GL on DVD!

[RoseVioletDaisy]

I wonder if they cut Mike Bauer's song because they couldn't afford the rights to both 'You Needed Me' and 'My Cup Runneth Over' so they decided to go with 'You Needed Me' since it was Kelly & Morgan's theme song and was in the actual ceremony.

[Mitch]

Ahh, I loved this time period and these episodes, I think the plane starting to go down was on New Year's Eve. I hated Fletcher with Alex though (and with anyone else....) Wasnt Sonni/Solita going on at the same time and Reva and Sonni have their catfight in the convent on Christmas Eve???Freaking great time on the show then.

[soapfave06]

Was Sara McIntyre in any episodes? She souds like such a great character was slowly phased out.

[jam6242]

I've just watched a few episodes so far but saw Sara in the Three Carries episode.

[DeliaIrisFan]

I got my DVD the other day and I started watching in chronological order. So far, I'm about to watch Quint and Nola's wedding. It's funny…most of these characters were long-gone and (for the most part) forgotten when I watched in later years, or if they were still around were so very different (like Roger and Holly), but there is still something so intrinsically GL about these old episodes. I truly felt like I was reliving something I had watched and cherished long ago.

I've seen clips/photos of the Dominican Republic sequence before and I was certainly struck by how…raw it seemed, but seeing the full episode was really a revelation. It was so not at all how you would expect a soap opera to look/feel. In recent years, of course, I became practically numb to the nonstop violence that soaps came to use in place of meaningful dialogue or story, but here they really let the ugliness of the violence sink in.

Roger wasn't the cartoon soap villain who came back from the dead every so often to kidnap a damsel in distress while her bevy of gentleman callers prepared to save the day once more. Even though this story obviously gave birth to that cliche, Michael Zaslow was truly scary, in part because he played Roger as a villain who wasn't all-powerful - he had nothing let to lose, and therefore would take whoever he could down with him. And Maureen Garrett was/is just amazing…her screams gave me chills, and what a professional she was to be willing to appear like that: with no makeup except for those bruises, and her dress all ripped up, etc. Again, it didn't seem like a soap opera - not that I think there's anything wrong with good soap opera, but those scenes were more like a (well-made) indie film.

Having watched this, I can see that the show kind of tweaked history in later years when the Holly/Blake relationship was portrayed as having been strained because Holly always somewhat resented her for being Roger's daughter. Even after her ordeal with Roger in Santo Domingo, all Holly could think about was getting home to little "Christina." Still, I think Holly's having a more antagonistic relationship with her daughter was more in keeping with the gritty realism of those last scenes with Roger before he "died" - surviving something like that has to leave some emotional scars. I was kind of hoping that when Holly came home, little Christina would reveal that the picture she had been coloring was of her and Holly and Roger being one big happy family again, and Holly would just roll her eyes and reach for her headache pills (and a bottle of wine).

As much as I loved the episode, Alan's speech at the end about how he'd learned his lesson and he would show his son a better way if given a second chance was a bit much. I didn't think it was necessary to spell out for the audience what the message of Roger's downfall was, although I guess it was ironic in a way, since obviously Alan ultimately didn't do any of what he vowed to do. The scene with a horrified Ed seeing the guns again and asking the cop to take those away was more than enough to drive the point home.

PS: I didn't realize they supposedly found Roger's body at the time. How was that explained when he turned out to be alive? Maybe I should have watched the 1988 episode before asking…

[DeliaIrisFan]

Onto 1981, and Nola, et al… Where had Nola gone when Kelly was passed out drunk in her room that night "the Copper Lantern opened" (that sounds like the name of Springfield' oldest gay bar, BTW)? She must have gone to do something really important, as Kelly could have woken up at any moment and realized she was gone (and in fact Nola's mother saw her leaving, which ultimately did lead to her undoing). At first I thought Nola snuck out to have sex with Floyd when she realized Kelly was too drunk, so that the due date would match up and she could convince Kelly that he was the one who got her pregnant, but obviously that wasn't the case. Does anyone remember?

I was taken aback by how casually everyone spoke of Kelly seemingly having a drunken one-night-stand with Nola…and she brought him home to her mother's boarding house that night, no less? Were people really that open about sex 30+ years ago?

