Xanthe

I think you're mixing up Nancy's boyfriends -- Chris Chapin was gone by the time the Sin Stalker started murdering prostitutes. Nancy had started dating Greg Houston (played by Christopher Cousins, dark haired) in June 1986 right around the time Chris left, and then in December she met Tony Carlisle (played by John H Brennan, blond haired). The murders had started by November but I don't know exactly when they jumped from "MJ is surprisingly invested in the murders of prostitutes, it's like she thinks they're human or something" to "there's a serial killer in town and even nice girls like Cheryl had better be careful". I know Greg was killed by the Sin Stalker. I think both Greg and Tony were probably suspects. Definitely not Chris Chapin.

Loved Cali as Paulina. (BTW it's spelled Timmins -- the city of Timmins, Ontario was named after her grandfather.)

When you think of the sheer amount of information that must have been generated about soap characters and settings production should be keeping records for reference. New writers shouldn't have to rely on actors and crew to fill in those gaps. If they ignore known history or don't bother to look it up I blame the writer but if the show didn't capture a specific piece of info that's on production. New Iris or old Iris? Possibly defensible if we argue that Dartmouth was where he did his undergrad and Northwestern where he went for graduate school? Of course even though Adam attended Mac's funeral no one ever suggested asking his father and Mac's brother Alfred for details of Mac's early life that I recall.

Direct link to Erin Reed if you don't xit (xeet? Have xited?) https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/debunked-misleading-nyt-anti-trans

I thought from some of the other dialogue around that time that the issue was that Mac had told her that he had gone to Northwestern but evidence had come up that he had not. I will see if I can find it but I remember Matthew being upset (Matt Crane did some nice work around his grief after Mac's death).

And I am not even looking for actual real dates to tie the timeline to -- I just want a sequence of events that remains in the same order even if some events get squished closely together as the retcons pile up.

I feel very confused about Mac's timeline and where his various business dealings and love children fit in. I suppose "after the war" can cover a long period but the AWHP suggests that Mac's first marriage was dissolved in the 1930s which seems like it would put Iris' birth before WWII. I know time in soaps is elastic and this scene is before the arrival of Paulina whose story obviously involves much later shenanigans. It's also kind of too bad that they didn't think to bring Sandy back in some form trying to resolve the mystery of Mac's past. I'm not sure whether Iris ever acknowledged Sandy's existence. She had gone to Texas before he surfaced and he had moved away before the Chief turned up.

Thanks Slick. I thought I had scrolled around on the page more (I definitely saw Paul Raven's post) and tried character names but I must not have been very thorough. Appreciate it.

I mentioned it over in Soap Hoppers as well -- I caught some of Solomon Northup's Odyssey on TCM this morning and noticed that Petronia Paley was playing Solomon's wife Anne and John Saxon (AW's Edward Gerard, who was the one who renamed Fanny Grady as Felicia Gallant) playing Epps (the character portrayed by Michael Fassbender in the movie 12 Years a Slave).

I don't know what I am doing wrong. I have been searching for Petronia Paley's Hoppers entry and am just not finding it. The index on page 1 says 28 but for some reason nothing I do brings it up. The reason I was looking for it is because TCM was showing Solomon Northup's Odyssey (a 1984 American Playhouse episode based on the same source as the 2013 movie 12 Years a Slave) and I noticed Petronia Paley as Northup's wife Anne as well as John Saxon as Epps.

Thank you, that is helpful. I did understand you meant the coloured rings, but when I started hunting to see if I could find any info I was struck by how similarly kaleidoscopic the effect of the original opening was and started to speculate about whether they used the same technique for both and whether the change was prompted simply because they knew they would be switching to colour or because they had new technology at their disposal. The AWHP gives the starting date for the circle of rings opening as January 19, 1966 and the transition to colour on June 20 the same year. September 7, 1981 was the debut of the "block letter" opening. Did any other shows (or movies) have similar openings that would provide insight into how it was done, I wonder?

How dynamic was the original opening that ran until January 1966? Based on the description on the AWHP it sounds like it was at least partially animated, and perhaps a bit similar to the rings since there is a circle that expands into a sort of latticework background. http://www.anotherworldhomepage.com/openings.html http://www.anotherworldhomepage.com/open5.html I am not an expert, but do we know that the opening didn't use computer technology? The pattern is very regular and 2 dimensional so I don't think it would have been impossible for the time. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_computer_animation

Aw, I have a soft spot for this theme. I'm not crazy about the arrangement which is maybe verging on the bombastic, but I enjoy the melody. I like the earlier theme as well and prefer the logo with the rainbow of rings to the opeming blocks that become profiles.

