8 hours ago, DRW50 said:

When I first started watching  Emmerdale, they had a cot death storyline. The moment was built  up to through the episode as we saw a number of lovely moments with mother and son, and others who  were close to the family. At this time Emmerdale had an hour-long episode a week, which  they often used to  layer material in a way that gave more impact to this type  of moment. But beyond  anything else - the community, the heart - it's  Charlotte Bellamy, who played  the mother (and is still on  Emmerdale - she is one of the finest actors in soap), who absolutely wrecks me any time I watch this episode. 

 

Charlotte is phenomenal in these scenes. There's just no other word to describe it. 

The Terror Island Story on Sunset Beach shocked me to death.. I was just 8/9 when I watched it and was really shocked about the murders. I thought the Crew would have a great vacation and then it turned into “Scream”.

it really haunted me for years.

I still can’t believe my mother let me watch this.

21 hours ago, LondonScribe said:

From a U.K. perspective, Aiden’s suicide in Coronation Street was both powerful and harrowing for a number of viewers and reasons. Not a comment on the show itself. 
 

 

This hit personal for me. I went through a tough time and this storyline was really hitting home and helpful!

i will never forget Aidan’s death and Johnnys reaction! Johnnys reaction was the only one I truly loved and which broke my heart for him

10 hours ago, Vee said:

They were absolutely fired and released to do other work. Frances Reid said it in public and Matt Ashford went to OLTL for an extended stint. It was forcibly rewritten because of fan and possibly network backlash. It was never a Reilly "master plan".

Absolutely. They were all meant to be dead up until the moment that Tom Horton's head scared Marlena out of the Horton house. I think the sequence where Marlena comes back and "kills" Alice is where the re-write started. It's almost as if you can see the switch in that episode.

14 hours ago, DramatistDreamer said:

And I know that later fans claim to have enjoyed it, but having James conspire with Barbara, the woman he terrorized for years seemed so stupid a concept that I really can't bother trying to analyze how idiotic that was.

There really needed to be a moment in that story where Barbara's insanity becomes too much even for James to handle, thereby forcing him to side with everyone else and get her the help she clearly needed.  If the same thing had happened to GL's Roger and Holly, with Holly going off the deep end, like she did during the Nursery Rhyme Stalker mess, Roger would have had enough sense to tell others, "Okay, so I'm an evil s.o.b. who doesn't deserve to live.  If it convinces you all that Holly is in trouble, so be it!".

12 hours ago, Vee said:

They were absolutely fired and released to do other work. Frances Reid said it in public and Matt Ashford went to OLTL for an extended stint. It was forcibly rewritten because of fan and possibly network backlash. It was never a Reilly "master plan".

Agree.  You could tell just from the change in the story's tone that something was going on BTS.  Before Melaswen, the SSK storyline was unsettlingly grim and sinister.  Afterward, the whole thing became non-stop camp.  JER was a great many things, but he was never tonally inconsistent.

1 hour ago, te. said:

They were all meant to be dead up until the moment that Tom Horton's head scared Marlena out of the Horton house.

Hands down, the silliest moment in soaps' history.

39 minutes ago, Khan said:

There really needed to be a moment in that story where Barbara's insanity becomes too much even for James to handle, thereby forcing him to side with everyone else and get her the help she clearly needed.  If the same thing had happened to GL's Roger and Holly, with Holly going off the deep end, like she did during the Nursery Rhyme Stalker mess, Roger would have had enough sense to tell others, "Okay, so I'm an evil s.o.b. who doesn't deserve to live.  If it convinces you all that Holly is in trouble, so be it!".

The difference being though, that Holly and Roger teetered back and forth between enmity and romantic situations. James and Barbara never had that. They never slept together after James resurfaced "from the dead" in 1986 or when he returned afterwards. In fact, James was perfectly willing to let Barbara rot in prison for a murder she never committed, a murder that never happened. I liked when Barbara once told James that she was no longer afraid of him because she was an even match for him, James' eyes lit up as he told her she was never more beautiful than she was after telling him that and Barbara smirked in response. That was the most sparks we saw between these two after their bitter divorce. Not the same type of tension between Roger and Holly, imo.

I still maintain that James never should have been resurrected after Paul practically drove a stake through his heart with those bullets in 1989. Those scenes were so powerful, which really should have "done it" for James Stenbeck. I realize that Anthony Hererra was a very charismatic actor and James had been involved in some of the most dramatic stories during the 1980s but the storylines that he was brought back for in the '00s were demonstrably worse, even the spa story was m several steps down from what he'd previously been involved in when on the canvas.

7 minutes ago, DramatistDreamer said:

I still maintain that James never should have been resurrected after Paul practically drove a stake through his heart with those bullets in 1989. Those scenes were so powerful, which really should have "done it" for James Stenbeck. I realize that Anthony Hererra was a very charismatic actor and James had been involved in some of the most dramatic stories during the 1980s but the storylines that he was brought back for in the '00s were demonstrably worse, even the spa story was m several steps down from what he'd previously been involved in when on the canvas.

Absolutely agree!

