Hi, Nancy, as in nancymck!

Glad you're here.  This is one great bunch of people!

Gerard

Hi, Jake, ie TEStokes!

Welcome aboard!  You can share whatever you want about your personal life.  We won't go anywhere with it.....promise!

Matt Drudg......I mean, Gerard

Raineypark wrote:

>>a problem that afflicts every other current Soap and most television these days: too many perfectly perky and pretty people...Lately, Soaps, in particular, have been ditching their oldest and most beloved (by a certain segment of the audience) long-term characters in order to get and keep a younger audience.  I'm not naive...I understand that like most things in life, TV is all about money and money requires a specific audience make-up.  But in the pursuit of the right demographic, tv today has tossed overboard a very significant part of storytelling: The Character, who knows the secrets, tells the tale, provides the moral, remembers the past and already suspects the future.....there are some extraordinarily talented and stunningly beautiful young people working out there right ....but I do believe that an unrelenting diet of pretty faces is no substitute for the banquet a show like DS provided: some beautiful, some not, some young, some not, some very talented....well, no comment (!) and all supporting one another in the common task of telling the tale.<<

You're so right, Raineypark!  Of course, soaps (and all TV dramas/sitcoms) are fantasy, even if some try to throw in "realism", done for entertainment, and being fantasy they are populated by performers who look "more than normal".  Yet, facts and figures prove that something is just not working, despite efforts by TV corporate execs to please that "demographic".  The ratings are low.  The Young and the Restless is today the highest rated TV soap and it can't command six million viewers.  Naturally, things like cable options have cut deeply into the major networks, but I believe that the attempt to make everyone who appears in a show one of the "beautiful people" does not work.  With everyone looking like some Vogue or GQ model, there is no variety - soon they all begin to look alike.  So what would be a draw?

Let's be honest about DS - it was populated by "normal people" just like us.  We all know there were some knock-outs, especially among the female cast, but what viewers cared about were characters, not cut-outs.  Today, DS is the only soap which survives in syndication, still commanding millions of viewers, both old and new.  Other than on the Soap Channel, can we find ANY of the other soaps, both retired and recent, re-airing anywhere on TV?  All those beautiful people, and no one is interested in seeing them in their roles again.  That says something.

Gerard

Kinda along the same lines, anyone watch that vampire story on Port Charles which played out throughout last summer and autumn?  Some actor played a double role - twin brothers, one a vampire, the other a priest.  I watched it on and off, the vampire going after his version of Josette, the hero trying to go after the vampire, and some guy the vampire bit going back and forth between wanting to be a vampire and not wanting to be a vampire.  I wtached it on and off, and then just lost interest.  Anyone know what happened?

Gerard

>>Also remember Gerard, Rob and Laura had to sleep in twin beds!!

jennifer<<

So did Lucy and Ricky, Jennifer, and they were even married in real life!  Although, in the first season, the twin beds were pushed together.  If my television history serves me right, the first TV sitcom to show a single bed in the parents' bedroom was on "Leave It to Beaver".  For the first few seasons, they had twin beds, by towards the end, they had only one.  However, they were never shown in it.  I do believe the first sitcom to have a married couple share the same bed in full view of everyone was "Bewitched".

Gerard (Who wonders if Barnabas and Angelique slept in the same bed during their short, turbulent marriage, and if either one of them snored)

It was right around then, I think, Prof. Stokes.  Of course, I've already erased those episodes and have taped the next set over them.  He says it at the end of a line, very quickly, but it's there.

And the next time the show starts from the beginning, I'm gonna hafta listen for Louis Edmonds "damn" in episode two, as revealed by Midnite!  All these cus words in DS!  Who'd ever think it was so racey?  What next?  Mary Anne and Genie showing up with their navels exposed?

Gerard

It happened so fast that you might not have noticed it, but while Ben and Angelique were arguing whilst Barnabas was languishing on the bed, Ben blurted out:  "damn it".  We might've seen TV history there.  That was 1967/68, and while I do remember the "d" word becoming common on the boob tube after 1970, I don't ever remember hearing it spoken before that.  They did begin to allow them to say "damnable" in the sixties, or to say "damned" if it was used in the context of describing the possible state of having to shovel coal for all eternity, but not as a cuss word.  Was it deliberately written in the script?  Did Thayer David just blurt it out (and you know how reluctant they were to reshoot a scene)?  Did we see TV history?

I remember that Star Trek used "hell" when William Shatner, at the end of the "City of the Edge of Forever" episode gave his final line:  "Let's get the hell out of here."  I think that was also a first.

Well, who knows about that first possible use of the "d" word.  Anyway, who gives a damn?

Gerard