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I was there as a teen when she read that diary aloud at a DS con. The next line after getting the news was "Why am I being punished?" I think Davis was in the audience or nearby, so KLS quickly apologized. Davis was widely known to exasperate a lot of the women at the show.

The thought of Marland being at any pre/post-millennial soaps is wild to me. I can't see him fitting at modern ABC besides maybe AMC, and it was in a peculiar place by the late '90s. I'm sure Tony Geary would've raised a hue and cry to try to get him back to GH (he talked Marland up til the day he left the business) but I wonder what that would even look like. Depressing or not, I can absolutely see both late-stage ATWT and Mr. Ken's Wild Ride hanging him out to dry in short order. Shades of Patrick Mulcahey in 2024.

Mary Beth Hurt was excellent in many things but particularly Woody Allen's first dramatic film Interiors, where everyone was at a perfect pitch of visceral intensity. Her last years were spent in a memory care/assisted living facility due to her Alzheimer's which I knew took a huge toll on her husband, the filmmaker Paul Schrader. I remember one of her strangest roles was essaying the demon voice in his initially unreleased fourth Exorcist film, Dominion: A Prequel to The Exorcist. The film wasn't very good but her voice work was a strong follow-up to the legendary Mercedes McCambridge. I guess I should finally watch Chilly Scenes of Winter.

I think the stories are what hollowed him out. I've said this before, but tuning back in one day as a kid to see what was basically a Disney-sponsored fairy tale wedding for Noah and Julia made me gawk and cringe at how saccharine and OOC it was for his character. KHC looked like he wanted to die. Come to find out much later, he gave an interview absolutely tearing that wedding apart lol. He hated it far more than I did. Cobb could be an ass, but he also had real and valid concerns. Frankly I think he was often more suited for OLTL in that period, which was another reason I always gravitated to it.

There's discussion of the DID story in both period interviews and the oral history. I think the reveal was always intended to be a part of it from maybe '93 onward. Maybe even earlier when Sloan first arrived writing about Victor Lord, but I don't know. He was supposed to be killed off or written out roughly a year before he actually was, but BTS circumstances (Clint Ritchie's farming accident) changed that. Hilariously Linda Gottlieb in the oral history says she went to Agnes Nixon for her blessing on the story and discussed it at length with her, followed by a quote from Agnes: "What? I never met Linda Gottlieb." Who knows what's true there. I don't know if they always knew of the Victor allusion with Sloan. I do know the original endgame was Viki and Clint reuniting, but that didn't happen. I thought they handled the similarities between Sloan and her father fairly elegantly in some later scenes in '95 or '96 when Viki was recovering from the situation and went over all of it, without running down Sloan too much. But I haven't seen those scenes in awhile. The OLTL oral history is very worthwhile. It does somewhat glide over some eras the author by his own admission wasn't an avid viewer for (1998-2007) and there's some well-known dirt on Rauch that doesn't make it in. There's also some fog of war from the actors here and there, some facts and info get fuzzy. The late Thom Christopher repeatedly credits Rauch for putting him and Tonja Walker together as Carlo and Alex, but only Gottlieb and Michael Malone did that. But it's a very good, very candid read.

I think the Victor/Sloan dreams or visions (there are a couple) actually start before Sloan dies, somewhere in fall '94, but don't quote me. Always nice to see a new intelligent face.

Stage mom.

It was probably her, yeah.

I would kill to see that. It is so bizarre watching them speedrun to marriage in '91, but I can understand the new regime playing the hand they were dealt hoping to maximize drama with the Sarah Gordon return (which didn't work out).

Wasn't he fired? Back to OnlyFans!

I take your point but I kind of hated that scene you mention, if it's the one I'm thinking of lol. In large part because it casually retconned in another offscreen affair for Monica with Rick into 2002 after the fact, when that absolutely never happened. I also thought the writing for them was way too glib and bumper sticker-esque by that late date in the mid-late 2000s - I think Monica was past the point of saying things like that to his face outside of an extreme situation. But YMMV. We do both love them.

It's a very worthwhile point. And no, they never seemed to. Alan and Monica were really the perfect ideal of a longtime soap couple of that caliber, where they could and would do anything to each other or other people and still come back together because they uniquely understood each other. There is a great love scene they have in '82 or '83 I think - one of Stuart Damon's favorite episodes according to a SoapNet marathon - where he explodes in sexual jealousy over her for some reason or another. They are married but have been living in hate with his affairs, his love child, her contempt etc. for a long stretch. This leads to hate sex that has a couple queasy moments, but the clincher that makes it perfect is when Monica responds and they begin to do it for real, and I think she has a line like 'if you tell anyone about this I'll kill you.' And then they began to make another real go of it again after that, slowly. That's the couple to me. And it made sense for them to evolve to a better and healthier place, much much further down the road.