1 hour ago, DramatistDreamer said:

The difference being though, that Holly and Roger teetered back and forth between enmity and romantic situations. James and Barbara never had that. They never slept together after James resurfaced "from the dead" in 1986 or when he returned afterwards. In fact, James was perfectly willing to let Barbara rot in prison for a murder she never committed, a murder that never happened. I liked when Barbara once told James that she was no longer afraid of him because she was an even match for him, James' eyes lit up as he told her she was never more beautiful than she was after telling him that and Barbara smirked in response. That was the most sparks we saw between these two after their bitter divorce. Not the same type of tension between Roger and Holly, imo.

I still maintain that James never should have been resurrected after Paul practically drove a stake through his heart with those bullets in 1989. Those scenes were so powerful, which really should have "done it" for James Stenbeck. I realize that Anthony Hererra was a very charismatic actor and James had been involved in some of the most dramatic stories during the 1980s but the storylines that he was brought back for in the '00s were demonstrably worse, even the spa story was m several steps down from what he'd previously been involved in when on the canvas.

I think it suffered from the Stefano disease. It felt like they wanted him to be Stefano without giving credit to the actual type of character and stories James was in.  If anything, I think Paul being driven to the dark side as time went on would have been more compelling than James returning.  It also was a Barbara crutch- don’t know what to do with Barbara?  Let’s resurrect James.

Edited February 18, 20223 yr by titan1978

3 hours ago, titan1978 said:

I think it suffered from the Stefano disease. It felt like they wanted him to be Stefano without giving credit to the actual type of character and stories James was in.  If anything, I think Paul being driven to the dark side as time went on would have been more compelling than James returning.  It also was a Barbara crutch- don’t know what to do with Barbara?  Let’s resurrect James.

By then, I don't think the writers knew much about the show's history. Hogan Sheffer himself admitted to not having watched any ATWT before he began working on the show. At that point, I doubt he had much time or desire to watch what came before his tenure as HW.

I am not sure if he was the sole or the last writer to resurrect James Stenbeck but whoever it was by then had made what used to be a dashing, charismatic and malevolent force into a caricature.

I do agree, it was a device to plug holes in the story that illustrated a lack of creativity.

Edited February 18, 20223 yr by DramatistDreamer

Eden's rape on Santa Barbara

1 hour ago, DramatistDreamer said:

I am not sure if he was the sole or the last writer to resurrect James Stenbeck but whoever it was by then had made what used to be a dashing, charismatic and malevolent force into a caricature.

Didn't James dress up as a clown at some point?  I could swear I saw him in full clown regalia one afternoon and thought, "Okay, even the most mediocre HW'ers that ATWT had back in the '80's would NEVER have done THAT to James Stenbeck!"

8 minutes ago, Khan said:

Didn't James dress up as a clown at some point?  I could swear I saw him in full clown regalia one afternoon and thought, "Okay, even the most mediocre HW'ers that ATWT had back in the '80's would NEVER have done THAT to James Stenbeck!"

Yes I believe it was Jean Passanante that wrote that garbage.

2 hours ago, DramatistDreamer said:

By then, I don't think the writers knew much about the show's history. Hogan Sheffer himself admitted to not having watched any ATWT before he began working on the show. At that point, I doubt he had much time or desire to watch what came before his tenure as HW.

I am not sure if he was the sole or the last writer to resurrect James Stenbeck but whoever it was by then had made what used to be a dashing, charismatic and malevolent force into a caricature.

I do agree, it was a device to plug holes in the story that illustrated a lack of creativity.

He may not have watched the show, but I clearly remember him saying he read all of Marland’s bibles, and thought they were incredible.  So he did do some research.  It lead to some shallow characterizations lol.

2 hours ago, Khan said:

Didn't James dress up as a clown at some point?  I could swear I saw him in full clown regalia one afternoon and thought, "Okay, even the most mediocre HW'ers that ATWT had back in the '80's would NEVER have done THAT to James Stenbeck!"

I was going to say they made him look like a clown but I figured that would be too 'on the nose'.😂

1 hour ago, titan1978 said:

He may not have watched the show, but I clearly remember him saying he read all of Marland’s bibles, and thought they were incredible.  So he did do some research.  It lead to some shallow characterizations lol.

I just remember him declaring his love for All My Children as he accepted the award for As The World Turns at the Daytime Emmys and wondered why he wasn't writing for AMC.

Hogan Sheffer wasn't writing for AMC, because God is real.

7 hours ago, DramatistDreamer said:

By then, I don't think the writers knew much about the show's history. Hogan Sheffer himself admitted to not having watched any ATWT before he began working on the show. At that point, I doubt he had much time or desire to watch what came before his tenure as HW.

I am not sure if he was the sole or the last writer to resurrect James Stenbeck but whoever it was by then had made what used to be a dashing, charismatic and malevolent force into a caricature.

I do agree, it was a device to plug holes in the story that illustrated a lack of creativity.

The first thing they did when James returned was to reveal he and Lucinda had been lovers 30+ years earlier and she gave their child up for adoption, even though they very clearly met onscreen for the first time in 1986.

Marland went to great lengths to kill James, and not in a wink wink way like Roger Thorpe. James had an autopsy, and I think we may have even seen him on the slab. And he was right to do so.  I know that the job provided Anthony some comfort in his later years, but that's the only positive I can really say about the character being resurrected.