Vee

I'm sure this has been in another thread, but Valarie Pettiford (Sheila) discusses her daytime career at length (and she is a big soap fan). She starts in about OLTL around 17 mins. I love her more and more every time I watch as I've revisited the '90s and specifically the rape trial saga - I mostly only remembered Stephanie Williams' blander Sheila from when I was a kid. I'd like to believe Hank and Pettiford's Sheila are back together today.

A very haunting scene with Bo and the grieving old man in the park (cemetery?) with the addled man having a soliloquy about his wife and birds covering her body, in her hair, etc. in the ground in the 9/9/91 episode. Between that and the pathos and later intensity of the Sheila/Troy scenes after she's ousted from the play you can't tell me Malone wasn't already in the building on these scripts. That and Carlo turning much darker again the next day - backhanding Stephanie with his ring hand when she calls Charlotte a whore.

No, because I said up front it really shouldn't have gone on and was for the best lol.

Joss is annoying but she is in no way comparable to Leo lol. She's not on nearly enough and unfortunately she does have a fanbase, unlike Leo.

Exactly. No need and it's insult to injury.

I agree with all of this. We've talked about this stuff and ways to modernize it for the mid-'90s before (going a la thirtysomething or Picket Fences, etc.) and it's a nice thought experiment, but ultimately this was a show with a middle-aged cast that was going into a fourteenth (and possibly fifteenth) season. They had failed to make the next generation central and even then it would've been a crap shoot at that age. The show was just too old to keep running perpetually and while it had adapted well to the new decade from what I've seen in bits and pieces, it's not Bonanza or Grey's Anatomy. It was just old hat and considered done. It would've been like Fox running a show all about Jim and Cindy Walsh and their friends. I'll say this: The only way I think it could've maybe worked (and it's a very slim maybe) is trying to pull a David E. Kelley Chicago Hope/The Practice or a Scrubs-type maneuver. Turn KL into a legacy brand, publicize it as that, do a big handoff and say this is KL for the '90s. You come back, there's been a year or two timejump and it's a largely all-new ensemble of young people, similar to what other posters have suggested. Maybe Karen and Mack are still there or Gary and Val, one couple or the other as mentor types but that's it. Maybe Abby or Sumner or others guest from time to time. See if you can bribe Pat Petersen and Tonya Crowe to return as Michael or Olivia with new spouses, or beg Nicollette Sheridan to stay on but otherwise it's all new people. People like Carla Gugino, who was just starting to become ubiquitous on primetime around then and particularly CBS, Billy Campbell, Tom Verica (later of Central Park West and How to Get Away with Murder), Lauren Velez, Michael Beach, Erika Alexander, maybe Mitchell Anderson as the gay guy on the block lol. Any number of young cute, more diverse LA people striving in a cul-de-sac they can't all afford, you name it. OTOH you look at what happened to almost all of those shows above when they tried to overhaul. Chicago Hope and Scrubs never made it. So there you go.

Let's not say things we can't take back about Erica Kane.

I adore Erika but I don't think that would fly. I think people are (understandably) beyond tired of OLTLers on this show and I also don't think anyone would ever see her as anyone other than Viki given the proximity and many crossovers. I had once wanted Viki to appear as a guest in a major umbrella storyline in which (in her role as an esteemed American journalist) she would interview the villain of the story in Port Charles but that's another discussion. As it is, despite a recently thriving primetime career I fear Erika may not be in good physical health (on top of the tragic loss of her daughter) to appear judging by her appearance on the last Locher Room. I dearly hope I am very much mistaken.

Maybe let's not post the videos in the thread.

Oh God. I had no idea there were so many. I do vaguely recall the first but I am most used to seeing the opening with the third shot which makes him look like rubberfaced Lucky.

For years I couldn't retain any of it after the first few words. The gag I had going for a long time was it would just run on like 'here's what you do when you go with to find what you know when you do what you give when you rainbow's end....don't cry!' I'm glad someone confirmed the shot existed. It truly is bad, but of course all those old '80s photos with the sepia treatment look like everyone has jaundice and will soon die. Crazy they made time to add him but no one else (I think).

I don't even know what The Soul Survivors is. More fool me.

