Up to July 24th, 1992.

🔷

"Homophobia is alive and well... in Llanview..."

Bear with me. I have so much to unpack.

🔷

So what is going on right now?

Let me say one thing first. I'm having some minor issues with the show at this moment. Don't get me wrong, I'm not that bothered, but I can't just say the positives only. Most of the storylines work, while some characters are seemingly lost.

🔷

WHAT WORKS 

1. Andrew vs the town's hate mob.

It shocks me how current and real this story sounds even today. The lie turned rumor has now turned into a public humiliation spectacle. A mob trying to destroy an innocent man. He is giving Christ-like undertones at times. Even after Billy FINALLY denied the rumor, the aggression and the homophobia are just getting started. From receiving disgusting messages that have words I can't even write down... to demonic Marty writing down threats to Cassie and sending them anonymously. The whole town has gone crazy. At least one positive thing happened - Billy's mother, who I feel is slowly realizing what he son may be... voted to keep Andrew.

2. Leanne vs Kevin... 

 It's not some groundbreaking stuff, of course, but it works. Kevin, with the help of Asa...  is preparing a smear campaign to humiliate Leanne with her past, get a divorce under the cause of "adultery" and ultimately persuade the judge to give him full custody of Duke. Oh, I almost forgot - Duke IS Kevin's child. The test proved it, as I expected. Now the divorce proceedings have begun and all the dirt is coming to the surface. Some of it real, some of it - completely fabricated by Asa and Kevin. Victoria was  once again the voice of reason - she tried to talk Kevin out of taking Leanne's child away from her. I get her point of view. But I also sympathize with Kevin... Leanne tricked him... lied to him and she deserves to get what's coming.

3. Sloan and Victoria...  

 Sloan finally confided in Victoria about his terminal condition... and she encouraged him to seek a second opinion. I'll repeat myself - these two's have insane chemistry. I don't know what the future holds, but this is one of the storylines I'm most interested it. It would be so unexpected if Victoria ends up violating her marriage vows to her husband. She has been such a saint so far... this will completely shatter that picture-perfect image and prove that she is human after all. I love it.

4. Blair vs Asa...

Blair's struggle to live with Asa and somehow NOT have sex with him is driving her wild. The old goat is trying every single moment he is alone with her... And hearing how Blair has not been feeling well the past few days... I'm wondering - IS SHE PREGNANT?!!! Is she actually pregnant with Max's child?!! This will be a repeat of Leanne's storyline... which they corrected with the child being Kevin's... but still... it will be interesting. And sort of karmic - Asa stole Max's father's fortune... now maybe Max's son can steal Asa's fortune in the future. We'll see. 

🔷

WHAT DOESN'T WORK

1. The Cleopatra idiocy...

Alex and Carlo's double... are vomit-inducing. Yikes. They are so cartoonish, so over the top, so not fitting to a show of this caliber when it comes to the writing. All of it is happening in the most unrealistic way possible, Alex is so fake when she talks with Mortimer about the museum security details. It's so obvious she plans to steal the jewels. I find myself thinking - why the hell am I watching this when the show has so much good stuff going on at the same time? 

2. Who is Luna Moody?

I'm going to say it. Luna is not an organic character. She was forced on us and continues to be. I mean...  how absurd... that some eccentric woman just happens to parachute in the show one day and is then... instantly installed in the character list without any reason for her to be there. First she was Tina's crutch when they were writing Tina rebelling against Cord, then she was Max's helper-sidekick... now what is she? A famous radio host? Just like that? Because that's a soap opera and these things just happen, right? OK, I appreciate they've toned down the idiotic comedy moments and now she is more tolerable... but again...  I can't bond with someone who is not an organic character. They are lucky I don't fast-forward her scenes.

3. Tina and Cain need to be written off. ASAP.

Please do us a favor and get rid of them. They are like Scooby Doo characters. Not funny at all. Again, why do we need them in this overcrowded show... when they don't do anything that meaningful. Now their current fiasco is to steal the jewels and frame Alex for it... but all of it is done so foolishly. I think they (the writers) want to have a lighter comedic side to the show... to contrast the INCREDIBLY dark Andrew-Billy storyline... but it just doesn't mix well. You go from a father dying (Sloan) and a man being accused of being a child molester... to cartoons laughing around dressed like thieves and Alex doing her Cruella Devil act. I get a whiplash from the contrast. 

