Xanthe

Happy New Year @slick jones and everyone! Excited to have seen the clip of Kelly Bishop as Cecile's cellmate in the AW thread!

I think that's a bit of an oversimplification. Reading the synopses from 1979, they established then that Cecile suspected that Philip had originally dumped her because she wouldn't have access to her inheritance until she was 35. And then later when it was revealed that the Count was not her biological father and actually Elena and Louis St George were her bio parents there was a mention that she would be entitled to Louis' Swiss bank account. It is not clear to me whether the parentage reveal was explicitly supposed to have caused her to forfeit any inheritance from the Count or if it was still inaccessible to her at her age (did they ever admit that she had reached the age of 35?), but Cecile was definitely interested in Louis' (ill-gotten) money at that time. One of the reasons Iris liked the idea of Cecile for Dennis would have been her background. The same for Donna befriending Cecile and wanting her to replace Sally in Peter's affections. And although soaps will bend over backwards to come up with reasons why rich characters are suddenly poor in order to create conflict, I don't think we should ever underestimate how much already rich people can feel entitled to even more money than they already have or at least how much they need to remain very very comfortable -- how many titled Brits married American heiresses? How motivated are multi-millionaires and billionaires to avoid paying more taxes? I have complained of not liking Jamie as a doctor when he returned in 1986, but I did notice a mention in 1979 that he was making plans to go to medical school and discussed them with Cecile. Thanks @watson71 for the videos. I could not believe my ears when Cecile and Peter announced the theme of their wedding on such short notice and then everyone readily showed up in costume.

I would argue that when Brittany was introduced she was not written as a pure villain. It seemed to me that they made her deaf and included her and Catlin's dead baby and her good friend Zane in order to bolster her sympathetic side because they knew she would be hated for coming between a very popular couple. It wasn't until after Mary Page Keller left and Taylor Miller replaced her that Brittany started out and out maliciously scheming and lying in order to get what she wanted. And then of course in the dePriest era they made Peter the villain and Brittany his victim.

Thank you! I find the Catlin and Sally scenes hard to watch because they are very emotionally unsatisfying -- Sally is so cold and Catlin is nowhere near sorry enough. And seeing Kevin complain that he loves Catlin, knowing that within the year Sally will be dead and even though she had reconciled with and married Catlin Liz would take Kevin out of town so that Catlin didn't have to give him a second thought when getting back together with Brittany less than a year after Sally's death, absolutely drives me crazy. Obviously they decided there was no story left there since the Matthews and Ewings were outside the Cory/Love/McKinnon framework dePriest wanted to establish in 1986, but it didn't have to be that way. Was Raven on The Edge of Night the same kind of blatant schemer that Brittany had become by this time? Carl pops up again one last time in Arizona and fights with Chris before appearing to possibly drown or something. Marley shooting him seems to be all in a day's work for Carl. Seeing Mac talk about how evil Carl is here is very uncomfortable when you think about his marrying Rachel eventually.

Would the audience at the time have known it was a member of the Village People? I tried to figure out what it was about by looking at the synopses on the AWHP, and it mentions that Lurlene asked if she could meet Randy Jones, but there doesn't appear to be any resolution and the rest of the story seems to be some kind of action adventure involving Ruby.

I didn't have a clear picture in my mind of Lurlene so I searched for a video and this was the first clip that came up.

If she had dug deep into the characterization of the people in those families perhaps she could have kept it going for longer. She didn't offer a description for the Loves other than rich and contrasting them with the Corys by saying they were rich but with a social conscience seems weak. It would be one thing if the comments had been superficial and the writing deeper but ultimately I don't think it was simply casting that caused problems, it was an overall shallowness. David Forsyth was a good actor but John didn't develop as a character until the writing post-dePriest grounded his issues in Vietnam rather than his lust for Donna. Anne Heche's Victoria also became more interesting after Reginald was out of the picture and she had a bad girl purpose.

I appreciate the links at the top of the Cancelled Soaps forum but if it is possible I think it would be even better if they linked to the first unread post instead of the top of the thread.

That's part of the reason I thought it was intended to hint at homosexuality until it was almost sanitized. It looks like Virginia Browne was the HW who created Sandy. Would she have been tempted to write a gay character?

I'm not sure whether Sandy detracted from Jamie in any meaningful way. Once Dennis left it made sense for there to be another young man in the Cory family that Jamie could be friends or rivals with. It's true that Sandy also married Jamie's first couple of wives but Jamie had moved on by the time Sandy got involved with Blaine, hadn't he? Jamie and Sandy could have had mild conflict or mutual support over Cory family or business or love triangle if Sandy had not been written out. Was there ever a plan to write Sandy as gay or am I reading too much into his escort past?

Thank you! (And thanks @DRW50 for the notification). Iris explaining to Blaine what lawyers are for was killing. I liked Rachel very much here. A bit shocked that Frank doesn't seem to rate a mention as even a flirtation on Rachel's AWHP character page. His minor character entry does note that he dated Rachel.

Thanks. It took me a bit to figure out that Blair Baker was the woman being pushed. I know this was when they were going for a nightime ER and/or procedural feel (and ads are not necessarily representative of the actual show) but it is still weird to have the impression that Gabe is the main character. Rachel doesn't even speak!

