On Tuesday, ABC Daytime pre-empted their normal programming for an all Brenda Barrett marathon. While I appreciated the gesture, as I approve of the idea of showing episodes that were more than 5 years old, I skipped it and recorded The Bold & The Beautiful and As the World Turns.
One may wonder why I made that decision, but it comes down to simple time management. I watched General Hospital in the 1990s, and seeing those older episodes would only make me miss those times. Granted my favorite times with GH had the speeding ambulance opening, but much of the “Faces of the Heart” era were very enjoyable. The other reason was SoapNet. They are showing Brenda episodes all month, for a week and a half in the mornings pre-empting the Ryan’s Hope reruns that have been running. So if I need a Brenda or an older episode fix, I decided that was the time to view them.
Of what I did see of the Brenda marathon, watching the credits was the best and worst part. First seeing the names of the writers back then explained why I did enjoy the show. I miss the times when I actually knew most of the writers by name, and tried to identify episodes based upon them. These days I can barely tell the difference among episodes and I miss that individuality. The other thing I saw, which made me sad was how many people in the credits are no longer on the program. When you start naming actors and characters and then the words, dead, gone, and MIA come out of your mouth it isn’t a great thing. At least some of the performers, I know what they are up to now, but things are always in a state of change. Of course, it is kind of strange that when I saw certain actors I called them the wrong names. Like oh that’s Justin, oops Ned. Perhaps, that’s why I tend to refer to characters by the actor’s first names until the closed captioning denotes who they are for my point of reference.
So like I said, that Tuesday afternoon, I recorded B&B and ATWT. With B&B, it was nice seeing Rick Hearst (known to GH fans as Ric Lansing) and to other fans based on any of the multiple characters he has played in daytime (Matt on Y&R, Scott on Days, or Alan-Michael on GL). Of course, when I saw him, my first thought was Rick, and not the name of any character he was playing. The annoying part was he was on perhaps for 2 minutes. So while he looked good, it was disappointing. The main thing going on in the Los Angeles of B&B was the fight over Forrester Creations. It was all about proxies and such. I was confused, but when you see a program less than two times a month, it is to be expected. Since I so rarely see this show, the main performers are people I refer to by the names of the actors not the characters. So it went something like this, Rick and Hunter Tylo aka Taylor were outside at a restaurant having a meal with some girl called Steffy, which is her character’s kid with Ron Moss’s Ridge. Due to the whole issue of Brooke and Oliver having sex, Steffy can’t stand Brooke anymore. She is out of the company. To get her back into the fold, Hunter/Taylor gives her shares to her daughter. Meanwhile Don Diamont and Heather Tom (sorry Bill and Katie, I almost typed Brad Carlton and Victoria Newman, their Y&R characters) convince Donna to give her shares of the company to Bill. Donna wants to help Brooke, but she isn’t available. So everyone at Forrester including Brooke is upset over Bill getting his feet back into the company, while Ridge is not happy with Steffy for hating Brooke.
On As the World Turns, I finally got to see what the big deal was with Dr. Reid Oliver. This was only the second episode, I saw him on camera. Which shows how infrequently I watch ATWT. The last time, basically all I saw of him was a kiss with Luke, and Noah seeing them. The majority of it was about Noah and Luke and Reid was kind of ignored. I understood why people like Reid and Luke as he makes Luke seem like a grown man. That is appreciated, but either way they could have done that earlier with the character. The other thing that was noticeable was how Barbara is still being held hostage. I feel this hostage thing has been going on a long time, as the last two times I saw the program she was in that warehouse. I hope the next time I see the program she will have been freed. At least, on this episode she didn’t just fantasize and had dialogue with other characters. Unfortunately now Emily is caught with her. Perhaps my annoyance with it with ATWT is the show is ending. There is only a limited time for the characters to interact with one another. Having them being isolated for numerous episodes is a waste. The other main thing going on was Chris and Katie. He’s pulling away from her due to his potentially life threatening heart issues. I think Chris should just tell Katie the truth and let her decide what she wants to do. Having her think there is something wrong with her is not the way to go.
To conclude, it was a nice respite to have a day off from All My Children and One Life to Live. It wasn’t as if the episodes were skipped, they were just off screen. Do I like the idea of ABC cutting more than one episode a month for marathons, not really? But I don’t have a call in the matter I doubt my watching CBS instead was what ABC would have wanted me to do, but that was my preference as I have SoapNet anyway. Did watching ATWT & B&B for the day make me decide to drop AMC and OLTL? Nope, but my plan for these days is to record something other than the ABC line up, as unless there is something very special on I have already seen it and potentially have it in my episode collection.
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