Ratings, Rants and Raves: All Soaps Fall; The Stories All My Children Could Have Told For Erica Kane

Gee....you mean viewers didn't flock to GH in record numbers to see Sam get her uterus patched up so that she and Jason can replace Jake faster than Facebook replaced MySpace?

So much of DAYS is just not working. There are little gems like the Jennifer/Daniel storyline. I don't ship them but it's actually ok.

I hate Sami/Rafe and this terrible terrible storyline of Rafe/Fafe hasn't done the show any favors. I would love to see a storyline for Sami & Rafe without EJ in it. Doesn't seem like TPTB can write Safe without dragging EJ in to give them a storyline. Sami/Rafe needs to sink or swim on its own. I think it will sink.

Also stupid is the spoiler with Brady re: Arianna's death. He didn't give two shits when she died cause he was too busy helping cover up Sami's crime but suddenly he's all about Arianna getting justice? Bitch, please. That goes double for Rafe if he gets up in it too.

Part of the problem is Higley but Corday & Tomlin aren't helping. All three of them are tanking this show with their "great" ideas.

OLTL is great soap lately. If Days was smart they would start wooing Frank C NOW to be headwriter when OLTL goes to soap heaven.

As always great ratings article, Jamey!!!!!

Days,
How about has Dena seen an episode of Dora the Explorer or Max and Ruby?? Heck I would rather watch those shows than Days right.

As for the ABC soaps,
AMC, just counting the days until Lorraine and Agnes take over, hopefully more favorites are coming back!!!!

OLTL,
Love it, I can't wait until next week when Roger comes back, I want to see how Ron is going to write this. Take that Frons and ABC!!!

GH,
Boring, boring, boring, and I could careless. I know we're supposed to suppport the soaps, but I can't watch this without falling asleep. You can have a nice nap though if you haven't taking one in a while.

I agree you have to do some finger pointing at Days' Corday and Tomlin, too. If Higley's a terrible writer, then it's their bad if they (1) like what she's writing or (2) just let her do what she wants.

I'm going out on a limb and say I'm cautiously optimistic about Days. The problem for me for months has been that the two worst stories (Sami/Rafe/Fafe and EJ/Taylor/Nicole) have practically taken over the show, both of them on 5 days a week most weeks. Other stories that might be going better are lucky to get 1 day a week or every 2 weeks.

But, with them finally allowing Nicole to figure out a few things (they've been writing her pretty dumb) and taking charge, and with this new turn in the Fafe storyline from this week, I find myself enjoying both stories more than I have previously. So, cautious optimism.

Jamey, you've definitely been focusing on the stupidity of the doppelganger story for weeks. But what do you think about some of the smaller stories going on? Is there ANYTHING you're liking?

Jamey,
You said "The secret lookalike-who-assumes-your-life was fresh and daring when the late Bill Bell, Sr. did it with Jeanne Cooper on Y&R in the 80's. Now the doppelganger is as stale, predictable and eyeroll-inducing as Fox News going after rappers."

Not to get off-topic, but did you happen to catch Wednesday's Daily Show on the subject of Fox News going after Common? It really has me shaking my head. Thank God for Jon Stewart for calling Fox News out on their total ignorance.

If not, you can catch it at: http://www.thedailyshow.com/full-episodes/wed-may-11-2011-albert-brooks

But let me say something on-topic. I too am getting sick of the repeat storylines. Do they honestly see what they're doing? They are the result of their own demise. I, for one don't want to waste my time watching rehashed crap.

The whole Balkan avenging his son was what started this stupid free fall. Guza should have capitalized on the great triangle that has always been Sonny/Brenda/Jax. It was gold back then and it's still got the ability to be gold now. If there was a need for the child to be anyone's it would have been much more pivotal to have it be a Jasper Jacks child. Setting off one bomb after another starting with Sonny and Carly's reactions.

