Xanthe

The AWHP synopses for January 1989 refer to him as Stefan but I don't see any Stefan in the DP list.

Is Donna aware at this point that Iris knew Michael on the Riviera, or that they had a romantic relationship? I feel like I remember her being absolutely cordial to Iris until she had that info. Thinking about Donna and Iris in this period makes me a little bit wistful for the days when Donna was chummy with Cecile in order to try to break up Peter and Sally.

I believe it had to do with the fact that the US broadcast allowed more time for commercials and so the Canadian network had a little bit of time to fill, at least in the 1980s. If I recall correctly they weren't doing it by the time the show ended in 1999 but I am not sure exactly when it stopped.

One thing to be aware of with the Canadian broadcasts is that they typically included a couple of scenes from the previous day's episode before the opening theme. I believe that's the case here because Mitch/Cass and Vicky/Lisa/Adam who are in those first two scenes don't appear to be in the rest of the episode at all. So those scenes alone would not be evidence that the Soapnet broadcast was trimmed.

Thanks! I think this means that the current outstanding unconfirmed references in Eddie's list are: Biography: Ray Liotta -- presumably a straightforward mention, possibly with a clip. However I have not found the episode online. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1442729 Valerie's Home Cooking. According to Wikipedia it had 172 episodes over 14 seasons. I skimmed the list of guests on IMDB and noticed that Faith Ford was on 3 episodes. Is the most likely thing that Another World came up when Ford was on? Difficult to say and I don't see any of those episodes freely available to check. Looks like they are on Discovery+ for the Food Network.

For reference the episode originally aired December 8, 1987 and Hunter was set in Los Angeles. I found this listing for NBC Bakersfield for example that shows AW at 1 pm. https://tvlistingsarchive.blogspot.com/2024/12/fresno-fri-dec-25-1987.html?m=1

I think Donna was replying to me -- we were trying to locate an episode of Hunter (an NBC cop series) that mentioned Another World. I had identified the episode and it looks like Eddie Drueding found it on Youtube. A witness to a crime confirms that she knew when something happened because she had just turned on Another World. Thanks, @Contessa Donatella.

Thanks for the suggestion but they do not appear to be pdf files. I tried using the site: search via Google and found this in s4e10, although I have not turned up any video online. https://subslikescript.com/series/Hunter-86734/season-4/episode-10-Hot_Prowl

I feel as if I would have appreciated Amanda more if they had leaned into how privileged and spoiled she was. As far as I could tell Sandra Ferguson's Amanda was just a nice well-meaning girl who occasionally got into scrapes because she happened to look like someone's dead wife. They were inconsistent with the presentation of Sam's art. If I recall correctly they started as pretty abstract and then he had his realistic baby Alli portraits eventually followed by a perhaps slightly impressionistic scene involving the Red Swan. The baby Alli portraits struck me as a bad choice.

I did a little bit of searching to see if I could get a bead on the Hunter reference in Eddie's list and didn't find anything specific. However I did find this site which appears to have transcripts of dialogue from episodes of the show. I did not see any way to search inside the transcripts without opening each episode up individually and that is not something I am about to undertake in the foreseeable future, especially without knowing whether the actual phrase "Another World" is the string to search for. https://subslikescript.com/series/Hunter-86734#google_vignette

I may have found the ALF reference, although it is just a mention of the title, no characters or storyline referenced and no clip or anything. The neighbour played by Helen Sheridan caught a glimpse of ALF in the backyard and has come over in a panic saying she saw a monster. When she says it looked like something from another world, her skeptical and unhelpful husband says "the soap opera?" S2E3, about 5 minutes in here.

This is an interesting take that I had not considered. Admittedly I have seen very little of George Reinholt in order to make the comparison. Do you have a sense of whether this Steve-Frame-like interpretation was natural and present from Lau's introduction, or was more likely influenced by the triangle with Vicky after Lemay took the reins?

I assume they aired the episodes in an hour-long timeslot . . . I have an idea that they placed the commercial breaks differently from the original broadcast, but am not sure whether they actually cut anything. Airtime without commercials was about 42 minutes, right? Did Soapnet air more than 18 minutes of commercials?

I always enjoy the fact that this was obviously cribbed from the Guy de Maupassant story.

Thanks! I glanced at the AWHP character guide and I think (although I am not 100% sure) that Josie kept the surname Watts even after she found out that Russ Matthews was her father and even after she married Gary Sinclair. I was looking at the auditions page since the latest update mentioned new details added. This is not new but Petronia Paley's entry mentioned her auditioning for another part which was ultimately cast with a white actress before they created Quinn for her. Do we know what the other part was? It sounds like it didn't last long.

