Days of our Lives-related stories
Posted Oct 19th 2009 10:03AM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: OpEd, Daytime, Video, Casting, Reality-Free
I'm still not really over
the end of Guiding LIght, but if there's one thing soap fans know, you have to move on. You get over the end of
Santa Barbara, mourn the loss of
Another World, remember forever that before vampires were in vogue in prime time, Barnabus Collins ruled daytime, despite rickety sets and off-the-rack costumes.
That said, even while people are saying that soaps are dead -- or dying -- I'm excited about
Crystal Chappell returning to
Days of Our Lives.
You want to know how excited? I'm going to watch. After
Deidre Hall and Drake Hogestyn were unceremoniously dumped by the soap, I drifted away. But I'm willing to give
Days another try, especially because my curiosity has been piqued about Crystal's return.
Continue reading I'm psyched about Crystal Chappell's return to Days of Our Lives
Posted Sep 30th 2009 11:00AM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: OpEd, Daytime, Casting, Emmys, Reality-Free
Is it even possible to imagine
The Young and the Restless without Eric Braeden as hero/villain Victor Newman? You would think not, but then
Days of Our Lives moved on without
Deidre Hall as Dr. Marlena Evans, didn't it? Still, Braeden and his alter ego Victor is still a front and center presence on the show, an integral part of the storytelling. Therefore, the news that
The Young and the Restless is contemplating killing off Victor if they cannot resolve the contract dispute with Braeden is a shocker.
Braeden is working now under a contract that lasts till 2010, and his reps have said that he would take a pay cut once the term is up. However, producers are asking him to take a pay cut now. That, my friends, is the rub. Braeden wants to help the show stay on the air, but he's not ready to take an economic hit until he has to. That's understandable.
Continue reading Will The Young and the Restless really kill off Victor Newman?
Posted Aug 17th 2009 10:02AM by Jason Hughes
Filed under: Other Sci-Fi/Supernatural Shows, OpEd, Lost, Heroes, Reality-Free, Gone Too Soon
Long-time readers of this site might remember the recurring feature "
Short-Lived Shows." While this column may bear a resemblance to that beloved early
TV Squad staple, there are notable differences. In particular, I'll be going much more in-depth about the show's fate, its cast, continuing fan support, and possible story continuations in different mediums.
Also, to make this column, a show must have actually been good. Shows that are canceled and deserve it certainly aren't "Gone Too Soon." They're perhaps not gone soon enough. Furthermore, a GTS could just as easily have been on the air for years before ending abruptly. If I'm sitting here wondering what happens next and now I'm never going to find out, that's gone too soon.
Which brings us to our first entry. HBO is known for groundbreaking television, but even they didn't know how much ground they broke with
Carnivàle in September 2003. On the surface, it was yet another brilliantly produced period piece, perfectly capturing the look and feel of the Great Depression era United States. Underneath, it was nothing short of the epic struggle between good and evil.
Continue reading Gone Too Soon: Carnivàle
Posted Aug 8th 2009 7:02PM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: Industry, OpEd, Daytime, Celebrities, Reality-Free
First,
Paula Abdul walks away from American Idol (or was she shoved out by the producers a bit?), now comes news that
Susan Lucci's not sure about sticking with All My Children when the ABC soap relocates to Los Angeles in December. My thought was there's no way La Lucci was going to pass on the chance to keep on working, but she's saying it's a tough decision. "I don't know ... I love the show and I love playing Erica, but I'm just now going to have a couple of days off. It's a lot to think about."
Could Susan truly be thinking anything but, "Yes, I'm going"? Seriously,
All My Children has been her mainstay for 39 years. That's right, nearly four decades of continuous employment in essentially a starring role.
Continue reading Is Susan Lucci quitting All My Children?
Posted Jul 28th 2009 2:30PM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: Industry, OpEd, Daytime, Watercooler Talk, Reality-Free
There will be no reprieve from the governor, no last minute miracle save. No, the end is approaching and
Guiding Light will stop filming the week of August 3. The CBS soap opera will air its last show on September 18, 2009, and the 72-year-long run of America's most enduring daytime drama will officially wrap.
Fans have been hoping that somehow, someway
Guiding Light would find a new home, but neither CBS nor Procter and Gamble have been able to save the show. Soapcentral.com has reported that efforts have been made to no avail. "We have not been able to secure an outlet to carry the show moving forward. We are extremely disappointed with this outcome, but we are confident we have exhausted every possible option," said TeleNext Media SVP Brian T. Cahill.
