DRW50

I do think this was the big factor (his age and appearance). He only had one small acting part after GL so I think it was probably their choice. I guess plans changed if Ethan Erickson told them he wanted to leave, then they also recast Bill. I am not sure, but I don't believe they ever intended the Santos family to be as big as they ended up being. I think the original plans were likely to keep Michelle with Jessie. Thanks for bringing up the tribute to Keith Christopher. I'd forgotten. I am surprised they remembered him, especially as everyone he interacted with was gone by 1998. He had some moving scenes with Lucy.

Iris and Steve famously got on well because she looked just like his sister.

They claimed that Cecile and Cass had had a hookup before they were in Bay City. I do wonder what the original plans for this story were, as I can't remember if they ever let viewers know that Cecile was lying until near the end of her exit. There still could have been interesting story with Cass acting like a father to Maggie as he leaned on her after Frankie's murder, but Maggie was written out not long after, and I'm not sure if she was ever even mentioned again. You're right that it would have made sense to have Cecile make a move on Cass, who was at a low (Frankie and just had another miscarriage and they were estranged). I think JFP likely did not see Cecile as attractive by that point. She really seemed to dislike the character (and most characters - just a wretched run). I didn't even remember that Stuart Brooks and Dina were meant to have a child or grandchild together. That was clearly all pointless. Is that something Josh Griffith ignores because he wasn't there then or was that Griffith?

That was all strange, yes. I can only assume someone at GL or P&G hated the twins by different fathers story and decided to retcon.

I thought of it because it was so incredibly brazen (viewers had seen James and Lucinda meeting for the first time a decade earlier) and so incredibly pointless. And just a huge mess to watch, with Liz Hubbard going hogwild, maybe because she also knew how ridiculous the material was.

James and Lucinda being lovers and having a dead child.

Five Road of Life episodes. I'm not sure if these are already around. It's hard to figure out (I finally found all the Stepmother episodes elsewhere). Ron Bowser-John Dunning Project - Road of Life : Ron Bowser-John Dunning Project : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

I didn't mind Rob Bogue, although that may be down to my finding Mark Derwin's Mallet unlikeable most of the time.

I've always thought Chris Marcantel was cute, so I get why she would, but there's nothing of interest going on. At one point the scene just has the three men yelling at each other and Diana standing there. All strangers and none of them make it past early 1983.

We get more of them than I thought we might get. I just wish she was teaching him lessons too instead of him being a moral voice to her. At least she is still allowed to hate Sonny.

I don't really dislike Wally Kurth himself. He's a bit smug onscreen but he's a decent actor and does work well with a number of people. My issue with Ned is how he was framed in the years when he was a prominent character. I think that hurt him and the Quartermaines and he was lucky to make it out of that era alive. I think anything they did with Ronnie was going to be limited in impact, although if Erika had just been a huge bitch onscreen and been killed off that could have been fun. I actually like the idea of her starting out as a relatively decent person and then turning to a scheme due to Tracy being Tracy, but she wasn't on long enough for that to have an impact and then having Tracy written off by her family (again) tips the scales too much in the writing.

I think that's part of it (and maybe they are hoping Erika will return someday), although I wonder how much is just Frank wanting to help someone he's close to after her recent loss and getting to see her play some dramatic material. Bringing in a relative for Monica along with Ronnie would have made sense, although the canvas is already so full, especially for what the Qs need (a young woman). For long-term story they should have considered it as there's nothing left now beyond more Drew vs Q stuff. I never liked him either. I always thought he was a sanctimonious ass and Ned/Alexis bored the hell out of me as a pairing. And all the singing and the leather pants...

Thank you again @Maxim for thinking of us with these. As mentioned above this whole period is difficult to process at times as you know most of the people you are watching will not last long (not even a full year in some cases). Sometimes I wonder if they should have tried longer with David Canary as Steve, but much as I loved David on AW, he just never works for me on here.