OLTL was always a good soap that had a tendency to sit in the shadows behind GH because it lacked all the glitz and glamour of the mob but now that it's been cancelled many are sitting up to take notice. Pity it took being cancelled to do that.

I'm not a bit surprise the Replace-O-Baby storyline flopped and I give less than a rat's tutu about Elizabeth being thrown under the bus (again) in another LL2 triangle (again) that's all Guza does with her babies triangles paternity isssues...

I find Lucky/Shioban boring as hell. The storyline has turned Elizabeth from a victim along with Luckky/Nik to keeping another paternity secret (again) adding to her woes instead of Brooklyn we get two more Shioban and Maxie telling her oh tell the truth...its more decimation of her character she has shown zero growth even after the death of her kid Guza continues to write her like shit.

Sorry this triangle or whatever its suppose to be is not entertaining its only to prop Lucky as the saint in all this and Elizabeth the bad guy (again). I wanted to see Elizabeth focused on "who switched the paternity" instead she's running after Lucky on the day of her dead son's birthday with another envelope...Helena comes back but who will be written for an emmy reel it certainly won't be Elizabeth Webber.

I'm having trouble with Thomas/Brooke storyline so I'm not surprised the very berries is tanking their numbers..I liked many aspects of it and found it fun but now Brooke is back to siding with Thomas not telling her husband the truth. My main draw is Thomas/DayZee but not much of a good story there I was hoping for more.

Y/R I like the Lucy storyline but sick of Phyllis, I'm missing Jill and Colin and am intrigued by Genevieve's arrival. I like Maura West's Diane and am waiting to see what she does next...I would have thought Nikki had more self-esteem than to forgive a man in less than an eppy who has berated and name-called her then she jumps in the bed with him quickerthan this week.

This Photo reminded me of something I saw last night Watching Joy Behar.

Susan Lucci is the WORST ambassador to what ABC has done to the two soaps. To put "politically correct" puts it midly. Sure, she appears sad in her media blitz this week, but this "All good things must come to an end" is annoying. The Fans of DC Confidential are more irrate (and some aren't even ABC fans!!)

Look, Lucci will be fine down the road. The Rumor of "Housewives" conveniently airing on ABC is a perfect fit for her (tho i'm not a fan of that show), but I just wish an ABC actor would get on Joy or Letterman, something and let the FUR FLY!!

So that's MY rant for the week.

And Amelia Heinle's hair. But that's another topic for another rant... Sigh.

....you mean viewers didn't flock to GH in record numbers to see Sam get her uterus patched up....

HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

Please don't remind Dena Higley of Grey's Anatomy before she kills off real Rafe and has Sami screwing his ghost. And I wouldn't be surprised if the Erica look-a-like is actually Erica's twin that Mona had to sell on the black market.

Thank God for Jennifer Rose and Maggie, who are the heart and soul of DOOL right now. Seriously, I am so glad Melissa Reeves returned to the show, she is so adorably endearing, and I'm actually liking her flirtation with Daniel. And Maggie just turns everything to gold. She and Victor are definitely my favorite couple on Days.

Everything else? Complete garbage. Nothing else entertains me one iota. I quit watching for weeks except for random scenes here and there. I'm tired of EJ, can JS take a break please? And this ridiculously contrived "romance" with Taylor is just sick and gross. Don't like Taylor, no matter who's portraying her. I like Rafe, but do we really need his whole family in town? Instead of bring in more of the Hernandez family, why not cast some younger Hortons? Especially since Nathan left town.

GH I don't really have much to say about. It's been so dreary and dull lately. I barely pay attention when it's on. It's almost like Guza and Frons are TRYING to make it unbearable to watch so that everyone will be okay when it's cancelled.

OLTL remains almost unwatchable to me. Every time I tune into it, Bess/Tess/Wes/Whothefuckever are doing their thing, and I just can't... I concede the OLTL is the only soap of the two I watch that hits the right soapy notes the best, but it's still a frigging mess. I can't even. Lord.