The show needs to cut the bad parts and keep the good. Still I'm loving it so much, that I can't stop watching.  

P.S We had the surprise visit from Reba McEntire who looks like she is related to Luna (she is her friend from the past). She sang a beautiful song dedicated to Asa from Renee... and it was just wonderful. 

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 

Clip of the day

Queen Victoria fights for justice against mob mentality and homophobia. One of the best scenes of the show so far.

 

 

Edited August 26Aug 26 by Maxim

Thank you @TheyStartedOnSoaps . I believe Kirsten had temped for Andrea Evans so that likely informed their decision. Given how short her stint at OLTL was they probably made the right choice not to have her as Tina. I wonder if that is actually the reason they didn't have her as Tina.

@Maxim Thanks as always. A very powerful clip. It's upsetting how absolutely nothing has changed since that time - other than maybe getting worse.

Reba was a big ABC Daytime fan, which is why she ended up hosting A Daytime to Remember in 1997.

You aren't wrong about Luna. That character was a mess in many ways, and that won't be changing. I do give Susan Batten a great deal of credit for her work.

7 minutes ago, DRW50 said:

Reba was a big ABC Daytime fan, which is why she ended up hosting A Daytime to Remember in 1997.

She had a funny line in the 30th anniversary coffee table book, about how she'd love to come back and play Dorian's long-lost sister, the one who's not crazy.

Luna was a success for me, I'm finding now surprisingly even from the beginning. There were definite peaks, valleys and cringeworthy stuff over the years, and she was never not an acquired taste that was always divisive among the audience - people either absolutely loved or hated her even back in the '90s in fandom - but I think she worked more often than not for me. That may change when I get deeper into '92 and am subjected to the whole ghost saga or her battle with Death (Mary Kay Adams!), but it's what I've seen not only in my childhood memory but in revisiting '93-'94 recently, and finally in going back to '91 when she first came on. She just clicks.

About half of October '91 is mislabeled in various places online, so it's been a process figuring out where goes where when and playing amateur continuity expert day to day. I will be getting back to discussing it shortly, probably when I get out of the whole disorganized month. It's good stuff though, even if the Ebert domestic abuse story getting bigger becomes a bit much.

Edited August 27Aug 27 by Vee

"I'm not a drunk! I'm the birthday boy!" - Asa Buchanan, stabbing his birthday balloons with an antique sword

October '91 remains tumultuous, partly due to certain episodes being mislabeled/dated and half of the month being labeled out of order. I've had to do a bit of an archaeology job to figure out what actually goes where when - from what I can tell, James DePaiva's actual first return date as Max is 10/25 but I can't be 100% certain. Phil Carey has absolutely eaten this material with drunk crashout Asa alive, both he and Pat Elliott have been stellar. I know this and the mysterious key Du Ann left Lee Ann is all setup for the new creative team's latest retcon to Max, Asa and the Holden family's pasts (and I am pretty sure I know how Cain is looped in too which makes it all the weirder), but it works.

It is neat to see an actual Daughters of Llanview meeting where the members (Viki, Dorian, Renee, Megan, Tina, Cassie and a few hoity-toity socialites, no sign of Babs Bartlett) welcome Sheila to the fold. I thought that whole racism subplot had just ended with no clear resolution. There's quite a bit of ritual surrounding initiating her - candles and having Sheila 'share her light with her sisters'. Well, okay! The fallout from Sheila's exposing mistreatment of female patients at the hospital is also still playing after a couple weeks off for bigger story; Sheila is still getting heat from the staff, and Larry is also growing outraged by people's treatment of her and Wanda.

It feels like it's been going longer but it can only have been a little over a month since Heinrich/Hudson/Cain first cozied up to Megan, and the romantic spoiler angle for her and Jake was played pretty heavy for a couple weeks, with a surprisingly more intense and intimate rapport than "Hudson's" with Tina in the summer - Megan and "Heinrich" make out more than once, and the lonely Megan fantasizes about dancing with both Heinrich and Jake (while Joe Lando's brief appearances have the real Jake fending off the sultry advances of dominatrix Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS in Jaba). Again I wonder if they were still hedging their bets in case JT re-signed re: who to put Christopher Cousins with, maybe followed by John Loprieno quitting and Tuck making her exit final. (Even though the lupus story is already very subtly being hinted at, and has been since Andy and Hunter's wedding in August.) Anyway, having Cain's latest scheme implode when Viki sees a photo of the real Heinrich Kaiser and nails him for not knowing more than 15 words of German - giving Erika Slezak a chance to bust out her fluent German and howl it at him as he flees Megan's house - is a hoot.

