I actually had forgotten how key Kendall still was in these May 1995 episodes--we just had Laurel and Trevor's wedding where Kendall discovers her and convinces her not to do anything--and then Janet is "struck by lightning" but no one will believe Kendall at first. This was the storyline where originally Janet was going to try to bomb the wedding right? Or was that something else. As it was, she had a gun and Kendall implied Janet was actually going to try to kill some people but it was all very very vague what exactly was Janet's plan (especially with armed guards everywhere.) That said, it was nice, as it used to be, to see the interaction of a large group of the canvas at the wedding.
(I forgot about the storyline of Gloria leaving her mental health clinic to readjust with Pine Valley society and honestly how well it was handled, including Grace Kiefer being the one to welcome her back to Myrtle's and talking about her own difficulties readjusting to society. Honestly, while the various plots move faster than they would by the 2000s--which I appreciate--there still have been a number of genuinely well written scenes where characters just reflect on their feelings, another thing that at the time I guess I took for granted.
I remember in Christopher Schemering's soap Encyclopedia from the 1980s he said that one criticism some soap fans had about AMC was that there was tonal whiplash often going from story to story, but as you imply, I think that was a strength and it's nice to see they still managed that in the mid 90s. It also has the benefit of when you are tired of a storyline, there are enough stories in play that you know that any one episode (mostly) will not just focus on that story.
Random--it looks like they've already had to deal with replacing some music due to rights. While I was surprised to hear genuine pop songs in the background of the Insomnia Cafe scenes, there was an episode where they threw Laurel and Trevor a disco themed bachelor party. They had a dance sequence (where Alec is jealous because Matteo pulls Hayley to the floor and they connect through a dance) to one disco song which had the worst generic synth "boopy boop" type music but I swear muffled in the background I could hear Donna Summer singing Last Dance. And then after they say they're going to slow it down with Saturday Night Fever's How Deep Is Your Love--but instead all we hear is more generic synth "boopy boop" music, so... The only reason this interests me is that it means someone in charge of these streaming releases (or maybe it was done before for the foreign markets or something) has actually gone through the trouble of replacing licensed music and not just, say, muting it or something.
By
EricMontreal22 ·
