Xanthe

Neal (played by Robert Lupone) was a kind of ambiguous character who did a lot of shady-seeming stuff related to the Egyptian treasure. In the end I believe it turned out he had been on the side of right all along but he was sort of isolated so it was hard to feel good about the twist. He pursued Victoria (then played by Ellen Wheeler) -- sometimes in a way that seemed like it could be charming, but at least once in a way that seemed like attempted rape. Then suddenly one day he left as his handsomer, more obviously straight-arrow brother Adam came to town to work for the BCPD. I don't know why they replaced Neal with Adam so it's possible that they could have transitioned him into Adam's role if they hadn't decided to burn Neal's bridges.

I have been reading Agnes Nixon's book My Life to Live. Here she describes watching Another World when Irna Phillips suggested she take the head writer position after CBS passed on All My Children: On first reading it sounds as if the actors were already there and inspired her writing, but based on the dates I believe Nixon created all of their characters. I also thought it interesting that she doesn't seem to mention Rachel at all, not even as a prototype for Erica Kane whom she discusses as if the character had no precedent in her work. Unlike Harding Lemay, Agnes Nixon was capable of delegating to subwriters while headwriting two shows.

Definitely. I loved his Floyd Robertson for his irascibilty. Since we are on a soap site -- at about 23 minutes in here he is as Rocco pretending to be Violet Mckay's long lost son Billy.

According to Harding Lemay in his book Eight Years in Another World (take with as many grains of salt as necessary), Olive was brought to town in order to delay Alice and Ray's marriage because of the timing of the recast from Ted Shackelford to Gary Carpenter. The more I read the more it feels like Olive was treated as a plot device rather than a fully-realized character. Maybe Jennifer Leak's performance added nuance that I am not grasping. I was interested to note since we had discussed Liz' disappoinments in love that apparently she lost Charley to Ada. I have a hard time imagining Ada troubling herself to take an active part in a love triangle.

Joe Flaherty of SCTV has died. https://www.tvinsider.com/1129950/joe-flaherty-dead-tributes-sctv-freaks-and-geeks/

Did Brian have a home set after he split from Iris? I feel like I chiefly remember him at his office when he wasn't visiting other homes or squiring ladies to public events. Did Olive have real feelings for Evan or was she just using him and vice versa?

I know that Steve Schnetzer played Mercutio to Robert Sean Leonard's Romeo in a production directed by Charles Keating for the Riverside Shakespeare Company in 1990/91. (Gerit Quealy was Juliet.) Not sure whether this is a different production.

In the linked interview from 2020, Schnetzer mentions that he and Nancy are divorced.

It sounds splendid but it does make me wonder what percentage of scenes would be set at John and Olive's to make all of that worthwhile.

It's really rather strange that they were kept offscreen for the entire duration of Olive and Ray and Beatrice. I'm sure that there were probably some details that didn't make it into the synopses but it seems very odd that at the very least John would not have expected Olive to want to bring the boys to live with them once they were married. It almost seems as if there was no intention to make Olive a longterm character when she was first mentioned, and the children were just there to add colour to Ray's background, and then when Olive was brought to town and kept on staying they were such an inconvenience that Lemay shrugged and said they were with Doris and nobody missed them. And yet on the other hand hadn't Beatrice come to town because Alice had adopted her biological granddaughter Sally? Why so much less interest in her grandsons? Still at the synopsis level, it seems as if Olive almost instantly jumps into bed with Evan Webster and starts scheming with him to design the house according to requirements that are different from what John wants just in order to show how very bad she is. Given where she ends up I am not holding out much hope that she will be extended much empathy that could explain any of her villainy.

I read through some of the 1976 synopses, and they say that the boys were 8 and 10 years old and that Olive had gone with them to her sister Doris in California. Before Olive shows up Ray tells Alice that Olive is marrying another man and then a couple of months later it turns out that Olive and the other man have broken it off. Not long after that Willis goes to California and arranges to pay Doris and send the boys to camp in British Columbia. At the end of the summer even though Ray has been portrayed as a theoretically devoted father, while he and Olive and Beatrice are all in Bay City, he is fine that the boys are staying with Doris. I have not yet read through 1977-78 to see whether they have any good explanation for why they remain with Doris for such a long time. I also note in passing that the bust of Mac that Robert destroyed had been recently sculpted by Rachel and given to Iris as a present.

Thanks. I'll have to look for episodes from that timeframe. The summary certainly doesn't suggest Olive deserved any sympathy. How old were the sons supposed to be? I watched a scene where Olive was talking about getting her divorce settlement from Ray (and whether he could make a condition that she return to California) and she mentioned her intention to bring the boys to Bay City once she had the money. If they were minor children it seems odd that neither parent seemed to have custody. Poor Adam flirted a little bit with both Lisa and Victoria after MJ left. Unfortunately I don't think that the 1986-87 era was very attentive to defining networks of relationships outside a character's primary storyline and when that storyline dried up they could find themselves at a very loose end. Ed Fry was charming. I even liked Laurence Lau with him when they talked as if Jamie and Adam had known each other as children. I think part of it was that Reginald absorbed too much energy from everyone generally. Scott's primary story was his romance with Cheryl which was interrupted by his romance with Dawn. The conflict in the Cheryl story was supposed to be that their fathers were enemies fighting for Mary and I guess that Cheryl was an innocent virgin. Maybe they would have opened up Scott's story more if they hadn't decided to go with the Dawn storyline. But in a way I think Scott was also hampered by the fact that characters weren't well-integrated outside their primary storylines at the time. They don't have to be close friends with everyone -- they shouldn't be! -- but they should show the degrees of separation from time to time.

