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Was Erica also an alcoholic? The daughter refers to getting sober and that could have been something else. I was thinking more generally since the daughter mentions Erica rather than Phoebe. (And forgive me, I don't mean to quiz you as if you must know the answer, I am really just speculating and welcome any insight or speculation.)

I wonder if that had anything to do with timing -- would Liz also have become an alcoholic if Agnes Nixon had known a specific alcoholic when she was writing the storyline? I found this (obviously more about OLTL and AMC): “I did recognize a few things,” says Nixon’s daughter Mary Hiltbrand, today an artist in Gladwyne. “I got sober, and when I got sober, a lot of the characters started getting sober. Erica went to rehab after I did.” “My brother had an illness that she gave to one of her characters,” adds Cathy Chicos, Nixon’s eldest daughter, who also lives in Gladwyne. “I’m sure there were others.” https://www.phillymag.com/news/2007/06/08/legends-the-original-desperate-housewife/

Thank you! Clearly Lenore's mother has had it up to here with Liz but it feels like if you didn't know the backstory you can't appreciate just how unreasonable Liz must have been, claiming that she is perfectly happy with Missy as her daughter-in-law.

Definitely before my time, I'm afraid. And I am not familiar enough with AMC to have a good sense of Phoebe really either, although I have been able to see the parallels between Robin Strasser's Rachel and early Erica Kane. I have read that Nixon based Phoebe on the kind of Main Line DAR snobs she had met in Rosemont. (Tangentially I recently saw a Fred Astaire/Betty Hutton movie with Ruth Warrick and Shepperd Strudwick in secondary roles and I imagined until the very end that they were going to wind up together, but it seemed they were both left single.)

Do you think that Liz became more like [the future] Phoebe under Agnes Nixon than she was when Irna created the character?

@Maxim I recall how much you disliked Sam's Baby Alli paintings in 1988/1989. When he and Amanda were courting (for want of a better term) his paintings were more abstract. Here's one (about 20 minutes in if the timestamp doesn't work) that Amanda secretly got into a gallery show for him. Definitely a different style.

Elizabeth Franz (Alma Rudder) was included in the In Memoriam segment at last night's Tony Awards. Reuben Santiago-Hudson (Billy Cooper) was nominated for a Tony for his rôle in Joe Turner's Come and Gone.

This was from Alice Barrett's Locher Room interview last year. Since then I have come across more details -- she was part of the cast of Lautrec which Brent had written and starred in in 1984. That was about the same time that she was cast in The Catlins and Brent started as Wallingford on AW that summer as well. "NYT June 29, 1984, Section C, Page 2 If Georges Seurat has made it to Broadway, with "Sunday in the Park With George," can Toulouse-Lautrec be far behind? Not by much because "Lautrec," a new play by Brent Collins, is in previews now and opens Monday, not on Broadway, but at the Riverwest Theater, 155 Bank Street. The play, described as a monologue with 10 characters popping up at various points, has some music and choreography, and will star Mr. Collins, last seen in La Mama's production of "Barnum's Last Life," in the title role."

I believe the sequence was Connie Sellecca walked out and was replaced on the pilot by Julia Duffy. George Clooney was the love interest in the first season. Then in the second season they recast Mary Page Keller as Maggie and replaced the George Clooney character with a different character played by Scott Baio. So in fact Scott Baio has played opposite two different Sally Frames since Jennifer Runyon was his love interest in Charles in Charge.

When Santa Barbara debuted, the Buffalo NY NBC station aired it at 9 am initially although it looks like the Hamilton Ontario station (CHCH) was airing it at 3pm while NBC showed He-Man and the Masters of the Universe.

Mary survived the switch to Open House although the boyfriend character did not. I also faithfully watched her in Baby Talk and Camp Wilder. I remember seeing her on an episode of Grimm and noticing that she and Thomas Ian Griffith also wrote an episode. More recently looking at IMDB they have writing and producer credits on a series called Virgin River. The logistics must have been amazing.

I also enjoyed him in the radio comedy Bleak Expectations where he played the villain Mr Gently Benevolent. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleak_Expectations

Marjane Satrapi has died. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/jun/04/marjane-satrapi-creator-of-persepolis-and-acclaimed-french-iranian-artist-dies-aged-56

The first song I think of when I hear the name Peabo Bryson is "If Ever You're in My Arms Again" which was Joe and Kelly's theme on Santa Barbara.

