The Rise of Los Angeles

In a recent blog post, I lamented the state of The Young and the Restless, and I referred to The Bold and The Beautiful as my "also-ran" soap. I'm not alone. If you track the ratings, media attention (anything, really, but the international appeal), B&B never quite has seemed to measure up to Y&R.



At the same time, in the last few years, the dynamic has changed. B&B has won the "Best Show" Emmy (in a shrinking field) for the last three years. While I hold my nose at this (not because the show is bad, but because Brad Bell and his team have scripted VERY SPECIFIC "Emmy shows", usually involving Susan Flannery and Betty White), it's hard to miss the fact that the dynamic of B&B has changed.




For those of us who are William Bell acolytes, it is also hard to miss that most of his proteges (folks who brought Y&R to Number One status with him)--Kay Alden, Jack Smith, David Shaughnessy, Ed Scott--toil on B&B in one way or another. Many of B&B's most interesting cast members these days also are those who were jettisoned by Y&R (Sony) in recent cost-cutting regimes.

So, I'm still ambivalent about proclaiming B&B as my #1 soap. B&B still does infuriating things that are simply eye-rolling. Examples: Steffy declares the much-older Bill Spencer Jr as her soulmate--but when he dumps her (in a great, heartwrenching arc), she turns her attentions to his son THE VERY NEXT DAY. After decades together, on the SUSPICION that his wife Brooke might have had berry-fueled sex with his son Thomas, Ridge dumps her--has a wedding with ex-wife Taylor the same WEEK--and dumps Taylor at the altar and returns to Brooke THAT NIGHT once the truth is revealed.




So, why can I forgive B&B, which has made a habit of these sudden story jumps (and of hiring top-notch soap performers from other shows, but dropping them within one or two contract cycles )? I think it has to do with the fact that B&B embraces its identity as classic soap.

Take the example of the Steffy tale, mentioned above. In the current story, Steffy now lusts after Liam (Bill's son). Liam wants to be engaged to the virginal Hope. Steffy's lust for Liam makes sense--he's BILL'S son, and he's in love with a LOGAN (the family she blames for all her troubles). Liam also saved her life recently--a bonding experience. In this triangle, we have three core families (The Taylor-Forresters, the Logans, and the Spencers) all mixed up. Liam's lust makes sense...he's a horny young guy and he's been veeeeeerrrrry patient with Hope. Hope's sexual reticence makes sense--she seen how her mother's "Slut from the Valley" ways have often caused mayhem. Bill Spencer Jr. will be torn with jealousy if his son takes up with the woman (Steffy) he was recently about to leave his wife for. The downstream stuff will be even better. Fighting for their daughters will pit Brooke versus Taylor against each other again...but for once not over Ridge!

I've often complained about Hunter Tylo's Taylor...who was once the sanctified oncologist/psychiatrist...but who really WAS the voice of sense on B&B. In recent years (since her second return from the dead), Taylor's been off the rails -- alcoholic, vehicular manslaughter, sleeping with Brooke's son, sanctimonious...endless. Taylor is now a spastic, hypocritical, controlling and sanctimonious (I use that word again because it is DEFINITIONAL) controlling mother.



Now, positioning Taylor as the show's evil mother is BRILLIANT. Evil mothers used to be the stock in trade of the best soaps! (think Phoebe Tyler and Enid Nelson on All My Children; think Vanessa Prentiss on Young and Restless). With Susan Flannery being open about wanting to retire (and her character having Stage IV Lung Cancer), the show needs a new "bad momma". Hunter Tylo is now perfectly positioned for that (living through her children because her own life is bereft; using her children to fight old battles).

The beauty of B&B is that the throughline of characters is not forgotten. Rick has ALWAYS hated Ridge (as the man who chased his daddy--Eric--away). Thomas grew to hate Rick (after Rick slept with both of his sisters AND his mother AND took a certain primacy at Forrester Creations). It was enough that Thomas tried to scare/hurt Rick twice. Amber, the needy social climber BRILLIANTLY played by Adrienne Frantz (much missed, by me, on Y&R), took BOTH of their virginities. Word that Jacob Young is returning in the role of Rick makes me think that a Rick-Amber-Thomas triangle is automatically going to unfold...and how amazing will that be? The triangle makes sense, the actors are capable, and we can already predict every reasonable beat in the story.