I also have to say, I cringed a bit seeing Nola so desperate for a man. Although all she really did was lie about who her baby's father was; she didn't threaten to let a child die for lack of a life-saving transplant if she couldn't have its father, or some such thing. Sad how soaps have actually regressed so much in this area. And, Nola admitted that deep down she just saw Kelly as her last chance to "get out of here" (the boarding house). Still, I'm not sure if a story like this is something I necessarily could have watched day in and day out. Although I did watch all of the Ryan's Hope reruns on SoapNet and Delia and her whole story arc of hanging onto the Ryan men by any means necessary became one of my favorite soap stories/character, but there was such a '70s feminist perspective on Delia's situation… Every other day, it seemed, someone would tell Delia that if she would just set a goal that didn't involve a man, she could put her creativity to good use and accomplish so much with her life. And, of course, she did.

I'm sure Nola's story was also handled with much more sensitivity and less misogyny than these kinds of stories on soaps today. Obviously, Nola's perspective and humanity were showcased in these episodes. Even after watching that first episode, I just wanted to hug her and tell her she had so much more to offer. By the end of the second episode, when she packed up her suitcase and left the boarding house to rebuild her life - and came back at the last minute to take her doll, which she was going to leave behind at first - I was absolutely in love with this character. And I was a newborn at this time and only saw bits and pieces of Nola's infamous(ly disastrous) return in the 90s.

The fact that Lisa Brown's Nola reminded me so much of Melissa Hayden's Bridget did help me get drawn into her story right away. I wonder why on earth they didn't make Bridget the daughter that Nola had been pregnant with in '81 - who came to live with her Aunt Maureen while Nola and Quint were on some extended archeological dig - instead of inventing that other Reardon brother? Aging a child who should have been about 10 into a teenager wouldn't have been the most egregious such thing that a soap had ever done...and, by the time Bridget showed up, Alan-Michael was already a young adult, and I presume he was the baby Hope was carrying in that episode.

On another note, I have to say, Kelly didn't impress me very much. I mean, I appreciated that he was written and portrayed as a living, breathing, human being and that the character had a distinct perspective...as opposed to the usual half-assed takes on this soap archetype in recent years, played by goofball/male model "actors," who are just walking plot devices. But sheesh, Kelly's perspective was such an entitled, self-important, straight, white male one! I didn't sympathize. And a few times when he implied that he was about to become violent with Nola ("what do I have to do to make you shut your mouth!"), he really creeped me out. Partly because I'm more used to seeing the actor playing evil/disturbed characters, but still.

I also don't quite understand the appeal of Kelly and Morgan. Were they actually beloved as a couple in their own right at the time, or were they just kind of a straw man for Nola? I can't begin to imagine why Kelly would have rather been with Morgan than Nola. In a way, I guess it was a nice message - this gorgeous man wants nothing more than to be with a woman who's not a cookie-cutter type (I mean that in the nicest possible way…the actress really was a lovely young woman) and she didn't have to lie or manipulate or try to seduce him like Nola did. But I just saw no personality or charisma or passion in Morgan whatsoever. And what on earth were Morgan and Kelly wearing to their wedding - he seemed to be dressed as an Elvis impersonator, without the wig, and was the bride's great-grandmother's nightgown what she chose as her "something old"?

[DeliaIrisFan]

I thought the 1982 episode was an odd choice to represent the Carrie story. She was barely in it, and her scenes were mostly about her reaction to Jackie's plane crash, rather than to any of the shocking things that her own personalities had actually done. The hypnosis scene was also too much…the psychiatrist with his bow tie, etc. This was 1982 in Springfield, right, not 1882 in Vienna? And I have no doubt that Jane Elliot's acting was superb throughout all that this character went through and I'm sure, for those watching the story day-to-day, it was well-constructed and suspenseful, but out of context it seemed like a parody of a soap opera.

