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Yeah, I've seen all of those. I meant Erica and Mike from his return in 1998.

Yeah, I've seen that one. There are a few clips online too of Jack and Erica during that same period, but I was hoping to eventually find more of Erica and Mike. I know what you mean. I liked Erica and Dimitri together at first too. Unlike Erica though, I wouldn't have married him the second time. Him helping Kendall find Erica's rapist pretty much ruined him for me.

^ I love all of these episodes from the 1990s! I especially love watching Erica, Janet and Skye team up to take on crazy Jonathan Kinder. He was such a good villain. Do you have any of Mike Roy's 1998 return?

They seemed to have gotten there by 1993 - Jack married Laurel, and he even did a reading at Erica and Dimitri's first wedding. Then the writers had Dimitri helping Kendall find the man who raped Erica, which Dimitri should have been smart enough to know was a REALLY bad idea, and suddenly Dimitri was out for a while and Jack was back in. They've had brief periods where they friends, or at least not sleeping together and not fighting with each other, but it never really seemed to last, which was a shame. Personally, I think if Michael Nader hadn't ended up getting fired or if his recast had gone over much better with the fans, I think the writers would have considered yet another go-round of Erica and Dimitri. Dimitri was around a lot when Erica was struggling with Bianca coming out, and there were still some sparks there. I would have enjoyed a full blown David/Erica/Dimitri triangle.

Jack was never really a lead character. When he wasn't with Erica, he faded into the woodwork. He was in Pine Valley for 20+ years and only managed to get married twice. I don't think anyone really knew what to do with him, so they let him be this default for Erica because the fans seemed to like it. The comparison to Ryan and Greenlee is, I think, very appropriate. I never liked the idea of Jack and Krystal because Jack, frankly, is a bit of a snob. I think Krystal would have been an ever bigger project to shape her into the woman Jack wanted. I don't think it would have lasted. I would have liked to see him either with Anna or later with Jamie Lunar's Liza. I think either of those pairings had great potential.

Yes, yes, yes!!! I loved the Jack/Erica/Travis triangle, and I completely understood why Erica dumped him after he refused to lie for her in the custody fight, and I figured they'd get back together at some point after that. Unfortunately it became this huge saga of them over and over again, and nothing changed. Neither one of them learned a darn thing. That wedding they had in Boca was totally fan-driven. Even Susan says she thinks they're better off not being married, and Walt was clearly happy about Jack walking out on her in the end, but the "Jerica" fans are beyond pissed. ITA with you on Tad and Dixie too. They were the new Cliff & Nina, remarrying over and over again. I was really starting to like Tad and Cara too, and I'm disappointed that was tossed out just to give Tad and Dixie a happy ending.

I think this is one of the big problems with soaps right now. This whole "destined to be together" thing ends up leaving couples stuck in a rut because the writers don't know what else to do with them. The Jack/Erica fans are still pissed that Jack and Erica didn't sail off into the sunset together. Zach had to be brought back from the dead to pacify the "Zen" fans. Great couples SHOULD come and go on a soap, IMHO. Tad and Cara had the potential to be a good couple, but they were completely dumped because Tad and Dixie just "had" to be together at the end.

Tad the Cad has always been a jerk, but MEK is cute and funny, and for some reason, TPTB don't feel a need to punish him for any of his wrong-doings.

~swoons~ David/Erica. All these years later, I'm still pissed that TPTB broke them up only because they wanted Erica to be single while she dealt with Bianca coming out. Then they never went back and brought David/Erica back together as a couple. That was such a waste of such a great couple.

Adam was no prize as a parent, but I never understood why Tad was viewed as oh so fabulous.

Susan is just plain gorgeous period. She always has been. The woman looks better in her 60s than I do in my early 30s.

See, I think Lena had the potential to be a glamorous bitchy lesbian, but then they had to make her all nice and sweet too. Dear Daytime Television: we like our bitches, both straight and gay. Being gay does not mean a character has to also be super nice. I did leave out Bianorexica because um, honestly, I wasn't watching the show very often then, and no one has posted those episodes on you tube yet, so I really couldn't comment fairly on it. My opinion on that Bianca consists primarily of "gee I'm so going to hell for thinking this" thoughts that 1) the poor child's nose was enormous and 2) it can't have been good for either Gina or Nathalie Paulding's self esteem to know that the role was re-cast primarily because Nathalie was very, very skinny.