@Vee Thanks. That was beautiful. Describes David as well as anything ever could. I saw in one of her obits that David said she initially struggled with using any of his dialogue rather than improv-ing, but when she finally did, they had magic. Bruce Dern said he credits David for Diane being rediscovered. Their passings are very somber bookends for this year.

That makes sense. I preferred Floyd under the Dobsons to Marland. He was goofy, stupid, annoying - we've all known someone like Floyd, and I couldn't dislike him. I didn't dislike him under Marland either, but he was very dull, clearly just there for the plots of other characters (a custody battle to upset Nola, many, many, many scenes of Leslie being warned by Josh about "Candy" or whatever her name was). I know the actor genuinely did music but I also thought the overnight music sensation story was like something out of a B-movie from 20-25 years earlier. I can't see Lainie and Floyd being hugely interesting as a pairing either though.

@Robluvthebeach Never knew that. Thanks. I wonder what the story would have been. Probably sleeping with Gus... @alwaysAMC Thanks for the latest mini-review. I also love to hate Dinah by this point. That's her best use. The Cassie/Harley friendship is one of those times where the characters we are meant to like are paired together, rather than what is interesting. Harley, at least until she was paired with Mallet, used to have unique relationships and friendships. I think you're right about why Bill was recast. Ryan Brown, unfortunately, is little more than a Ken doll. I don't believe he would be a child of Billy and Vanessa any more than I believed he was a child of Jill Foster.

https://www.soapoperadigest.com/content/ghs-erika-slezak-and-yrs-roger-howarth-dish-their-real-life-one-life-to-live-reunion-excl/

I was going to ask if she could be turfed out in the slim chance they redistrict in NY but if she's Staten Island, probably not. @Vee Yes. I was thrilled. And while Jay Jones said incredibly stupid things in his text, I'm glad voters had the sense to still not vote for a Republican, no matter how much the GOP and the media went on about decency. Republicans have no decency and no moral authority. The state rep who cynically held onto the texts to release far into the election cycle also lost her seat tonight - oops! You're right about Biden and how the Beltway and the constant grievances and gleeful enabling of any Republican along with any Republican-leaning "edgy" leftist who will posture against the establishment before fully imploding (like the new darling Graham Platner). You can see that ilk, like Majority Report, being angry tonight because Mamdani didn't win by as much as Spanberger or Sherill did. Or in Dave Weigel spending day after day trashing Karine Jean Pierre, but when asked about the sugar baby currently serving as Trump's propagandist, just said that she's good. Anyway, here's a brief list of the various wins tonight.

Tracy was not a good mother, so I guess I get it, but the whole family piling on just shows how plot-driven and interchangeable the material is, as @titan1978 mentioned above.

VintageNoSpintage has put up a number of June and July 1984 episodes (not sure if these are the same videos that I think were on Spauldingfield's channel at one point earlier this year).

Ned's always been like that, it just isn't as noticeable because he rarely appears now.

That could have been an interesting story, and a darker path for how much Ed drew in broken birds. They didn't create Vanessa so she wouldn't have been involved, but Vanessa and Lainie fighting over Ed while Vanessa is hung up on Lainie's brother is another compelling story.

The line will probably be that evil Democrats shut down the government to help win. Voters didn't seem to mind, but the media will eat up every word. His next step will be insisting he's cutting off funding to those states, which he was already doing anyway. I hope they tell him to eat [!@#$%^&*], which he already does anyway. Probably media darling Elise Stefanik, who looks like she always got shoved out of a bed right before she shoves her face in front of a camera. That second one is the line I'm hearing too. The media will do their best to make sure everyone forgets any of the results by the morning. More time to remind us of how awesome and badass and funny Trump is.

Those episodes are the most I have seen of her - I think she is in some of the Jennifer's trial episodes as she was working as a legal assistant or something by then. I haven't really watched those. Then she marries Carter Bowden (was that his name?) and leaves and shows up again heavily pregnant while Jackie is staying with her a few days before Jackie dies. They missed a trick never bringing any of her kids on to give Ross a headache.