at the old school melodrama and histrionics. I don't think JFP or Tomlin ever understood this about her.

Seeing this is frustrating because you have so much raw potential here which Frons didn't give a [!@#$%^&*] about.

Edited December 22, 201312 yr by DRW50

Oh, I thought the work she did in those last scenes with Haver - she was his prisoner for like a straight week of shows, maybe a week and a half before these scenes, and he used to just talk to her over the intercom in a rubber room - was her best on OLTL. I agree Linda Dano is a soap legend, but she wasn't on my show. She's always seemed like a very nice lady IRL. I couldn't stand her on the show, but I thought she got an incredible exit here which they unfortunately undid shortly afterwards. The unbelievable tone-deafness they displayed, hyping 'a previous victim found alive' in the soap press - when it was widely known everyone hated Rae and adored Gabrielle - still amazes me. The brief scene of her (dead) body being very clearly surrounded by gasoline and set ablaze, which was incredibly gritty for soaps, is in the following clip not posted here. They made up some nonsense about how the cops burst in right after Haver left and saved her from the flames. Okay.

And yeah, so much of the show was extremely atmospheric at this time, and often very forced. Right after this, IMO, is when the Haver storyline totally tipped into over-the-top madness with the same poetic bent that couldn't sustain it, which was frankly the norm for Malone II. It's all in that series of clips this lovely person put up - I'm rewatching a lot of this for the first time since I was in college.

The Troy angle was well-done at first - when they had Gabrielle meeting up with him at a dive bar right outside town in the fall of 2003, after losing Al. They had some good scenes together. But he was being let out as a red herring, to trick the LPD into believing the case was all about Nora and Troy.

They dig even deeper than I'd remembered into Haver's psychosis - later, around clip 51, they bring in his mom who goes into pretty rough detail about his childhood. None of this would be out of place on any primetime police procedural made since 2004, but back then, and on a soap opera no less, it was really something. John was also a richer character at this time, but he fell apart after this ended. And he really does look gross. His relatives, Undead Michael, Shannon and the first, terrifying Scary Death Lady Eve McBain, are already incredibly annoying. They tried testing Scary Eve with Bo, too, which annoyed fans to no end.

I know you've talked about this before, but was it Malone or Higley who wrote the Killing Club story?

Was anyone important beyond Gabrielle killed off in the Music Box story?

The way I understand it, Malone wrote the tie-in book in 2004, in which it was a simple subplot where Marcie wrote a book called The Killing Club with an offscreen "Professor Malone's" help (I know). She became a published author, much fanfare, etc. and then they ran ads telling people to go out and buy the real book. The actual RL book, the one Marcie supposedly wrote in-story and Malone wrote IRL, is entirely disconnected and, to my knowledge, untied to OLTL or any of its characters. I never read it.

I can remember Jen and Flash/Sarah being attacked by Haver - that was how Sarah lost her singing voice for good, and she left town with Cord while still unable to speak - and a couple dayplayers were killed, including Kevin's private investigator Elyssa Collins, who had learned Walker Laurence was "Todd" (Victor) and one of Jen's stripper friends. Beyond that, no one I can recall, other than Gabrielle. But it's been a long time. The ingenious element of the MBK was that he kept switching identities as he moved around the country over many years - in Jersey or Atlantic City he had been "the White Rose Killer," in other parts of the States he was "the Green River Killer" or something. He kept swapping IDs and M.O.s out as he moved around the country to evade the FBI, a bit like the Zodiac. John had known him as the "White Rose Killer," who had of course killed his fianceé. I thought showing us that he videotaped it was kind of a ridiculous touch. That YT user appears to have almost all of the story, so you might well go back and look.

After Malone left, Higley launched the "Killing Club murders" story, in which Marcie revealed she'd had a 'real' "Killing Club" in HS with her outcast friends and someone was murdering people based on her book and, IIRC, her past. The culprit turned out to be fellow outcast and classmate Ivan Potter, who had taken on the identity of literary agent Hayes Barber. I don't know if ABCD had intended for there to be a "Killing Club" storyline like that one while Malone was still there, but either way, the one that turned up onscreen in 2005 was all Higley (and absolutely terrible).

Edited December 22, 201312 yr by Vee

Wow. I remembered Matt Ashford howling "WHOOOORRREEEE!" but I'd forgotten how bugfuck nuts and hilarious the climax was here, with Rae finally going full-tilt into her sex pest mode to roleplay as Mrs. Haver again. Ashford is very good, actually, until that moment (and so is Linda Dano in her own histrionic way), but the whole thing is sheer opera. This is why this era, which believed itself to be so literate and atmospheric, was always on the verge of utter camp hysteria.

Edited December 22, 201312 yr by Vee

And now for something completely different from this strange era, one of the first scenes for either Bruce Michael Hall's Joey or Bree Williamson's Jessica, at the very beginning of Malone and Griffith's return in February 2003. Joey cooks for Jessica and Viki, as his culinary skills had always been highlighted in the mid-'90s. I remember liking this a lot. But I loved everything about BMH's intro, with the handsome, mystery man wandering about town in a leather jacket, talking to people in the storm, helping Flash, and then undoing his collar to reveal he was a) a priest and Joey Buchanan. It was more of a proactive approach to the character than anyone had had in forever, and as I said before, it was also the last time anyone ever did. This was before he met Jen Rappaport, which is when it all went sour. We also didn't know just how ridiculous Malone II was about to get at this point - within days, Victor Sr. was back on our screens. Looking at this scene now, it's a little too simplistic, earnest and a tad drippy but its heart is in the right place. Joey has a lot of happy talk here but they said a lot more with less about Kevin and Joey when Dan Gauthier arrived in the summer and took over the role, and would sort of subtly command the relationship. It wasn't something that was actually confronted in-depth until after Joey was gone, when Jen and a very drunk Kevin shot the [!@#$%^&*] about Joey at Ultra Violet the following year and Kevin told her she had simply been a replacement for Kelly after he had taken her from Joey.

