"I take thee...Cord."
My first real glimpse of Andrea was that OLTL weddings VHS tape I watched over and over in the mid '90s. A good portion of it, rightfully so, was devoted to the insane Tina spectacles of the peak Rauch era. An era that would never have been possible without Andrea.
No matter how many bad things Tina did, Andrea found the heart of the character. You believed she did care about other people - Cord, Viki, Gabrielle, her kid - even if she often wanted to put herself first. Her work holds up exceptionally well too. If you showed somebody new to soaps the Tina material from back then, gross and stupid as a lot of it could be, they would probably still be fascinated by her.
I don't think you can understand just what a difficult job Andrea had in making Tina so beloved unless you look at so many other failed attempts at the same character over the years, or even on the same show.
Andrea was a delight to watch. She lit up the screen. She had such a presence. In many ways I might compare her to Judy Holliday, another very intelligent actress who never quite got her due.
I'm glad Andrea at least got to return at the end to give Tina a happy ending.
It's been a tough few years for soap fans, but much as all of these losses hurt, this one really makes me sad.