Same, a few times today, including just now. Application version Chrome 148.0.7778.215 Operating system Android 16; SM-S948W Build/BP4A.251205.006

Soaps smoothed the way to a stylish Duet BY IVOR DAVIS "I am proud to be a graduate of the soap brigade," says Duet leading lady Mary Page Keller. The star of the half-hour romantic comedy (Sunday at 8:30 p.m.) served a brief stint on Ryan's Hope, and then appeared for two years on Another World where she met her boyfriend, actor Thomas Ian Griffith. And she is the first to say, "It gives you the chance to stretch yourself, make mistakes and then move on." Keller plays the eye-catching Laura Kelly in the offbeat Fox Television series opposite Matthew Laurance, who is novelist Ben Coleman. The show has clicked because it uses style, class, and considerable humor to trace the couple's relationship. It's fresh and it's funny. Ben, a transplanted Easterner lives in Hollywood, pens detective novels, is a spontaneous fellow and a fan of junk food. His girlfriend lives in a funky Venice Beach loft and runs her catering business from the cluttered house. The couple has established single lives. Laura shares her loft with her slightly kooky sister (Jodi Thelen). Chris Lemmon (actor Jack Lemmon's son) and Alison LaPlaca are Ben's friends Richard and Linda Phillips. But the obvious hit of the new show is the peppy Keller who got her break into television in 1982 playing Amanda Kirkland on Ryan's Hope and, for two years, was the beleaguered Sally Frame on Another World. Today the success of Duet has brought her an antique-filled co-op in Manhattan and a rented house in the Hollywood hills. As in Cheers, much of the show's appeal depends on whether Laura will say "I do" to her writer boyfriend. "I'm thrilled we seem to have found the right pace," admits the 26-vear-old actress. "Not surprisingly we had a few rough weeks in the beginning, But that's natural. Once we all got to know each other and began to play off each other it began to work. "The thing about Duet is there are no 'stars' and no prima donnas." The pretty actress grew up in Los Angeles in a family strongly oriented to show business. Her mother had worked at Walt Disney's factory as an animator on pictures like Pinocchio and Fantasia. But when she was 10, Mary's engineer father moved the family to Silver Spring, Md., and that might have been the end of her theatrical aspirations. But Keller won leads in high school versions of The Wizard of Oz and at the University ot Maryland she earned the lead in The Glass Menagerie. She read that Ryan's Hope wanted a leading ingenue -- applied and won the role over several hundred applicants. In between her soap stints she made a quickly-forgotten horror film, Scared Stiff, and then was hired for the Fox series. "Many of the people I meet in this business went to 'soap college,' " she smiles. "It's one of the best training grounds there is. The money is good, the exposure is formidable and you have to learn so many lines a day that everything else after that is downhill."

That is wild to me. The twist that Emily Benson was the killer seemed to come into the story late. In fact I could swear that at one point Royal Dunning admitted to having killed David Thatcher and then later they had Sally remember that she had seen a woman wearing a ring holding the gun that shot David. From that point onward I'm sure that Emily was the plan but it felt like a disconnect from where the story started.

What would be the timing? Would it be early enough in 1985 to prevent not only Le Soleil and all that entailed (Chris Chapin, Edward Gerard, Egypt/Arizona) but also the invention of Brittany? I like to imagine that they would have kept the creation of Victoria and the eventual introduction of the twins' father in some form. But as far as I am concerned Sharon Gabet should have been something different and I don't know what might have replaced Le Soleil.

