Xanthe

Yes, that was interesting. I don't think she ever went by Sinclair when she was married to Gary either, did she? Maybe if Russ had stayed around longer it would have happened eventually. Do you remember, did Sharlene go by Matthews when she was originally married to Russ?

That seems like a reasonable guess in the absence of any other evidence. It's impossible to be 100% certain that there was no other reference to the family either from Josie or maybe in relation to Matthew. But the odds seem pretty good that nothing would have come up. Russ was the only other older generation character using the name since his sisters and cousin had all taken their husbands' names. Olivia was a Matthews but she and her daughter with Dennis were also out of the picture.

Oh, absolutely. I'm sure most people neither knew nor cared that Days was not filmed in NYC and that there were many reasons why it was fun and convenient to have Days be the soap Joey was on. It wasn't enough to prevent me from supending disbelief.

I believe those series as well as The Good Wife and its spinoffs were shot in NY so it makes sense that a lot of NY-based actors would crop up. That reminds me tangentially of how peculiar I found the Friends storyline where Joey worked on Days of Our Lives. Friends was set in NYC and at that time Another World was the only NBC soap in NY. Days of Our Lives is of course an LA-based soap and Friends was also made in LA, and in the story Joey didn't have to move or travel to go to work, he just had a job on Days as if the set was in the same city.

That's a bit murky since that happened during a writers' strike. Assuming Kristen Marie had a 2-year contract she left about when her contract would have expired and Sharlene and Josie showed up right before that. Lemay was officially credited as HW from September 1988 but it seems very probable that his anticipated tenure influenced events that happened during the strike which started in April.

DePriest left in January 1988. According to the AWHP, Rose last appeared nearly a year before in February 1987 while both Sara and Peggy appeared as late as October 1987.

She appeared onscreen not long after Rose Livingston and Sara Montaigne, and we found out that Sara was Rose's estranged daughter. I wonder whether Peggy might have been part of that family group -- or else they were just juggling a few different potential mysteries so that they could develop whatever seemed to be getting the best response from the audience. They didn't do anything much with Rose and Sara really either. Maybe Rose would have become more prominent if Rachel and Mac had split up over Mitch, or if Sara had really flourished. In some ways I can picture Cheryl being affected by MJ's prostitution similarly to how Josie was distressed by finding out about Sharlene. But I can also see that Josie as a Frame being involved with Matthew would have different stakes for Rachel and Sharlene than Cheryl being involved with Scott. I do think the solution for Cheryl would have had to be a badder boy than Scott -- either a real bad boy who would do her wrong, or the kind of bad boy (not Chad!!!) who is essentially misunderstood and other people just don't understand. Cheryl would also have been better off with some friends her own age. Matthew and Josie benefited a bit from having other teenagers to interact with.

I think Cheryl was essentially replaced by Josie, and it seems likely that Lemay wanted to bring the Frames back into the picture and for a variety of reasons that it would be McKinnons who would make way for them. Cheryl didn't really get many layers -- she was pretty and kind and sweet and faded into the background so that Scott could participate in the AIDS storyline with Dawn. Looking at the AWHP, other than (not very) shockingly being in love with her mother's adopted son Scott, Cheryl apparently went out with Sam and flirted with much-too-old-for-her John Hudson and MJ's ex-boyfriend/pimp Chad. I know MJ told Mary that she had been a prostitute, but did she tell Cheryl and did she tell anyone about Chad's pimping?

Garneau was in the Liberal party and his riding was in Montreal. He was the first Canadian in outer space.

Astronaut Marc Garneau has died. He had also been an MP and Cabinet Minister until 2023. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/marc-garneau-passes-away-1.7552640

It has come up in this thread before that early on it was specified that Another World was set in Bay City, Michigan, but somewhere along the line the references shifted to Illinois-ish. I have tried and failed to find any specific clear reference to Michigan, although there have been some circumstantial details that suggest Bay City is not in Illinois. i notice that the AW Bible begins by describing the location as simply "not far from Oakdale", but things do change (the bible calls Pat Cynthia) and we can't take that as pure canon.

Dragging this quote over from the Texas thread just because it shows a reference to Bay City as a fictional location at least as early as 1981. It doesn't quote Gail Kobe as saying it directly but the point she is making about the Houston setting of Texas does seem to take it for granted that Bay City is not real.

