Mona Kane Croft
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Posts posted by Mona Kane Croft
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49 minutes ago, Donna L. Bridges said:
From Eddie's page:
Corinne Jacker and Robert Cenedella, November 9, 1981 - December 1981
(In 1981, with Barbara Hamilton Bauer, Myra Sofronksi, Jeffrey Sweet, and Peter Swet)Corinne Jacker, December 1981 - November 1982
(In 1982, with Barbara Hamilton Bauer, Robert Cenedella, Myra Sofronski, Jeffrey Sweet, and Peter Swet)
(In 1982, with Barbara Hamilton Bauer, Edward Clinton, Lloyd Gold, Leslie Lee, Jeffrey Sweet, and Peter Swet. Dorothy Ann Purser as Story Editor)Cass 1st appearance Jul 1982, so she created Cass. That's all I got. Does that jog anything?
Interesting writing partners:
Cenedella had followed Agnes Nixon as headwriter, and was in the position for a couple of years. He had been quite successful at continuing Nixon's vision for AW. Surprised he did not do a better job of advising Jacker.
Peter Swet had been an assistant writer during Lemay's years at headwriter. So again, I'm surprised Swet wasn't able to keep Jacker on course.
Also surprising that Jacker had been a fan since day-one, but decided to write off Pat, and had Steve drop Alice in favor of Rachel. She must not have been a fan of the Matthews family. LOL.
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7 minutes ago, titan1978 said:
That interview actually makes me sad for today’s soaps. An idea generated from outside the writing team, and the HW knows nothing about any of the players involved from that time period to draw on organically.
I am enjoying the story, just makes me sad about the state of things.
I completely agree. It's sad in many ways. Sad that we viewers are so desperate for an identifiable storyline, that we will gush at any bone they throw us.
To be honest, it is not fundamentally a bad plot. But the execution is awkward and too fast, making the storyline unbelievable. Had Griffith taken it slowly and added more nuance and detail, the entire thing would seem much more plausible. Every step along the way, we needed more explanation and exposition.
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Jada Roland (despite the dark hair)) or Bibi Besch as Alice Frame on Another World in 1975, when Jacquie Courtney was fired.
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6 hours ago, Paul Raven said:
Was Corinne Jacker given free reign? It seems that way.
Maybe if she had been given more guidance or an experienced co writer ,things might have been better. She claims to have watched from the start, but nothing onscreen reflected that.
Courier Express, 27 December 1981
Playwright enters Another World by Tom Jory.
-Corinne Jacker was hired by producers of NBC's "Another World" to pump new life into the slumping daytime serial, and the Obie-winning playwright says she knew right away what had to be done.
"I'd followed the show from the start," says Ms.Jacker, who took the job as head writer for the series in October, "so it was easy. I felt the stories they'd been using lately had taken 'Another World' away from the things that I loved about the show. "I told them 'I wanted the show to reflect normal life -- no gangsters, no dope, no towns freezing over. I said I wanted to find drama in the people, the characters.
"IT SEEMS TO ME the soap opera is as close as you can get to a novel by Dickens or Balzac - which, by the way, were serialized first in cheap pulp editions. And that's what I hope to do, only more. Because when you look at Dickens, he's characterizing in broad strokes - villains are villains and good people are good people. I want my characters more finely drawn.
"And I think we're beginning to accomplish that," she says. "The kinds of things I didn't like - 'The Breather," the rape scene - are gone, and there's no more organized crime. Remember, there's plenty of drama in life, like in Dickens and Balzac, and that's what's happening in 'Another World.'
"'The problem with the other stuff," she says - the city froze over in ABC's 'General Hospital" - "is it works for a while. You tune in to see Liz Taylor on 'General Hospital," and it's exciting. Then the others try to imitate that, and it doesn't work, and the viewer is less thrilled."
IN ADDITION TO MS. JACKER, the series' producers hired two new directors and a new scenic designer, and changed the show's music and opening. There have been several cast changes under the new head writer, and Ms. Jacker is busy adjusting the demographics for Bay City, the fictional setting for "'Another World."
