BetterForgotten

I liked quite a bit of what I've seen of Susan Harney's Alice. Obviously, I wasn't alive to see Courtney at her peak, but I thought Harney was able to play both toughness and vulnerability well. What was the main problem with her Alice? Was it simply because she wasn't Jacqueline Courtney?

I wish I could find the interview with LLB where she was asked about Maria's firing and if it was awkward for her. She was basically like, "It's no big deal, everyone is trying to make it something it isn't. I am happy to be back on the show." Of course it was a very big deal to Maria, remember her Facebook post meltdown when they fired her ass?

That much Kimberlin Brown would get me thinking what she's doing to get Trump re-elected. lol. I just can't enjoy the character with that in mind anymore sadly. But then, I haven't cared for or enjoyed anything Sheila related since her first exit from B&B. The character should have been left there and done, IMO.

I'm surprised they resisted Lauren/Sheila in that feud week. Perhaps they're doing a 'villains' week where that will be showcased?

Did anyone ask Bethany about playing teenage clone Reva first? LOL

In fact, she appeared more under JFP than she did when her own sister-in-law was running the show. She even tried to cool down the situation over Maria's firing at one point, lol.

Generally, it was hilarious when the P&G soaps cast child actors who couldn't hide their obvious New Yawk accents, when these shows were obviously based in the mid-west.

Hillary will be on an OLTL reunion Alan has scheduled.

Giving jobs to friends or showcasing actors she feels are worthy of attention (when most don’t) often seemed to be a motive for JFP.

I wonder if it has anything to do with paying Sony and the Bell's royalties as CBS doesn't actually have any owning interest in the show.

Martha tried so hard to be professional as Liz was going off at certain points, lol.

Jessica Collins complained to her about the outcome of that story (and the message it sent out) and they changed it. But it won Jessica an Emmy, so...

I am not making fun of her loving her daughter, her Emmy speeches just blend together and follow the same pattern. That’s why it sticks out whenever she was cut off or told to wrap up.

"I LOVE YOU, COURTNEY PHELPS!" "An hour movie a day, 365 days a year!"

It's the only thing JFP has ever publicly apologized for, to my knowledge.

Fun fact - Peter's real wife, Courtney Simon, wrote the dialogue for Ellen Parker's Emmy reel and regularly cites it as the best work she ever wrote in daytime on her Twitter feed. And Nancy Curlee herself wrote many of the breakdowns for the episodes leading up to Maureen's demise.

Best Emmy reel in the supporting category of the 90's, IMO. Even Kimberlin Brown and her overhyped story on Y&R couldn't compare to this in the end.

Why was P&G so enamored by Gail Kobe’s work on Texas (a failed soap, which did seem to get better by the end granted, but still a failed soap)? Look at the massacre she went on to inflict at GL. It’s amazing that the show lived on for so long after this and even had brief renaissances.

The arrangement of the early 80's theme when Steve returns is beautiful...

Thanks, it seems like P&G never gave her much of a fair chance at either AW or GL then.

Anyway... I've seen some of L. Virginia Brown's work on AW, which I enjoyed. How was her work on GL? The period between Marland and Pam Long is a weird period for the show, and I know Brown was one of the many HWs during that time.

I know it's not considered the show's best era, but I've really enjoyed the material I've been able to see from L. Virginia Browne's year-long HW stint. The show feels focused, appropriately paced, and still character-driven amongst the changes happening to the genre in the early 80's. Some characters do seem a bit aimless, but this is probably the tightest I think the show's been since Lemay's heyday (I'm not a fan of much of Donna Swajeski's overrated tenure).

I never liked Lilly until Heather Rattray, and I stopped liking her again when Martha returned. It is absolute revisionist history that she was a bad recast - in fact, much of the soap press praised her at the time, and she definitely added more layers to the character. In fact, her Lilly felt more like the daughter that Lucinda would've raised to me.

I have to say that I'm always surprised when watching episodes form the 70's and very early 80's at how much superior AW's production values were to the other soaps that taped out of NYC at that time. There was a real aesthetic to the show in the 70's that the other P&G soaps or ABC soaps out of NYC just didn't have. I've mostly found Paul Rauch's tastes in aesthetics really tacky and even garnish on other soaps he produced, but 70's AW is a different animal on the production end vs. other east coast soaps. I don't think this lasted into the mid-80s though - somewhere at that time the show took on a very washed-out and dated look that largely followed it to the end.

The part about Marland is 41:20 into that video with Alan if you guys want to check it out yourselves. It does seem like their complicated relationship went back to THE DOCTORS. She said she once suggested that he write an ‘All About Eve’ type story on that show for her, but he wasn’t interested and only cared about “young love.”