Xanthe

The name change had to have happened pretty early if Michael got it from the army and had time to force it on John. I think it's likely that Hudson was the name Nick's mother knew him under. And Iris, for that matter. And who was that spy lady? I suspect it is impossible to reconcile the retcon of Reginald with anything before dePriest and the waters sort of closed over him after he died so there wasn't much to worry about afterward either when Carl resumed the villain mantle.

The Garrison-to-Hudson name change originally applied just to Michael, to explain why Marley couldn't easily find him under his original name. When Marley found the Garrisons in Massachusetts, they said they hadn't heard from Michael in years. What I think was actually unexplained was the retcon of John and Clara, where Clara was apparently still living on the family farm not far from Bay City under the Hudson name and John who had been missing since Vietnam was also using the Hudson name. Why did Marley have to go to Massachusetts to interview a branch of the family that Michael wasn't in contact with instead of locating Clara? How did John who was even more estranged from the family than Michael manage to pick up the name change and resent Michael for it?

Thank you very much. I will try to up my search game. 😊

I didn't get any hits when I searched the forums for Smits so I wasn't sure he rated as a hopper! (ETA: I must have been doing something wrong -- I see it now but I know the search behaves differently on my desktop vs the phone.) Regarding the dates, I think the episode I found must be May 8, 1985, since that's the day the daily AWHP synopses mention Jake and an unconscious Thomasina. (The Plains Motel was well over by September, not sure whether Smits continued to appear after this one episode however.) He would not have been around in November.

There are probably multiple factors at play, but I do think that dePriest's overly simplistic approach to characterization hurt the long-term prospects. What storylines were you watching? Did you feel like something specific was derailed or did it just not have a direction in the first place? The Sin Stalker was structured as a finite story and once Lisa had learned to trust Jamie it didn't seem to have any further impact. Reginald was the focus of so much and then not long after dePriest left he was killed off. Was there any long-term impact other than ensuring that Vicky had money to throw around?

I don't see Jimmy Smits listed in the Actor Guide on the AWHP, but he's listed in the closing credits (and in fact starting about 5:19 he is visible behind the credit crawl; I did not find the actual scene included) as the Plains Motel Bartender. The episode he's in must be from early May 1985 as Brittany is recuperating in the hospital, still deaf, and Sally is *stressed*. The second episode must be from November 1985 however with Carl hauling Marley around in the Arizona desert.

I feel like I could easily interpret her coziness with Rudy at the same level as "emotional and digital" even if the technology was different.

Speaking of old/crazy, I thought she was cozy with Rudy Giuliani and got some scoop because he called her to chat (or maybe it was a butt-dial).

I know that the character of Lila and the transformation of Bobby into Shane (or vice versa) is supposed to have been based on Bourbon St, but I don't recall knowing that Henry Simmons who played Tyrone Montgomery had been in its cast.

And here I was stumped because I couldn't think of a rhyme for Wyoming.

A handsome young pimp learned to pity When his sister was quite ill (though pretty) His anguish seemed hollow But macho Chad Rollo Stopped trafficking girls in Bay City

Did Chad profit financially from extortion? They spent so much time whitewashing him and suggesting that he could be a viable love interest that I don't remember him keeping up any criminal activity. When he started pestering MJ he was still pimping. I remember him chatting with a naive runaway in a park and nobly refusing to traffic her -- and of course feeling guilty when Dawn was diagnosed with AIDS. I don't know whether they considered having MJ go back to Chad after Adam jilted her. She didn't stay around very long after that. Dawn's trip to Venice with Scott was a graduation present and Chad apparently visited them before she died and never appeared in Bay City again. TCM has a bio for Richard Burgi in which they oddly describe Chad as "macho". https://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/person/775837|0/Richard-Burgi#overview

I went back and looked at the AWHP synopses and they actually say that it was Chad who paid for the trip. Thanks. I had only remembered Vicky getting the bulk of it and Donna and Nicole getting nothing. Apparently Mary got property in Paraguay. John didn't really work properly until dePriest left and they grounded him in the PTSD storyline. Mary was more consistently effective but had less storyline once Reginald was disposed of and her children dried up. And if her original storyline had been as icky as John's it probably would have dragged the character down as well.

Was Scott still rich after he turned against Reginald? I have a dim recollection that Reginald may have left all of his money to Victoria or something when he died, but while he was alive, did he continue to support Scott or try to influence him by giving or withholding money?

Two returns from the dead were not sufficient for Margaret dePriest -- John Hudson was similarly the return from the dead of a character who had never previously been alive on the show. He was not the same storyline as Mary and Reginald but he was part of the Love/Hudson orbit. (I have more tolerance for cases where a popular actor is brought back with some explanation for how we could have believed the character to be dead -- for example Kathleen.) I don't remember whether Scott ever explicitly stated why he didn't start using the name Love, but he did shun Reginald about the same time Mary did. I don't know if it's just because I'm not used to it but Scott Love sounds terrible -- maybe if he had a two-syllable first name (like Donna, Peter, Nicole, and Marley) I could adapt more easily.