I took most of the week off from AMC. That show, too, is unwatchable. But I like the characters on that show more than I ever liked anyone on OLTL, so it at least has that.

You think?

I'm going to just cosign keanna's post, lol. And OLTL is FANTASTIC soap. It may be campy at times--Crazy Marty, Tess/Wes/Jess, etc--but dammit, it sure as HELL ENTERTAINS me. I don't ask for much, I just ask to be entertained and OLTL makes me literally Laugh Out Loud. GH hasn't done that in years, and even less so this year with the effing gloom and doom central. I hope with RH returning to OLTL, the ratings go even higher. I'm still drinking the kool-aid, it's nice and fresh, so I don't pay attention to anything else. Given the timeline, there's really no point. Anyway, many folks stopped watching in the past but are tuning back in for this Todd/Todd storyline, no matter how possibly implausible . Great Ratings, Rants, and Raves, Jamey!

edited

Thanks, GHfan, and well said as always!!!

Okay let me say this:

Great writers like Agnes and Bill Bell have stated over and over again that they read the newspaper and that they often tended to pull their stories from there. Agnes speaks of the first storyline in daytime history to receive mainstream press her Imitation of Life story featuring then OLTL actress Ellen Holly who passed for white. How did she get this story? She read about light skinned black people having to had pass for white to get jobs they otherwise would not have been able to get in the 60's and decided to write a storyline about a young black girl struggling with her racial identity in racist American system. It was pure gold.

When Y&R last did the Victor and the payola scam they were taking a page out of the corporate scams book that were littering the newspapers at the time like Enron, American Airlines, etc...

If these writers would just start reading the newspapers like the greats did and stop depending on old Hitchcock, The Exorcist and Lord of the Rings for plotlines they could come up with sometime good.

Note: It was obvious that a certain NBC soap creator didn't read the news paper when their soap was created. Nor does a current NBC soap head writer read the paper that much. When's the last time you read about a real life doppelganger?

When will people STOP blaming Susan Lucci for AMC and OLTL being cancelled?? Susan Lucci has NOTHING to do with these shows getting pushed into their collective graves.

Furthermore, she does NOT know where Hoffa's body is buried, did NOT start global warming (although all the hairspray Erica Kane wore in the 80s may have slightly contributed to it! ), is not to blame for the spike in gas prices, the crappy economy or anything else that is going wrong in society.

She's an ACTRESS. Not an executive, not a director, not a producer.

Please leave this woman alone, folks, and find another scapegoat for your anger!!!

The problem with B&B is being dated, but not in the way one might think. The style isn't the problem, it's the characters. Taylor/Ridge/Brooke is a tired, empty story. Amber is a worthless character who returned only to play stories she had in 1998! There is no fun which makes this more bearable. There used to be fun when the Spectras were around. Now you have poor imitation Jackie, who is invisible these days, and the equally dull Donna. Pam is fun but she has no one to bounce off of and has also disappeared.

People don't care about seeing how many times Brooke can be tricked into having sex with men she's not supposed to be having sex with.

As for OLTL, the scenes with Clint and Viki and Dorian, as well as Echo, are easy to get hooked on. But any time Bree Williamson or David Gregory are center stage, the show is unwatchable. The show's leading men are also terrible, and no amount of time spent on Natalie, Kelly, and Marty screaming and making faces can hide how bored and unreachable Michael Easton is in every scene. Camp is fun but it's fun when it is better than comic relief in a low budget porn film from 1989.

Y&R - Lots of shock value with nothing underneath. I think Billy Miller's shrugging through his scenes says it all about most of the current stories. If this is an umbrella story, it's an umbrella that folded in on the person holding it.

P.S--

Jamey, I co-sign with this post 100%!! Once again, you have read my mind!!!