In the end, that's the thing about B&B that makes it best. It embraces classy soap storytelling. (Friday's cliffhanger was a very public proposal from Liam to Hope--and she was clearly ambivalent about it), it follows core families and doesn't mostly kill them off. Actions from decades ago are remembered and fuel today's characters. The show almost never veers into crime-drama or science fiction...so that one knows one is going to get good domestic/romantic/business stories. Even now, the show is setting up a Bill Spencer/Nick Marone alliance to bring down the House of Forrester (again)...and the story will be leavened with decades of justifiable personal resentments. The alliance is also on shaky ground, because both Bill and Nick have strong emotional connections to Bill's wife (and Nick's ex-paramour) Katie Logan. However this story goes, it will force Forresters, Logans, and Spencers (all intertwined already) to pick sides. That's how you write a soap!

Rationally and Respectfully Saving AMC/OLTL

The always-entertaining blogger of Daytime Confidential, Jamey Giddens, proposed a number of constructive, rational ways of trying to save AMC/OLTL. Note that each of his suggestions are respectful, business minded, free of insult. They seek to use the demographic and marketing clout of the devoted soap audience to make a logical case for the perpetuation of daytime drama.

I reproduce his suggestions below, and fill in my own "followup" in blue. These are all from the Sunday April 10, 2011 Twitter timeline of @Jamey_Giddens

1. Hearing a decision will be announced re: ABC Daytime THIS WEEK! Keep calling Anne Sweeney! (818) 460-7700
2. Neither are safe, but one could have more time. Keep calling, keep writing, I am serious. ABC wants out of the soap game.
3. Look up your local entertainment reporters at your local newsapers. Ask them to do articles in favor of ABC soaps.
4. Do the same for local morning talk shows, radio, etc. Tell them ABC's soaps are in danger and to do stories.
5. Tweet (poilitely) famous ABC soap fans/alum ala Rosie O'Donnell, Oprah, Roseanne Barr, Carol Burnett, Nathan Fillion. Ask 4 their help!
6. Snoop Dogg, Wendy Williams, etc.Make noise! Email top bloggers in mainstream, Perez, Just Jared, Michael Ausiello, Nikki Finke, etc.
7. Go to message boards like Daytime Royalty, the Soap Opera Network and Soap Opera Source forum and organize. (From MarkH: SoapCentral too)
8. Contact We Love Soaps, Michael Fairman, Carolyn Hinsey, Nelson Branco, whoever, just let the soap fans' collective voice be heard!
9. And remember, be polite and sane. Don't be talking all crazy and stuff. They already expect that from soap fans. Prove them wrong.
10. In your emails, point to the success of telenovelas, essentially Latin soaps that are winning timeslots in primetime.
11. It's not the soaps that need to go, it's the execs who have run out of ideas and ran them into the ground. Serialized stories are viable. (MarkH: the final bolded part seems most important to me...don't think we should add anti-exec rhetoric right now.)
12. Watch the commercials between ABC soaps this week. Write down the sponsors, contact those brands. Tell them you saw their product on ABCD.
13. Now is the time for sane, rational solutions 2 attempt to stave off a bloodbath.

The gay male soap fan

With gays erupting all over daytime :-), I thought this historical article might offer some interesting historical context on a segment of the audience that was long ignored.

In another long-promised excerpt from that out of print soap book I have been drawing from, I wanted to share this tail-end excerpt from Jane Feuer's chapter, "Different Soaps for Different Folks". Her broader chapter considers the question of how soaps, programmed for such a mainstream audience, have come to have such specialized appeal for subgroups like African American women and gay men. Because the appeal of soaps to gay men has been a through theme in this blog, I thought I'd include some her comments on that topic. The article is old (1997), so it would be interesting to think about whether what it says is still relevant almost 12 years later.

=========

The Fan and the Gay Male Audience


Although they may not he counted as a commodity audience, demographic groups other than women in the age range of eighteen to forty-nine may he interested in soap opera as an art form. The common word for those viewers who are overly invested emotionally in soap operas is fans, and according to Michael Kape, the level of affective investment differentiates the fan from the ordinary viewer. (Very few soap fans are as extreme as, say, the one who stalked soap star Andrea Evans and forced her to leave One Life to Live.) Kape makes a distinction between fans who merely have an emotional investment and the readers of Soap Opera Now, whom he sees as better educated and more discriminating. But not everyone agrees with this distinction. Many academics believe that the audience/fan distinction has been too sharply drawn, and they now feel that viewers may be deeply emotionally involved in soaps and, at the same time, may be critical of them.