The hourlong show, once on a slide opposite "All My Children" on ABC and CBS "As the World Turns" and "Search for Tomorrow," seems to even have begun stabilized - maybe even began an upward swing. Ms Jacker's background is in the theater theater and, she says the stories will get deeper, with more wrinkles. My reputation is of a serious dramatist. I've never a written episodic drama. I'm a little more interested in the subtleties of characters than others might be."
SHE'LL ALSO INTRODUCE what Paul Rauch, the program's executive producer, calls "contemporary issues." One of the first characters Ms. Jacker created was Harry Shea, a union boss, played by Ed Power. "We're having a black family come into the show as a core family and I think I'm right that it's the first black family in a soap where one member is not a doctor, lawyer or other professional person. And we've got an older mother who gets pregnant. In other words," she says, "'we're trying to deal with issues that affect all of us."
Ms. Jacker has been prominent as a playwright off Broadway and for regional and repertory theater for more than a decade. Her "Bits and Pieces" at the Manhattan Theater Club in 1975 won an Off-Broadway Obie award, and "Harry Outside," produced at the Circle Repertory Theater in '76, was similarly honored. She is playwright in residence at the Circle Rep.
MS. JACKER ALSO has written extensively for television. She wrote the script for Katherine Anne Porter's ''The Jilting of Granny Weatherall," an "American Short Story' presentation on +public TV in 1980, and developed and wrote scripts for three episodes of "The Best of Families," a public television miniseries broadcast in 1977.
"My feeling in taking this was that the key lay in the organic development of the plot," she says. "So I've restricted myself to the longterm plot and the daily story breakdown. The five writers who work with me do the dialogue." Ms. Jacker says she develops biographies for all the characters in the show, for use by the dialogue writers, and they're working now on a map of Bay City, to help with geographical relationships.
I was watching at the time, and I can't remember specifically anything Jacker did at AW, other than continue the return of Steve Frame, which Rauch had already decided to do, and the previous writer had laid the groundwork for that. In my opinion, she botched Steve Frame's return by making it too unbelievable (isn't a return from the dead already unbelievable enough??), by surrounding it with over the top details, secret rooms, Harry Shea as Steve's "best friend" even though the viewers had never seen him before, etc, etc. And for someone who supposedly watched AW from day-one, how did she happen to ignore so many details of Steve's previously established history? And his previous relationships with Alice, Rachel, and Jamie? Nearly everything seemed to be made up as she went along, rather than relying on established history, which many fans at the time still remembered very well. I realize casting was also a problem, but the writing was far worse than the casting. Believe me -- that much is true. Nobody will ever convince me that David Canary was not capable of playing Steve Frame. Canary was one of the best actors in daytime. All Canary needed was a lesson in Steve's history, and some direction (you know, by the director).
But back to my original question -- aside from Steve's botched return, what else was happening in Bay City during Jacker's time as head writer? It must have been forgettable, because I have forgotten it. LOL. And how long did Jacker stay at AW?
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48 minutes ago, Donna L. Bridges said:
It makes sense because we know that NBC was asking them to do exactly that.
Yes, you are right. And what is rather amazing is -- TPTB must have had a complete turn-around, because they hired Harding Lemay as head-writer in 1988 (just before the strike), and they HAD TO KNOW Lemay would never write anything over the top or similar to DOOL in any way. So somehow some attitudes at the top were changed, even if briefly.
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5 hours ago, chrisml said:
I've been revisiting 87 and 88 and I still think it's so much better than its rep indicates. The casting decisions are what let it down. Getting rid of Petronia Paley was a huge mistake. It still baffles me that was allowed to happen and then Jane Cameron decides to leave which is another huge mistake. They turn MJ into a prostitute which belies belief and is so shortsighted. I wish the writers (and the strike writers) had not written off Cheryl and Scott. Two characters with so much potential, and they saddled Scott with the Dawn storyline that was never going anywhere. Poor Cheryl just seemed like an afterthought after a certain point. I wish the writers had done more to keep the McKinnons more connected to other storylines. It really does feel that there was no plan for Mary or the McKinnons so they had Reginald turn into a one-note villain. It would have been more interesting if Mary realizes who she was, and still felt more connected to Reginald. All of the mistakes just seem idiotic decisions that don't take long-term story into consideration--something that would be a major problem with Swajeski's tenure as well.