Concerning Bree Williamson, I enjoy her portrayal of Tess like most everyone else does, and feel that she played that role magnificently, but I am on Bree Williamson overload. And this new character, Wes, is just another excuse for Ron C. to shove MORE Bree Williamson down my throat, and I find myself gagging. The character is NOT interesting at all for me, nor is it really necessary. Bree is a GOOD actress, for the most part, but she's no Erika Slezak. Not even close. I would have LOVED to see a more CAPABLE actress, like Gina Tognoni, Susan Haskell or Robin Strasser get a dual role instead. Or even Melissa Archer or Kassie DePaiva.

And thanks for the shoutout to my 2nd favorite CBS bad girl of all time, Annie Dutton (Cynthia Watros!)... Sheila Carter, of course, is my favorite!!!

Great article! I don't watch All My Children, but giving Erica a dopelganger is silly. I fast-forwarded through that whole Rafe mess. Any way a great farewell story for Erica would have been Erica confronting her greatest enemy, "time."

She confronted a bear, why not have her confront aging? Menopause? The fact that the last egg in the dozen has reached its sell by date would be a compelling story for the forever young and youth obsessed, eternally desirable Erica Kane. Its a huge deal in a woman's life. She doesn't have to be less sexy or sexual, but it would have sent her on a new path. And ABC could do a cross promotion with KY.

OMG, yes.

OLTL has maybe one or two decent - not good, not amazing, DECENT - storylines going on at anytime surrounded by filler and crap. Mumbles McBain is boring. Jessica's a constant victim and Bree Williamson mugs in a bad way when she's playing one of those insufferable alters. Wacky Marty is only saved by Susan Haskell's performance. The teens/early 20-somethings not named Matthew and Destiny are a total waste of my time.

It really says something about soaps when something as inconsistent as OLTL is called the BESTEST SOAP ON THE AIR by the critics.

@David you are hitting so many good points. Primetime and cable serial writers are now doing what Bill and Agnes did. The creators of The Good Wife said they were inspired by the countless stories of political wives "standing by their men". They took that premise and ran with it, creating a fresh take on the tried and true legal soap. Grey's and Private Practice take real life medical journal stories and turn them into soap plots each week. The only soaps teling stories about doppelgangers are supernatural ones like Vampire Diaries and those type of stories work for shows like that, because those soaps don't operate in reality.

I will be interested to see how Chuck Pratt handles The Lying Game on ABC Family, since it's central plot is a Doppelganger story. At least that's about twins and it's based on a book. It's absurd for a daytime soap to be telling these kinds of stories though. Number One, they've done them to death. Number 2, they don't have the budgets to make them even fun or campy enough, and really that's the only way you can do them is for camp on daytime.

I felt so bad hearing Lucci calling this shit a "contemporary story of identity theft" on The View. I'm like, "My God, Susan, don't sell this shit for these people!"

Y&R alone has had two John Abbotts, two Jeffrey Bardwells, two Phyllis', two Laurens, two Kays, two Patti's and now it appears, Two Canes in recent years. It's fucking stupid and it's time for it to stop.

you're welcome, keanna! and thanks to you too! :)

AMC was my first favorite soap and though I haven't watched regularly for 20 years I hate that it's going away forever in just 4 months. I can remember when all of my friends watched for Jesse and Angie and there are actors (Obba Babatunde ie.) I am always happy to see because they were on AMC during my tenure. I will play wait and see on who's returning and how current sls are rewritten before I sign back in because it really sounds horrible right now.

Sarah Michelle Gellar commented on AMC's end and she was so much more responive than Ms. Lucci, I don't think anyone is blaming SL, I just think we were hoping for a stronger response from someone for whom there would be little or no consequences.

If OLTL is the best we have then we are in some serious trouble, the Clint/Matthew storyline is the only one with legs. What they have done to Marty is criminal not entertaining at all is is what makes the general public scoff at soaps, all this crazy for some guy after everything that she has been through and overcome this is her ending, not amazing at all.

The Jolie aspect is just getting to be too much, why are all these females being thrown under the bus to support this odd couple that just doesn't sell itself. I do not know who is telling anyone over there that this is the it couple.