You can tell they were setting story up even before the parachuting-in of Luna and Malone's name being officially on the show - I don't know if he was involved in the material (I suspect so) but Megan is notably under the weather at Hunter and Andy's wedding in late August, Alex is kept on after her planned exit and the spectre of Sarah is raised all around the same time. In addition to Jason being added in early August, which I think is all Gottlieb.

I could've sworn Mark Brettschneider (Jason) was the last addition to the Tour of Llanview opening. I've yet to see him though, I'm a few behind in '91. Always was baffled that he made it in but not Luna, but again maybe I imagined it. I think OLTL dumps Robyn Griggs in the fall and then brings her back after Carlo's death in the spring to wrap the murder mystery, but don't quote me, I'm not sure. It is hilarious seeing half the opening populated by already-fired people. It's also hilarious that it took me til this month to realize the reedy, weaselly guy up front in the opening is in fact the chameleonic Nicholas Walker as Max and not Jake's annoying friend Lucky or whoever. I'd spent years wondering 'why isn't NuMax in the opening?'

The part that still cracks me up was the 2013 anniversary interview with her, Kin, Tony, etc. where Jane triple-checks with the interviewer that both Gloria and her sister Norma are dead, dead, dead before discussing it. I didn't know Jane was in line for Samantha. Her clashing with Liz Hubbard would've been a sight for the ages.

I have a hard time buying that Jeanne Cooper was going to ATWT. I can see her floating it or threatening to move. I have heard the JE story about ATWT before but I've forgotten who she was supposed to play.

Nope.

That's because the story is an afterschool special from 1983. Tabyana is perfectly capable of carrying when given something half-decent. The Kai C-story isn't it.

That's what Lulu has done since she was first SORASed into Julie Berman. They were BFF for a long time. They made Berman's Lulu into Carly's Mini-Me and it hurt the character.

People need to stop falling for cheap lip service about story, characters and follow-through when the show regularly does the same thing it has for many years.

It was never going to actually exist. It was just a dumb talking point for a nonexistent storyline. And it was a stupid idea story-wise, as it gave Kristina nothing to do on canvas.

Exactly. It may change soon and I hope it does, but as it stands she's been coddled by the show for months as much as Sonny and Alexis.

Darn and I have had this discussion and I mostly agree with him. I also think it's complicated because of how the show has handled Kristina for years. I think Mansi is capable but like so many talents on this show (including Jonathan Jackson and hopefully less so Alexa Havins next) is often wasted by the storytelling, scripts and pacing. For months when KM first came on she was near invisible or seemed like it, saddled to a boring background timewaster story with the surrogacy and a mediocre dayplayer for a love interest. I wasn't the only one wondering why she was hired to do nothing. Then (unlike Darn, we had this discussion, quiet you!) I actually thought she came into her own very strong during the Patrick Mulcahey months in the spring and began actively carrying a meandering show where she was the heroine starting to square off in a reasonably intelligent and forthright way against Natalia, Joss and the manipulative Ava in Sonny's home, only to (once again) have her own illusions about her father crushed at the Chase wedding. It was when PM had clearly left the building that the worm turned and she became just unbearable for me re: the baby, the miscarriage etc. and that's continued. If they want to move her into a more overt spoiled villain or schemer direction now that's valid and viable, I believe Mansi can play it and I think she deserves better from the show. But you have to have enough viewers still willing to follow her there after what she's already done and how the show and the wrtiing have seemingly coddled her as much as her mother and father, where it has clearly not seen her as the bad guy or someone to root against. That approach to how the show treats her has to change in order for the shift to work enough for the audience, which is something already stated above by my friend in fairness. I'm open to it, but I have little faith in this creative team. I don't blame Mansi, who I think is far more ready for primetime than Lexi Ainsworth. I would've been fine with Lexi staying but Kristina had been a C or D-character for years and that wasn't changing anytime soon. Could it have? Maybe. Could Lexi have handled it? Not sure. We're here now.

Wasn't he there two years later after Monty was ousted? Still, it's not too long.

Yes, from The Mod Squad as you said (and Peggy Lipton from that was having a comeback at the time on Twin Peaks, shout-out @DRW50 while Clarence Williams had also stayed active in TV and film). I'm a little surprised no one ever brought him back from the dead or another relative to create drama for Brenda or even today. It's doable. And yeah, the Jagger flashbacks just crack me up.