It's not in the same category because Reginald was not created for John Considine (in fact he was an emergency replacement for the actor they originally hired) but the actor did play Vic Hastings in the 70s before returning in the 80s as Reginald. And of course Beverlee McKinsey played Emma for a few days before being cast as Iris.

On Another World in addition to Rachel/Justine: Cass' evil doppelgänger Rex Allingham Amanda was supposedly the double of the dead wife of Dustin Trent (although fortunately Sandra Ferguson didn't have to act the part of the wife except for a brief video clip) in 1989. And I’m not sure if it was really a physical double, but in 1999 Amanda was also somehow at least spiritually a vessel for Amalie, the beloved of Jordan Stark who similarly possessed David Halliday. Anne O'Donnell and Alexander Nikos were the doubles of dead characters Frankie Frame and Lucas.

Didn't Larry Welch force Hope to marry him on Days of Our Lives even though she was in love with Bo?

Interestingly, SCTV's The Days of the Week doesn't use organ music. In many respects the parody feels very true to the form and (at least here) doesn't have any obvious jokes beyond the utter brainlessness of Mojo.

I didn't watch Passions. Did it make fun of soap tropes and conventions specifically and directly, or was it just that it had silly outlandish supernatural storylines? I would argue that you can combine soap with other genres without necessarily undermining the soap elements. My radical opinion is that soaps would have been better off if they had been satisfied with capturing and entertaining their own niche audiences rather than trying to mimic what other "more successful" soaps were doing and diluting their own individual brands. Don't chase the GH supervillain ice princess if your show is about a publishing magnate and his artist wife.

And/or there was someone they wanted who was unavailable but they counted on to be available soon (and then fell through)? It's interesting to me that when they did establish a head writer, they promoted Gillian Spencer and added Sam Hall, which makes it seem as if if they were holding out for someone specific they didn't get them. The pairing lasted until March 1986 when Margaret DePriest came in.

There was a 2-week WGA strike in March. Not sure why the head writer role was empty for so much longer. https://www.indiewire.com/gallery/writers-guild-strikes-hollywood-history-wga/hollywood-writers-go-on-strike-in-dispute-over-payments-for-streaming-services-3/

Evan's original motivation in working for Iris was to get revenge on Rachel, but I thought that the idea was he fell in love with Amanda and got to know Rachel and realized that he was mistaken. I'm trying to remember but didn't he take Rachel's part against Gwen at the 25th anniversary party? So by the time he left I thought he and Rachel were all good. I have no recollection of Evan's return in 1994, but the AWHP makes it sound as if his vendetta was against Carl. And Iris was also against Carl, as was Amanda. I have no idea what his motivation was here.

The introductions of Victoria and Brittany were in the same window, as well as Lesoleil and the Chapin/Love/Hutchins history.

You'll never believe this [/s], but Rachel's amnesia occurred during a period of no head writer from March to July 1985. Gary Tomlin was gone by February and the team of Sam Hall and Gillian Spencer took over in August. (According to the AWHP Gillian Spencer had been part of the Feb-Jul writing team though.)

Frame, Frame, Frame, Frame, Frame. They were having their cake and eating it too. Steve was not quite dead when Alice got the idea to adopt Sally -- he was in Australia and she discussed it with him -- and she adopted her using the Frame name. And then Sally was included as a Frame, visiting Emma, interacting with Willis and Sharlene, and of course Jamie. And based on the synopses for 1975 it sounds like Rachel might have been going out of her way to be friendly with Sally (and Beatrice) in order to spite Alice.

Thank you. Although I remember being aware of Jamie in his young teenage years, I don't have any direct memory of the Rocky storyline. As @Mona Kane Croft pointed out, the stables were definitely a feature in 1975. Based on the AWHP synopses, stables were part of the description of the Clayton Estate -- and regarding the continuity angle, allegedly it was Victoria Wyndham[!] who ad-libbed the part about how she admired it. http://www.anotherworldhomepage.com/aw1975d.html No mention of school so in theory she could have been on a city bus -- but the rest of the speech isn't included to confirm. Another thing I found interesting was that on the day Rocky first appeared (he was mentioned as early as August 27, 1975, but John Braden first appeared on December 9), Rachel was making plans to keep a horse for Sally. I think we have discussed here how close Sally was to the Cory family and this suggests that it didn't come out of thin air with Mary Page Keller. http://www.anotherworldhomepage.com/aw1975d2.html