The entire Tess mess is not worth anything, the fact that DID is being treated as a comedy skit is beyond my understanding and Wes is Tess with a hat, can someone please slap the person who came up with this idea.

The actor who plays Matthew one of the few good actors on the show is leaving yet we get to keep the none acting Fords and guess what Clint gets his heart wow how so unpredictable, and Destiny who we never see is going to be pregnant with his baby didn't even know they were that serious.

But no OLTL is the bestest evah, and is killing it. Better than anything in primetime, cable its up their with Shakespeare and Wuthering Heights.

You're welcome, GH fan!!!!

The only one I watch (although lately in the last several months, I haven't watched) is AMC.

I agree, a lot of the ideas listed for storylines would have/be so much better than the dribble that's being written now. Why isn't the writing better? Because the writers don't give a crap about what they're writing. You can't even say that they are even "calling it in". I mean, my God, they're still writing Erica as if she was in her 30's.

And why they don't bring Adam back? Because the guy's in his 70's. One interview they did with David Canary was that he was afraid that he would get to the point where he wouldn't be able to remember his lines. It seems that the older cast plays younger characters and the younger characters play older...or is that the way the writers write the characters?

Us viewers were promised that AMC would end in a dignified way. I seriously doubt that will happen if they continue to write like this.

One of the reasons AMC has tanked is that it never occurred to any of their endless parade of writers to revitalize one of the best characters the ABC network has ever produced and has nearly always misused: Skye Chandler Cudahy Kinder Davidson Jacks Quartermaine.

Robin Christopher is one of the most under-appreciated actresses in Daytime. She could have been brought in as a foil for Erica, Kendall, or Greenlee. She could have been used in some epic business shark stories or female rivalry or romance stories.

This was a huge missed opportunity.....But then again, American Daytime TV is full of missed opportunities. woulda...coulda...shoulda...is right!!!

Furthermore, she does NOT know where Hoffa's body is buried, did NOT start global warming (although all the hairspray Erica Kane wore in the 80s may have slightly contributed to it! ), is not to blame for the spike in gas prices, the crappy economy or anything else that is going wrong in society.

She's an ACTRESS. Not an executive, not a director, not a producer.

Please leave this woman alone, folks, and find another scapegoat for your anger!!!

Totally agree
as an actor myself, when shows get cancelled, etc, its not the actors fault, cause they behave professionally, and say ALL GOOD THINGS COME TO AN END, etc, Susan is being SUSAN, a very graceful , sweet, kind, person, and burning bridges and getting angry will just lead to alot of drama down the road that is not needed.. Also think of it this way , if an actor threw a fit everytime they were axed off a show, etc, boy there would be a 4th world war, right ... I dont blame susan or any actor, and I dont blame ABC, I blame the time we are in , SOAPS are just not in that model to be played anymore, I would love the shows to go on , believe me , but who knows, I see all these people posting and making FB pages, etc, and all the message boards, and I am guilty of coming on here and spewing what I read, Im sorry for that , never meant to cause any harm or people getting their hopes up, or getting upset at me .. So this is my apology .....

Soap Actor,

You don't owe me an apology, but thanks anyway!!!

Y'all might recheck the Days ratings. I am SURE they are up in the girls 6-12 years old. I have been enjoying that Sami shot faux rafe this week. I am also enjoying that EJ is getting screwed 9 ways to Sunday by Nicole. Other than that not much for me. Where the hell is Chill at? Ok don't put the boys together if you must but atleast put them on screen! Preferably without those two girls that were cast as instagirlfriends. Abbey and Gabbi. Who was watching old Patti Duke reruns? I cringe everytime the teenage (yet simultaneously 30 year old) Abbey is on screen with her MOM. She could eat poor Jennifer for breakfast and be hungry by noon. If I were Missy Reeves I would slap the casting director. "That did NOT come out of me!" Oh and did I mention that someone should fire Dina Higley today?