We didn't get scenes like this again, really, until RC took over. And after a short while he forgot to do them, too. He did a couple near the end, with Todd, Viki, etc. hanging around the Llanfair kitchen like this, and that's still a set I miss most of all. I didn't get to see people just talking again until the PP reboot.

Edited December 22, 201312 yr by Vee

Thanks for sharing that clip. I liked BMH and with proper writing his sweet earnestness (which the show lacked) would have been put to good use. Joey had been a non-character for a very long time at that point, and the family needed his heart to stop from descending into the malaise that hit them for the rest of the show. Too bad male characters with heart or sincerity are no-go in modern daytime.

Rachel and Sheila in 1992, about color and identity. "I never know whether to say white or black." Wait and see just what - and who - comes up.

Valarie Pettiford was still there when I started watching, but not for long. The Sheila I mostly remember was the uber-bland Stephanie Williams, who they weren't at all invested in and disposed of fast - looking back over the years since and seeing more of Pettiford, it's obvious how electric and wonderful she was. I often wished they would say Hank and Sheila reunited offscreen, and I always held out a tiny ember of hope that if Nathan Purdee were ever to return again - as he did for that pointless cameo in 2009 - they could bring her with him for a day or two. Of course, that's the kind of wish and dream reserved for an environment like this past year, where you can refocus a soap around people like Julia Barr and Michael Nader - not ABC.

Based on this and other things I've heard it's clear they toned down Hank "The Cannon" considerably. I've often seen a lot of old press from the time about the heat with him and Alex early on, or the triangle with Sheila between his type of (as per the magazine quote) "unreconstructed black male" vs. establishment man Troy Nichols. I haven't seen much of that Hank on YT.

Daphnee Duplaix was the only Rachel who had the same integrity and intelligence as Ellen Bethea's. I really did want them to reunite her and Kevin on the new show and let them be tentpoles - the new Buchanans.

Edited December 25, 201312 yr by Vee

From the little that's available of that time, I don't think Hank was ever "edgy," in the way they made him out to be. There was little involvement with Alex (they actually had more with Alex and Herb), and the Troy triangle barely seemed to be oncamera.

I do think he was a fantastic contrast to Nora, and he and Ellen Bethea had great father/daughter chemistry, especially during the rape trial. And while I never felt a big connection with Purdee and Valerie Pettiford, the relationship at least had potential.

Pettiford always seemed to make Sheila more than what she was on paper. I think her best work was during the rape storyline.

Thank you so much for posting the converstation between Rachal and Sheila.

I had heard about it, but I never had seen it. I understand that the show invited Ellen Holly to appear on that episode, but that she had declined to do so.

There is one other episode which I wish I could see and never have. In this, Sheila (being played by Vallerie Pettiford) was adititioning for a musical play. She and John Lopreio (Cordero) sing a song together.

I liked Valerie Pettiford as Sheila, but my favorite was Stephanie B. Williams. Definately because she was prettier than Ms. Pettiford.

R. J. was blackmailing Sheila at one time. I wonder if the show considered killing off R. J. and placing Sheila under arrest? Surely it did.

To me, the perfect was to have brought back Sheila was to have her return with a baby four or five years after she moved to London. This child would be Hank's, although she would deny it. Hank and Shelia could have conceived the child before she announced that she wanted a divorce and that she was moving to London to be with her brother Ben.

I thought that the exit of Troy was terrible. He was written off with such little fanfare.

I think originally RJ was supposed to be murdered, but they realized his potential.

Here's the scene you mentioned.

IIRC, Michael Malone has said his original plan was for Rachel to shoot R.J. and for there to be a whodunit over his murder.

I don't know how Troy ended up written out, I've always been curious about that triangle.

For that matter, there's still a lot of fog of war among some of us who are relative latecomers (unlike danfling) as to how and when, say, characters like Brenda McGillis or Dan Wolek or Rafe Garretson were written out and by who. I know a couple of us were taken aback when Brenda Brock was quoted in Jeff Giles's new book as saying that Linda Gottlieb signed her for another year in the summer of '91 and she waited that year out, doing little or nothing. We all thought she was gone by then. Any data you have for us is always appreciated, Dan.

I personally am also curious as to some of the story progression at that time, how they moved with the new characters - Wikipedia claims Blair debuted in late October of 1991 and then very quickly made moves on Cord - she's already friendly with Cord by Halloween - and subsequently watched him "die" in Jaba with Jake either in November or December. It also claims Andrew came on in October, but I don't know when. From what I've seen of '91, Andrew seems to have gotten very tight with Megan and company very fast by the end of October. And when did Alex and Carlo first hook up?

There's more about the messy quadrangle with Kevin, Stephanie, Jason, Lee Ann, etc. in that period but I've already asked about way too much. I was under the impression Kevin/Stephanie was a Rauch pairing that Gottlieb and co. undid.

Edited December 28, 201312 yr by Vee

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