It seemed to me during that era, TPTB were trying hard to make AW more similar to DOOL. Making MJ a former prostitute for instance, was similar to Kimberly Brady's past issues on DOOL. Even MJ's personality changed from a confident police officer to a damaged somewhat vulnerable damsel -- again more similar to the personality of Kimberly Brady. In fact, it seemed TPTB were transitioning the McKinnons into AW's version of the Bradys on DOOL. The mother being formerly involved with a wealthy bad-guy, Mary and Vince opening a pub/restaurant, etc. And some of the other storylines at this time seemed a better fit for DOOL than AW -- Reginald being a moustache-twirling super-villian (not unlike DOOL's Stefano) is one example.
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29 minutes ago, Paul Raven said:
This Jordan/Eve plot has more holes in it than a bathhouse on a Friday night in 1975!
How did Jordan get poison into the bottled water?
What happened with the private jet crew -are they just hanging around the airport?
Newman Security strikes again-the whole family heads out of town and nobody is alerted.
And the baby switch- wouldn't the parents of the dead baby missing a baby?
If Eve was sickly wouldn't she be under strict observation. How would Jordan gain access? And how could she look after a very ill infant?
They should have made Jordan a former nurse, that would explain the hospital access, caring for a sickly baby, and at least a little about administering the poison. They could have explained that over the years, she had been fired from multiple hospitals for doing inappropriate things. They should have also had a throw away line about the private jet and the crew. A few details similar to those thrown into the script here and there would make this plot much more believable.
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38 minutes ago, Paul Raven said:
I can't believe they are saddling Victoria with a grown child. She and Nikki can compare notes.
Maybe the whole thing will be uncovered to be Jordan's delusion and Claire is someone else all together (hopefully)
If she is Eve I get the feeling Cole will be around a few weeks and then return to his life-of course promising to be in constant touch.
Like they did with Phillip/Chance and Brock/Mackenzie.
I really don't see Cole/Victoria having any legs.
How long had Cole been gone? What year did he leave the show?
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10 minutes ago, j swift said:
Josie also really suffers in the final recast. Nadine Stenovitch may have shared Amy Carlson's haircut, but she had none of the charisma or sexual chemistry.
It also didn't help when they recast Gary with John Littlefield. I know that they wound up together IRL, but it is a bummer when both characters in a couple get recast.
Does anyone know the story of why they fired and then rehired Mr Littlefield? He left in May 1999, and SOD wrote that he was going to be replaced, then he returned a month later and stayed until the finale.
John Littlefield is leaving Another World this spring Littlefield Joined the show in April 1998 replacing Tim Gibbs(Now Kevin on one life to live}The departure is storyline dicated this was reported from Sod
Speaking of Nadine Stenovitch and John Littlefield, did anyone catch them on a couple of episodes of Escape to the Chateau about three years ago? They are close friends of the family that owns the chateau, so they came for a visit or two.
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9 hours ago, watson71 said:
Had RH made it to the 2000s- how do you think the show would have incorporated the 9/11 attack into the storyline given the NYC locale of the show?
They could not have done it in real time (or anything close to real time), because they would have been taping too far ahead. And playing it out a month later would have probably come across as distasteful. So they might have waited until the first anniversary, and done a tribute then -- as if 9/11 happened and they experienced it, but the audience just didn't see it play out on camera.
Some real life events are awkward and painful for the audience to re-live on a soap. And some, the audience simply would prefer not to re-live. So I think a tribute on the first anniversary would have been RH's mostly likely choice. Just speculation on my part.
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9 hours ago, BoldRestless said:
CZ said she has really big scenes airing on December 26th... the way they have blown through everything I can't even imagine the story going on til the end of this week.
As late as about a week ago, Zenk was saying in interviews that she was still in California taping on the show. That surprised me, even then. But now, I can't see how this plot can go on much longer -- at least Zenk's role in it. Characters like she's playing usually don't last long, after their true identity and intentions have been unveiled. Is she going to keep the whole Newman family tied-up in a basement for a month? That seems unlikely, so otherwise I can't imagine how Zenk was still taping new scenes as late as a week ago. But who knows?
