DRW50

I would argue that didn't really work out for OLTL either, as they only gave him actual story for about a year; it just looks better because he had primetime success and spoke graciously about the show. I do get why they wanted to age Joey, and Nathan was a decent choice, even if he wasn't as good as Chris. I do wish they had kept Kavovit - to be honest I was never sure whether he wanted to leave or was let go, as they were playing him with Tess before he left, so there was some potential story in place. Of course, if they had, he would have been dumped the way Scott Defrietas was for not being "hot" enough. Howarth was always a terrible choice as Paul, but they were just picking a name out of a hat anyway. They should have just cast him as Hutch, or Teddy Hughes, or Mark Kasnoff. Hell, say he was Grandpa Hughes reincarnated. It's not as if anything he was going to do at the show was going to matter anyway, just as it never did at GH.

He did. Smith and Kavovit worked well together for what the Emily/Paul relationship was meant to be at that time. I do understand why Paul had to be recast, even if I really liked Andy in the role...it's a shame they screwed it up so much. I wish the show hadn't put them together again later on, as it never really worked - the layers of those first few years were completely ignored as Paul was just an empty suit and Emily was a grab bag of misogyny and histrionics. This aspect makes sense - unfortunately they never got to explore it onscreen.

That would have been a great idea. Ian was mostly wasted on B&B (not even getting into his GH return).

I agree. This was one of the times Jill bringing in an FOJ might have made sense, although now I'm imagining a Vanessa/Buzz pairing.

@Maxim I suppose all this tells you what negative responses the stories must have been getting (maybe aside from the Dixie/Adam stuff). I feel bad for Nancy Addison. I'm sure you probably already know this, but IIRC the only reason Nina returned was because of fan or network backlash to the Angie/Cliff pairing. Taylor Miller is very striking in her first run, but they never allow Nina to mature the way she should have. I also have come to realize that I just don't enjoy watching Peter Bergman.

I didn't mind Fletcher with Alex. I thought Jay and Beverlee worked well together. My main complaint about the pairing is how much focus went to Fletch wanting to keep Alex in line. This was even more of an issue with Marj's Alex. Still, I liked them well enough to where I was glad Alex left Springfield with him. It annoyed me when Beverlee was in the role that no one was a true ride-or-die for Alex (Marj's Alex was so OTT I couldn't be surprised). These days on soaps, you have characters like Phyllis on Y&R who could burn down an orphanage and still have Genoa City holding a rally for her. The pairing with Vanessa never made sense beyond the show needing to stall until they got Billy and Vanessa back together. The pairing with Holly made sense as a fling but not a permanent relationship.

Yes. I did like Larry. Toward the end of his run, they did play up more of a sanctimonious, unlikeable side (even before they had him cheating), but I put that on the poor state of the writing and also the inevitable result of having to deal with KMH's Emily. Before then he did seem like a supportive, nice guy, with an easy sense of humor. I can see viewers in 1991 wanting him to be happy, especially as there was enough turnover in the male cast to where the only other young guys around were angsty Caleb, Andy, Holden, etc. The Sean story was so odd. I'd love to see Marland's story plans for 1990 because I have the issues with that year which many seem to have with 91 and 92. Much of what is done is aborted halfway through (like the Sean story or "scheming" Lily) or spinning in circles due to impending cast departures (Paul/Emily). And the last gasp of Tonio, which still goes well into 1991. The Casey right to die story is excellent (this is the story that got me hooked on ATWT) as is Kim/Bob/Susan. So much of the rest is a scramble. Burke Moses is charismatic and handsome but his energy is anathema to the Marland era - he's always about to rip someone's head off. That may have been Marland's biggest flop of a storyline.

Bea Arthur in a Jay Leno special I hadn't heard much of until yesterday.

I'm glad the tight unit of the first few decades meant Matt was always part of the family. That wouldn't have happened after the Farm era. I really like Franke and Janie too. I don't know why they got rid of them.

Oh right. That makes sense. Thanks.

Anti-hero/Willie Loomis who [!@#$%^&*]/whatever you want to call him, Harry Sowolsky, her on-and-off boyfriend of several years, had returned to break up her relationship with the rotter Dan Hollister. Dan was murdered, and Harry vanished (someone with more knowledge may be able to tell us if something weird happened behind the scenes). Ann then left to try to find Harry. She would briefly return in 1990 for the Trisha/Trucker wedding. It seems like the show gave up on the character at the same time as they were trying to prune the Alden tree by writing out Shana. I do wonder why they didn't at least bring her back when Jack died. By that point they seemed to avoid returns. I don't even know if she was mentioned in the last years. I hope she was at least told her father had died, then came back from the dead, then died again. Most of what I've seen of Callan White is so downtrodden and that gets worse as the decade goes along. She does what she can, like the Dane/Gwyn cheating story when she's becoming an alcoholic. Still, when I see her, I tend to think of a trashy Canadian softcore film she did with the guy who hosted The Hitchhiker.

That's a great idea.

Thanks. Obrecht's return scenes did feel very forced, although after seeing her have a big welcome with Willow I wonder how she'd react to Willow these days. I also watched a clip of Ellen Travolta staring down Russian gangsters. And this is the first time I realized just how strange the current placement of the Q mansion front door is.

