Xanthe

On the one hand it appears the part of Mark was recast after only a few weeks. On the other Amanda whom he had been dating reconciled with Sam after a couple of months and that seemed to leave the character nowhere. Seems a lot like planned obsolescence since they didn't set up any other storyline for him. I noticed the entries for Jake's parents Alice and Ray (as they were called to set up the Kevin half brother storyline). It made me wonder who had played Jake's mother, then called Helen, who had lunch with Kathleen the day Marissa was flying back to Bay City in August 1986. Since she's not in the Minor Characters I suppose if she's anywhere she's just listed as a Day Player without a character name.

I am not an expert, but I am going to guess that it was in fact scripted because of how clean Neal's line and reaction shot were. If it wasn't scripted I would have expected some scrambling to catch the reaction (or only get the voice offscreen).

Wow. Tomb dust disease had a lot of symptoms when it didn't knock you out right away. Sometimes Mac seemed to be manic, with his enthusiasm for electronic books; he was a bit more paranoid when he fired Liz; and he also seemed to have some kind of dementia when he forgot when it was and called Neal Alfred (or Albert) and tried to call Ada's house to reach Rachel. Neal does come across in the episode here as more leading-man-like than I remembered, with a bit of an edge. The bit where he blurts out to the twin he thinks is Marley that he's in love with Victoria seemed very odd. I mean I understand from a story point of view that it piques Vicky's interest so she calls him, but it didn't seem internally motivated in any rational way, especially given that he appeared to sincerely believe he was talking to Marley. I agree that Mac's brother and nephews always seemed to have come out of nowhere and didn't really feel fully integrated, especially the way Neal disappeared as soon as Adam arrived. Maybe they didn't think to bring Dennis back because they thought he would be too old for Victoria. Or they didn't want to stir up memories of Iris.

Just saw the post about Robert LuPone's death in the In Memoriam thread. He played Neal Cory on Another World for about 6 months. The character, although technically Mac's nephew, didn't really seem to fit anywhere -- it wasn't clear to me whether he was always intended as short term or if they decided he wasn't working out and replaced him with Adam. I had forgotten that although he seemed to be trying to steal the Egyptian treasure it had turned out that he was actually an undercover federal agent. His behaviour continued to seem sinister and he harassed Victoria and possibly almost raped her. Then he left immediately once Adam arrived and was never mentioned again.

Thanks for this. Quite a career. Even at her worst Victoria was never an "evil" twin and I wish the NYT had not reductively described the twins as "good and evil". (And if you didn't know the characters based on the ordering of the names you might think that Marley was the evil one.)

Thanks for this. I find it hilarious how Liz just dumps Kevin out so she can talk confidentially with Catlin. I also was starting to roll my eyes at Sandy because it seemed like he was taking offense that Mac wanted to have Peter go over his deal. Peter's a lawyer! He has specific expertise that you don't have! It is normal to have lawyer review contracts as a matter of course! But the scene ended and we didn't come back to it. The snippets are a bit out of order since we seem to start with David already dead and then see him alive then Catlin in jail for his murder again. David was murdered on May 4th. Nothing seems to be later than Catlin's trial or before the arrival of MJ so I would guess in the range of February to June.

Peter wasn't present at the reading of Reginald's will in 1988 but according to the AWHP synopses, Scott got a fair bit of money, Mary got property in Paraguay, and the rest went to Vicky. Donna and Nicole explicitly got nothing. No mention of Peter or Marley so I assume they also got nothing. Of course there was also a confusing plot at the time where Nicole had a condition on her trust fund that absolutely forced her to have to marry in order to access the money even though there had been no similar condition on Marley's trust fund in 1985. There are probably many ways however that they could explain Peter having massive wealth suddenly if they had wanted to. Reverting "Little C" or Catlin Jr to Peter Reginald and ignoring the whole storyline where Brittany tricked Peter into believing he was her baby's father and they had the whole thing out on the stand during her trial for Peter's attempted murder seems much more challenging, and possibly not worth it just to bring Brittany back. I think it would be easier and possible more fruitful to instead reveal that Emily Benson had not died and she had secretly raised her and Peter's baby. If absolutely essential to bring back Brittany, why not retcon that although Little C was Catlin's baby, actually Brittany had been pregnant with Peter's baby when she left town with Catlin and that baby had been raised to believe Catlin was its father. (I am starting to warm to the idea of Brittany's return, provided we find out that her appeal failed and she spent some time in prison.)

