First of all, it is ridiculous as to how many people live in the Lakeview Hotel.  I mean, if these characters can afford to live in a fancy hotel, can’t they afford to at least rent an apartment.  Here’s a list of all that I know of who live at the Lakeview:

• Henry & Vienna – A while ago, V was pregnant, but lost the baby.  Were they planning to raise the kid in a single hotel room?  Even with no kids, you’d think that there might be an apartment behind or abive Al’s Diner (which they own) where they could live?
• Craig & Johnny – Again, this guy is loaded, but he lives with his young son in a hotel room?  Where IS Johnny these days, anyway?  Craig went to all this trouble to get custody of the kid, you’d think he’d buy them a normal house to live in, and that he’d actually spend time with him.  That poor kid is going to develop all sorts of problems, perhaps even public speaking anxiety. And that would be the LEAST of his problems!  But Craig has been spending most of his time lately hanging out at Carly’s house, Johnny nowhere to be seen.
• Dusty – He actually was going to buy a home, back when he *married* Meg to try and get custody of the aforementioned Johnny.  But when that fell through, as far as I know, he still resides at the Lakeview.
• Damian – He’s fairly new back to town, but as far as I know, he’s a long-term guest at the Lakeview, too.
• Lisa – She owns the place!
• Barbara – At least she has a penthouse apartment there, and is not living in a single room!

But what’s even more disturbing is the fact that at one point, there were at least 20 people living at Emma Snyder’s farm.  How big is that house, anyway?  And consider the fact that Emma has a hard & fast rule about there being no sex allowed under her roof between unmarried couples.  Yet, she did have a few unmarried couples living there for a time (Jack & Janet, Luke & Noah), who all had to have separate rooms.

In addition to this, they had all of Jack’s kids living there, as well as Lily, Holden, and all their kids.

So who’s living on the farm now?

• Emma – Well, she owns the place!
• Meg & Eliza – They’ve moved back and forth between the farm and Fairwinds, home of ex-husband Paul.  Now it appears that Meg and her baby are on the farm for good, unless they decide to move into the Lakeview with Damian.
• Jack & Janet – They’re married now, so I guess they are now allowed to share a bed and have sex.  But still…Jack is a police detective, Janet waits tables at Al’s Diner. (but will soon be co-hosting local talk show “Oakdale Live”).  You’d think that they could afford their own place by now.
• Parker, Sage & JJ – Jack’s kids, who usually reside at their mom, Carly’s house, but get taken to live at the farm whenever Jack gets his panties in a twist about something Carly has done.  As of now, JJ is at boarding school.

So that is WAY fewer people than usual.  But guess what?  There ARE a few characters who have their own homes, which we actually see on camera:

• Lily, Holden, Faith, Natalie & Ethan – The Snyder family had a house set a long time ago.  Then it went away and they all ended up living at the farm.  FINALLY, this family has its own house again.
• Tom, Margo, Daniel, Casey & Adam/Riley -  As far as I know, that’s all who lives there.  I’m pretty sure Nancy Hughes lives with her son Bob and daughter-in-law, Kim, but I could be wrong.  Daniel, Tom’s sone with Emily Hughes, is currently in boarding school, but stays with Dad & step-om over vacations.
• Brad, Katie & Liberty – Liberty is Brad’s teenaged daughter with Janet.  I’m pretty sure she lives there and not at the farm with her mom and step-dad.  Katie is also pregnant with hers and Brad’s baby.  At least they have a place to put a baby!

And then there are people who KNOW have their own homes, but haven’t seen in a while, or NEVER have seen:

• Bob, Kim & Nancy -  There used to be a set for the elder Hughes’ house, but I haven’t seen it in ages.  I assume that Bob’s mother Nancy lives with them, because when Tom & Margo threw a party for Casey, the three of them arrived together, and left together.
• Susan, Emily & Allison – There used to be a set for their house, too.  I assume that Em still lives with her mom and younger sis, even though she’s over 40 and certainly has the money for her own place.
• Lucinda – Haven’t seen her place in ages.  Was staying with daughter Lily and her family for a time.
• Luke & Noah – This is the most maddening of them all.  The boys (who are a gay couple) just moved into an apartment together, but no one has ever seen it.  The boys seem to interact with each other mostly at Java, or at Luke’s mom Lily’s living room.  Neither is a place where couples can get romantic, if you know what I mean.  I guess the sponsors are afraid they will offend viewers by showing a couple of guys making out on a couch in their own place.