My main objection to Bianca as a child vs. Bianca as a teen and adult is that Bianca was seriously rocking the "I'm Erica Kane's daughter, and I'm a spoiled brat" attitude in the early/mid 90s when she was played by Gina Gallagher, and I loved how that Bianca interacted with Kendall. To me that was totally in keeping with the same little preschool-age Bianca who wanted her Mommy and Daddy to be together and who set her dollhouse on fire when she saw Erica kissing Uncle Jack. The Bianca who came back to Pine Valley in 2000 played by Eden Riegel was the anti-Erica - unglamorous, laid back, sweet, quiet, and pretty much unlike the Bianca we'd seen before. We saw shades of the old Bianca the night Travis died when she screamed and cried and yelled at Erica and Jack, but for the most part, she was a fairly different character. Agnes Nixon has said that she'd planned for some time for Erica's daughter to be gay. My personal take on it is that the writers knew they had an uphill battle getting the audience to accept Erica Kane's daughter as gay, and they couldn't have her be gay AND a total b*tch, so they made her the nice one. And honestly, I think it kind of worked because they brought Kendall back shortly thereafter to be the b*tchy one, but then they made Kendall nice too. As for Bianca's life in Seattle, I feel massively cheated. TPTB did a good job continuing to occasionally show Barbara and Travis after they moved, but I really got the impression that there was a lot of good story potential there that we never saw. Travis admitted during Bianca's anorexia that he still loved Erica and he wanted to hurt her for choosing Jack over him. When Sean came to town, that story was furthered when he later told Colby about fights that his parents had over his dad and Erica and how Barbara cheated on Travis. I wish that had all been able to develop on camera.

Yeah... I find that very obnoxious. But then again, that's typical for soaps. So aside from issues with Kendall and Erica's age, your main objection to the storyline is that Agnes didn't plan it 23 years in advance?

I'm in my early 30s, so I wasn't around to watch the show at the beginning, so I can't speak all that knowledgeably about what was or wasn't implied. I've seen clips online of the time Adam kidnapped Erica, and he tells her that she can come willingly to his bed, or he'll force her. This was her ex-husband, someone she knew fairly well, and she cringes away from his touch in those scenes. She's clearly afraid of him, and I suppose you could look at it and say "well, she was reminded of being raped as a teenager" because she got her hands on a pocket knife and was determined to fight him. I think though they've always played it as this event was so traumatizing that Erica blocked it out and never wanted to think of it again, which isn't completely unreasonable, IMHO. When Josh came back they tried to claim that she wanted the abortion in part because being pregnant reminded her of being pregnant with Kendall and it was traumatizing, but I never bought that. Her having an hysterical pregnancy after her miscarriage with Phil Brent though... I think that giving up a baby, then aborting another and then finally miscarrying a child you really did want would be devastating, and that could have all combined to drive Erica temporarily crazy. As for why we didn't see much of the aftermath of her pregnancy, here is how I see the timeline. Erica's birthday is supposedly November 2nd (per the Jane storyline - the security code for the door was 1102 - Erica's birthday), so if Erica was 15 when the show began, and she was raped on her 14th birthday, she would have turned 15 in Nov 1969, and she was raped in early November 1968. If Mona didn't realize Erica was pregnant until she was five months along, that would have been around March of 1969. At that point, she was visibly pregnant while naked, but clearly not while clothed because no one else had noticed. Let's assume school got out in late May. Mona would have only had to hide the pregnancy for about two more months, which could have been done with creative clothing and/or Erica being "sick" for a while. After that, it would have been summer vacation, and Mona could have taken her out of town. In 1993, it was said that Kendall was born in Phoenix, which I guess was where the adoption agency sent Erica. Mona could have told everyone that Eric sprung for Erica to go to a fancy summer camp somewhere or even that Erica was visiting her dad. Kendall would have been born in August or September of 1969. Perhaps Mona told people that Erica wanted to try going to school in CA for a semester but came home because she got homesick. Not many people would think too much of that. Remember too that this was the 1960s, before abortion was legal, and it was still quite scandalous to be a single pregnant teenager, so Mona wasn't likely to tell a lot of people. Erica made it quite clear to Kendall in 1993 that she was very sexually naive at the time the rape happened, so there would have been no way to pass off the baby as Chuck or Phil's when she clearly wasn't sleeping with either of them. A shocking percentage of rape victims never report the crime, so Mona not reporting something that happened five months earlier on the other side of the country isn't surprising. At that time as well, there was also a prevailing line of thought that the woman "asked for it", so I can see Mona thinking that she was protecting Erica by not making her talk to police. Mona might have confided in Dr. Tyler as a way of inquiring if he knew of anywhere she could take Erica to terminate the pregnancy, but if she told him that in confidence when Phoebe was not around, I don't see why he would have told Phoebe about it. I think he could have kept that a secret. As for not telling Nick, I could see Mona thinking that this was all her fault: she let Erica go to CA, she trusted Eric to take care of their daughter, and he didn't. If she hadn't let her go, it wouldn't have happened. Who knows - maybe Erica said that to her mother in anger one day during the pregnancy. If Mona felt guilty, I could see her wanting to keep that quiet and not tell Nick about it. As for the adoption, I disagree with you - I don't think there was any way Mona would have kept that baby. Erica said at one point that when her mother explained to her that she was pregnant as a result of the rape, she screamed for days. She was DEVASTATED by the pregnancy, and I can't see Mona shoving the rape in her face every day by making Erica pretend that her rapist's child was her little sister. Mona told Erica in 1993 that she did see and hold Kendall before she was placed for adoption, which to me is absolutely something Mona would have done. She would have loved the baby because it was Erica's, and it would have broken her heart to leave the baby, but yes, I think she definitely would have done so to protect Erica. Once the baby was born and they were on their way back to Pine Valley, I could see Mona telling Erica that it was over, that they would put behind them and never speak of it again. And I can see Erica clinging to that denial but being a changed person by the trauma of of the rape, the pregnancy and the birth, and as a result, she then viewed men differently, she viewed herself differently, and maybe it made her more determined to make something of herself, to be completely different from the way she was before. I'm not saying it makes a huge amount of sense or that it was the healthiest way of handling the rape, but I could see her handling it that way. The twist about Eric was unnecessary IMHO. It was bad enough that he forgot the party, didn't invite any famous guests and wasn't there to prevent her from being raped. But then again, this was the same guy who cheated on his wife and fathered a child with his mistress, who abandoned his family, who neglected his children, who faked his death to avoid trial for embezzlement, who later mooched off of Erica and then sold the Enchantment stock she gifted him to one of her arch rivals before abandoning her again and walking out on his grandchild. Is it really so hard to believe that he would have traded Erica to Richard Fields to get him in a movie? Maybe Richard saw a picture of Erica at Eric's house and wanted her and only her. Or maybe Eric was really just sick enough that he was willing to do anything. I mean, if half of what we've heard about the sex abuse scandal at Penn State is true, there were plenty of people who knew young boys were being raped but did NOTHING about it. If that can happen, then I can see Eric doing what he did - I just don't think it was necessary to drive the story. Erica dealing with her own rape and coping with her daughter's rape and pregnancy would have been enough to drive her to drink already.

