B&B: Bold from the beginning

[Videnbas]

I remember Caroline as very involved in launching her magazine (to the point where she clearly made that her priority over her relationship with Thorne), but maybe that comes a little later. 

And didn't Brooke get the job at the lab yet? 

[DramatistDreamer]

Caroline has a job but she's only a trainee who has been shown at her office less than a handful of times. Brooke keeps telling Dave that she wants to get her career started before marriage but so far, we have yet to see her at an actual job.

Since it's already November 1987, maybe what you have described happens in '88?

[Soaplovers]

Brooke is working by 1988, while Donna is shown going to school as she works both as a model and waitress.

And I think in one of the 1987 episodes, Katie was mentioned at work (after school job maybe?)

[Chris B]

I’m at the end of August. They’re knee deep into the Caroline rape story and Stephanie has just discovered that Brooke is the woman Eric has been having an affair with! How funny that their first confrontation is a misunderstanding!!

One thing I’ve loved about 1987 is that they keep rotating the focus so even though you’re waiting for long term pay offs, the show still has things going on. It’s very well paced and unfolding like a page turning book. Bill Bell did a great job when you consider he was also at the helm of Y&R at the same time.  

[Videnbas]

Has anybody else noticed that the airdates on the official Youtube playlist are completely off? They are clearly just making them up.

For example, episode 185 was the Christmas episode and they have it listed as December 7 (which obviously can't have been the intended air date).

And I believe episode 188 was the last one of 1987, and still they seem to keep going in the Season 1 playlist even though Season 2 should probably start with the episode they call December 11 (episode 189).

If they don't know the air dates, why don't they just name the episodes by episode numbers so they can be easily identified?

[sheilaforever]

Airdates are indeed completely off. Seasons start March 23 every year, though…

 

at least they used to: sometime around 2013 B&B switched to the fall season schedule of CBS. Yawn!

[Videnbas]

Okay, then it's still Season 1! But I still don't get why they put the airdates in there if they have no idea. If they go on to Season 2 in a separate playlist (hopefully they will go on!) it will be harder to locate the correct episode because the airdate will be wrong and the playlist number will have to be added by whatever the number of episodes in the previous playlist is. They could just make it easier for everyone if they went by episode numbers instead of made up dates.

Somehow I feel it's the same thing happening that happens on screen when the writers forget the show's history. The people currently working at B&B either don't have access to information about the history of the show (even basic stuff like air dates), or they do and just don't care.

I'm still glad they're posting the episodes at all, though!

[sheilaforever]

Maybe the show licensed the library / YouTube page to a service provider and therefore there is a lot less connection to B&B than we think? Or nobody at B&B does have the actual airdate list because nobody did track CBS back then? Or they are just lazy and thrilled to have ironed out everything with licensing to go through with broadcasting on YT? It could be either. LOL

Edited November 21, 2021 by sheilaforever

[Althea Davis]

This youtube profile is disturbing. How a professional profile can be like that is beyond me. They upload strange unfinished episodes... tons of them... they upload the classic ones cropped, looking off and without proper airdates. I don't like that. It takes away from experience. Also the quality in some videos is laughable. It's stupid, because we know they have near HD quality. Episodes have been re-broadcasted... like hundreds of times... in the last couple of year there have been 2 channels repeating old episodes... we have seen from Cala Classics and RTL, that they have them in pristine quality. 

Also from some reason they deleted a season, 2009-1010, which was long ago uploaded on the channel is somewhat OK quality... and right now they have been Premiering these episodes again, but with OVER THE TOP low quality, near unwatchable. Yes, I repeat, they are premiering these episodes, uploading even low quality trailers.

Are the people connected with this youtube psychologically disturbed?

 

[Videnbas]

 

It is just odd. If this account is really the official one connected to the show, it's strange that they don't make an effort to make it more "professional".

And  I can understand that maybe the actual airdates may be hard to sort out 34 years later, but why fake it? If they don't know, at least be honest about it and name the episodes by number instead of by air date. Simply making up an air date doesn't make sense on any level. It is just completely unhelpful and confusing for any fan looking for a particular episode. And it gives the impression that the uploaders just don't care. I mean, getting a date wrong here and there is one thing. Being consistently off by 2-3 weeks is another.

But, again, I'm still glad they're doing it and hope they will keep at it. And I'm kind of hoping that if the early seasons make their way back into TPTB's consciousness, they might be inspired and rediscover what made the show great to begin with. Characterization, storytelling, long-term planning, a variety of plots and characters shown every episode, and so on.

