Retconning: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

[amybrickwallace]

 

I thought it was Mickey. Was Mickey presumed dead when he eventually landed on Maggie's farm, or was he just missing?

[robbwolff]

I think Tommy Horton predates either Mickey or Brooke. As I recall reading, Tommy was presumed dead when DOOL debuted and then showed a few years later with a new face and amnesia.

[amybrickwallace]

 

Yes, you are absolutely right! He was presumed dead after the Korean War, I believe.

[robbwolff]

Exactly. I was just reading his back story on Wikipedia. What a waste. So many viable characters were tossed out over the years.

[vetsoapfan]

 

LOL, yes, Scarlett O'Hara was capricious, stubborn, selfish and wont to delude herself. But viewers and readers are often presented with less-than-noble lead characters. Wuthering Heights is my favorite novel of all time, but both the romantic leads, Heathcliff and Catherine, are dreadful people. Stanley and Blanche in A Streetcar Named Desire would never receive Christmas-dinner invitations from me either. Margaret Mitchell has gone on record to say that she, herself, considers Melanie Wilkes the true heroine of GTWT, and that Scarlett is an example of what not to be.

 

Unfortunately, slavery was a grim fact in the old south, and while characters like Mammy and Prissy were never free to go where they wanted and do as they pleased, critics cannot condemn GWTW for acknowledging that reality. Margaret Mitchell and the filmmakers were bound by history to portray slavery as part of that era.

 

Brooke Hamilton from Days was not the first character to return from the dead on daytime TV. It had happened numerous times before. Even on the same show, Tommy Horton, Jr., had returned from the dead a decade before Brooke did. He had been a casualty of the Korean war...or so the Horton family thought. He later turned up in Salem with amnesia, and was unrecognizable thanks to extensive plastic surgery. His own sister, Marie, fell in love with him before his real identity was revealed. Talk about a shocking storyline. Having a young woman fall in love with her brother in the mid-1960s was very daring. Poor Marie had to run away and become a nun!

[DRW50]

Is the line that Brooke was the first character actually killed off in the show's present day to come back?

 

I have only seen one episode of each actress. The second Brooke seemed very theatrical (as she was, apparently) so I don't know how viewers felt about her, but after all the trouble they went to bringing her back it seems like a cheat she was killed off so fast. 

 

The one episode I've seen of Adrienne was wonderful (I think maybe I've seen two, now that I think of it). She was luminous. I don't know if Bill Bell had any hand in her casting but she would have fit into Y&R of that era.

 

I really really really wish even a few more episodes from that period were available to see. 

[Khan]

 

Yep.  That's what I meant.  Thanks, Carl, for saying it better than I could have.

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[vetsoapfan]

 

 Carl, you have just given me a memory flashback, LOL.

 

Back in the 1970s, Daily TV Serials was one of my favorite magazines. It was colorful, informative, a bit irreverant, and always a fun read.

 

In a year-end review, the editor once reported that he had criticized Adrienne LaRussa's  work as Brooke Hamilton. He had opined in the magazine that her performances were "embarrassingly trite." He later met AL at a social gathering, where she confronted him and demanded, "What right do you have to say I give terrible performances?" The editor smugly replied, "The same right that allows you to give them."

 

AL was a gorgeous woman with an usual, fascinating look. While I did not think she was the world's greatest actress, she had a certain something. I thought it was unnecessary and spiteful for Daily TV Serials to print the story about the confrontation with AL. It was like spitting on an opponent when she was unable to fight back.

 

The second actress to play Brooke, Eileen Barrett, was a warmer actress, and brought vulnerability to the role. The show was just at a point where they could have redeemed the character (her misdeeds had been outed and she was broken) when they killed her off. It was dreadful watching her final scene. Brooke was alone in her car, sobbing as she drove. Reflecting on her life, she cried aloud, "Bob doesn't love me. No one loves me. No one...has...ever loved me." Then she lowered her head against the steering wheel as the sobs overcame her, and she crashed the vehicle and died. UGH!

 

What a horrible way to go. 

 

 

[DRW50]

 

I'm surprised Daily TV Serials was that petty - I associate that more with Daytimers or Daytime TV Stars.

 

That last scene for Eileen's Brooke sounds awful. I have seen so little of that era of DAYS but sometimes it sounds like they were trying to actively chase away viewers, between things like this and what they did to Laura Horton.

[I Am A Swede]

 

 

I would never consider Melanie the heroine of GWTW.

Yes, Scarlett is all of the things you mention, but she's also resourceful, resilient, intelligent, independent and strong. She's a flawed person, with good sides and bad sides, and much more interesting than Melanie. Scarlett accepts life the way it is while Melanie clings to a way of life that is gone forever. She even states that she will cling to her hatred of the yankees for the rest of her life and that she will pass her hatred on to her children and grandchildren.

[vetsoapfan]

 

After Pat Falken Smith and Wes Kenny were fired, the show almost instantly fell into a slump. TPTB kept making one horrible decision after another, most of which alienated and infuriated the audience. Laura leaving Jennifer Rose on a bus was ghastly. Her later hanging herself, ditto. Days had always been predicated on leisurely-paced family conflict and romantic angst, with only the occasional bout of violence if it were essential to a long-term story arc. The show's sudden switch to action-driven stories and shock-value stunts was NOT what viewers expected or wanted to see. I think many old-guard viewers left Days and drifted over to Y&R, which was the type of soap Days used to be.

 

I see your point and actually agree with you. For all her faults, Scarlett was an interesting character and a survivor, while Melanie was a sweet and kind-hearted relic of times gone by. But when being asked about this topic, Mitchell did say that Melanie was the true heroine of the story (probably because Melanie was a "saint" while Scarlett was a "sinner". ) I think that Melanie is the sort of character whom mothers of past generations might want their daughters to be, but Scarlett is the type of character whom those daughters would NEED to be in the tough, real world.

[cassadine1991]

What was the backstory to Laura's psychotic break/postpartum psychosis/depression storyline?

[vetsoapfan]

 

Her mother had been mentally ill and in a catatonic state for many years, which compelled Laura to become a psychiatrist. Laura, herself, had never exhibited any signs of mental problems until after Jennifer Rose was born. .She was just suddenly unbalanced. The writing was not very nuanced or layered; the foundation was not really there. 

[Khan]

I also don't believe it was medically accurate.  If Laura were schizophrenic, as the show seemed to suggest, then the symptoms would have manifested much earlier in her life.

 

I have to give props, though, to Sheri Anderson, Leah Laiman and Thom Racina for remembering Laura's medical past (however questionable it was) when the adult Jennifer worried that she would inherit the same mental illness.  And, of course, we see now the same mental instability in Abigail, now don't we?

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[Soaplovers]

 

Do you think the show could have portrayed Laura's mental problems as postpartum  depression that it could have helped with the sudden onslaught of mental illness for the character?

 

 

In regards to GWTW.. I viewed Melanie and Scarlet as two sides of a coin... the two sides of a personality... People wanting to be more like Melanie, but in reality more like  Scarlet?