If fans have been given bad press, perhaps too sharply setting them oft from other viewers, then one group of viewers presents a particularly interesting case: gay men. Gay men are known to be more devoted fans of soap operas than straight men. Since many gay fans are not forthcoming about their sexual identities, this is an impossible audience to study statistically. Yet Michael Kape believes that the networks are aware of their presence, and that they will do more to cultivate this audience in the future. According to Sean Griffin of the University of Southern California, who has researched among gay male fans of All My Children, the show's producers are aware of this audience, or hoped to increase its size by creating the openly gay male character, Michael Delaney.


Network recognition of the gay male fans is only part of the reason why this alternative group may be of interest to students of soap operas. Gay male viewers, like African American women viewers, raise the question whether different audiences receive different messages from the same programs; that is, whether or not they constitute interpretive communities that differ from the assumed eighteen- to forty-nine-year-old housewife audience. The experts I interviewed disagree about whether gay men create different meanings from soaps than other audiences. Michael Kape does not believe that gay men respond differently from other groups. He says that if you look at the origins of soap opera as a form that relies heavily on emotional response, you will discover that "people are people," that sexuality ultimately does not affect responses to powerful soap opera dramatics. Sean Griffin, on the other hand, says that it does. His interviews with gay male fans of soaps from the Internet news group "rec.arts.tv.soaps.abc" led him to the conclusion that gay men had a fundamentally different response from other viewers to the introduction, for example, of the gay character Michael Delaney (played by Chris Bruno) on All My Children. According to Griffin, however, the responses of gay men are not uniform, and some conform to those of women and straight men. Some gay men, for instance, agree with some straight viewers that actor Chris Bruno is perfectly believable; other gay men find that the actor, who has declared that he is straight, is uncomfortable in the role. (There are straight fans who share this view too.) Griffin says that "Gay men seem more often to do a 'double reading'. While they remain completely engrossed in the story lines and characters, they also see the whole thing through the eyes of ‘camp'."


Griffin's research found that the gay culture's investment in the diva phenomenon (as explored in The Queen's Throat: Opera, Homosexuality, and The Mystery of Desire by Wayne Koestenbaum) factors into the pleasure of some gay male fans. Griffin makes the comparison of certain gay men who are staunch defenders of Erica Kane with those who are tired of her snotty egotism. Griffin also finds that gay men generally have a greater sense of whimsy or irony with regards to soaps, because they know that they are not the networks' intended audience. He also believes that the ability to read the small clues or social signs that help gay men identify one another in an often hostile society may help them in reading where soap story lines are going (in other words, which two characters are being set up for a romance, or that a character has been limping although others ignore it).


Lastly, gay men obviously like looking at handsome male actors. Here, it is hard to differentiate between how straight women and gay men appreciate the show. In the online discussions of soap opera Web sites on the Internet, Tad Martin was usually spoken for by the female fans, while Pierce Riley (at least when played by Jim Fitzpatrick) was championed by gay men. When asked why this research is important, Griffin replied, "Well, my main interest (other than I am a gay male myself who loves soaps!) is how gay male fans challenge the often rigid ideas about how who the viewers of soaps are and how they read these things." If this is true, then the title of this article, "Different Soaps for Different Folks," is a lot more complex than it seems. It is not so much a question of say, Generations being targeted at black viewers and The Bold and the Beautiful at whites. The issue is really that different audiences seem to make different meanings out of the same soaps.

A great day on ABC! (Should we be optimistic?)

I am not a regular ABC watcher anymore, and I also usually refrain from commenting on current shows/stories per se.

But the Monday 12/29/2008 ABC shows were, in large measure, perfect soap confections...enough that even this lapsed viewer might tune in tomorrow...which, after all, (per J. Bernard Jones) is the point.

Of the three ABC shows, All My Children was the weakest. However, a trio of villains has energized this show and restored some rooting value. David Hayward is just dastardly, but Vincent Irizarry is a revelation. Unlike his flopped character (David Chow on Y&R), Hayward has an unapologetic agenda. He wants to claim his grand-daughter, and 'avenge' Babe's death. The character's throughline is fairly clear. Amanda...well, I know her troubled background, and Chrisell Stause plays just the right note of ambivalence and guilt to make her deeds more interesting. Melissa Claire Egan plays her psycho with such a powerful vulnerability and childishness, and again (from her dead brother Richie) we understand that there are likely dark roots that explain her behavior. The big thing is that when any of these three are on the screen, they captivate and keep the show interesting.