@EricMontreal22 will be pleased to know that around the 10/21? (often labeled 10/30 in certain places due to mislabeling) episode Malone's wilder streak flare up again and the past life regression saga with Tina and Luna returns, featuring the glorious sight of Karen Witter as La Perdita the swashbuckling Spanish pirate with a vaguely Ricardo Montalban accent. KW absolutely kills this stuff along with prim British soldier John Loprieno who can play anything and was so rarely allowed to on the show. Whether or not KW and JL got along they do have great chemistry; they make this fantasy lark work, unlike when Malone attempted similar flights of fancy in the 2000s with a lesser budget and less winning actors and it usually just came off mortifying. Bree Williamson in petticoats pleading with Mark Dobies' redcoats not to execute noble peasant Antonio in Angel Square didn't quite hit the same way. Clint Ritchie in a fake pirate beard playing an accordion is a lot to take in too, BTW!

Luna leaving Tina/Perdita 'swimming' through the sea while she hits the john is hysterical, only for Cord to walk in on the entranced Tina and her accent pawing at 'Lord Cordwright.' La Perdita, on a kleptomaniac spree through town, runs into Cain fleeing Llanview again, only to mistake him for fellow pirate 'Enrique del Rey' and lift his wallet, leaving Cain up a creek (and later furthers the ladies' case against Cain). This is all so deranged but it's one of the only times in recent memory one of these truly zany comic plots has worked for me as an adult, probably because Karen Witter is so very, very good at this. (A slightly similar hypnosis comedy subplot in Malone II involved Nigel and Roxy, went on for weeks as opposed to a day or two and was terrible.) This all ends up concluding not unlike when the Ghostbusters apprehended the possessed Rick Moranis, with Megan collecting Tina/Perdita:

Quote

Megan: I think you should let me take your temperature, Tina.

Tina: I burn only for Lord Cordwright.

Megan: Nice, very nice.

It isn't a perfect arc, obviously. Cord has been a real chauvinistic ogre to Tina in this period, really nasty to her suddenly out of nowhere for several weeks, and it does go a bit too far. Yes, Tina needed to stop being hemmed in by the Buchanan alpha male, not unlike several other women on the show per the old Rauch sensibility, but the handling of their marital strife could've been more nuanced before it got to this point. It gets resolved with the past life romp, but now we have Blair entering the picture. (Also amusing: Luna reading Cord's chart and discovering he had a domineering, deceitful mother.)

Speaking of, assuming this is Blair's 'theme' they keep playing it's very wholesome and infectious but seems kind of deceptively so. I love all the recent new music cues they've been playing ad nauseam including the Twin Peaks-esque guitar stuff and the harmonica reverie; they're presumably a Gottlieb addition. I'm sure people got sick of them but I haven't!

Always dryly hilarious, Bob Woods gets the quote of the week after Cassie reads their wedding engagement item in the Banner, written to goad psycho Alex out of hiding: "You know where we could buy a used Sherman tank?"

Edited August 27Aug 27 by Vee

Thanks @Vee for the detailed and nuanced recap. I've seen those fantasy scenes and enjoyed them - I don't think Malone ever got Tina (I know I've said this about 50000000 times) so I think he felt more at ease with her in that setting.

I still don't understand how Cord went from singing operettas with Sheila to being the husband from hell to Tina. 

Edited August 27Aug 27 by DRW50

I think Malone got Witter's Tina well enough, which was in many ways a '90s update of the classic character which he helped really flesh out but where Witter's performance also did a ton of work. I also think it's possible BTS constraints (like JL's exit for a year, and possible issues with the actors) drove the focus on Cain and Tina, though I do like Witter and Cousins together. The show only moved on from this focus because IIRC KW chose to leave.