There is definitely a feedback loop in all cases between the writer and the performer. IMO Kathleen Layman frequently used a very soft voice and could often appear intimidated so that is not the differentiating factor for me. I thought she was wonderful and enjoyed her portrayal of the character. But for me it was not a difference in Sally Spencer's affect that weakened the character. I would find it easier to believe that it was the actor's performance that inspired dePriest to write in the weakness if she hadn't done similar things to other characters. For example Donna Love had been the head of her family until Reginald came back and terrorized and drugged her until she was institutionalized. We saw all of that with Anna Stuart still in the role and when Philece Sampler took it over she was essentially subordinate to Michael and helpless to deal with John or Reginald or Peter. I don't know what Felicia's storyline would have been if they had not killed off Zane. It's possible that Lisa would have turned out to be her daughter, or the red herring substitute daughter like Jenna before Lorna. I won't claim that they managed to weaken Felicia, really, but I always scratch my head at how juvenile her and Mitch's behaviour seemed to be when they were apparently falling in love. There was a whole bit before Dr Glaser was revealed to be the Sin Stalker where Felicia and Mitch were constantly squabbling about how probably Alan Glaser was the kind of man that Felicia should be with and refusing to admit to each other that they were in love. I don't think that was a good use of Mitch and I'm not sure whether Felicia's flamboyance brought out the best in him. I'm not sure I can think of a character where I thought dePriest's take was more interesting or enjoyable than under other writers.

I loved Kathleen Layman's MJ. She felt very relatable to me. She was presented as smart but underappreciated. I didn't think that Larry was the right kind of love interest for her and I was ecstatic when she started dating Stephen Yates' Jamie. They were very charming together and much lower-key than typical soap couples. Kathleen Layman and Julie Osburn were excellently cast as sisters. I loved the fact that they were both intelligent but MJ was more responsible where Kathleen was more likely to take risks and then beat herself up for her failures. But I also liked the writing better in this period and thought that the characterizations were better-handled. When Sally Spencer took over the role of MJ, Jamie had already left town and Larry had left the police force. The new headwriter made the decision to demote MJ so that she had to wear a uniform because they wanted the character to have a distinct look -- but it had the effect of making her subordinate to her new partner Adam instead of having seniority in the department. I liked Sally Spencer in the role and I was a fan of MJ and Adam together, but I was very frustrated by the way the character was written, especially her relatonship with ex-pimp Chad. I don't think that Kathleen Layman could have done a much better job with the degrading material MJ was saddled with. And it was maddening to me how all of it seemed to be designed to grind MJ down while trying to raise Chad up. I was very disappointed when they wrote MJ out so soon after Adam called off the wedding. However I was happy that when they wrote Adam out they at least gave them a happy ending offscreen but that was a very small consolation.

I've been having an issue today on my desktop. I'll be logged in but if I change the page I show as logged out. Sometimes when I enter my credentials it logs me in and sometimes it doesn't. A few times when I clicked Submit Reply nothing happened. My input was restored if I closed the page and opened a new one but it took multiple tries to post successfully.

I remember when MJ first came on, Larry was dismissive of her and didn't think much of her university education. (I was annoyed with the later prostitution retcon where they decided that MJ had not got her degree and what she had really wanted was to become a professional singer.) I remembered that Vince called her Mike when he came home to Bay City not long after Katheen had arrived. And in this episode he refers to her as Mike when he explains to Ben that she had called him in West Virginia, and addresses her as "MIchael J McKinnon" when she comes home and finds him in the kitchen. https://youtu.be/boi-eB70IH8?si=TwZ7GW9lA4i3fHCV&t=328 MJ is glad to see him but Kathleen earlier in the episode is obviously resistant. I don't recall there ever being a big reveal about Kathleen having a problem with Vince but I think there were also some hints about her having had a bad relationship with a man in New York that never went anywhere.

A while ago we were discussing how the Soapnet pop-up captions called MJ "Modesta Josephine" during the 1987 episodes where MJ's past as a prostitute was revealed to Adam causing him to call off their wedding at the last minute. For what it's worth, Modesta Josephine does not appear to have been a continuity error within the show itself -- I came across this episode where Ada receives her invitation to the wedding and clearly reads out MJ's name as "Michael Joseph".

I had a sudden flash to Big Business -- could it be Joe Grifasi? https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0341055/?ref_=ext_shr

After Philece Sampler was introduced as the Donna recast, she and Michael had a big fairytale wedding and spent their honeymoon in the Love stables reminiscing about their youth. At one point the characters Gino and Dominic are brought in to serve them hotdogs and pizza as the owners of a restaurant (if that's not too grandiose a term) they had frequented in high school. The restaurant shows up occasionally for a little while after that -- I seem to recall Amanda and Sam running into each other there, and I think maybe John sees Brad Pitt there? I can find an entry for Dominic (Louis Zorich) on the AWHP Day Player list, but I haven't found Gino. The resolution in this episode isn't great but I feel like the actor looks familiar. Any ideas?