Continue reading The end is near for Guiding Light
Posted May 15th 2009 10:32AM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: Daytime, Emmys, Reality-Free
They have feuds. They have babies (at least one of them). They have daily debates. But the ladies of
The View have no sway with
the Daytime Emmys. Well, that's not entirely correct. The ladies themselves, Whoopi Goldberg, Joy Behar, Barbara Walters, Sherri Shepherd and Elisabeth Hasselbeck, received an Emmy nomination in the category of Outstanding Talk Show host(s), but their show was snubbed.
Whether it's deemed a Talk Show/Entertainment or Talk Show/Information, it's not deemed worthy. But
The View's missing nomination is merely one of the many oddities of
the 36th Annual Daytime Emmy nominations. Something is really bizarre in the batch of noms.
Continue reading Weirdness in the Daytime Emmys nominations
Posted Mar 17th 2009 12:03PM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: OpEd, Daytime, Reality-Free
There are many things the soaps do well. You know, things like lavish weddings, fancy dress balls, murder trials, even corporate boardroom shenanigans. On the other hand, there are more action-oriented story lines that just bring out the worst in soaps.
In the last few weeks, for instance,
All My Children staged the worst looking motorcycle/car crash I've ever seen on TV. It was riotously funny, and that was not the desired effect. When a wedding gown-wearing Greenlee (sans helmet) careened off the road into a frozen river, the sight of her veil flying in the wind as the tires screeched, with the headlights blinking and the actors pretending to be tossed around, was a hoot. All I was thinking while watching the accident was: "Could this be executed any worse?" (Also, what a waste of Rebecca Budig's return.)
Continue reading TV Squad Soap Report: Do what you do best... drama!
Posted Mar 4th 2009 10:55AM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: OpEd, Daytime, Reality-Free
It's been a little over a year since
Guiding Light bolted from the confines of a New York studio to create a reality based production, a sort of cinema-verite style that brought to life a real New Jersey town to "play" Springfield. The results have been middling at best, but recently
GL has lurched forward in a positive way and that can all be explained in two words/one name --
Grant Aleksander. The actor is back as Phillip Spaulding, one of the most important characters in the history of the show.
The last year of
GL hasn't only been about the new production. Coinciding with all that physical change which has set more and more scenes outdoors and in "wild" set, the cast has been undergoing massive change. Top line veterans Ricky Paull Goldin, Nicole Forester and Beth Ehlers have all departed, and recently John Driscoll was tragically killed off.
Continue reading TV Squad Soap Report: Aleksander the Grant
Posted Feb 4th 2009 5:02PM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: Daytime, Cancellations, Reality-Free
NBC seems determined to destroy
Days of Our Lives, the last soap left on the network. After receiving a truck load of negative press for
firing/letting go/dumping Deidre Hall and Drake Hogestyn, the producers are now dropping the axe on perhaps the most popular romantic couple ever on the show, Patch and Kayla. According to
Soap Opera Digest,
Mary Beth Evans and Stephen Nichols have been let go.
This may seem like an economic necessity for
Days of Our Lives, especially since the soap only has a year-and-a-half to prove to NBC that it's still viable -- that was the length of the pick up it received when it was renewed in 2008 -- but to fans this is just another slap in the face.
Continue reading Days of Our Lives dumps another supercouple
Posted Dec 4th 2008 1:04PM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: OpEd, Celebrities
There are two things that I find disturbing about the news that there's a reality show in the works for married actors
Harry Hamlin and Lisa Rinna for TV Land. Number one, do we really need another show biz couple exposing their personal lives for the cameras? Number two, why is TV Land getting away from celebrating TV history by broadcasting great old shows to do banal entertainment like this kind of unscripted drivel?
Are audiences really clamoring for more of this stuff? I know I'm not, and I don't know anyone else who is! Seriously, this is not reality TV. There's nothing real about it except that they're using their real names. (Yes, those are their real names!)
Continue reading TV Land plots a Harry Hamlin & Lisa Rinna reality show
Posted Nov 21st 2008 3:07PM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: Daytime, Celebrities, Reality-Free
Just a couple of weeks ago, all was fine and dandy in
Days of Our Lives-world. Or so it seemed. The big fan shindig at Universal in Hollywood seemed to signal that the status quo was holding that the lone NBC soap still in production would be able to use the 18-month renewal granted by NBC to climb in the ratings and return to past glory. Now comes the shocking news that NBC
has fired Days of Our Lives' two biggest stars, Deidre Hall (Marlena) and Drake Hogestyn (John)
. By the way, Deidre and Drake were at the fanfest. You think they knew the pink slips were on the way? Um, no.