That’s all I can think of for the moment.  Maybe ratings would go up if they spent a little more time and money for new sets, which is something that many fans want to see!

Basically, CBS plans to replace “Guiding Light” with an updated version of the classic game show, “Let’s Make A Deal”.  Now, I’m old enough to remember the original with Monty Hall, I loved it as a kid.  But, as often happens when someone tries to update a classic, it’ll likely be very lame.  And so will whatever game show they come up with to replace ATWT, should that soap be cancelled.

Over at ABC, it’s just been announced that “All My Children” is moving from New York to Los Angeles, as a cost-cutting move.  “One Life To Live will be staying in New York, but moving to the studio that AMC will be vacating.  Article here.

The problem with AMC’s move is that it’s possible that many of the long-established actors may not want to make the move.  For example, Susan Lucci, who has played Erica Kane since the show began back, has a long-established residence in New York, and she may not want to move to L.A.  But maybe that is part of the cost-cutting…if these highly paid soap veterans get dropped to recurring status or simply decide to leave completely, that eliminates their salaries.  Then  they can create new characters and hire young unknowns to play them, people that are willing to work cheaper.

But this could really backfire, because people will stop watchng the show if their favorite characters leave because of this move.  Then ABC will have a great excuse to cancel it completely, no doubt putting another lame talk or game show in its place.

NBC may soon be soap-free.  All they have now is “Days of Our Lives”.  The cancellation of “Passions”, a show I never watched, but I know a lot of people liked it, resulted in NBS showing yet another hour of “The Today Show” in its time slot in many markets.  But how long before Days tanks, now that many of their big-name stars have left, mostly due to budget cuts.

I find all of this very sad.  People like me like to watch soaps as a form of escapism.  I hate the new trend of these cheaply-produced talk and game shows, as well as reality shows.  I’ll take well-written fictinal stories any day.  Talk shows, especially have gotten ridiculous and often depressing.  Even long-established shows, such as Dr. Phool, have gotten too tabliody.  He sunk to a new low this past season with all of that crap about Octo-Mom.

If soaps go away completely, a lot of us may not even bother to turn our televisions on during the day. I do know that I will NOT be watching the new “Let’s Make A Deal”, and I certainly will not watch anything that replaces “As The World Turns”…which is actually my favorite soap right now.

Such a crying shame.

Anyhoo, I keep up with what’s going on over at a site called SoapCentral.com.  The big news over at the Young & the Restless is that Melody Thomas Scott, who has played leading lady Nikki Newman for 30 years, is leaving the show.  Apparently, Ms. Scott could not come to an agreement with the show, who asked her to take a pay cut.

Dan J. Kroll, the founder of SoapCenral.com, wrote a piece about this in his In The Bubble blog.  Fans are invited to leave comments.

Some said that Ms. Scott was right to leave, that she should be paid what she is worth.  Some argued that it looked as if the show was only asking FEMALE stars to take pay cuts…Jess Walton, who plays Jill Abbott, alsmot walked, but in the end decided to take the pay cut, saying that “a job is a job”.

But if they asked top male stars, such as Eric Braeden (Victor Newman) or Peter Bergman (Jack Abbott) to take pay cuts, we haven’t heard about it.  I’d like to hope that the show was fair, asked the guys, too, and maybe they just took it with no dramatics.  But we don’t really know.

Other fans who posted on Dan’s blog said that Ms. Scott should just suck it up and take the pay cut, as Ms. Walton did.  Many soap fans have lots of time to watch now, live, not recording them, because they are out of work.  It sort of rubs you the wrong way when you see someone who has a job , probably a very highly-paid job, not accept a pay cut in order to keep said job.

Soaps are getting to be a dying genre on TV.  There have been so many budget cuts, and sadly, it often shows in the finished episodes.  They hire a lot of young kids who will work for cheap, and don’t give stories to beloved veteran characters because it would involve paying them too much money.

You see it in the sets, too.  Over on As The World Turns, half the characters live in the Lakeview Hotel, because the show can’t afford sets for each major character’s home.  For a time, the other half of the town lived on Emma Snyder’s farm.  Thank goodness they finally made a new set for Lily & Holden’s house, so they all moved off of the farm.  But still, Holden and Lily are of only a small handful of Oakdale residents who have their own homes.  The others are Brad and Katie Snyder, Paul Ryan, and Tom & Margo Hughes.  Luke and Noah were supposed to get their own place, have they shown it yet?  As I said, I haven’t watched in a while.  They lived on Emma’s farm for a while, but then moved into Holden & Lily’s house when they finally made a set for that.