I know we have discussed the location of Bay City in the Another World thread and the fact that originally Irna conceived of it as being the real Bay City MI, and it was later writers that treated it as a fictional Bay City [probably IL]. This article seems to suggest that that idea was well-established by 1981. I wonder when it started.

Very sad to hear. Because of The Powers That Be, I always pictured Valerie Mahaffey as Maris on Frasier. I still occasionally think of her in a Little Orphan Annie costume at the Annual Raisin Festival Masquerade Ball in the soap spoof miniseries Fresno.

She never was a villainess. At most she clashed a little bit with Cass and Felicia when she first came on only because she didn't just do whatever Cass wanted in his scheme to find Cecile. I agree she didn't resemble Nancy Frangione and they only got away with the body double storyline because Nancy was nowhere nearby while Kathleen was making decoy appearances in a blonde wig. And I am more grateful than not that they cast Julie Osburn because she was a great sister for Kathleen Layman's MJ and also fit in with Cass and Felicia without being like Cecile.

I feel a little bit similar about Ben Schnetzer since I remember so clearly when he was born. But obviously not quite the same since it was not his mother onscreen.

I had forgotten that. Didn't Julian also keep company with Dannii Minogue? (Kylie is also in The Residence as herself.)

Watching the Netflix series The Residence and did not recognize Julian McMahon (Ian Rain on Another World) as the Australian Prime Minister until I looked him up.

If Reginald had had more dimensions he probably wouldn't have been killed off and Carl might not have been brought back to fill the international supervillain role. I think though that the Loves were also severely damaged by the way Nicole and Peter were made irredeemable and written out. I definitely feel that loss more than the loss of Reginald, primarily since they were good characters to begin with and were only ruined during this period.

So many things would have had to be different for Mary to want to go back to Reginald. It could have been interesting if it had been handled completely differently but as it was we had a very black and white Mary good/Reginald bad. If she had been able to ignore his worldly crimes and how he treated his own children there was still the fact that he had separated her from her children. Maybe if they had shown us more intimacy and affection between them and had allowed him to have real vulnerabilities it could have worked but as it played out they didn't do much to present him with any sympathetic hook. There are a lot of ways to define wanting things to work. Fans are mostly thinking of preserving or restoring characters and an atmosphere that drew them to the show. The sponsor may only be thinking of the bottom line. When a producer or HW comes in and decides that their vision will deliver for the bottom line and they need to fire most of the cast in order to do it it can feel very much like not caring.

I would argue that Another World never played "everything" for laughs. Even when there were comedic scenes in some storylines there were other storylines that were not intended as comedy. You give 1988 as the end point, and Mary was on the canvas from August 1986 to February 1989, so she must have overlapped with the despised laughs you are referring to at least half of the time she was there. I honestly can't recall any real comedy that Mary would have been part of. I don't think she was lighthearted about choosing between two husbands, MJ's prostitution, Kathleen's death, or even her son Scott dating her daughter Cheryl. I would have said that the amount of comedy depended on the head writer and there was more comedy under Richard Culliton and Gary Tomlin in 1984 than subsequent headwriters. I guess there was an outbreak of more comedy when Cecile kidnapped Cass from his wedding in 1986, but in general the Sin Stalker wasn't presented as funny, Mitch's return wasn't funny, John's arrival wasn't funny, Reginald wasn't funny. The tone was serious even if the plots verged on the ludicrous. And maybe that's what you mean -- but I would make a distinction between intentional comedy and storylines I can't take seriously for other reasons.

Thanks for letting us know. Take it easy and don't risk your health -- whenever you're in good condition is soon enough.

"To give her child a name" just means to make the child legitimate and be able to take the father's surname.

Denise was the best thing about that otherwise ridiculous plotline. I wasn't familiar with her work on Days of Our Lives or General Hospital but I could see her warmth and charisma as Mary even though the Another World storyline was a bit lacking.

Didn't she know when she involved him in her scheme, before the character was introduced? I thought she tracked down Janice's son and poisoned his mind against Rachel in order to get him on board. It's a bit confusing because in the summer of 1988 we get a lot of Drew Marsten (whom I had forgotten was Nicole's ex) and mentions of a mysterious Countess and also Reginald working to undermine Cory. Drew disappears around the same time Evan arrives, and gradually we get the reveals that he is in cahoots with Iris, Janice's son, etc.