DRW50

I was definitely not expecting some of those stories. Thanks. @SFK you'd love this.

An alternate version of the Bull pilot. Bull featured Alicia Coppola, among many others like Elisabeth Rohm and Stanley Tucci.

@I Am A Swede Sad to hear it. I always enjoy listening to New World in the Morning.

That was before my time with reading SOD, so when I read them a few years back I was pleasantly surprised - the quality and respect for readers is so far above what the magazine would be by the late '90s (with a columnist essentially saying she wanted a woman to be violated with a fireplace poker).

Kim Zolciak is back on reality TV. ‘The Surreal Life’: Tyler Posey Joins Kim Zolciak & More In MTV Series – Deadline

I can understand the need for caution, especially when it comes to soap magazines, but I do trust your word, and I'm glad you are sharing your memories. The sad truth is we will probably never see the full episode resurface. I see why AWHP doesn't want to go out without having more info, but I hope if some of us manage to find the articles where Rauch or Jacquie talked about the two-hander, they might reconsider.

‘Murder, She Wrote’ Picket Planned For WGA Strike Thursday at Fox – Deadline

https://variety.com/2023/tv/news/the-talk-postpones-return-cbs-strike-1235725821/ The Talk and Drew Barrymore postponing their returns.

Yes. Thank you for letting us know. Sorry that earlier in the GH thread I wasn't sure about the news - this is the only place I go to for soaps so it was the first I'd heard.

Shocking news. When I first came here Miller was one of the hot topics of conversation and burned brightly in that era of Y&R. Love or hate his work, there was always something to talk about. He was a very magnetic presence. And when he went to GH he managed to win many fans over after the exit of Steve Burton, one of the biggest presences on that show over the last 30 years. I was so annoyed at the time with the Daytime Confidential and other soap press overhype of the Maria Bell run that I probably did not give Miller the credit I should have at times for his stint on Y&R. And I'm sorry for that, not that it mattered, as he will always define Billy Abbott to many fans. I hope he is at peace and I'm thinking of all his friends and family right now. So many losses in daytime this year.

Thanks. Hopefully he's alright.

Was that said somewhere?

You're a stronger person than I am. He's already made himself a victim and has a ton of support from the usual suspects. The dead end/grifter left is full of abusers and enablers.

Nice to see Lucy there. Seeing Lucy cross over to OLTL in the mid '90s would have been a hoot.

Thanks. I guess that wasn't using the old bible and more just inevitable mother/daughter soap conflict.

Definitely. The details of Jim loving his brother but also so clearly being in his brother's shadow are very compelling. I do think Russ had the potential to be a more interesting character than he was (RIP David Bailey but what I've seen of his time in the role felt very much like the usual self-righteous "good guy" - not sure how Sam Groom was but I wish they'd tried a fresh approach). Did the story of Susan being in love with the man Liz was dating happen?

Thanks. Hadn't heard of her. The plans were that he felt inferior to Alice, who was brilliant, so much so that she could have skipped a grade if her parents hadn't wanted her to have the full high school experience. They would take Russ for tests and see that he wasn't like normal kids. Jim, over Mary's objections, would give him a broken-down car to repair. Russ would love it, and make the car work again, but would get in a car crash and go to reform school. When he returned, he would be moody and difficult, but Mary would see that he wanted to be a mechanic and try to convince Jim to support this.

Thanks. An interesting read. Clearly there WERE much more detailed plans for Granny, her relationship with Janet and adoration of Mary because Mary was the "right" type of woman (a homemaker) while Janet had to learn to stop acting like a man (their words, not mine). I assume very little of this got through. I wonder how much it affected Janet's characterization. I guess none of those plans for Russ went through either. Doesn't even sound like the same character. Did Ann Fuller, the social worker character, exist on the show? Pat is a better character name than Cynthia. I can't remember any soap character named Cynthia, aside from Linda Dano's on ATWT. About a month. Per AWHP it looks like she went to help her niece with a baby. Clearly a very difficult time if she never returned and was never mentioned again. Very true. The Doctors did a lot with Carolee and Mona but most soaps don't.

Thanks. Even the photo of her on AWHP is striking. So many missed opportunities with the Matthews family. I feel cheated even though I barely saw most of them. The format of father-in-law questioning and comforting an unsure daughter-in-law was genius on ATWT and GL. Daughter-in-law and mother-in-law relationships are trickier. It's too bad no one at the show in that period ever talked about whatever the plans were. (did AW ever have a bible?)

That's sweet.

Good points @Neil Johnson Did any at the show ever talk about Granny Matthews? Was she Irna's attempt at another version of Grandpa Hughes and Papa Bauer, but someone decided she wasn't needed? Was she ever mentioned again? (I guess Janet wasn't either)

https://variety.com/2023/theater/news/michael-mcgrath-dead-tony-winning-actor-1235724482/

I think the view is that the show was fading around 1977, which is one of the reasons Lemay brought in the stories he claimed he would never have done before then, like Sven's reign of terror and Pat killing her daughter's sleazy boyfriend in a psychotic break.

I know little about them and was shocked to see at least two of the three on AWHP's major characters list did not last a full year. Only one of them did.

Oh. That's odd if so because I don't know if the Gregorys were any more notable a core family than others who just lasted a few years, like the Sheas, or most of the McKinnons, etc. But I have not seen anything of their era.