This is all about money, folks, and instead of seeking other ways to trim costs, Executive Producer Ken Corday and company have used a hatchet and chopped off the top salaries. Don't be shocked to hear that more is coming. That could be Peter Reckell and Kristian Alfonso -- Bo and Hope -- the other iconic romantic couple on the show, right after Marlena and John.
Continue reading Days of Our Lives shake-up: It's all about money
Posted Oct 1st 2008 8:41AM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: OpEd, Ratings, Reality-Free
Did you see
Mad Men recently? As part of Harry's creating a TV division at the Sterling Cooper ad agency, he was made responsible for screening scripts of TV fare so that the content pleased/satisfied/supported the advertisers' desires. Interestingly, it was Joan -- the office manager/head secretary -- who was given the scripts to read and her main focus of
As the World Turns.
She became completely engrossed in the 1962 Oakdale story in which a character came to from a coma with a new personality. Her enthusiasm for the soap story convinced the advertisers to back
As the World Turns rather than
Love of Life, another CBS soap at the time.
Mad Men was historically accurate about
As the World Turns. It was the top-rated soap opera for 20 years -- 1958-1978 -- and in 1962 (the year in which
Mad Men is currently set),
ATWT had increased its share from 47.7 to 53.7 in just a year. It was the soap on the rise and over half all TVs on in daytime were watching this CBS soap.
Continue reading TV Squad Soap Report: SOAPnet's boom and a Mad Men memory
Posted Aug 26th 2008 11:03AM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: OpEd, Daytime, Reality-Free
Everyone thinks they can write. No, really. If you talk to anyone who likes TV and movies, invariably you'll hear that they have a great story. Well, some do and some don't. In the soap business, just about every kind of story has been told.
A show like
Passions, which has recently come to an end, told wild tales about witches and sorcery and dwarfs and demons.
General Hospital has been firmly set in plots about mobsters in the manner of
The Godfather, with Sonny Corinthos a latter day Michael Corleone.
As the World Turns, currently in its 52nd year, is rooted in traditional love stories and family conflicts, although you have to give them props for
Luke and Noah, a frontline gay romance which is definitely a 21st century development.
Continue reading TV Squad Soap Report: Have I got a story for you...
Posted Aug 6th 2008 2:23PM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: OpEd, Daytime, Cancellations, Reality-Free
Perhaps the strangest soap opera of all time has come to an end now that
Passions has been canceled by DirecTV. The gothic, modern psycho-drama set in a small Maine town replete with witches, elves, zombies and even some regular people, lasted nine years on the air. In primetime terms, that would be a hell of a run. For soaps, it characterizes
Passions as a noble -- to some -- failure.
I never cared for
Passions. It turned me off in the first season, 1999, but it wasn't because of the outre elements. I was actually interested in the gothic stuff because I'd grown up enjoying
Dark Shadows with Barnabus and Quentin and Angelique and all those horror classic reinterpretations on a next-to-nothing budget -- furniture provided by Stern's Department Store, as I recall -- including werewolves,
Frankenstein's monster and
The Innocents, and parallel universes.
Dark Shadows remains a vivid, happy memory.
Continue reading TV Squad Soap Report: Passions played out
Posted Jul 10th 2008 2:23PM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: OpEd, Daytime, Reality-Free
Soap operas are a funny form of television fiction. They have rules all its own, they can tell all kinds of stories and do them in the most unusual ways. Here's a few things I've noticed lately, things that seem to only be possible, on a soap.
Only on a soap...can a medical clinic be conceived, built and stocked in less than a month. It's true. It happened in Port Charles. On
General Hospital, soon after Emily died -- and Nikolas stopped seeing visions of her thanks to a brain tumor -- he decided to dedicate a health clinic in her memory. Since Nikolas is a royalty, some kind of prince, cost was no object. He never met with an architect or designer, never spoke to contractors, never searched for a location and dealt with permits. He did have a fight with the mayor for a couple of shows about opening the clinic after it was already completed. If only all construction projects could be done so easily. Jeff Lewis on Bravo's
Flipping Out doesn't even work that fast!
Continue reading TV Squad Soap Report: Only on a soap...
Next Page >
The TV Squad Podcast: Vik Sahay of Chuck, Oprah talk, brutal timeslots, and more!
TV Squad Ten: Top Ten ESPN shows from worst to first
Andy Richter: The TV Squad Interview