As I recall he went to California for pilot season but didn't get anything so returned to AW.

If you had asked me to name characters on Santa Barbara, I would never have come up with Megan and Greg. But as soon as the discussion started here I could vividly picture Paul Johansson (whom I clearly remember as the least interesting character in Soapdish) and Meg Bennett.

Janet wasn't the same generation as Pat and Alice, was she?

By mid-1987 only Wyndham, Watson, Ford, and Dano had been with the show for more than a year or so. And only Constance Ford had been there longer than Victoria Wyndham. I am not sure whether Wyndham and Watson had credits above Ford simply because they had leading roles and Ada was more supporting, or if it is possible that Ford was not on contract at some points during her tenure. Contract actors were always listed above day players. The only special credit I can think of from the mid-1980s onward is that Denise Alexander was put at the end of the credits as "and Denise Alexander as Mary McKinnon".

I agree regarding the dates. If Peter is there to visit Emily and Dee has just arrived, it must be January. The AWHP has Dee's first day as January 22 1985 and Emily's last day as January 28. I think it's the 22nd.

I think we were supposed to believe that Reginald was capable of concealing his true self and appeared to Mary as charming and refined. He kept her comfortably in their hacienda in Paraguay and neither she nor Scott knew that he was an international criminal and homewrecker. I think we have tried to puzzle out the timeline before and it's hazy. If Cheryl was a baby when Mary left then we have to assume it's been at least 15 years. I think Mary and Vince were supposed to have started their family young, but I don't think it was clear how much older Kathleen and MJ were supposed to be (and whichever of the two was supposed to be the eldest at a given point in time). You would have to have a 12-year gap between the oldest and the youngest (not impossible, 29 vs 17 in 1986) or the McKinnons not starting their family right away to match the 15 years with the Vulture.

Part of the problem was that either the writing or the performing (or both) failed to give Reginald any real depth of emotion. He spent so much time lying to people that when he told Mary and Scott he loved them it felt only like he wanted to control them and when he spent a lot of time with Victoria it seemed to be just to spite Michael. The only unselfish thing I remember Reginald ever doing was the dramatic moment when the Vince impostor he had hired to pretend to attempt to murder him threw his knife just when Victoria stepped in the way, and Reginald instinctively moved to protect her (and wound up, ironically, being injured himself . . . which suited his dastardly plan to frame Vince anyway). Part of the point was obviously supposed to be that despite it all he actually loved Victoria and didn't want her hurt -- but it just wasn't properly integrated into his character or into his interactions with Michael and Donna. They could have done so much more to show that his feelings for the few people he did supposedly love were real in his way.

According to the imdb, she also has credits as Rhonda Jensen. They tied her very closely to Reginald in a way that essentially made her his patsy. If that whole storyline had been more nuanced maybe she could have had more relationships with Scott, Mary, Cheryl, Nancy, even Brittany. Vicky didn't really have an existing relationship with Jamie, and the recast Larry Lau started around the same time as Rhonda. I don't know if they were already thinking about putting those characters together but in hindsight it feels like they needed to wait for a Lisa in order to make enough conflict for it to be interesting.