I think after Witter left Tina in Malone's era became a plot-driven character. There is some stuff Krista Tesreau had with Tina's classic friend circle which is genuinely funny upon recent revisits and I think KT does her best with the role, but she's still never given the kind of sympathy or central perspective she had with Evans or Witter again. I do think Tina selling Viki out for a foolish fling with David Vickers was a believable regression and that Krista played her shame and regret well when the truth came out, but I can also see people being jolted by Tina being in an antagonistic role to Viki again for the first time in almost a decade. I suspect OLTL felt Karen's Tina had perhaps become too modern, too evolved, too smart and so they changed it up to differentiate the character, who was now also surplus to requirements with Blair, Marty, etc. on canvas - with those powerhouses in the mix (and Luna now frontburner) Tina was suddenly a B or C-player. The other problem is KT's Tina was just too superficial and foolish, even though I think Tesreau played what they gave her. It was an afterthought, bubblehead character at that point.

I'd forgotten Cord and Blair actually apparently got very serious in '94. I barely remembered that angle from when I was a kid.

Edited August 27Aug 27 by Vee

Another guffaw-level quip of the month in October '91.

Quote

Renee: Why would Du Ann take a key that belongs to a toolbox?

Asa: Oh, please, who could ever figure out that old, warped turkey neck?

That is, in fact, exactly what Du Ann looked like.

I'll get deeper into this stuff in my next post or two, but I had heard for decades about the bombastic reintroduction of James DePaiva's Max after Nicholas Walker was flushed out the airlock, and the online legend does not disappoint. They film him ass-first in Wranglers strutting to the camera with his rear the focus, face unseen for much of the episode, and have a bevy of bored Texas bordello workers straight out of the One Eyed Jack's brothel from Twin Peaks light up at the sight of the hometown stud made good returning to the fold like he's John Holmes. Just hysterical, but well done and properly amped up given the hype at the time. They've also been setting up the latest iteration of the convoluted, labyrinthine Max/Asa family history (overcomplicated long before Gottlieb/Malone) pretty well with the secret key, Asa's paranoia, Joe Hawk in Texas, etc.

The Joey/Stephanie angle keeps being played up as she takes him to visit Carlo(!!). Little Chris McKenna and Thom Christopher, of all people, get a refreshingly strange duo scene together at the hospital where Carlo educates the petrified boy on Schubert, asks if he'll keep standing up for Stephanie and ponders 'making peace with his demons.' They're obviously referring to Carlo's role in the Sarah conspiracy at this point, but one wonders if TPTB had the truth about Carlo killing Stephanie's father in the back pocket even then. (Particularly with Stephanie bringing up missing her father to Renee.) I know the original intended conclusion of the Who Killed Carlo mystery was for little Al Holden to have shot him by accident, and that the network vetoed it but that is over half a year away. The later reveal of Stephanie was presumably not planned for at this point, but it's possible the other secret was always there.

Edited August 30Aug 30 by Vee

A very quick change happens late in October '91 following Asa humiliating Lee Ann and Kevin at not one but two public events (the teen social and Asa's birthday bash) - just as the Asa/Max intrigue is heating up, suddenly Lee Ann is racing to the phone at Wanda's to see if it's Max calling from Texas, and Kevin is so turned off by it (after arriving at the restaurant eager to continue their romance) that he decides in the same episode to split for the Buchanan ranch in Arizona and clear his head. Same episode: Carlo is out of the hospital and is ready to take Stephanie to California so he can recuperate in Charlotte's home! Sure, why not? No more mention is made of the Joey angle with his obvious crush on Stephanie, at least not so far.

Anyway, Kevin and Stephanie get a reasonably mature and wistful goodbye as friends at the airport because they're both taking off, reflecting on their whirlwind courtship. I wonder if this is how they wrote Robyn Griggs out so abruptly, presumably because of backstage conduct, as they clearly were still playing her (with Joey and Jason) a week or two before and potentially playing the angles with her, Kevin and Lee Ann. Or maybe this isn't her contract exit and she'll be back again before Carlo's murder mystery, where IIRC she returns to town after his 'death' to later be revealed as the culprit - I really don't know, this is my first time watching '91-'92 in sequence vs. select clips or scattered episodes. I'm sure someone else will know better. Griggs, Joey Thrower and Yasmine Bleeth all do very good work in this stuff, particularly Thrower who is so unabashedly emotional and boyish with Lee Ann (and Stephanie) vs. the more put-together, evolved and manly Kirk Geiger. Sometimes JT is too wet behind the ears or obnoxious, and I can see why they recast but I do think he put in pretty good work with this period, especially after the unbearably treacly Kevin/Stephanie summer debacle.