Better was One Life to Live, which just seemed like payoff city. Asa's video-from-the-dead, revealing both his connection to David Vickers and his challenge to his sons to come out on top. The unrivalled Tuc Watkins, playing just the right amount of winking as a 'reformed' (and Buddhist) David Chow returns to town. Payoff that Viki and Charlie found out about Dorian's role in their previous undoing. Payoff that Dorian is trying to high-tail it out of town. Payoff that Marty is getting Todd right where she wants him. I literally could not wait to see the next chapter...and it helped that a lot of the characters on the canvas are those I would recognize from decades past.

And, shockingly to me, best was General Hospital. Yup. Start with the mob that everyone hates. Except Jason and Sonny had a heartfelt scene, remembering that it was Michael's birthday, and remembering their next rivalry. The delightful chemistry between Jax and Carly continues to add an element of romance to a show that often forgets the importance of this element. SpinMax...who can eat the show...were much fun, and I enjoyed Bradford Anderson's romantic fantasy, as a debonair young man dancing with his Maxie. But, of course, everything Scorpio-Drake was perfection...from the vows, the toasts, the flashbacks, the dyadic conversations on the edges of the dance floor. For one episode, GH reclaimed all that it had won this summer on (the cancelled?) Night Shift II...and restored hope that the "mothership" could again rediscover its heart.

It seemed that these episodes are being scripted for people like me...lapsed viewers who are home during the holiday "break", and who might be enticed to keep watching. This strategy can work, too. As long as ABC doesn't do a bait-and-switch and return to the usual dreck. Might the network be rediscovering that heart, history, engaging villains and innocents, and payoff all work together to make a show watchable?

I'm always encouraged by these flashes of greatness, because they show me the potential is still there. The trick is to make it more regular and consistent.

Myrtle's Farewell

I have already gone on record with my sadness at the passage "Great Aunt Myrtle". Beyond losing the phenomenal Eileen Herlie, long-term lapsed viewers like me also lost yet another touchstone to the Pine Valley of our memories. And, along with the loss of folks like Darlene Conley (B&B's Sally Spectra), it also seems that the era of the great "broads" (meant with ultimate respect, as strong women who spoke their mind and fiercely protected their "brood") has passed.

So, of course, I would not miss her funeral for the world! In this post, I confess that I feel a bit petty for having some less than positive things to say. I have no complaint about the way Myrtle was honored per se, but I find myself reacting to the fact that I think this funeral was actually a fair demonstration of the relatively poor health of All My Children these days. It is in that "meta" sense that I offer these impressions. I apologize to those who feel AMC is doing better these days, or who loved the episode unabashedly.

Now, let me start with fulsome praise. The fact that AMC would even honor its fallen vet, in the modern era, is remarkable. For a show that just let Julia Barr disappear, this is a terrific gift. There was genuine love, too, from all of the cast members who were present. Thorsten Kaye showed every drop of his true love for Herlie, and his poem at the end was goosebump inducing. The flashbacks were a special treat.

But even as I was grateful for all this, as a lapsed viewer who just watched the "funeral" for Katherine Chancellor on "my" show (Y&R)...well...the contrasts were stunning.

Where was Dr. Joe? Where was Tad? Where was Linc Tyler? Where was granddaugther Skye Alcazar? (They explained that daughter Rae Cummings was overseas).

All in all, there was so much sparseness...in the sets used, the characters used (some of whom had little meaningful connection to Myrtle). There was only one notable return, even though most of Pine Valley has lived with Myrtle at some point.

Sadly, I have to compare this to Y&R, where no expense was spared, from a sumptuous church set, to a half dozen returning favorites (who made sense and were logically connected to Kay).

There was also a heavy handedness in the AMC treatment that I, as a non-regular viewer, didn't like. The tinkling bells everywhere. The gold-burnished fadeouts on the flashbacks. The "crystal ball" made me feel I was watching Passions, and there was no need for that device...especially one that broadcast images to both Opal and Petey simultaneously. That, sadly, purely provoked eye rolls.

In the end, as a "visiting" viewer, it was clear to me that this was a departure episode with very little integration into the larger current canvas of the show. Moreover, as a "historical" episode, apart from a few flashbacks, there was very little attempt to link Myrtle into her larger history on the show. No flashback of Lenny/Langley?