^ I used to watch Swan's Crossing. I think SMG and I are about the same age. I do appreciate that connection, and yes, SMG does resemble SL a little bit, but I still think she was too young. I wonder what SL thought about them bringing on a daughter for Erica who was old enough to make her a grandmother? I think the age thing may be why I really liked Alicia Minshew as Kendall - her Kendall to me looked and acted more like an adult when she first came back.

IIRC, the writers wanted Kendall to be about 16, but fans were protesting, since Erica had been on the show for 23 years by that point, and no matter how good Susan Lucci looked, she wasn't really passable as being in her early 30s - she was 47 at the time! So yeah, I think they then tried to pretend she was really a lot older, but I guess just massively immature or something? Either way, it didn't work very well. IMHO, they should have planned for her to be in her early 20s from the very beginning and cast an older actress. Going with an older actress would have made more sense than retroactively changing Erica's age and saying 'Oh, well, Erica was really born in 1962.' Um... yeah... I also thought Christopher Lawford was bad casting for Charlie. Charlie should have been in his early 20s, and CL looked like he was at least 40.

My main objection to SMG's Kendall is that the writers couldn't decide how old she was supposed to be. In that clip, she and Erica are interacting as if Kendall is about 16-18, yet by the wedding to Dimitri, Kendall is over 21 and drinking with Charlie and Haley at the rehearsal dinner. Based on when she was supposedly born, Kendall should be several years OLDER than Charlie but there's no way in hell anyone would think SMG looked older than Christopher Lawford. I also don't necessarily buy that Kendall was in her 20s and was a virgin when she slept with Anton and was so sexually naive that she freaked her [!@#$%^&*] out over that.

Yes, I agree, that would have been better. After a while, the dynamic became as if Erica had raised them both AND that Bianca and Kendall had grown up together. I know Bill and Alice showed Erica some photos they had of Kendall growing up, but it would have been nice to have Erica and Kendall looking at childhood photos of her together or talking more about her upbringing, or Kendall asking Erica if she'd ever picked out a name for her - and being upset when Erica hadn't because I really don't think she would have named the baby. So much they could have done there but didn't.

SFK, on another board some of us were discussing ideas for plots for AMC 2.0 (before PP threw in the towel), and my idea was to have a teenage relative of Kendall's adoptive mother come live with her. I was envisioning that Alice Hart had taken in her niece after her own sister died, and was raising the child, but then Alice died and left guardianship of the girl to Kendall. Kendall and Zach would then get saddled with a teenage girl who on the surface was a total brat and hated Kendall for turning her back on Alice and the family who raised her, but who deep down was also suffering from the loss of not one but two mothers. I was picturing her totally hating Erica and Bianca and not wanting to live in PV at all, and yet Erica really relating to her because of the loss of her own mother. Kendall would have to deal with her guilt over abandoning her adoptive family, she and Zach could have great discussions over trying to figure out who you are, and it would give them both some insight into what they're likely going to face when Gabby grows up and realizes that her uncle is really her dad.