Also, what was the big cliffhanger supposed to be at the end, when the alter that came out under hypnosis announced that her name was Carrie McKinsey? Was "McKinsey" the last name of one of Carrie's exes? All I could think of was Beverlee M. If Jane Elliot had affected BM's unmistakable voice at that moment, my jaw would have dropped. Certainly, one legendary daytime actress playing her character's alternate personality - who was in fact an impersonation of another legendary daytime actress - would have been something to see. (Was that why Vanessa was skulking around Carrie's hospital room, so that she could sneak in and say to Carrie, "You listen here, you cow, this show already has a bitchy, spoiled, daddy's girl character, and it's me, so you can just go off to some sanitarium, and I will mend Ross's broken heart…with or without my mink coat"?) But, seriously, I don't think that's where this story was headed…

Anyway, the highlight of that episode for me was Nola once again. Even if it seemed to be a silly story that she and Quint were involved in, it was nice seeing her sailing around the world for her exciting new job - she really had achieved the life that she had declared she was going to go out and find a year before. I was kind of hoping that Nola's first scene in that episode, in which she was dreaming and you could hear a voiceover, was going to segue into one of her famous movie fantasies…imagining herself as some Fay Wray type in a campy tropical island B-movie or what have you. That didn't happen, though, and from the later scenes, I gather that snippet was a flashback to a scene that had already aired. Ah, well...maybe I'll get to see one of those sequences in that wedding episode, which I can't wait to watch.

[~bl~]

She said Mackenzie. For me the 1982 episode gave a good idea of Justin and Ross not really Carrie. (That isn't a complaint...) Vanessa was at the hospital for another reason, and well being Vanessa. It was nice to see Sara, and the part with Josh gave me the giggles.

[P.J.]

I don't really remember much about Kelly and Morgan (or what drew them together), other than that I liked them at the time. Knowing what I know about soap dynamics now, I'd probably agree they were more of a foil to Nola than anything else. They fell apart rather quickly, Vigard left the role and some horrid actress took over (I think it was Amy Steel) and Morgan had (or came close to) an affair with Josh.

[jam6242]

The Carrie McKenzie reveal was a cliff hanger because that revealed there were 3 Carries, when it was previously believed she only had a dual personality (Carrie Todd Marler and Carrie Anderson).

I think Kelly & Morgan were supposed to the rooting couple as Morgan was presented the innocent young heroine. I'm not sure Nola was intended to be sympathetic but Lisa Brown made her so. I adored her even when she was at her worst. During that trip Nola & Quint took in the Carrie episode, they had their first kiss (he saved her from drowning and couldn't hold back his feelings for her, as he had been doing).

[rlj]

Jennifer Cooke was the 2nd Morgan, and if memory serves me correctly, she did have an affair with Josh. Cooke went on to star in the V tv series.with Jane Badler.

[Dan]

I liked the 1982 episode more because of the perfect setup that it gave to the next episode with Phillip and the reveal.

I just finished the 1987 anniversary episode and I got my first look at the rarely mentioned Lacy Bauer and OMG was she annoying. Like a cross between Ann Hamilton's Mindy and May Merisi with an annoying voice to boot.

[DRW50]

If you want to see her she's in the clips of Rita's story about being unhappy in bed with Ed.

Sara was one of the show's most popular heroines in the early 70's and drove a lot of story. I'm sorry they got rid of her - Milette was a good actress and still looked attractive.

Please register in order to view this content

Here's her segment of "The Guiding Plight"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OglGoRuum8

[Soapsuds]

Finished watching the secrets DVD. The 1993 episode wasn't great the second time around. I did like the Maureen and Ed scenes but the rest of the show was rather boring. Eve was on...ugh...I remember hating her character. I remember she went crazy when Nick, who I couldnt stand either, dumped her. Julie...ugh...another useless character...hated her too...then there is Dylan who was boring as bricks......then we have Ann Hamilton as Mindy...WTF were the casting directors smoking/drinking?? The best episode on that DVD is Nola and her secrets coming out. Lisa Brown was just awesome on that episode. Second favorite is the ex wifes club episode. It was great to see Mindy and India back. I didn't realize till now how great Joan Collins was as Alex, not because she was Joan, but because she fit the part unlike Ann Hamilton......

Now watching the 1983 Christmas episode.

[DRW50]

Imagine Ann Hamilton as Alex...