There was no greater testament of how separated today's AMC has come from its' history than when "legacy" character (I know some folks hate that term) Petey Cortland had this exchange with his mother:

Opal: She wasn't fooling anybody. This here crystal ball's the real McCoy. She had this from way back when Phoebe Wallingford pulled her out of a homeless shelter to pose as Kitty Shea's mama.

Pete: Who?

It is such a sign of how much AMC has lost its historical throughline that Petey, legimitately, could have no idea whom his mother Opal she was talking about.

Ah, but in the end, at least Myrtle was honored, and that is all that mattered. In that context, I feel petty even listing these grievances. The heart strings were duly plucked.

It is my own selfish nostalgia...wishing for an AMC of my youth... I call this wish "selfish" because I did not hold up my end of the bargain. I did not "age along" with my old show. I stopped watching some time in the 80s, so AMC doesn't owe me any historical "feel good" hour. Theirs was an episode for current viewers.

Like a real funeral with a family you no longer often see, it was nice, for an hour, to come together with my old show, and some faces I remembered, and say goodbye to that wonderful old friend. The final poem by Thorsten Kaye was a beautiful ending, and I reproduce it here with gratitude, courtesy of the TV Megasite:

Now who will lead our carnival?
And who will make us stronger?
Who will mend our broken sleep when she is here no longer?
For whose part do we stand and bow?
What stories do we tell?
And will we memorize the day when great and greatness fell?
Say will this valley overcome, and will these shadows fade?
And will we lift our eyes to see the beauty that she made?
The disappearing last of her that leads to worlds unknown
has left a path to softly tread when sadness wanders home.
I'll meet thee where the highland winds divide wild mountain tyne,
where I will be forever yours and you,
forever mine.

Great Aunt Myrtle has passed

Fair warning: I'm a melodramatic, sappy kinda guy. Nowhere is that truer than this post. I apologize in advance.

Full disclosure: As a kid, I watched waaaaaaaaaaaaay too many soaps. From birth to age six, my paternal grandmother babysat me by day, and she was an ABC fan. Not just ABC, but I definitely remember a lot of ABC in my home. When other children in the neighborhood might go out to play, my grandmother had me take my afternoon "nap". My nap took place on the sofa of her living room, while she watched her soaps and game shows. My earliest memories of this seem to include One Life to Live...I have this distinct flashbulb memory of Tommy Lee Jones in prison...but that may have been manufactured memory by clips I have since seen.

We got the Buffalo affiliate, and they really didn't start showing One Life till the mid-to-late 70s, when OLTL went to 45 minutes and shared a timeslot with General Hospital. (Do I have that right?). The stalwarts, those afternoons, were All My Children and General Hospital. My memories for that era are hazy...I was pre-school age...but I have very specific scary images of AMC's Tara Martin, upset over some romantic problem with Phillip Brent as I recall, laying down in the snow and almost freezing to death. I have memories of my grandmother RAILING against GH's Audrey Hardy, who had had a baby, and was hiding it from the father. My grandmother was just heated over that deceptive woman. I remember "Howie and Jane" from GH, and I seem to recall the death (head hit on coffee table?) of a young girl (Brooke?), and everybody being sad for a day. My narrative recollection of the shows and their storylines really doesn't set in till later in the 70s.

During this hazy era, I remember AMC fairly well. In my flashbulbs, I remember Erica fighting with her mother. I remember Phoebe calling Mona all kinds of names (for stealing the heart of Phoebe's husband Charles). I remember Kitty and Nick, and then I remember Kitty dying, and then (in what I think might have been a first for soaps?) Kitty's identical twin Kelly coming to town. I remember Margo having a facelift, and pulling some deception on her husband Paul, and Margo having a drug using mess of a daughter named Claudette, and on and on. I bet if I ever read those storylines in written summaries, it would all come back to me.

From this era, when we still had black and white TV (we didn't get our first color TV till about 1976, as I recall, a little Toshiba), I recall Myrtle Lum Fargate. As I recall her, she was initially hired by Phoebe...maybe as a scam mother to Kitty or Kelly? Anyway, what I firmly remember is that she was a character! Loud, boisterous...different from anything else on that show. She was far from young....and she was far from a sweet grandmother. I seem to recall pretty quickly she developed a fondness for Kitty, and was regretting her deceptiveness, and eventually she became a real "mama" to Kitty. I remember being so sad when Kitty died, and glad when Kelly appeared.