My chief memory of Olive is only that I thought her name unusual and striking. I wasn't watching enough to really follow her storyline. Who was Evan Webster and what was their relationship?

I'm torn because the Lumina nonsense also makes me see red and I think I would have been annoyed if that had been the crutch they used to bring Frankie back to life. Maybe if Lumina had been a hoax and Anne was a lookalike put up to the impersonation by Jordan Stark ... which could then either lead to finding the real Frankie still alive despite everything we had seen and heard, or the discovery that Anne was related to the Frame family. Although Sharlene was gone by then -- was there a Frame family to speak of? Josie I guess, representing the last vestiges of both Frame and Matthews. And of course she would be connected to Charlie.

I believe Cass and Felicia explicitly reminisced about Wallingford during the Carolyn shenanigans. I have to say that when I think back on the last few episodes I am eternally grateful that the big event wedding was Cass and Lila and not Amanda and Cameron. I happened to catch a scene the other day where Jordan Stark was trying to make Amanda the vessel for Amelie and there was a lot of dialogue about the struggle Amelie had to keep control of Amanda because even though Jordan dismissed the idea, Amelie could feel that Amanda really really loved Cameron and that strong love was blocking Amelie.

I don't really remember Taylor Halloway but I see according to the AWHP he was Kit and Rick's father and that he had an affair with his sister-in-law Miranda. Was there much of a storyline about this affair or was he just background for his children?

A little while ago we were talking about the reuse of surnames for different unrelated characters. I notice that apparently the rich Uncle Kevin that David Thatcher smothered with a pillow had the surname Fowler which of course was also Sam's surname. I believe that Uncle Kevin was David's wife Jennifer's uncle rather than David's uncle and for some reason he intended to make Sally the trustee of Kevin's inheritance after Jennifer died. Having Sam related to Uncle Kevin would not really have done much to enhance his storyline -- although I guess it could have added detail to Sam's dislike of rich people somehow. But David and Sally were dead and Kevin gone and none of that would have made the tension between Mac and Mitch's half brother any more intense.

She is on the Bennington website as faculty indicating that she was a full member until 2004 and since then has taught occasionally. Doesn't say how recently. https://www.bennington.edu/academics/faculty/janis-young

This is not a new find or anything since the AWHP has the info in both the Actor Guide and the Minor Characters list, but I had not remembered/recognized that Jake's amnesia girlfriend Alison was played by Marin Hinkle. Actually I had forgotten all about the character and when I saw her I was trying to figure out whether it was a temporary Amanda filling in for Christine Tucci.

This is really before my time, but I was reading the New Yorker article that @VelekaCarruthers linked in the writers thread (for some reason although I wanted the link to the post I got the link to the article instead) and the author drops in a lot of plot references from this period including mentioning that Lenore was interested in Bill Matthews. I must say some of the plot descriptions are rather dizzying but I found them interesting. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1972/02/12/afternoon-television-unhappiness-enough-and-time Post link:

This is from a long time ago and I got very hopeful when I came across a couple of episodes from the custody trial over Mikey but sadly neither included credits. However he definitely does not sound anything like Hunt Block -- in fact I wonder whether he might not be American. There is something about how he pronounces "like" in this clip that sounds a bit English or something? Toby Miller.m4a I had not remembered the part of the story where Donna has Mikey's mother arrested for prostitution.

Did Liz ever have any romantic relationship that wasn't one-sided and/or with a creep? I believe she was disappointed in Wayne Addison, Mac, and Milo the producer.

In the AWHP synopses for 1982 there is just a mention that Liz, Susan, and Julia decided to move into the house with Sally. There is no mention of whether there was any financial motivation although Liz had apparently invested in Jamie's movie and been let down by a romantic interest in Milo the producer. Sally had recently split with Denny who had extracted money from her. Julia might have been living with the movie people but I suppose Susan must have been staying with Liz.

I haven't found anything specific that answers your question but is the Matthews house that Liz and Sally and Julia and Alice were in in 1984 supposed to be Jim and Mary's house, or is it Liz's house and if so was it the same house from 1964 to 1984 or had she moved?

Not that the scale and positions of the people outside the boxes look as if they were all naturally in the same room with each other anyway. Those heads at the top are much larger than those below. They probably aren't intended to be consumed as the whole set at once. I don't quite like the way the red lettering is sometimes the character name and sometimes a word or phrase, but that might be because I was confused about the relevance of whipped cream to Henry. I guess it's related to Coop's theme of dessert menu somehow?