The first hints of Addie in Blair's locked room, with strange noises knocking about next door followed by Blair playing a music box to soothe the invisible guest, are pure Malone gothic, very Jane Eyre. Blair's fascination with crafting jewelry, which led to Melador (Blair's company to this day on GH, where it is a current competitor for Lucy Coe's Deception), was also baked in from the beginning. I always wanted them to make more of both this and Blair's journalism background in later years, so it's good to see the roots for both stretching so far back. Korf's Blair also lets the mask slip finally, briefly, not just when her hand curls into a fist over her papers when she meets Dorian at the Banner but when she puts on her handmade(?) earrings in her little boardhouse room and suddenly looks transformed, regal, laser-focused. I will always love KDP's Blair (who was still very rooted in MK's Blair's history in those early years if you revisit '94-'95, which is likely why Kassie always said only Malone understood Blair) but Mia Korf is a revelation so far. It is still so amazing that there was an AAPI lead at this time on a soap, and so unconscionable that Korf was basically the last.

Caherine Ann Christiansen (Jane Ebert) has a very strong performance monologuing about her abuse by her husband and how she can't remember if the first time he hit her hurt. Her other performances to this point were a bit too simpering and bog-standard for me, but that was very well done even if the Ebert saga is taking up a bit too much time very quickly. (I am still trying to remember how and where Viki got so involved outside of seeing Jane working Asa's party; I think she saw her one other time at Wanda's.) The airdates and labels get very wonky on these October episodes online and you have to go on a real fact-finding mission in order to watch them in proper sequence (which I have, with some work), but at this point the Eberts can't have been around for more than two weeks. Everyone's doing a good job but I can see why it annoyed people as I think it plays out over the next month, though again I still think it is a brief vignette side dish to the larger classical soap opera arcs unfolding.

Jason and Lee Ann always did have serious chemistry, and Jason's crush on co-worker Lee Ann comes into focus as Kevin skips town. I wonder if they were keeping their options open on those two this early even with Kevin and Max in the picture or if Jason was always meant to be Lee Ann's endgame. (Don't get me started on what on Earth the show would've looked like if they'd actually gone through with recasting Lee Ann with Sydney Penny in '93.) Their bonding over the Ebert situation and Jason's past with domestic abuse (in the 10/18 episode which I am pretty sure is not actually 10/18; I believe it is actually 10/25) is very well done - Mark Brettschneider's voice catching as he lets slip that he was the abused neighbor boy he claims to be talking about is heartbreaking, and his monologue kind of outshines Jane Ebert's. Again, a sign that Jason was the obvious prototype for what later became Todd Manning after Roger Howarth and Frat Boy #2 took like a rocket, except Jason came minus the serial rape. Jason even has the scar courtesy of his stepfather's abuse.

I always wished Jason and Lee Ann would have reunited. Then again, I liked him and Marty too.

The meta-commentary from the bordello madam about Max being all 'doom and gloom' until he came back to Sweetwater and rocked all the girls' worlds and now 'looks like the old Max we used to know and love' is hilariously OTT even before they do the infamous shot of JDP winking to the camera about feeling like the old Max again. Brian Frons and the Real Greenlee campaign would be proud. But after suffering through the final painful months of Nicholas Walker's fey, hammy Max Buchanan I can't exactly be broken up about it.

Edited August 30Aug 30 by Vee

I had forgotten Luna was more New Age and eccentric in her first months on the show before the show sort of softened her a bit where she was still quirky/unique.. but made more like an actual human being vs a walking stereotype.   

I remember many a person grieving when Luna left the show, and I would say from rewatching episodes that she was a definite energy that fit so well with early to mid 90s OLTL.   I don't know if she would have fit in during the 2nd half of the 90s though.. but it's interesting to imagine how Luna would have fit into Angel Square and other focal points of that era.

19 minutes ago, Soaplovers said:

I had forgotten Luna was more New Age and eccentric in her first months on the show before the show sort of softened her a bit where she was still quirky/unique.. but made more like an actual human being vs a walking stereotype.   

