With BTG hitting that milestone soon, I thought it might be interesting to look back at BTG's first year and other soaps past and present to discuss what changes on and offscreen occurred before the first anniversary.

BTG had one recast with the role of Ted and it's still not clear why that happened. And Bob Guza departed as co headwriter, but that seemed to be the plan from the start. As far as story is concerned it seems that Shanice taking a more major role was probably not in the cards at the outset and Derek and Ashley being de-emphasized seems to have come into play. Andre and Dani marrying??

Looking into the past a lot of soaps didn't even make it to Year One.- The Best of everything, Hidden Faces etc

The most recent example being Lovers and Friends. Rather than revamp on air it was taken off after 4 months and returned 6 months later with a new title For Richer, For Poorer, some cast changes and new stories but it was cancelled after 10 months.

Santa Barbara had recasts and revamps almost from the beginning .

What do you recall of those first 12 months of various soaps?

All I'll speak to here is BTG. Given the very circumspect way MVJ has talked about the recast and talked about the necessity of making a change followed by Maurice Johnson's less than politically correct comments re: LGBT issues in a later interview, I think it was a personality conflict BTS.

As for Guza and Ron Carlivati, IIRC MVJ has said they came in as a favor to her for the first year/early months to help get it off the ground (Guza as co-HW and RC I think on breakdowns) and were always set to leave. And yes, Andre and Dani marrying and becoming a serious relationship was also a change of plans per Karla Mosley's interviews. They appear to have blessedly abandoned their planned Andre/Ashley endgame in its entirety.

Edited 3 hours ago3 hr by Vee

I remember Sunset Beach had a few issues (Ashley Hamilton being replaced by Eddie Cribrian, Kelly Hu and Adrienne Frantz* being let go etc), and the show ended up doing a flashback week of clip shows about seven months in (August 1997?) to give them an extra week while they retooled. The most notable change they made during the retooling was changing the theme song to something a little bit more upbeat (which IIRC was based on one of the show's already existing musical cues).

And then after a few more departures and recasts there was that murder week at the start of the show's second year, followed by a few new arrivals. After that I think the show mostly stabilized for the rest of its three year run (Shockwave aside, pun intended lol).

*In Frantz's case, her character Tiffany was actually temporarily recast and then written off.

The short version (I'm going to write a longer one some other time) is that BTG premiered with a BANG. Then 2-3 (maybe even earlier) months after that they had some real issues and hardcore growing pains. I was close to calling it quits sometime last summer... and then VOILA everything started clicking for me in October. Since then I've been in love with the show and I find that they've begun telling real stories... instead of doing shocks and newsflash of the month type of storytelling. I love the slow burn and that they are not hurrying things as much as they did in the beginning... and I love that the characters are evolving and breathing, they are given more opportunity to bond and to connect themselves and with the audience.

It was a bumpy road till October, not gonna lie. I was being critical every single day. I'm not saying now that things are perfect... but IT FEELS like a show to me... like a family, like a grown energy and not something that is rough or in the works.

There is a flow to the show at this moment (I have 10 or so episodes to catch up to, btw.)

B & B in season 1 was almost like an odd hybrid of a high gloss California based soap and their attempt at remaking Y & R for the late 80s audience with the Logan family. The biggest changes during that first season was a recast of the Logan mom, de-emphasizing the Donna/Rocco/Katie triangle, and realizing that Beth/Eric weren't exactly going to be end game even though early episodes seemed to indicate that.

Capital not only dropped their original headwriters (the creators), but they moved the focus away from their Romeo & Juliet story (Tyler/Julie) onto their more grey area characters (Sloane and Trey).

BTG has the disadvantage of writing and filming so far ahead that when something isn't working, the corrections aren't apparent for weeks/months.

Edited 1 hour ago1 hr by Soaplovers