54 minutes ago, DRW50 said:

I was barely watching at this time and one of the times I tune in, she's falling on a glass, whimpering in pain, and bleeding out. I was traumatized and horrified. I don't know what the show was even meant to be at this time.

I think by then, many soaps just threw anything and everything at the wall to see what stuck.

All it made was a god-awful mess.

1 hour ago, Vee said:

She essentially refused to do the scripted scenes and got herself fired, so at that point it's a semantic thing AFAIC. It was all because of the silly scenes where Carlotta mistook Cristian for coming out instead of Fish, IIRC. Carlotta had never been shown to be anti-gay.

Except she plays the victim every chance she gets by telling everyone she was fired

1 minute ago, TheyStartedOnSoaps said:

Except she plays the victim every chance she gets by telling everyone she was fired

It's a distinction without a difference AFAIC. Patricia Mauceri is a homophobe who effectively quit rather than expect the scripts to uphold her bigotry. So she got herself fired. Same thing.

2 hours ago, DRW50 said:

She made a big production of how Carlotta would not have supported Fish and Kyle getting married. I think the character had not had any problem with gay people (if anyone else remembers otherwise let me know) so it felt like she was pushing her own beliefs onto the character.

It wasn't about Fish & Kyle getting married - it was about Christian having a book about "Coming Out" and Carlotta wonders if Christian is gay. Then she goes to Christian and says it is okay to be gay. 

Edited September 8Sep 8 by TheyStartedOnSoaps

3 minutes ago, Vee said:

It's a distinction without a difference AFAIC. Patricia Mauceri is a homophobe who effectively quit rather than expect the scripts to uphold her bigotry. So she got herself fired. Same thing.

What is strange is that she talk religion and saying that her charcter is such a religious person - but then she had those hot and sexy steam love scenes with Hank Gannon, that is not Sunday School Carlotta at all!

4 hours ago, DRW50 said:

I was barely watching at this time and one of the times I tune in, she's falling on a glass, whimpering in pain, and bleeding out. I was traumatized and horrified. I don't know what the show was even meant to be at this time.

What was weird is they did the same really nasty injury with Nora during that regime in the summer of '03 (IIRC) - when Troy went psycho and held her hostage as they were writing Ty Treadway out, and I think Nora cut her hand on some wine goblets he demanded they drink from or something and was losing blood, and they had to stop him and get Nora out of there before it was too late, etc etc.

Thanks for the mini-reviews and clips @Maxim 

The Marty, Viki and Sloan scene is good, but hurt somewhat by the typical need in this period of going for the throat. I laughed at that extra going wild near the end, and the uber-dramatic music.

Marty is so interesting in 1992 and early 1993, before she goes the route all "punished" women on soaps go and loses her personality. 

The Clint and Viki clip is lovely, and atypical of much of this period in that it breathes and is subtle. Very good work from Clint and Erika. I also like that the script just doesn't bother to hide how obscenely rich Viki and Clint are.

On 9/7/2025 at 12:03 PM, soapfave06 said:

Those scenes between Marty and Viki are great. I never thought of it, but since Megan’s exit ushered Marty in, I really wish Megan had been this much of a hellraiser when she was revealed as Viki’s daughter, they clashed only very briefly with little character driven drama before getting along well. A missed opportunity there. 

I wouldn't have wanted them to go too far but I do wish they'd had tension for a longer period of time. I wonder if Megan became too popular with fans too quickly for that to play out. 

We did get more with Viki and Natalie, especially as for the rest of the show you could tell she wasn't seen by the family as being as important as her non-acting sister.

I don't think Marty ever lost her personality - I adored her because of her fire and SH's visceral performances following the rape, which is where I came in. Yes, she changed but she was still raw and authentic to watch all along IMO, including spending much of the next two years railing against Todd.

The problem was that until Patrick they didn't have a man to pair her with that could stand up to her performance (other than more and more 'bonding' scenes with Roger Howarth which, don't get me started), and even then that pairing got messy very quickly with Dylan, the Men of 21, etc. Bob Krimmer was capable but the Andrew/Marty angle was played with and then never fully executed despite something of a brief emotional affair, IIRC (probably for the best).

Why they never really attempted Kevin/Marty (to my knowledge, anyway) I don't know - I know period teasers in the mags in '92 apparently mentioned them flirting with that option. I would still play that angle today as tension in, say, a Kevin/Rachel marriage, even if it never went anywhere.

Edited September 9Sep 9 by Vee

The late 80s/early 90s was a mess with the amount of turnover there was with so many characters. It also seemed like alot of new characters were introduced at this time that ultimately didnt stick

Edited September 9Sep 9 by Cheap21

My favorite example of this so far is still the scene in late August '91, just after Gottlieb arrived, where Father Tony comes into Wanda's to tell the L.A.-bound Andy and Hunter he's also leaving town - his bus leaves in an hour! Soaps need more of this today with their deadwood casts: Exiting actors talking about their exits together and then GTFO!

2 minutes ago, Vee said:

My favorite example of this so far is still the scene in late August '91, just after Gottlieb arrived, where Father Tony comes into Wanda's to tell the L.A.-bound Andy and Hunter he's also leaving town - his bus leaves in an hour! Soaps need more of this today with their deadwood casts: Exiting actors talking about their exits together and then GTFO!

Hollyoaks did this in 2010. 

It's a good idea, but if your show doesn't handle the transition well enough, can just alienate old fans and not bring anyone else in.

Luckily, OLTL managed the transition.

Hollyoaks...did not.

2 hours ago, DRW50 said:

I wouldn't have wanted them to go too far but I do wish they'd had tension for a longer period of time. I wonder if Megan became too popular with fans too quickly for that to play out. 

We did get more with Viki and Natalie, especially as for the rest of the show you could tell she wasn't seen by the family as being as important as her non-acting sister.

I love Megan but longterm not sure what it did for the show. I would have loved to have seen Carla recentered around the 25th Anniversary with a long-lost daughter with a rough childhood who found her way to Fraternity Row (since Carla originally wanted to be an actress) 

11 minutes ago, soapfave06 said:

I love Megan but longterm not sure what it did for the show. I would have loved to have seen Carla recentered around the 25th Anniversary with a long-lost daughter with a rough childhood who found her way to Fraternity Row (since Carla originally wanted to be an actress) 

Long-term I don't think it did anything, although I respect Jessica Tuck for returning so many times. 

That's a great idea about Carla. Ellen Holly was approached for the 25th but did not want to return.

Mauceri was nothing but a hypocrite but then I've never encountered a homophone who isn't one. She can act in a gay love story (I think I do) and has no problem with that, but then must have had some conversion in between that and the Kyle/Fish storyline. I noticed she NEVER talked about that movie when she was whining about being fired.  It didn't fit into her martyr role she wanted to cultivate. I'm afraid to know what Tonja Walker may have said about the situation as I don't want to think any less of her than I do already.

I'm not sure what I think about quick exits for characters who aren't working. When new regimes come in and there's a quick turnover, it does alienate me. I think execs should look at a show and try to make existing pieces work. I prefer when characters who never interacted with each other are suddenly thrown together in exciting ways. Obviously, there are performers who are not working, but if I used that as a measuring stick, I would have fired Strasser for a while after her return (not to be a broken record, but egads I can't take her screeching and I've stopped watching OLTL clips for the moment because of her).