I think she went by Hudson while married to Michael. @Maxim if you have noticed one way or another please confirm!

That was certainly memorable -- and I'm sure production nurtured that line of thought as well. It occurred to me that neither Kathleen nor Frankie was typically referred to by the surname Winthrop while married to Cass. Most other female characters I can think of did change their surnames (although Rachel mostly used Davis professionally when the writers were paying attention, except of course under DePriest when they had her exhibit under Cory, and of course Felicia didn't change her nom de plume even when she had husbands with their own surnames). Is there anyone else I'm not thinking of?

According to my understanding it was -- he went out to California for pilot season, but didn't get anything and decided to return for the stable paycheque. I know his son Max was born somewhere around this time (Ben is younger and was born in 1990) but it might have been after Schnetzer returned rather than before he left. In any case with a young family or wanting to start a family he settled down for stability. The timing doesn't seem to match exactly with either Julie Osburn's contract or his. They left in early December 1986. Her first airdate was early September 1984 (2 years + 3 months) and his was mid-July 1982 (4 years + 5 months). But closer to hers so she might have extended a bit. The idea that it makes any kind of sense for production to claim that they have focused on developing male characters and will now get around to working on female characters is bizarre, even if the results had not been what they were. I'm not even sure what she thinks she meant, although the talking point that soaps were too feminine was certainly around. I remember the interview posted here a while ago with Pamela G Kay and Russell Curry where Pam Kay promoted the idea that men were getting their manly due on AW at last.

It's funny because I think Kim Morgan Greene's Nicole could have been convincing as a doomed rebound relationship for Cass. Or maybe that's just because I saw him as her escort at a party in one of the Italian episodes we saw a little while ago. Anne Howard's Nicole as written had things a bit too simple -- she was established as a good designer whose professional issues (sabotage by Barbara Van Arkdale; need for investors) were solved pretty quickly, and her drug addiction and failed relationship with Jamie were pretty much ignored. Donna didn't do much to hinder or disapprove of her, and neither did Peter or even Reginald. If they had let her have some of that messed-uppedness and had allowed a bit more tension in her other relationships it could have been more interesting.

Merry Xmas!

What the woman knows about when she got pregnant, timing-wise, can be very different from what is apparent to the man. And gestation can have a bigger range than you might think because it is calculated from the last period and not when conception actually occurred. There's a range of about 4-5 weeks that is considered normal full term. If Dina last had sex with John not long before one period, with Brent after it, and knew she was pregnant pretty quickly, she could have sex with John again in order to be able to persuade him he would be the father when she revealed to him that she was pregnant a couple of weeks later. That could eat up all 5 weeks but it wouldn't necessarily be obvious to John. Brittany on AW for example slept with Catlin, confirmed she was pregnant, and then seduced Peter and persuaded him to make an honest woman of her. When she went into labour she loudly announced how extremely premature her baby was. Of course Peter wasn't fooled for long but Brittany also lost time having to get him into bed that probably Dina wouldn't have had to worry about with John.

I'm sure that I have complained before that one of the problems with the way Reginald's return was structured was that he was represented as Donna's kryptonite. She was unable to defend herself against him, and therefore more emphasis was placed on how Michael and Peter reacted to him. Not that their storylines were noticeably more complex, but they were given more agency in how they acted and reacted. Unfortunately Michael's final climactic beef with Reginald was focused on the recent loss of Donna's unborn baby, which they described as Michael's son/Reginald's grandson, as if Donna were completely irrelevant.

I'm not convince that any character was especially well-served in the DePriest era. Philece's Donna was certainly in the thick of things, antagonized by Reginald and the Sin Stalker and John. Anna Stuart's Donna had suffered as well. John and Victoria had to be reshaped post-DePriest to be really good and the performers were equal to it. But was there any character who thrived under DePriest and survived?

AFAIC there could have been a romantic/sexual component to their business relationship as well. But as presented, Iris sighing over Michael didn't do anything for me.

I know we had a clip posted not long ago of a flashback where Michael "rescued" her from a man she wasn't excited about and the vibe felt really off to me. It would probably have made more sense with Carmen's Iris to have suggested that it was business that had brought them together, but they really stressed the Riviera (wasn't that Josie's teen phone hotline nickname as well?) and romance aspect which I found unconvincing.