^ SMG really rocked the bitter, angry Kendall. I remember watching her back in the day and waiting for her to whip out a weapon and start offing people. I also often wondered if Kendall had some sort of deep dark secret or had experienced some sort of trauma that made her so bitter and angry because it really was out of proportion for what had happened in her life. Yes, she was adopted, and yeah, I get it that she felt abandoned by a mother who later became rich and famous, but if Kendall was such a fan of Erica's, she had to have been able to do basic math and see from Erica's bio + her adoption papers that Erica was 14 when she was born. I mean, at 14, it's not like parenting was a reasonable option, and it's not like Erica would have been given much of a say in the matter, not the way adoption was generally handled back then. I mean, at worst Kendall could have assumed that her birth mother was a teenage slut. Yet she was SO angry when she came to town, and she went out of her way to try to make Erica miserable. I also get her being curious about her birth father too, but once Erica told her she'd been raped, I still don't understand why she would have been remotely curious about Richard Fields. I remember him insisting that he'd never raped anyone, and that it was consensual. Hello - Kendall, your mother was 14, and he was a grown man! I always felt like Kendall's anger was never really explained, and it would have made more sense if we'd found out that her adoptive parents were abusive or that she'd suffered some sort of severe trauma because of the adoption.

I disliked the whole Santos clan. Julia was tolerable as a nurse, but I never cared about her and Noah. Maria was so freaking self-righteous all the time. I'm still bitter that Edmund didn't marry Brooke.

I think Erica did evolve in a lot of ways, especially after she had Bianca. I know the whole rape storyline with Kendall and Richard Fields was controversial, but I personally liked it, and I thought it explained a lot of Erica's issues. It wasn't just that she felt abandoned by her father, it's that she was abandoned by him, and then he left her alone with a pedophile who raped her and impregnated her on her 14th birthday. That could screw up even the most well-adjusted of people. Because yes, if it was "just" that she felt abandoned by her father, then I can see how she could be seem as perpetually immature, but she'd suffered far more than that. Rewatching the scenes right after Kendall (SMG) tells Erica she's her daughter, when Erica goes to see her at the Pine Cone, you can see just how much Erica has grown up: she tries to keep the ugly truth from Kendall to avoid hurting her, and she tells Kendall that she'd like to try to be a mother to her. The Erica of the 1970s and 1980s absolutely would not have done that. Erica circa 1993 and early 1994 bent over backward to try to be a mother to Kendall. Then once Kendall came back to PV, you had the growth of their relationship and Erica finally being able to love her daughter for who she was, to forgive and forget all of the bad things Kendall had done. By the show's end, they had a close and loving mother-daughter relationship, and Erica went to extremes to protect Kendall and her sons. Plus there's the whole evolution of how Erica views Bianca. She went from wanting her daughter to be a miniature Erica to struggling to cope with her daughter's sexuality to eventually accepting it and loving Bianca for who she is. In the scene where Caleb comes to Pine Valley for the first time, he asks Erica who Bianca is, and she smiles brightly and says proudly, "My married lesbian daughter," to shock him, but she's clearly proud of Bianca. She was even supportive of Bianca being with Marissa, despite her intense dislike of Krystal. Erica has absolutely matured over the course of the show, but she did so in a way that stayed true to who the character was. Erica has always been self-centered and selfish, she's always chewed through men like they're kleenex and viewed life through her own skewed moral compass, but we saw her grow as a mother, and eventually embrace being a grandmother, even if she doesn't use the word "Grandmother." No, she never managed to have a long-lasting really good romantic relationship with a man, but as she told Jeff Martin back in 2006, she got used to living alone, and maybe she's not meant to be married. It takes a lot of self-awareness and maturity to figure that out! I think her telling Jack in the last episode that she didn't want to marry him just to make him feel better was a HUGE sign of her emotional growth. Back in 2003 when Jack wanted her and Chris was out of the picture, Erica didn't want to marry him... until he was shot and Mary shared the news that Greenlee was his daughter. Then she couldn't wait to run down the aisle for all the wrong reasons. But by the end, she'd figured out that there were problems in the relationship, and she wasn't willing to marry him "just because."

Didn't Michelle Trachtenburg play Lily for a while?? I think she was Lily in the early/mid 90s. And ditto Kylie - Dimitri was a pompous ass to Erica most of the time. YES! IMDB to the rescue - Michelle Trachtenburg played Lily Benton Montgomery from 1993-1996!

Gillian, Greenlee, and Kendall... all fun, bitchy, anti-heroine women who became soft stepford wife types after being paired with Ryan. It's a miracle Erica escaped from Ryan with her bitchiness intact.