12 hours ago, Faulkner said:This sh’t is laughable. Nick getting overpowered and stabbed by a 70-year-old woman while Victoria and Cole are completely oblivious. Claire already coming to the realization that she’s been deceived by Jordan.
Yes, these scenes were awkward to watch to say the least. The idea that two grown-ass men would just stand there and calmly listen to Jordan's explanation and threats without beating the crap out of her is ridiculous. There should have been at least some reference to Nick and Victor threatening to become violent. For example, Nick grabs Jordan and starts to choke the truth out of her, but she retorts by saying something like, "Go ahead and kill me, but you will NEVER find Nikki, if I'm dead." Then Victor pulls Nick away, Jordan brushes herself off, and the scene goes on. Some how it should be acknowledged that Nick and Victor could beat the truth out of Jordan, even if they choose not to.
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1 hour ago, dragonflies said:
sadly these days fans don't have the patience for a story to go on for months, this is an "insta" world, everything is "Fast"
The audience has the patience, but TPTB don't believe we have the patience. TPTB are just incorrect.
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9 hours ago, Xanthe said:
What about Josie?
The original version of Josie was definitely written as a traditional ingenue. But again, as popular as she may have been with the existing audience, Josie wasn't on the show very long. So she's just one of many tried and failed attempts on the various soaps to introduce that archetype post mid-80s. Thankfully, Josie's exit didn't involve her becoming a villain or going crazy. She was written off with most of the character's dignity in tact, allowing her return years later. But the later version of Josie was older, hardened by experience, and by no means naive. So the later Josie had out grown ingenue status.
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3 minutes ago, Soaplovers said:
Jenna on AW was a fairly successful ingenue... but she had a backbone and wasn't written to be a Mary Sue and she had a fairly popular coupling with Dean in the early 90s
True, but even she didn't last long enough to become what I would call a successful long-term ingenue.
Sorry, I really didn't mean to side-rail the conversation. My major point was that one of the major reasons Marley became a secondary character to Vicky was that Marley was a traditional ingenue at a time when that type of character was becoming unappealing to the writers, pretty much across the board in the genre.
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15 minutes ago, j swift said:
They may not have lasted as long, but Brett, Lisa, Kelsey, and Sofia were all good girl ingénues young adult leads with contemporary stories created after 1985.
And in terms of long term good girls on modern soaps, DAYS Belle just completed a 16-year gig, and butter wouldn't melt in the mouth of GH's Robin.
Re: Brett, Lisa, Kelsey, and Sofia -- Yes, but as you said, they didn't last long. So not long-term ingenues. The writers were so hip and trendy, they probably considered those four too boring to bother with. As I said (or maybe implied) there have been many attempts at traditional ingenues since the mid-80s on various soaps, but almost none of them have succeeded long-term.
Belle -- Yes, but she had spent long long periods off the show. At least I believe that's the case.
Robin -- I probably would agree she is/was a long term ingenue. She was on GH for many years and never permanently lost a man to a bad-girl (at least not that I recall). And she never turned bad or went crazy. So let's add Robin to the list.
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1 hour ago, Soaplovers said:
The problem was that Marley always played second fiddle to Vicky.. because a character like Marley needed a writer that could make a character like Marley more naunced. Vicky was easy to write so writers like Swajeski, Sloane, etc tended to write for her and use Marley as a talk to for Vicky (except for the 1991/2 period where Marley had a story arc that didn't involve Vicky so much).
We also need to remember that Marley was a traditional soap opera ingenue, at a time when the traditional ingenue had, for the most part, fallen out of fashion -- at least in the eyes of soap opera writers. By 1985-ish, the tables had turned between ingenues and bad-girls. Meaning that by 1985, in most cases, the bad-girl won and the ingenue was either written off or went crazy. In Marley's case, she was written off, and then years later went crazy.