I remember many a person grieving when Luna left the show, and I would say from rewatching episodes that she was a definite energy that fit so well with early to mid 90s OLTL.   I don't know if she would have fit in during the 2nd half of the 90s though.. but it's interesting to imagine how Luna would have fit into Angel Square and other focal points of that era.

It's surreal to watch this stuff and then go to the last couple weeks of GH, where Susan Batten is basically playing Luna again by another name as a recurring character, Home & Heart TV cosmetics personality "Flora Gardens". This is almost certainly Frank Valentini doing a favor to an old friend to help Batten (and Morgan Fairchild) keep their benefits. I can't stand the H&H stuff but I don't have a problem seeing SB or Morgan from time to time if they could utilize their appearances better. I do assume Flora is an actual relative of Luna, lol.

Like I said a couple pages back, Luna was always divisive but also always popular as much as she was hated. I get the complaints but I still like her, especially in this early stuff where she is so different from a lot of the show. Poor Jon Russell shows up to try to whisk her off on a fancy date at sea while she shows up in jeans and a hoodie and laughs it off, and it makes you wonder if right then and there they were future planning for who her endgame was - I have no idea if it was always intended to be Max, as I knew they went hard at Max and MK's Blair.

They bring Max with a purposeful vengeance in this period, and I assume Jimmy DePaiva must've enjoyed it despite his later clashes with Gottlieb (like many of the actors on the show, or several men at GH under Wendy Riche). So far he's not swanning around in suits like NW's effete NuMax; the original article is still all denim and dust. I never got the sense it was the Luna pairing he objected to but in how Max became Mr. Mom and super domesticated toting the babies around, etc. near the end of Malone I. At least that's the part he was complaining about loudly on USENET where soap stars often thought no one would find it in the mid-'90s.

Edited August 30Aug 30 by Vee

JDP from the great interview Damon Jacobs ran:

Quote

The girls weren’t picking him.  He was taking little jobs, his dream disappeared.  This is a guy who had seen himself as king of the world, then decided to bartend at Rodi’s.  There’s one point where they said, “We’ll just make him a father, we’ll just have him walk around with kids strapped to his chest.”  That just didn’t work for me.  At a certain point I said that if the role of Max Holden were now being recast, and you put out the breakdown for what this character is, I would not attend an audition for it.  What’s the point?  Everybody has certain skills or natural tendencies in their performance.  Mine is to be big.  I like to play big characters.  So to play mundane boring whatever, it doesn’t work for me.

[...]

I had begun a whole campaign with Claire Labine at that point.  I would break into her office and I would put posters and things up about what Max was about.  She really had no idea what this guy was about.  I would put these things up so she would get excited about writing for him.  Claire eventually said, “Okay, I get it.”  So I re-signed.  A month later they fired Maxine Levinson, brought in Jill Farren Phelps, and Jill Farren Phelps went about trying to get rid of Claire Labine.  So I did all that work, I finally found a head writer that was going to try again, and then they get rid of the head writer.  (pause) So I was not in the best of moods.

Edited August 30Aug 30 by Vee

1 hour ago, Vee said:

JDP from the great interview Damon Jacobs ran:

I just read the whole interview. I am surprised JDP didnt like JFP. He was in a major storyline during her time as exec.

2 minutes ago, mar4331 said:

I am surprised JDP didnt like JFP. He was in a major storyline during her time as exec.

It was a pretty lousy one, and cancerous for Max.

@Vee As always, enjoy the mini-reviews. I guess Malone's plans for Joey to be gay never even got any hints on air. There were a lot of stories with McKenna that always seemed to be hinted at rather than created, all the way to the end of his run.

I don't think the show ever fully got Max after his original run. When JDP returns Max seems very desperate, his pairing with Lee Ann seedy (although they probably never intended that as anything beyond wrapping up what Walker had started), and the fling with Blair is not centered on him the way Max's old relationships were. He could be a sexist pig under Rauch, but you tended to see all sides of him. He wasn't that way after his return and I imagine that slowly ate at JDP, although I think from the Max/Blair stuff up to about early 1994 he's in a decent place.

Any time I see your comparisons between Todd and Jason I'm reminded of what a better character Jason was and what a better actor Mark was, although I know Roger had more charisma and sex appeal.