Xanthe

It was mostly the question of who Iris and Michael were supposed to be as people and what would have attracted them to each other -- and what would have made Iris a threat (or not) to Michael's relationship with Donna. Michael had been introduced as very down-to-earth. And although Donna sort of occupied a similar demographic to Iris I don't think they were really alike -- especially not the young Donna Michael had known compared to the more mature (and presumably post-Texas?) Iris. It's possible that I wasn't watching attentively and ignored or overlooked subtleties that were actually shown. Maybe the idea was that Philece Sampler's Donna was an idle princess whereas Iris was a smart businesswoman and therefore easier for Michael to treat as an equal?

Thanks for sharing. I was never very happy about the idea that Michael and Iris shared a past, or at least I never quite knew how to picture it. Watching that clip I was trying to figure out whether it is supposed to be the first time they ever met. I think I would prefer to think of it as a point where they were already together, because otherwise Michael seems just a little too familiar and presumptuous. But that is probably supposed to be what makes it romantic.

Do I want to know who "they" are? And if they have the ability to control the weather, is the implication that they are causing bad weather out of malice?

The copyright at the end of the credits says 1989 and the plot descriptions for the NBC Thursday night lineup read over the credits point to January 26, 1989.

The March episode with Michael's flashback has a scene where Mac offers her a job and it reminds me of how much I wish we had had Nancy as a foil for Amanda.

I don't know of any pictures or video of Aunt Bertha unfortunately. Based on the AWHP weekly synopses for 1985 (the daily synopses do not go to December) and the video available on YouTube for December 24 1985, I believe the day Marley and Jake met Ellie and Aunt Bertha must have been December 23. About 18 minutes in on Dec 24 Ellie phones to wish the Loves Merry Christmas and (thinking she is talking to Marley's twin instead of Donna) that she hopes they will find their father. No Aunt Bertha.

Found the 1984 scene I was looking for -- it's Anna Stuart as young Donna and the back of some unknown young actor's head as Michael.

Oh, thanks. I'm going to have to look to see what there is from the fall of 1984 because I believe Donna had a flashback then herself, probably with different younger actors.

Michael has a flashback in this episode to Donna's father kicking him out, and indeed the father calls him Garrison (it's early, this was the original continuity). I believe young Michael is Adam Storke but do we know who plays father Love (not yet named Reginald) and young Donna? @slick jones?

Interesting theory, but it played out almost the exact opposite of that. Marley hired Larry and Catlin to locate Michael Garrison. They found the family in Massachusetts and she and Jake went there to meet them. The town was up in arms over an evil corporation, New Resources. Marley talked to Ellie and Aunt Bertha and saw that twins ran in the family. She was upset about New Resources and wrote a strongly-worded letter. When Michael as president and CEO received it, the name Love from Bay City interested him and he went there to check it out. Donna was out of town but Brittany who had just married Peter hired him as the stableboy, so he got to know Marley and Victoria and figured out the paternity situation before Donna returned home. The idea that Michael was an evil capitalist ruining the lives of people in MA was never pursued or resolved -- it was always good that he was very rich. Ellie and Aunt Bertha and Eugene were never mentioned again.

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.