By the mid-1980s, even the queen of writing and/or creating successful ingenues, Agnes Nixon, could not get a new ingenue to succeed on AMC. Nixon had been highly successful writing long romances for Missy Matthews and Alice Matthews on Another World, and on AMC had created popular ingenues, Tara Martin, Nina Courtlandt, and Jenny Gardner. But Jenny was Nixon's final successful ingenue. Even though she tried several times during and after the mid-80s to introduce such characters, the new ingenues each lost the boy to her competition (bad-girl) and were written off.
The era of the "good-girl" was over for good. Writers found the bad-girls more interesting and more exciting, I suppose. A couple of years ago I was involved in an online discussion trying to determine the last two or three successful long-term ingenues on daytime. And the only characters anyone could think of were Lily Walsh and Lily Winters. I tend to agree.
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14 hours ago, j swift said:
It was coo coo for coconuts, and that's what is funny to me. So, it made AW thrilling to watch, and yell at the screen, and joke about with my friends. Which are some of our favorite memories.
At the risk of being potentially offensive (and I apologize for that) -- Your statement reminds me of the people who counter any complaint against whacky writing with the reply, "It's just a soap." Implying that -- well, implying all kinds of things about a genre that many "old fashioned" fans tend to take seriously. I realize you did not use that phrase (...just a soap), but your comments simply reminded me of those who so. I've come to believe those who take soaps seriously will never understand those who enjoy whacky, supernatural, or sci-fi plots on an otherwise believable soap opera. And visa-versa. This is not to say one group is right and the other is wrong, but I do believe the soap audience is split into two different "tribes" who watch for different reasons and have very different expectations.
14 hours ago, j swift said:And, honestly, I don't get why anyone would continue to watch if they felt disrespected.
I believe many long-term fans continue to watch poorly written soap operas because most of them watch for the characters, and not the plots. Over the last 50 years, I have tolerated many many terrible, unbelievable, even insulting plots, because I simply loved the characters too much to give up. For example, I believe Another World was the worst soap opera on the air for its final 20-years. But I kept watching -- always hoping it would improve and return to its former glory. Which it never did. But I loved the characters, so I continued to watch and to hope. I'm confident I'm not alone.
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42 minutes ago, DRW50 said:
I did wonder if they had more plans for Jansen.
Dr Eric Jansen seemed like a Harding Lemay character to me. And his situation with Marley (including her fertility issues) also seemed like a Harding Lemay interaction, heading toward a romance (it was dry, talky, and percolating slowly). So I've always believed the Marley/Jansen thing was something Swakeski pulled from Lemay's storyline projection. And then when she realized it wasn't flashy and exciting (the superficial stuff Swakeski seemed to prefer), she decided to dump the whole thing, along with the Eric Jansen character.
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34 minutes ago, SFK said:
Revisiting the Iris/Mac/Sylvie backstory, I am reminded of a couple of plots from B&B. Li and Jack raised their adopted son, Finn, who unbeknownst to Li was Jack's biological son all along. Even more disturbing, Ridge had a romantic dalliance with Bridget, who he raised as a daughter and later accepted as a sister. Let us thank Kay Chancellor's dear God in heaven that Lemay never took Iris' Electra complex to the forbidden once it was revealed that MacDaddy was not biologically related.
Actually, I personally believe there is on screen evidence that Lemay was likely toying with the idea of Iris and Mac "consummating" their strangely inappropriate relationship. Not that it would have ever been an ongoing thing -- but I believe one night of (later regretted) passion was possibly on the horizon. Of course, P&G would never have allowed that to happen, but there were scenes between the two that are uncomfortable to watch (to put it lightly) both before and after the adoption revelation. I believe Lemay was testing the waters to see if it would fly. It's unlikely he informed anyone at NBC or P&G that he was doing this. Frankly, he probably didn't even tell Paul Rauch. It is my opinion that Lemay rather wanted to go there.
23 minutes ago, SFK said:While I did not see any of Gerald Davis, I did see some of Eric Kane as a child (and more recently on YouTube). I feel like there were significant missed opportunities with these father/daughter relationships on each show in their later years. I did not care for AMC killing Eric offscreen and the revelations thereafter.