Author Joanna Trollope has died. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/dec/12/joanna-trollope-bestselling-novels-ordinary-life-a-village-affair-dies-aged-82

Madeleine Sophie Wickham who wrote the Shopaholic books as Sophie Kinsella has died at age 55. https://bbc.com/news/articles/ce91d2m1gg7o

Before I watched this I assumed that it was going to somehow be about something sexy and was wondering at what stage in their relationship it would be set. Brittany certainly threw herself at Peter very determinedly when she knew she was pregnant by Catlin and had reconciled herself to the idea that Catlin was not going to leave Sally any time soon. And Peter didn't turn against her until after the baby was born and Reginald had come back from the dead, so I guess they had six months or so where at least for promotional purposes they could have been advertised as a sexy coupling. However it made a lot more sense when I saw it and it was about Brittany finally shooting Peter. Thanks @Maxim for the 1983 episode. I particularly liked the little scene between Mark and Cass. I remember feeling at the time that AW was a little bit dull in that period until the reveal of who had killed Alma.

If it's not limited to people who did both at the same time, Gary Tomlin acted on AW before he was a writer and later director. And Lewis Arlt who appeared first as David Thatcher and later as Ken Jordan also wrote and directed.

Grant came first and Ryan followed, then Spencer, and eventually Kelsey. I really wanted to like Kelsey but Kaitlin Hopkins in the role rubbed me the wrong way. It took some time for it to turn out that Ryan was Carl's biological son. If they had used Perry as Vicky's True Love maybe things would have swung the other way and Perry would have found out that he was Spencer's biological son, thus backing into the rivalry with Grant and ensuing triangle.

I do think that if he had lived something would have had to shake up Nancy and Perry's relationship. I suppose Jake and Vicky could have accomplished that some way or another. This is where I start to play the game is there anything Ryan did that Perry could not have done? I suppose that Perry would have been too much of a known quantity to have swept Vicky off her feet the way Ryan did -- although depending on the writing that could be a minor issue and something could have happened so that they saw each other in a new light, etc etc.

Rhonda Lewin as Vicky. Neither of the recasts for Matthew (Brian Krause and Jeff Philips) lasted long and Matt Crane came back.

One thing I thought was missing was how to collapse and expand the forum levels. Then I discovered that if I tapped the blank space to the right of the name the forum level does collapse and the + would appear. Now that I know of course I can use it but I thought I would mention it since it wasn't completely intuitive.

That was one of the productions that I went to see! My mother and I flew to NY for it. We also saw The Real Thing with Ewan McGregor and Maggie Gyllenhall a couple of years afterward. Earlier on I had seen The Invention of Love (another favourite which I first saw in Philadelphia) with Robert Sean Leonard, and Jumpers. I think those are all of the Broadway Stoppard productions I have seen, the rest were here in Ontario. I regret having missed The Coast of Utopia.

I have enjoyed a lot of Tom Stoppard's work. I really started with the movie of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead and after that I would go to productions of his plays when I had the chance. The one that really blew me away was Arcadia which I have seen 3 or 4 productions of (and wish that I could have seen Rufus Sewell as Septimus). Before the COVID lockdown I had a ticket to see Leopoldstadt but it was cancelled and I haven't had another opportunity.

Another World-April 1983 Thanks! I have watched the first one. I'm not sure what Cecile's plan was or whether she hoped to gain anything by it but based on the included scenes I don't think that little drama played out for maximum impact. Rachel was positively serene upon discovering that Mac was John Caldwell. The YouTube AI noticed that there was a lot of talk about Zack Hill and helpfully added a link to a musician named Zach Hill.

Ben was the second McKinnon introduced after MJ. He played football on the high school team, was close friends with Carter and was part of Marley and Nancy's friend group when Marley came home from Switzerland and decided to do her senior year in Bay City. Marley and Ben started dating. That made Donna a little bit agitated because it reminded her of her youth and Michael. One of my favourite scenes of Donna's was when although she felt compelled to keep Marley from making the same mistake she had she quietly reminisced to herself about how kind and wonderful Michael had been. (This was well before Victoria or Michael came on the scene and at this point Marley still believed she was Donna's sister.) Ben wasn't around all that long (less than a year) before he was suddenly obviously replaced by his cousin Jake. He had a football opportunity at a school in California and left town. Marley was heartbroken to see him go. After a few weeks he stopped writing to her and I think maybe even told her he was seeing someone else. He never came back to Bay City, although they did talk about him maybe coming back after Mary turned up alive. Ben didn't really make that big of an impression. He was basically nice and genial so the main conflict was Donna's disapproval because he wasn't from a good family.

I was watching during Julie Osburn's first tenure as Kathleen and I liked her with absolutely everyone -- the McKinnons (especially MJ, then played by Kathleen Layman) and with Cass/Felicia/Wallingford. I wasn't able to watch as consistently during her return but I was struck by how comfortable it felt to see her and Steve Schnetzer together even though I also really liked Cass with Frankie. In the episode below Ben is leaving and his friends and family (including the original Vince) are seeing him off. Kathleen interacts with an assortment of people, including a confrontation with Donna.