BetterForgotten

The funny thing is that the show doesn't even pretend that Fishman is a capable actor. He had more lines per episode when he was 8 than he does now!

Leon didn't appear in season 10 and wasn't mentioned to my knowledge. Martin Mull never turns down a job, so not sure if he was asked...

I wonder if we'll ever see Nancy or Leon again - supporting characters that were almost exclusively tied to Roseanne Conner and didn't have much worth to anyone else.

You’d think they’d do their research as Andy was born in season 6 and is older than Jerry.

Oddly, Bev felt closer to her characterization in the original series than she did in a lot of season 10 to me. With Jackie, I can see why she can't bring herself to leave the Conner home. More than anyone else, she spent her entire life being protected by Roseanne and counting on Roseanne to be the only reliable person in her life (barring that political clash in the beginning of last season). It will be interesting to see where they go with her now that the prevalent sister dynamic is gone.

It was kind of an echo to the season 5 episode 'Wait Til You Father Gets Home' where Roseanne's father died, and Darlene remarks how everyone brings you food when someone dies, like it's supposed to fix everything. I still want to know what the hell happened to Jackie's son. Why is he erased from history?

The reviews are pretty strong across the board. Everyone behind the scenes seems to have worked their asses off to put on a quality show on its own merits. I hope this pays off for all involved. They deserve to not live in the shadow of Barr forever.

Meanwhile, Laurie Metcalf has another Broadway project in the works. Laurie Metcalf and John Lithgow to Star on Broadway in 'Hillary and Clinton' (Exclusive)

Even when Erica had other rivals and when the characters didn’t orbit one another, the show would always acknowledge that Erica/Brooke didn’t much care for each other. That continuity was always strangely satisfying.

They were obviously not going to work on a soap after their ordeal with their own one, but the Dobson's would have been interesting at AMC as well. I think they would have gelled well with Agnes's sometimes broad humour approach and they showed at GL they could also handle more contemporary issues. Their ATWT had issues, but a huge part of that seemed P&G wanting to follow the trends GH/ABC was successful with at that time.

Mulcahey seems very no nonsense. Nixon's working style just rubbed him the wrong way. He's spoken very highly of Marland, the Dobson's, Nancy Curlee, and even Bob Guza - perhaps they gave him a greater level of freedom to express his creativity.

I think Patrick Mulcahey's commentary about Nixon's feedback on his LOV scripts was that she was a severe micro-manager and her feedback ultimately wasn't helpful to him. Found it, it's from a Santa Barbara fan site: http://santabarbara-online.com/InterviewPMulcahey2.htm How did you start in Santa Barbara ? Thereby hangs a tale. After working with Douglas Marland on Guiding Light and then on Loving, which I hated (and where Agnes Nixon was like some psychotic schoolmarm on speed, making copious condescending red-pen "corrections" in the margins of scripts - "You used the same word on page 2 and on page 34 ! Too repetitive !") - after that, I decided I was done with writing for soaps. Douglas was the best. He'd taught me more about writing than any ten literature professors ever could have, plus I'd won an Emmy. I figured I'd never have another experience like that, so I decided go back to what I knew best : waiting on tables and writing plays at night and being a starving artist again.

Strasser did some of her best work (and probably the last time she got the chance to) in that 1995 DID storyline, the reveal aspect at least. But yes, Malone could be a deeply convoluted and heavy-handed writer.

That period had some of the show's best production values.

Too bad it was a fluke. She's such a joke these days, but then again, that's how she seems to see herself anyway....

I have to believe she'll just wrap of this season of BB and won't be around for the next one (if there is one).