You probably know this but, although Rachel and Erica were very similar characters -- especially in the early years of both; and Ada and Mona did have a few similarities, Gerald Davis and Eric Kane were really not similar in any way, other than the fact they had both abandoned their daughters when they were young children. Otherwise, Gerald and Eric really had nothing in common. I do understand, however, why people might try to compare them or even assume they may have been similar to one another. I believe of the six characters mentioned in this post, the only one NOT created by Agnes Nixon was Gerald Davis, who I believe was created by Robert Cenedela.
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11 minutes ago, kalbir said:
Nikki's substance abuse was from self-medicating after a fall from a horse that resulted in a miscarriage and a back injury. She hardly left the ranch during the time she was self-medicating.
Okay, thanks for that information. I was not watching Y&R during Nikki's initial alcoholism storyline.
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1 hour ago, Donna L. Bridges said:
I don't believe it was Pete who caused George R to be fired; it was Paul. Jacquie, of course, is completely on his head. He, and he alone questioned her acting ability. My solution would have been to pair her with a good acting coach & find a way for her to deliver the style he was looking for! I was never satisfied with any other Alice. Virginia Dwyer also but I found his reasons to be compelling in her case.
You are right about that, Donna. Rauch was the person who cut George loose. But my point is that Lemay was writing great stuff for many of the actors and characters he disliked (or found boring). Lemay was given too much power over hiring and firing. He was the head-writer, not the executive producer.
Courtney didn't need an acting coach. The audience loved her. She was voted most popular female soap opera actress two years in a row -- including the year she was fired. Virginia Dwyer was the matriarch of the entire show, and she was also beloved by the audience. Mary Matthews was the Nancy Hughes of NBC. Dwyer's acting was fine. Again, the head-writer should not be in control of judging the acting ability of the cast. As always -- my opinions only.
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1 hour ago, Khan said:
It's funny how Lemay personally abhorred plot-heavy writing; yet, in the times when he was forced to do it - Iris' real mother, Sven, the Greg Barnard murder - people actually really liked it, lol.
Yes, you are correct. Interestingly, Lemay was very good at writing plots he said he didn't enjoy writing. He was also very good at writing for characters he didn't particularly enjoy. For example, he said he didn't enjoy writing for Jacquie Courtney's Alice, but he wrote amazing stuff for Alice -- Emmy worthy material, actually. Also Lemay implied in his book that he didn't know how to write for middle-class characters, but he wrote great material for nearly every member of the extended Matthews family, while they were on the show.
That's one of the reasons I believe Lemay should have been forced, coerced, or strongly encouraged by Paul Rauch to keep Virginia Dwyer, Jacquie Courtney, Ariana Muenker, Michael Ryan, and George Reinholt on the canvas.
To some degree, Lemay was not a good estimator of his own talent.
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2 hours ago, j swift said:
@Mona Kane Croft I recall the circumstances of Iris finding out she was adopted, but do you recall how she found out that the adoption had been retconed?
Also, around the time that Sandy came to Bay City, Mac promised Jamey that he would be in the will, did that pan out later?
In one of her early scenes in 1989, Iris told Mac that Sylvie had told her that Sylvie and Mac had an affair years earlier, and that Mac was Iris's bio-father. Completely unnecessary to retcon the original story. Everything Iris did in 1989 could have gone forward with Mac as her adopted father.
If I'm not mistaken, this conversation occured during one of Swajeski's first episodes credited as head-writer. So it's possible Swajeski chose to do the retcon herself, or it is equally possible Lemay had planned the retcon and it was in his storyline projection, which Swajeski used for months. She followed some of Lemay's plans, and ditched others in favor of her own ideas
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Another World
in DTS: Cancelled Soaps
Posted
I was watching Steve pretty carefully during this period, just to see how and if he referenced his past. I'm certain he never mentioned John Randolph, and pretty certain he never referenced any of his siblings by name. It seemed especially odd he never mentioned Willis, since Steve had just returned from Australia, and that is where Willis and Gwen also lived at the time. It would have made more sense plot-wise, if Willis had been instrumental in finding Steve in Australia, and getting him back to Bay City. But that's not how Jacker rolled. Steve may have mentioned coming from a big family or something like that, but I don't remember him even doing that.