But I digress.  The fact is, anyone who still has a job working on a soap should be grateful for it.  As you may know, the longest-running soap ever, Guiding Light, has been canceled due to low ratings and budget cuts.  Some of their actors will be lucky to land gigs on other shows, but there is not room for all of them.  Some of the minor players may have to  go back to waiting tables, or go on an admin job search. In these tough economic times, we all gotta do what we gotta do in order to keep rooves over our heads and food on the table, yanno?

Perhaps Melody Thomas Scott could get signed by another soap.  But honestly, she’s been Nikki for so long, will fans accept her as any other character?  And would another soap offer her the same salary she was getting from Y&R?

I doubt it.  NOBODY in the soap opera industry has tons of money to spend these days.  Right now they are struggling to maintain a budget and somehow not get canceled, as GL was.

On this show, it seems that the characters can move from one place to another in very unrealistically short periods of time.

A current storyline features this psycho guy named James Stenbeck.  He’s been menacing many of the folks of Oakdale, including his own family, for decades.  He’s died, but comes back from the dead more times than I can count.  The last we saw him before this current go-round, he was in prison.  But obviously, he escaped somehow, and returned to Oakdale to tormet his son, Paul.

Paul recently got married to Meg Snyder, and Meg is currently pregnant.  Paul got himself in trouble with a loan shark, unaware that the whole thing was engineered by James.  James tells Meg that he will save Paul, if she agrees to give him her baby.  Of course, she doesn’t want this nutcase anywhere near her baby, so James kidnaps her and brings her to a cottage by the ocean, which is later determined to be in Maine.

Now, here’s where the teleporter comes in.  Oakdale is supposed to be in Illinois, a suburb of Chicago.  At the beach house, James tells Meg he’s going to the store to buy some food.  Very shortly thereafter, we see him in Paul’s house in Oakdale, tormenting him some more.  And then he’s back at the house in Maine, bearing the promised groceries.  Meg did comment that he’d been gone for a long time, but still.  It was daylight when James left, and still daylight when he returned.  There was no indication that a whole day or more had passed, in Oakdale or in Maine.  In real life, how long would it take to get to Maine from Illinois?  At least a couple of hours on a plane, not to mention all of the extra time you need at the airport for check-in and security and all.   Since the house is on an island off the coast, he’d have to have chartered a boat.

Somehow, Paul, with the assistance of ex-cop/FBI agent Jack Snyder, finds out where James took Meg and they go there.   So does Paul’s mother and James’ ex-wife, Barbara.  They used the teleporter, too.  And so did Jack’s ex-wife, Carly.

Okay, I missed a few shows.  Apparently Barbara and Paul took the teleporter back to Oakdale, where Paul was hospitalized.  Meg stayed behind at the cottage.  James supposedly died again.  And another dead character, Dusty Donovan, had been revealed to have been held captive by James as well.  While James was “at the store”, Meg was trying to find a way to escape.  She found a secret room, where she saw Dusty locked in a cage.  She picked the lock with a bobby pin and get him out.  Apparently, Dusty had faked his own death.  His adopted son Johnny had been taken from him after the boy’s mother, his wife, Jennifer died.  He was trying to find Johnny and get him back without anyone knowing he was alive.  He had come close, in Bangkok, when he was kidnapped by James, who had just escaped from a prison there.  Dusty was understandably confused when Meg told him they were not in Bangkok, they were in the U.S., somewhere near the ocean.  I guess he must have been sleeping in the teleporter.

Today’s episode was all about the teleporter.  The show opened with Luke Snyder, Meg’s nephew, being happliy reunited with his boyfriend, Noah, who had been in Europe.  Luke takes a call from Brian, who works with Luke at the foundation he (Luke) started with an inheritance from his bio-dad, Damian.  Brian is calling a meeting at the Metro nightclub, where they are planning to hold a fundraising event.  Luke tells Brain he’ll be right there.