Holly running off to scam with David makes more sense, even if depending on the writing of the time she is either much more sensible than him or much more deranged. I wonder if the fi-core writer who came up with the Blair/David stuff even knew of OLTL. If not that would explain why Tracy didn't know of Dorian. With Jackson from AMC appearing in the same timeframe I wonder if this is something Frank knew he'd only be able to get through during the strike. I think if they cut down on the cast and have tighter writing, they could still have more crossovers, but I agree it shouldn't be a priority. (still, give me Blair over Eva La Rue as the noblest homophobe).

I was rewatching a bit of Blair's GH appearance...there's something very funny about MEK doing the drawl that Kassie has naturally had all her career. I guess she should have gone with him to Sarah Sherman's vocal class to win over the haters. I had forgotten that they claimed she'd had an affair with David. That just would never have happened. She's more likely to have had an affair with Tea than David. Not really what I would have chosen for a final appearance of Blair, but still, not as bad as much of what they did with the character during Kassie's run. At least she still knew just how to play Blair.

You're right, but the story does end up playing out that way and I think is compelling in that context - the problem is the lack of any real aftermath.

I know this material isn't exactly classic, but I was wondering if anyone knows the first and last dates for GH's 2023 strike material? I was bored and looking around at some old clips and see that Obrecht returned at that time. Was that a long-range plan or did Frank just figure hell, we've got months to fill, let me bring back a pal? I also see that she was with Scott...was that at this time? How long were they together? And finally I see that Shari Belafonte was on GH as her close friend. I guess the days of weight loss commercials are long gone for Shari, but they could have done better. Too bad they couldn't have had her as a new wife for Jake Meyer.

I agree. I think this is what they intend Kristina to be. She is clearly heading for a breakdown, and perhaps once the breakdown happens, she will be softer...but as I saw someone say, she's been like this since August. I'd argue even further back than August. This isn't a time when the show should have stuck to realism, because it's unwatchable.

Do any of you who know more about these old miniseries than me know what the "production problems" on Deceptions were?

I am hoping the moment where he goes to the Wall might show up, and there are lots of glimpses of other moments I'd enjoy (like his big tirade at the picnic, or Noreen talking about AIDS research, or James Horan's arrival as the real Clay), but I am so glad to see these moments I never thought I would.

Thanks @Franko for posting and thank you @GymnastGuy for uploading. I have wanted to see this since SPW wrote about it in 1997. I know not all is there but I'm glad for what we can see. A strong performance from James Kiberd and classy support from Callan White, who feels more checked in here. On paper, I wouldn't be a fan of the army buddy who is his conscience, but it mostly works. The only slight complaint I have is I wish they had had some of the scenes at the Memorial without music.

I've heard that too. I think Smith did a decent job with a character who on paper was extremely vague, and he also had chemistry with Mary Ellen Stuart, which hadn't been the case with some of her other love interests. I can see why Marland was torn. But I also think they were hedging their bets much of the way through because there were a number of occasions where I felt like the writing tilted more toward a framing of what happens when someone who seems like the perfect murder suspect actually isn't, instead of laying out a case for viewers the way they did with Doug Cummings. I do wonder if they realized how quickly Rex Smith was going to leave and if Marland had plans to recast the character if he'd lived.

The '08 and '23 writers' strikes were a benefit to GH. I can't speak about the 1988 strike as I haven't watched a ton of that period. I know some fans think the strike made the Sonni/Solita saga more compelling, even if it also made the story a mess. Does anyone know if anything on GL changed through the '08 strike, or did the show even have storylines at that point? I think she's good as the early mysterious Blake, from what I've seen. I'm not as sure if I could have seen her bedding Alan-Michael, but you never know.

And that's probably why Marland got cold feet. The story is a whirlwind, probably too much so (Frannie and Darryl are intimate only a few months after Carolyn's murder), but Darryl never comes across as being as much of a heavy as Cummings did, so it's not as much of a retread as it could have been.

You aren't wrong about any of this, but I only have one real issue with the story. I don't think making Darryl the killer was the best idea, because it's just so predictable and there wasn't going to be enough fallout (the real fallout was Darryl leaving town alive, as, in a world where Frannie was recast and Jennifer learned about her father, or if Connor had stayed around given the odd decision to create a past fling between them, there was plenty you could do with him), but they should have done a better job finding another killer. The Harpers, or Arthur - who cares? If they were going to have a minor character as the killer, I might have gone with Dana, as she didn't go on to have any purpose once the plot was over anyway. When I was able to watch at the time, I never felt the story was overly confusing or boring because I just cared about Frannie and the turmoil she was in. To me that was the engine. And in recent years, when I've rewatched, Frannie, as well as Barbara and the fallout she suffered from her paternity lies, still make me feel invested. The parade of bit players is OK with me because they are often just rattled through Margo and Tom, and this is when they still felt like real people instead of shouting all their lines. This is where my feeling connected to the central characters was key - once that connection was broken, I had a much harder time, which is why I thought the whole Diego murder storyline was somewhere between boring and wretched. The only stories at this point on ATWT that bothered me were the stories with characters like Hutch and Rosanna, which bored me to tears, aside from Tess' bitchy asides.