ALL: Imposters/clones/impersonate

[carolineg]

No  Not really it seemed like it may have been gearing up to her possibly being Sam or just a random psycho, but it was entirely dropped.  I don't think it helped that Andrea looked visibly older than Deidre because of work and stuff (no disrespect to Andrea who seems to have aged very naturally).  I didn't think they looked that much alike in the 70's.  They are mirror twins, but I also don't think anyone in town would have been fooled by Hattie.  Their voices are even very different.  I think it was just a gimmick. 

[Contessa Donatella]

When I first saw this topic I thought it was gonna be about imposters & impersonators on Facebook & on Twitter & on Instagram. Y&R has been hard hit, Eileen Davidson, Victoria Rowell, both Peter Reckell & Maurice Benard have been hit, now Crystal Chappell has lost her Facebook & her twitter identities. Sarah Joy Brown has had an Instagram imposter! 

[Michael]

Thanks for responding. That was my recollection, too. She had the surgery and then... nothing happened.

I loved the setup of Marlena returning to hosting a radio show, and it really did feel like they were building to something. I found Langan's run to be full of elements like that. Things would get set up, built, and then either dropped entirely or forgotten for a while before there was a random conclusion.

[soapfan770]

Personally I think the one I haaate the most is the use of masks! WTF, put on a face mask and suddenly your whole body conforms to that person’s? Days uses this tactic the most, so corny LMAO.

Y&R went overkill in this category. During the Bell years we only had Katherine/Marge and Blade Rick.

Then, since 2006 we have had:

Phyllis/“Sheila” or whoever that was

Carmen/Ines

William/Jeffrey

John/Alistair

Katherine/Marge 2.0

Patty/Emily

Lauren/Sarah

Patty/Emily 2.0

Cassie/Mariah

Adam/Gabe

Jack/Marco

Hilary/Amanda 

Did I miss any of them?

B&B has had Johnny/Rush, Amber/April, and Owen/Casper

Oddly B&B has had a reversal of this when Phoebe and Steffy were identical twins but became fraternal twins.

 

Yeah I remember wayyy back during the SSK story when they brought Hattie but played by  back there was much speculation that this was the case. Then a few years later when Samantha appeared to Marlena in a dream DH played and there was outrage that Andrea wasn’t brought back and I remember someone commented that Andrea didn’t even look like Diedre anymore. 

Edited January 20 by soapfan770

[Contessa Donatella]

Ya know that latex mask business is taken wholly from the old Mission Impossible TV show. Just about every episode the ones who did the masks would be impersonating someone else & often they would be taller or fatter or thinner, etc. When DAYS did it, they overdid it! 

[carolineg]

That's why I wonder if the story with Andrea didn't go anywhere.  Hattie was having all this surgery to look just like Marlena and what happens when these surgeries are complete?  Lol.  Andrea wasn't going to look the same age or body shape without undergoing a major transformation herself and that was probably something she didn't want to do.  I really don't mean it in an insulting way-it just is what it is.

In my mind it made sense for DH to play Hattie when she returned even if I think Hattie is completely useless.  I really just think Langan or whoever thought it was a clever idea at the time, but didn't think the endgame through.

Like I said, I always thought Don was an idiot back in the day because the two women, while twins, were fairly easy to tell apart.

[Khan]

That's what made an already preposterous storyline even moreso, IMO.

There was a lot about Tom Langan's work on DAYS that left me absolutely baffled.

And I think we all would be remiss not to mention the mother of all bad "evil twin" storylines: the Rachel/Justine saga on AW.  I think Carolyn Culliton, who was the show's HW for most of that storyline, is a fine lady and writer, but I think that particular story got away from her.  It made the Natalie/Janet story on AMC look Shakespearean in comparison.

Edited January 20 by Khan

[Contessa Donatella]

That it got away from them is probably a good way to put it. Like some things, it began pretty well. But by the time she was grinding 18 gears or bricking Vicky up in a wall, oy, it was so awful. 

[soapfan770]

Pretty much this. I recall Hattie did get an exit scene by leaving town when Stefano left following the ridiculous “Bombs in Salem” story because she was going to be a liability or something lol, but I think the only people who knew Hattie were Marlena, Roman, Fay and I think Kate. 
 

Langan’s era was full of story/plot danglers.

All that needed to be said. The Langan era was sheer insanity. 
 

Rachel/Justine was one of the strangest stories I had ever seen on a soap at that time and actually made the Possession story, which was running concurrently, look more plausible and sensible. 
 

The story suffered from a turnover of EP and writers with the very baffling decision to kill Ryan off. And VW somehow kept her Justine accent all the way to the show’s end.

[Contessa Donatella]

Well, just in case you don't know, Jill fired Christine Tucci & she & PMV were a couple & it pissed him off so he said he was quitting & Jill in that special way she had, said if he was gonna quit, she'd just kill him off! So, that is how behind the scenes makes it onto the scene! 

 

At least we got one good thing out of it: Vicky with Ryan in heaven, that was inspired soap!! 

Edited January 20 by Donna L. Bridges

[Paul Raven]

OLTL

Bo/Patrick London

[Lye-C]

Langan’s Coronation Massacre is still, in my opinion, the most violent scene in daytime history and no one talks about it anymore. 

I think they could have used Andrea as Hattie in 2004. I liked the Salem PD’s theory that Marlena could have been mistaken for someone who looked similar to her but not identical.

I don’t enjoy Deidre’s Hattie at all. 

Edited January 21 by Lye-C

[Contessa Donatella]

Once that's been said what else is there to say?

Something else we agree on. 

[Xanthe]

On Another World in addition to Rachel/Justine:

Cass' evil doppelgänger Rex Allingham 

Amanda was supposedly the double of the dead wife of Dustin Trent (although fortunately Sandra Ferguson didn't have to act the part of the wife except for a brief video clip) in 1989. And I’m not sure if it was really a physical double, but in 1999 Amanda was also somehow at least spiritually a vessel for Amalie, the beloved of Jordan Stark who similarly possessed David Halliday.

Anne O'Donnell and Alexander Nikos were the doubles of dead characters Frankie Frame and Lucas.

 

 

Edited January 21 by Xanthe
spelling

[soapfan770]

The silence of that is with good reason. The Coronation Massacre was nothing more a blatant rip-off of Dynasty’s Moldavian Massacre, and only Brandon’s blink if you miss her wife died. It was nothing more than a laughable sweeps stunt already padded between a plane crash that involved the majority of the cast before the Massacre, the Kiraksis mansion fire, the Salem High chemistry lab exploding the following month, and then by May/June bombs in Salem. It was very easy to forget.