I think of Caroline's situation as being very similar to Sara Montaigne or Peggy Lazarus -- character with no known existing relationship to established characters, attempts to hint at some kind of secret, and then nothing. Scott was revealed pretty quickly to be Reginald and Mary's adoptive son, but the writing was so thin that he didn't get a lot to do with his relationship with his parents and finding out that Reginald was an international supervillain. Basically it seemed like the only reason he was a Lasalle was to increase the drama of his romance with Cheryl. But if the writing had been stronger it would have dug into his relationship with his parents, with the rest of the McKinnons, with the rest of the Love family. And when he fell in love with Dawn it would have made more of a connection with Chad, for better or for worse.

I think Nancy should have been back in Bay City in some form. And I thought Clayton Prince as Reuben could have done more. I would have been very happy for MJ to return to Bay City but they would definitely have had to sort out the presence of Chad in some way that I doubt Margaret dePriest would have been capable of. Unfortunately Scott was a little bit isolated and by the time they wrote him out with Cheryl it didn't feel like his absence left a gap. I wonder if they felt that the return of Jake filled that demographic slot and they didn't need both. But if he had avoided Cheryl and if they had come up with a good storyline for him (maybe finding his birth parents as long as he wasn't a Love triplet) it could have been interesting.

I can never keep straight which was Shane and which was Bobby. I mean I know they were the same man, magically perfect for Victoria because of a cornea transplant, but even though it should be obvious I always doubt which name goes with which occupation.

Thanks. Not that long ago I saw the episode where Jake and Vicky spent the day in Central Park and I had not realized there was any ambivalence. In the episode you linked it felt like the writers were twisting themselves into knots in order to try to force a situation where Marley would pose as Victoria and the result is an unconvincing jumble. Paulina assuring Marley that although Jake was not the right husband for either of them but was ideal for Vicky left a bad taste in my mouth given everything that had happened. Michael Malone was the HW in this period but who knows which dialogue writer would have been responsible for such a generic platitude sidestepping real backstory.

While I am willing to believe that Trump has exaggerated his injury, I find it hard to believe that even MAGA staged an incident that killed a bystander and resulted in the death of the shooter. Or are those deaths supposed to be lies to make the story convincing?

I never expected to think Marjorie Taylor Greene was on the more reasonable side of an argument. Luckily Loomer's litany of complaints against her reminded me that they're both terrible. I thought Republicans were blaming Tulsi Gabbard for Trump's bad debate prep. I guess it takes a village.

I wouldn't call that one storyline. That is, during the Who Shot Jake? storyline, Vicky was on Marley's side and was trying to protect her. It was I think only later when they decided to put Jake and Vicky back together that they really let Jake trample on Marley again as if he had never done anything wrong and given all the blondes plus Donna motive to kill him. Did Vicky have any beef with Marley between the trial and much much later when crazy Marley became obsessed with Jake? I know earlier Vicky and Marley were pitted against each other over Jake (and he was basically a decent guy even if Donna and his mother disapproved of him), or at least Vicky used underhanded tactics to try to hold on to Jake while Marley kept nobly trying not to steal her sister's boyfriend. Then later when Jake thought he was Steven's father Marley sided with Jake and was willing to raise Vicky's baby. I didn't have a problem with Jake surviving and I liked the part where he was blackmailing Paulina and she was fighting back. But deciding that he and Vicky should be endgame was yucky.

It's one thing to support Trump. It's another to present yourself as (or to allow the media to identify you as) "undecided" in order to offset your bias and give weight to your pro-Trump opinion.

The frame he presented before he asked for her opinion was specifically for why this debate had made them make a decision and she went on and on not mentioning the debate at all and asserting that her life had been so much better during his administration that obviously she preferred Trump. And the reporter didn't press her on anything about the debate, just confirmed with her that of course she had voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020. But as soon as she started with something like this was a serious election to run the country and not who you would want in your bridal party I knew she was hopeless. CNN, if you're too gullible to keep die-hard decided plants out of your panels of undecided voters, at least be prepared to skewer them hard for being decided. Or maybe stop pretending they're undecided in the first place.

I think the details here are wrong. This character is Jake's mother and her appearance was August 28th 1986, not a flashback but a meeting with Kathleen in a restaurant, and also at the time the character was known as Helen rather than Alice. The AWHP Minor Characters has an unnamed actor in a (sepia-toned!?) flashback in 1992, presumably related to the Kevin Anderson story, as "Alice McKinnon". She resembles Julie Osburn slightly but she wouldn't be related to Kathleen by blood. http://www.anotherworldhomepage.com/minor4.html 1986 episode is here, Lucy Martin shows up about 18 minutes in. https://youtu.be/nqtzKhSiF2o?si=TdaLE5Cu9e2WREDs