EDIT: I just read and got a laugh out of the disclaimer in the info section:
"This program is presented as originally created. It may contain outdated cultural depictions."
I think we all understand without being warned that a show from the 80s depicts the culture of the 80s.
However, that warning label might be warranted in connection with the current episodes.

Edited November 21, 2021 by Videnbas

[Broderick]

The storylines really ARE a lot more varied and interesting than what we see nowadays.  

[kalbir]

Of the original B&B characters as written by Bill Bell, the best were Stephanie and Caroline. Yes we could see the Y&R influences, Stephanie being a Jennifer/Katherine/Vanessa hybrid and Caroline being a Chris/Leslie hybrid, but it was the combination of Bill Bell's writing and the acting of Susan Flannery and Joanna Johnson that made these two characters the most memorable of B&B's early years. Plus if we're keeping it real here, it was easy to ignore Ronn Moss's horrible acting in the first three years of B&B whenever Ridge had a scene with Stephanie or Caroline.

For those who watched these original Y&R stories and their B&B versions, how would you compare the two:

Chris/Snapper relationship and the surrounding storylines (Chris's rape, Greg falling for Chris) vs. Caroline/Ridge relationship and the surrounding storylines (Caroline's rape, Thorne falling for Caroline).

Lance/Lucas/Leslie/Lorie quadrangle with Vanessa in the background vs. Ridge/Thorne/Caroline/Brooke quadrangle with Stephanie in the background.

[DramatistDreamer]

Even when I use the Playlist feature for From The Beginning, some videos are out of order chronologically and I have to go back and click on the next video, in order.

[Broderick]

KT Stevens (Vanessa Prentiss) was about 60 years old (but LOOKED even older -- smoked a lot of cigarettes, probably), and she played a very gothic, secretive, veiled, formidable, upper-crust character who seemed obsessed with the love life of her son.  Susan Flannery (Stephanie Forrester) is about a decade younger, still has a youthful look, is more caustic and sarcastic, and even though she appears to have a "crush" on Ridge, she's got a zillion other things going on in her life -- a romantic rival (Beth) who's love with her husband, an assistant (Margo) that she's suspicious of, a daughter (Kristen) that she has a problematic relationship with.  In other words, Stephanie seems more like a fully fleshed-out, well-rounded character who withstood the test of time, while Vanessa Prentiss was primarily a one-note villainess whose story ended in four or five years because there wasn't anything in her life except Lance.   Stephanie was just a better character (probably) than Vanessa, with a whole lot more storyline potential that was tapped.  It probably also works in Stephanie's favor that she's more upper-middle class snotty, and interacts with a variety of characters, while Vanessa was more exclusively wealthy and was a recluse.  Vanessa's social reclusiveness limited her storyline potential.  

I really liked Trish Stewart as Chris, but to me Joanna Johnson as Caroline is an even more appealing performer.  She's just beautiful.  While Caroline is a bit more high-maintenance than Chris, she also seems slightly more neurotic, and is just sorta more interesting.  Her leaving the show was a real loss.  It's hard to compare Snapper with Ridge.  William Grey Espy (Snapper) was such an interesting, aloof, laconic character, and Ronn Moss is -- well -- he's not much of anything.  Jim Houghton (Greg) wasn't the greatest actor in the world by a long shot, and neither was Clayton Norcross (Thorne), but again, I felt as though Snapper and Greg were far more developed and interesting than Ridge and Thorne.     

 

[j swift]

Way back in my undergraduate days I did a content analysis (for some b.s. media studies course), of the first week of B&B in comparison to an early week of episodes of Guiding Light.  As I recall, the interesting comparison was between Stephanie Forrester and Bert Bauer.  They ruled their families, one from the office and the other from the kitchen, they both served a "Lady Macbeth" role in their respective husband's careers, and while they both meddled in the romantic lives of their sons, they both also had preferences for one son over the the other.

Looking back, I could have made the comparison to any number of soap mothers (at the time the GL archives were being shown at the Paley Center, so I had access).  However, the parallels were remarkable, right down to similar lines that both characters were given to defend their meddling to their husbands.  In fact, my pièce de résistance  in the research was the New Daily News review of the premiere of B&B which mirrored a profile of Bert in the same newspaper published thirty years earlier.

Edited November 23, 2021 by j swift