soap opera surreality

[gwynnega]

This came up on Twitter today, but I must share it here as well--one of the stranger (and more hilarious) soap opera moments of all time. For some reason Santa Barbara decided to recast a character in the middle of a scene! One minute Mason is played by Terry Lester, the next, by Gordon Thomson. The clip is dubbed for Italian TV, but the look on Nancy Lee Grahn's face says it all!

Comments

[cindergal.livejournal.com]

Hee! That must have been some punch.

[gwynnega]

A life-altering punch!

[freixenet.livejournal.com]

oh, I remember this!! Brilliant, brilliant. Thank you so much for posting the link! Gods, I miss SB. That was amazing stuff and so well cast...such great characters--I used to have a dozen VHS tapes with SB episodes, and now I can't remember what happened to them. If I was smart, i dubbed them to DVD.

[gwynnega]

I really wish I'd watched SB, but for years I was a GH-only soap viewer. I've watched some SB clips on YouTube. There are quite a few (and fortunately they're not all dubbed into Italian!).

[usedtobeljs]

Oh, dude, those of us who watched Santa Barbara CHEERED when Gordon Thomson replaced Terry Lester, middle of a scene or no. :-))

(Thomson was no Lane Davies, but he at least could do justice to the Shakespearean complexities of Mason Capwell, which Lester [bless his heart] just couldn't.)

[hugs]

[gwynnega]

Heeee. I'm not familiar with Terry Lester's work on SB, but I know he's famous for playing young Jack Abbott on Y&R, a vastly different kind of role from Mason Capwell!

::hugs::

[freixenet.livejournal.com]

This.

SB was one of my soaps, back when I had soaps

[ratphooey.livejournal.com]

Poor Terry Lester. He tried, he really did. But Lane Davies had been so indelible in that role.

Gordon Thomson was just more of a Mason than Lester.

I thought it was a hysterical transition at the time, and it holds up!

Re: SB was one of my soaps, back when I had soaps

[gwynnega]

I can see that Lane Davies would have been a very hard act to follow. It would've been like trying to recast Luke Spencer!

Re: SB was one of my soaps, back when I had soaps

[ratphooey.livejournal.com]

YES. At least.

[willowgreen.livejournal.com]

Genius!

[redeem147.livejournal.com]

I miss Santa Barbara so much! (But Lane Davies most of all.) Loved Terry too (on Y&R), and forgot that Gordon Thompson had played Mason until you mentioned it. What an entrance!