Xanthe

Thank you. I wish there were more -- I would love to see all the parts of Donna encouraging Cecile to comfort Peter and the reveal of Kevin Thatcher. Carl was chilling. I do wish though that the David Thatcher murder had been more personal or more organized crime related. Emily's motive of general opposition to the baby ring was confusing and possibly misplaced. I wonder how early the story was decided. I see Alexandra Neil as Emily Benson didn't appear until June 5, weeks after David's murder.

Indeed. I know Mac became confused and had dementia-like symptoms (forgetting things from the recent past, thinking the present is the way it was when he was much younger) as well as paranoia, but I don't recall anything like being possessed by someone else. That kind of thing annoys me unless the universe has been built to permit it from day one so I would be surprised to have forgotten about it. About 14 minutes in Liz flashes back to Mac firing her the previous day. Later in this episode he hires her back.

I wonder a bit what the timeline was like. As early as May 9, Perry gave Nancy an Egyptian ring that was supposed to have belonged to his grandmother. That was also during the period when they had no head writer. Then in August after Sam Hall and Gillian Spencer became head writers suddenly Daphne and Carl were looking for Egyptian artifacts and Chris and Nancy and Donna all had some or ought to know where their fathers' artifacts were. Then in October Ada gave Nancy permission to go to Algeria with Daphne and Daphne just took her to Egypt instead. By October there was both an Egyptian character (Fayez) and a Native American (Hawk) involved in the search for the Egyptian artifacts. Chris, Hawk, Nancy, Daphne, Fayez and Carl all had scenes in "Egypt" and then somehow they realized that what they were searching for was on a reservation in Arizona. Carl and Daphne must have returned to Bay City because when he murdered Daphne he paralyzed Kathleen and Cass was arrested for Daphne's murder, and I don't think either of them had gone to Egypt or Arizona. Carl, Chris, Nancy, Marley, and Jake all went to Arizona in November chasing the Egyptian treasure or to follow someone who had gone to Arizona chasing the treasure. The Achille Lauro hijacking was October 7-10 so they must have been very close to going on location when they had to rewrite and replan.

For what it's worth, the credits to this episode mention only the hotel, no government assistance.

Yes. That was where Nancy got the jar of tomb dust that killed Grant Todd, a Cory maid, and nearly killed Mac.

I see in the AWHP synopses that Steve went to Finland on business just before Jim died, without Alice (who could not get away from nursing obligations). I tried to see if anything looked like an obvious last-minute substitution for a location shoot in Finland but nothing jumped out at me. Steve and Rachel had only recently been to San Diego but I have a hard time imagining Mitch kidnapping Matthew to Finland. If I recall correctly in 1985 they allegedly planned to go on location to Egypt and then changed their minds because of political unrest or something, so after establishing a lot of Egyptian details in the story they went on location to Arizona with weird Egyptian baggage.

I honestly feel like this is a false dichotomy. Cass and Felicia were around for such a long time and although they had many moments of high comedy which I know you don't like, they also had serious relationships and heartfelt emotions and tragedies. Wallingford wasn't around for as long but he too was such a good and concerned friend that I have no difficulty imagining him interacting in a human way with so-called believable characters. The key would be the writing and the nature of the relationship. Why are these people in each other's orbit and how do they feel about it? Probably the only time I felt warm toward early John Hudson (pre-Lemay and Sharlene) was when Wallingford talked seriously with him.

Kathleen and MJ changed order. When Kathleen first arrived MJ was the eldest, but when they added the prostitution retcon they made Kathleen the eldest.

According to the synopses on the AWHP from 1964, it is clear that the order then was defined as Pat, Alice, Russ. Pat was in college and there was a lot of time devoted to planning her 21st birthday party. Alice was graduating from high school (as valedictorian) and planning to attend art school. Russ was flunking his sophomore year of high school and wanted to drop out rather than go to summer school. http://www.anotherworldhomepage.com/aw1964.html By 1967 Russ was accepted into the internship program at the hospital and Alice mentioned in passing to Lenore that she had just turned 20. http://www.anotherworldhomepage.com/aw1967.html

Dawn was a year away when Dr Jamie showed up. In the interim Brittany needed a doctor for her baby and Amanda needed someone to give her birth control advice. But Chris Chapin could have handled both of those things if it hadn't been necessary to replace all strays with a Love, McKinnon, or Cory-adjacent character.

Sometimes it felt like Bay City was nothing but stables, but I take your point. I believe Sally had a half-formed theory that Mac would be able to hire him for something somehow. After all, she had been made Art Director without any obvious education or training. I scanned through the AWHP synopses for 1982 to see how that happened and they seem to go from Sally refusing to go back to college, to marrying Denny and losing money to whatever scheme he had going on, to divorcing Denny. Out of nowhere she is working with Cass and meeting Peter and being promoted to Art Director. Note that I am all for Sally giving up nursing to go into publishing but I am still livid that Jamie left publishing to become a doctor.

Could they be Janice with Tim McGowan?

I don't think Donna's perception of class was (at least originally) supposed to be based on wealth as such. The Loves were presented as wealthy and privileged but there was never any industry or trade that explained where their wealth had come from. When Reginald was originally cast they chose a British (*Welsh) actor which sort of feeds into the aristocratic air. Donna would probably have looked down on the Frames because their recent origins were so low. I think Lemay was interested in those types of class difference but a lot of writing regimes didn't do much to portray class. I remember Catlin and Sally having a conversation during one of their secret meetings while he was in hiding after escaping from jail where she talked about how it would be nice after he was cleared if they could buy a house and he was overwhelmed by how much it would cost and she said that it was reasonable to think that they would be able to have enough money. It was definitely presented as she had a good job and he would be able to get a job and it would be within their reach, not "my father was very rich so I don't have to worry". Later when Taylor Miller was in the role they really leaned into the idea that Sally was too middle-class to understand lower-class Catlin's feelings. I think they went to marriage counselling after she left him because of Brittany's pregnancy.