My memories of Myrtle come into firmer resolution later in the 70s and early 80s, after Lenny Wlasika (that's Langley Wallingford, to you!) appeared. The astute, educated professor was really a con man. His secret was revealed when ex-"carney" Myrtle spotted him...and remembered their larcenous past.

What fun! Myrtle's blackmail of Langley, getting him to do the right things, seems to have extended for years! Myrtle was a crackling life force, and the screen lit up whenever she got up to her maneuvers.

Now, that life force is gone, at least in corporeal form. Eileen Herlie has passed on.

I am absolutely a lapsed AMC viewer. I really haven't watched AMC with any regularity since at least 1983 or 1985. I have monitored from afar, but for the most part, the show never really recaptured my interest. As my life got busier and busier, my soap addiction narrowed down to healthier and healthier subset (now it is Y&R and--with disdain these days--an occasional B&B), and AMC was never compelling enough to grab me.

Let me digress for a second...but it is relevant. If you are like me, your parents at some point sold the house you grew up in. The house might still be there, but the parents aren't. Still, when you get back to your hometown, maybe you're compelled to drive past the old homestead. I am. Or maybe you lived in a town once, and moved away, but have occasion to drive past your old apartment once in a while. Anyway, if you're like me...it is not a satisfying experience. The exterior changes. The people and surrounds are different. You can't really go inside anymore. The physical place deviates more and more from how you remember it. And one day you realize that the portion of that place that is important to you lives in your mind and memories. The physical place is irrelevant, and in fact kind of interferes with the memories. If you're like me, your emotional attachment is to the way things were...not the way they are.

Well, maybe you see where I am going. AMC now is like a house I grew up in, but that I haven't lived in for 25 years. The house is no longer mine. So, I no longer even really want to live there. I've moved on.

I might feel differently if the house--AMC--had much semblance of how it used to be. But most of my touchstones--Ruth (Mary Fickett), Phil, Tara, Chuck, Phoebe, Charles, Linc, Kitty, Kelly, Mona, Erica (she's still there!)...and later Palmer (barely there), Monique, Nina, Cliff, Sybil, Greg, Jenny, Jesse and Angie (back!), Tad (well, I guess he's still there), Marion, Liza--are gone. Indeed, there has been SO much attrition from my era that going back is almost a little like visiting a cemetary...it serves as a palpable reminder of what I once had, and what no longer exists...and so rather than the few remaining veterans capturing me, they serve more as sepulchral reminders of death and loss. Not really fun.

Well, now with the passing of Myrtle, my ancestral home is even more different, less inviting. The crypt of my memories has yet another member.

This sounds like a selfish kind of mourning...and it is. It is all about my personal connection to what AMC used to be, and my sadness to have lost it. I mourn not only Ms. Herlie, and Myrtle, and all the characters of my youth...I also mourn what daytime used to be. When I was a child, I distinctly remember being MOST captivated, of all the stories, by loud drunken Phoebe and wooden stoic Charles and poor hapless Mona. Here you had a trio of sextagenarians in a bona fide (if chaste) love triangle, and it was a rip-snorting blast! Such fun to watch. Ruth Warrick and Eileen Herlie burned up the screen whenever they were on together, sparring, trading insults. It was grand, grand entertainment.

That day shall never come again. These weren't "veterans". They were HIRED as "old people", but played on the front burner! Now, soaps no longer play their vets...and they surely don't hire "old people".

It is our loss.

We shall never enjoy the sublime and unique entertainments of a woman like Eileen Herlie on daytime again.

I have written here, and elsewhere, that Y&R is really the only soap to still own my loyalty. Part of the reason is that that is a home I never left. I have watched pretty continuously since the show's debut. But, in addition, that is a home--a dramatic canvas--that still bears a strong similarity to the canvas I enjoyed 25 years ago. Same actors, same characters, same sets, same music, even some of the same historical threads. With every day that passes, I realize what a gift this continuity is...and that this, too, shall never be again.

I shall miss Eileen Herlie. I wish her great peace in her transition. Yet, in a different sense, I have this gift so beautiful it gives me goosebumps as I type this. Because Myrtle Lum Fargate shall live on for as long as I do. I will always hear that loud, deep, throaty voice and that lilting accent. I shall always remember Kitty and Kelly calling her mama. I shall always delight in her impish manipulation of Lenny/Langley. Those things truly, truly shall endure for me, and make me smile every time I think of them. For this gift, I thank you Ms. Herlie, I thank you Ms. Nixon, I thank you ABC.