Meanwhile, Meg’s brother and Luke’s adopted dad, Holden, has gone to the beach house in Maine to accompany Meg safely home.  Jack and Carly are still in Maine, too, Jack was injured, Carly saved his life, and he was taken to a hospital.  Carly decided that what Jack really needed was his girlfriend, Janet, so she called her and told her the teleporter was ready.  A few minutes later, we see Carly and Janet at the docks, she is getting ready to leave so that Jack and Janet could have some time alone.  They are then joined by Holden.  Holden was mightily pissed to go into the cottage to get Meg and see Dusty still alive.  Before Dusty supposedly kicked the bucket, he was having an affair with Holden’s wife, Lily.

Anyway, Janet goes to see Jack, and Holden, Meg and Carly go back to Oakdale together, in the teleporter.  After making sure that Meg got to her home safely, Holden and Carly decided to go to Metro, which Carly is part owner of, to have a drink.  And…get this…when they get to Metro, the meeting with Brian, Luke, Noah, Lily and Lily’s mother, Lucinda, is still going on.  I’ve heard of long business meetings, but this is ridiculous!

Oh, and Lily is pissed to see Holden with Carly.  Holden cheated on Lily with Carly over the summer, it has since ended and Holden and Lily are attempting to reconcile.

Anyway, see how ridiculous this is?  I realize it’s just a TV show, but still, people notice.  We joke about the teleporter a lot over on the ATWT board over at SoapCentral.com.  I wonder how much it would cost to buy one for myself, it would beat the hell out of driving in Boston traffic.   I should run it through my budgeting software to see if I can afford it…LOL!

Finally, Dusty is alone in the cottage.  He told Meg not to tell anyone that he was still alive, so he could resume his search for Johnny.  But now Holden knows, and who’s to say he won’t spill the beans?  An oddball funeral director came by and asked Dusty what he wanted done with James’ remains.  Dusty said that he didn’t care.  After the man left, Dusty whipped out a CELL PHONE called someone, and asked them to book him a flight back to Asia.  Where did he get a cell phone, anyway?  When you kidnap someone, you take away their cell phone so they can’t call for help.  Was it James’ cell phone?  No one knew Dusty was there, so it wasn’t like anyone knew to bring him a phone.

Oh well, it’s just TV.

“As The World Turns” has been really good lately.  The character of James Stenbeck is back, and he’s making life a living hell for his son, Paul, his ex-wife and Paul’s mom, Barbara, and now he has quirky Henry Coleman held prisoner in the Fairwinds (Paul’s mansion) wine cellar.  I love both characters of James and Henry, it was sheer genius to put them together in a storyline.

The character of Paul Ryan, as played by Roger Howarth, is a complex character.  Paul hates his father, James, this is why he uses Barbara’s maiden name, Ryan, as his own surname.  Paul is forever battling the demons from his father, he tries to be a good guy, but it’s not always easy for him.  He was recently married to Meg Snyder, who is pregnant with his child.

Paul tries so hard to do good and win the respect of the rest of the Snyder family.  So much that he borrowed money from an evil loan shark in order to help save the Meg’s family’s farm.  Things went bad, very bad.  James (who is skeeving about in the wine cellar) said that there was money buried there at the Snyder farm.  Paul went and tried to dig it up, and made a really huge sinkhole.  He didn’t find anything.

But then, Meg’s nephew, 4 year old Ethan Snyder, ran off and fell into the hole.  Meanwhile, Derrick the loan shark tried to drown Paul in the reservoir, tying him to a cinder block, but somehow, Paul survived.  He went home, and almost immediately went off to risk his life again…by going down into the hole to try to save Ethan.  I hope for Meg and their baby’s sake that he went and got himself some good life insurance quotes.

At the end of today’s show, Paul was down in the hole, and Ethan is safe.  The scenes where he talked to the boy, and gave him some water, saying that “Uncle Paul is gonna get you out of here” were so sweet.  The previews for tomorrow show Ethan being pulled up to safety.   Meanwhile, Paul, who was the only one to think to bring a flashlight, saw the chest that James buried there, which was allegedly full of gold.  Gold that he could use to pay off Derrick the loan shark, and protect himself, Meg, and their unborn baby.   Paul dug it out and opened it, it was empty.  James has lied to him once again, and Paul fell for it.  If not for James, Paul would not have dug out the hole in the first place, and Ethan would not have fallen into it.  It’s nice that Paul is the one to save Ethan.  He never meant to hurt anyone, he just wanted to do for the Snyder family, to prove to Meg that he’s the man that she wants him to be.

Tomorrow’s episode looks really good from the previews…can’t wait to see it!

If you are a fan of this show, please feel free to comment and discuss!