It surprised me too, but Joe Lando did recur off and on throughout the last few months for drop-in stuff while imprisoned (including Jake's insane dungeon interludes with evil dominatrix Ilsa, which seems to be directly lifted from the "She-Wolf of the SS" exploitation films). He then appears for a few weeks during this Cord/Blair stuff as they head first to Tokyo then to Jaba City to spring him. Jake does get a great moment while they're hiding out in a Jaba City cafe where he (like Megan before him) clearly twigs that something is up with Blair and Cord and tells her to cut the bull and watch her step. If Lando's career wasn't already taking flight by this point (I think he was already out after pilots or movies, and he would do the Dr. Quinn pilot film not long after this) I wonder if they'd have tried him with Mia Korf. There was something there. But she clearly had it with all of the men they put her with.

Finally getting back to OLTL '91. I'll talk more about these eps at length in a couple days but @EricMontreal22 will be pleased to know of yet another florid Malonian fantasy episode being part of Cord’s sendoff. It's a strange choice for ushering in his dramatic exit after many years on the show, beginning on a Friday over what I believe was Thanksgiving weekend (November 22nd). Here it's a redo of Casablanca, as “Tina’s”. Interestingly, just as with the pirate past life romp a month before, Karen Witter's Tina is once again the one cast in the masculine role - Tina becomes the husky-voiced, hardboiled club owner a la Humphrey Bogart, while Cord is the aristocratic old flame a la Ingrid Bergman and Jake is his drunk co-pilot (while Blair then appears on his arm as Cord's new woman) Sometimes this kooky fantasy/pastiche stuff didn't work, but sometimes it really did. My jury will be out as I head for Monday (in 1991).

Oh, he definitely got some. He came back from a break around '99 or 2000 and I remember USENET roasting him about it. I think Linda Gottlieb also told a story about that happening with Clint Ritchie or something at one point. And yes, Hillary went to the network to try to get killed off in childbirth after Nora and Sam had sex. She was that upset about the story.

Whatever happened is very strange and still a hushed topic. There are several theories and rumors, but it could've just been Woods' midlife crisis. They were pretty close and cozy in the '90s, and HBS continued to play Nora's love for Bo through the long off years. RSW, not so much. And yes, the rumor was that Frank Valentini went to them with a Come to Jesus talk around 2009, after he very explicitly threw a fan question at a live Paley Center panel the previous year about why Bo and Nora had not reunited directly to the actors. It was the right thing to do, and to my surprise they both threw themselves back into the pairing onscreen and off. All of the passion and humor was suddenly right there again. They've remained seemingly very cozy again ever since, and Bob Woods has all but alluded to being the party responsible in the oral history. He said it was a mistake to separate them, 'we could've been printing money all those years.' It rarely happens that way in daytime with an old supercouple, but here I'm glad it did.

Watros has always (IIRC) been very complimentary of Kim in years since, including recently. She said any drama was overblown. I think some of Kim's rumored jealousy or anxiety was real. She admits to some of it in her book IIRC, and doesn't spare herself on a number of things. But she also is incredibly complimentary of both of them as actors, and I think regrets anything that happened.

Wasn't there some infamous rumor about a dressing room spat/love triangle with Tom Pelphrey, Gina Tognoni and someone else at GL? I don't remember the third person.

Yeah, they totally dropped the weather machine revisit on GH in '23. Drove me nuts.

Austin/Jennifer and Kate/Jack is wild. Weren't J&J still going strong at that point, or was Reilly already angling to dump Ashford?

A small price to pay! I'd still make him Tommy Horton's long lost grandkid or something. Or the last secret DiMera they'd have to recast six weeks later. (Please no Roger Howarth this time) I do like him shading the original interviewer in that clip.

I had a feeling he'd go for it. Hopefully it can actually come together, because I legitimately expect him to pull a Franco and do the show at this point.

Russian spies?? That is insane.

I dunno about that. I think Tomlin's OLTL was much messier than earlier Carlivati. There is a lot of 2002 especially that is just plain embarrassing. And frankly FV had no definitive signature for years until he got together with Ron and they became industry stars. He just produced the show and kept it running smooth under multiple HWs; it took years for his ego to manifest. I do think Gary means well and has done good work, but it's apples and oranges to me between the 3 of them. As for Walter Balsom, I have no idea the ins and outs there. I just know Ron confirmed that he had pitched Roxy being trans and Rex's father and it got shut down. Later he hinted at it in the final weeks, when Roxy discovers her favorite heroine on Fraternity Row (who IK/Roxy 'played' in the Fraternity Row fantasy episode in late 2011) was born male. (Ron did the same with his plans to make Shane Morasco gay - his last act with the character was to send Shane off to 'the Phil Jimenez Art School.' Phil Jimenez is a prominent and openly gay comics artist.)

That was the intention under Tomlin, yes. And as a result he was very oddly asexual and had weird chemistry with the Seths for most of his first year; they kept Rex's true self very close to the vest. Then Tomlin was fired by Frons and Rex was suddenly fúcking recurring coed bitches Shawna and Mollie two at a time and became much more of an obvious schemer.