i started watching soaps at age eight(my parents should have known right then and there i was part of the lavender set).

my first love was "all my children".i'm remembering a willowy and fragile nina cortland,a young and spunky brooke english,a spoiled and snotty erica kane and of course pine valley's grand dame pheobe wallingford who was married to a character played by our own louis edmonds(langly i believe).

i can still hear the theme to "edge of night".it wasn't overtly supernatural but there was something dark about the show.i wish i got 'soap net' but i don't.

i was mesmerized by diana millay the minute she walked into that diner.loved the hat and gloves.i just thought her delivery was very interesting.as you said luciaphil,melencolic as well as sort of tired and weary.it's almost as if she knows the battle she is about to undertake will take everything she's got.

i sort of liked maggie's scenes with laura.she knew she was in a nowhere town and laura's tales of far-off places must have seemed exotic.they do seem to be struggling with who this character is here however.is she the nosy town gossip or the good girl from the wrong side of the tracks?i think her most effective scenes early on are with david ford.

and you have to cut maggie some slack for her aggressive pursuit of joe haskell(even though it is wildly inappropriate here when vicki's in such danger).snagging the town's hunkiest fisherman from the clutches of it's most spoiled brat must have been an irresistable proposition.

i'm almost through with the full run of the show and i really want to back and re-watch the laura storyline.

vicki:"burke i think it would be fun if you and me and carolyn got together and did something sometime."

burke:"....gulp...."

as much as i enjoyed the 1966 episodes i'm ultimately glad that the show made the jump.

that's why 1967 is my favorite time period.i felt plenty stimulated by those episodes.

i just feel that after a certain point the writers aimed certain storylines specifically at the pre-teen audience.
i don't mean that as a total criticism because i as an adult enjoyed alot of this material but i do think the show could have stayed a bit more grounded and utilized the original cast more and focus less on what amounted to temporary,disposable characters.

i agree that it would have been great to have some traditional soap opera storytelling with the return of paul stoddard.it was a wasted opportunity in terms of character driven plotting.

but i suspect that the writers believed(rightly or wrongly)that after all that had preceeded it they couldn't return to more "normal" soap opera storytelling because it might turn off those "kids that ran home from school".they needed to constantly sate the pre-teen attention span.

i loved the jason mcquire blackmail plot but it's unlikely that it would have rivited many twelve year olds.

in some ways they created a monster.the youth audience brought the show it's greatest success but they became captive of it and could never again gear a storyline strictly at an adult audience.

i also agree with those here who found the whole werewolf/leviathan connection to be tacked-on,silly and meaningless.

suffice to say that the peter bradford development was the worst plot twist in the show's entire history.

i certainly wouldn't go so far as to say that i thought leviathan was the best storyline but i did,having just completed it,enjoy it more than i thought i would.

like most here i prefered the early part of it.i thought it was creepy and atmospheric and unique.the antique shop set joined my list of favorites.i thought it was really well done.

it certaily had it's flaws as well.

clocking in at just about three months i thought it lasted just the right amount of time.longer and i can see it becoming quite wearisome.

thanks guys.

i thought of it while smashed onto a rush-hour subway car.imagining various d.s. scenarios is often a way i spend tedious times like that.