Adult Dennis was in Bay City from June 1978 until he left for Texas in 1980. At that time he was mostly getting involved with Cecile and Elena and Sally was in her delinquent phase. To the extent that Peter and Donna Love replaced Dennis and Iris, I can see that if the Carringtons had stayed they might have played out a similar story for Sally with them. Although Donna being Marley's mother added a little something to that plot that Iris would not have provided. Later, when Dennis came back and was involved with Marley and Olivia, Sally was already dead.

Yes. March 5 was the Monday and according to the daily synopses on the AWHP the announcer mentioned the upcoming change on the Friday March 2 episode. http://www.anotherworldhomepage.com/aw1979d.html http://www.anotherworldhomepage.com/dates.html

I know we have talked a lot about Hugh Marlowe as Jim Matthews and touched on his Hollywood career, but I did not realize until I caught the end of All About Eve on TCM tonight that he played Lloyd, Karen (Celeste Holm)'s husband.

Here's a creepy thing I had forgotten about the Sin Stalker: Dr Glaser had apparently been obsessed with Lisa for years because her mother had been one of his patients and most of what they talked about in therapy was Lisa's virginity for some reason. So Dr Glaser had been patiently waiting for Lisa and somehow ensured that she would move to Bay City to be with her aunt in 1987 so that he could marry her as soon as he had murdered enough filthy sluts to be worthy of her. And probably he had also killed Lisa's parents. https://youtu.be/bAAA7t2PRno?si=5rna4EMMl6O1VSem

That isn't strictly true -- I had refreshed my memory about some of these details when we discussed how Harding Lemay might or might not have written for Wally if Brent Collins had still been alive. Wallingford was always a supporting player but he definitely had more hints of romance in his life than, say, Bridget. He had been engaged to a woman in the past but never married. He dated a woman called Jeannie at one point. I am not sure whether it is Jeannie who came to Wallingford's memorial in Tops (at about 33 minutes in): In early 1985 when Zane came on the scene, Wallingford started to gear up to approach Felicia romantically but silently backed off when he realized that she was romantically interested in Zane.

I wish that when they had done the 1987 update they had tried to integrate the rainbow circle of interlocking rings and that typeface. I really didn't care for that torn paper effect in the cursive Another World. The thing I didn't mind about the later versions of that opening was how strongly the colours popped in the little vignettes and that most of the clips were from scenes within the show rather than staged poses. I did enjoy being reminded of John and Sharlene in the barn, for example.

Somehow this reminded me that when Kathleen first arrived, Cass was paying her to show up places in a blonde wig and pretend to be Cecile in order to draw out someone who might know something that would help him find Cecile again. Of course Julie Osburn is perceptibly taller than Nancy Frangione so other than the blonde wig I'm not sure how realistic the impersonation was supposed to be.

I think Cass was impulsively putting a more glamorous flair on the name and persona. I can't remember whether he made a direct association with Krystle Carrington of Dynasty fame, but I know the K made me think of her (although of course Krystal Lake did not style herself like Linda Evans). The difference in spelling might also have served to try to make it less obvious that the name was copied from a nearby town.

Julia (like Sally) was not an infant when she was adopted, so I trust Dr Dunning was not required for any part of the procedure. Sally was supposed to be in Boston for boarding school between Cathy Greene and Julie Philips and she had a lot of SORASing to fit in in about 7 months. I have always imagined that Kevin must instead have been born between Julie Philips and Jennifer Runyon which was a gap of about 6 months in real world time. According to the AWHP during that period Sally was supposed to have left for Chicago (to study nursing). Being in Chicago seems to fit better with the proximity to Dr Dunning and David Thatcher as well. I know that the Thatchers and/or Royal Dunning were said to be located in relatively nearby Crystal Lake and that was the inspiration for Cass' drag name.

Exactly. Kyra Sedgwick arrived as a bit of a wild child which did seem a bit reminiscent of Sally post-Boston. Was Sally already reformed by then? I guess Jennifer Runyon wasn't committing crimes, just marrying Hobsons and feeling like Steve wasn't as protective of her as he was of Diana. Did Julia and Sally interact much when Kyra Sedgwick and Jennifer Runyon were in the roles? Thanks for the confirmation. If Dan and Susan reconciled in 1979 and then adopted her without discussion offscreen I suppose she could have been SORASed to 17 by 1982. It's not so very different from the timeline for Sally to get pregnant and give up Kevin in order for him to show up as a 5- or 6-year old child in 1983.

I would have liked to see Tito redeemed just enough so that Paulina would have kept him as a quasi foster son despite his bad behaviour. Nick had put his nasty ways behind him so Tito could have been a jerk and a screwup with just enough of a real emotional attachment to Paulina to make it interesting. I've been looking at episodes of As the World Turns where they still had a thriving population of children, many of whom grew up to have quasi adult storylines. There was a period in the early 80s where Another World had a lot of little kids around who had been born on the show and it’s too bad that really only Amanda and Matthew and Maggie (and I guess I should count Nancy) from that generation grew up. I have a question about Julia Shearer. According to the AWHP, Dan and Susan adopted her at the age of 10. She first appeared at age 17 in 1982 played by Kyra Sedgwick. Prior to that Susan had last been in Bay City in 1979 divorcing Dan. Was Julia talked about prior to 1982 or was the adoption a retcon in order to fill in a family void?

If you put lyrics in your song I *will* notice them and they *will* affect my enjoyment of it. I'm delighted for those who enjoy the lyrics or who can ignore them, but please allow me to appreciate entertainment in my own way. As Judge John Hodgman would say, people like what they like.