Thanks. I see in the Soap Hoppers thread the only AW credit for Grenier is currently "Greg Brady" in 1995. Now we know another! Taking a customer's clothes and forcing her to stay in a bubble bath until her father bails her out seems a tad out of line. And frankly I would have expected Victoria to be able to figure out how to cover herself in any of the bedclothes or draperies in the room rather than put up with it. It feels like when my friends and I would play Barbies as children and come up with salacious and improbable storylines in which the dolls were obliged to dress in as few clothes as possible without being naked. (The winner wore a single belt of scotch tape.)

Is that Zach Grenier as Mr Kessler?

Sweet innocent Marley also had a bit of a dry sense of humour -- she would react to Donna or Nancy's ridiculousness with a mocking seriousness. I think there probably were some elements where Marley did get limited in order to make the distinction from Vicky but it wasn't a sudden obvious change in the character one day as far as I recall. I do not want to comment on the most brilliant transformation I have ever seen (live onstage) as that would be a spoiler, so I will mention instead the sensation I had watching Tatiana Maslany on Orphan Black. She did a fabulous job differentiating between multiple characters, with different tones and accents and postures. She was also helped by wigs and clothes and things but it was so easy to think that Tatiana Maslany was playing Sarah while some other actress whose name you couldn't quite think of was playing Cosima or Alison. I had that feeling with Ellen Wheeler's Marley and Vicky.

Donna admitting to Marley and Victoria that she was their mother wasn't really a reveal, story-wise. The only new piece was that this was the point where Marley found out for the first time. Donna had of course been confiding in Peter and when Marley was stricken with a disease that required a bone marrow transplant they were distressed because they couldn't tell the doctor that they weren't her siblings. Victoria made Jake and Bridget give her one day in Marley's place before she would agree to reveal herself to the family and donate the bone marrow, and it was when Victoria was pretending to be Marley and before Donna knew she existed that Donna confessed to "Marley" that she was her mother. When Marley didn't remember later Donna assumed it was because she had been so sick at the time. So there were a couple of months where Victoria, Jake, and Bridget all knew and Marley didn't yet, while Donna believed neither Marley nor Victoria knew. I think initially the audience had it confirmed in October 1984 that Marley was Donna's daughter. Then Jake arrived in February 1985 as Ben was leaving town. Bridget arrived the next month, and then in April Victoria was revealed. My impression based on what I read in the press at the time was that they had not planned out the twin idea when Marley was first introduced, but that they saw something in Ellen Wheeler after she had played Marley for a while that gave them the idea that she could add a twin character to her repertoire and it would really open out the Donna/Marley storyline, which obviously it did for years. But I don't think they knew from the very beginning. Thinking about the twin thing makes me wonder about the evolution of Leo Mars from Abel Marsh. Interestingly, Abel Marsh is listed as a main character on the AWHP but Leo Mars as a minor character. Did they hire Joe Morton with the intention of having him play twins, or did they expand his role because he had the range? (Did they ask him to sing and Joe Morton felt that it didn't make sense to have a singing doctor so they compromised by creating the performing twin?)

Ellen will always be my favourite Marley/Victoria because she did such a tremendous job physically differentiating between the twins and with the portrayal of Victoria's pain and neediness. Obviously some of the credit for the characterization goes to the writers but I thought that the character lost something when Rhonda Lewin and then Anne Heche played her as a bit of a spoiled brat who for some reason trusted Reginald and Peter. Even if Ellen's Vicky had allowed Reginald to pamper her she would I think have been on the alert to see what the catch was.

Wasn't one of the reasons they cast RKK as Bobby/Shane instead of bringing him back as Sam because Sandra Ferguson didn't want to work with him?

He and Ving Rhames were Cecile's guards when she kidnapped Cass the following year, 1986. Tommy Lee and the Plains Motel disco were the summer of 1985 at the same time as Lesoleil.

Jimmy and Polo are in the picture on the middle left. They were lackeys to Tommy Lee, the guy in the pics with Jimmy on the bottom left and right.

Peter likewise changed as he was recast -- from the original stalwart basically good guy to the duplicitous creep who tried to sabotage Sally's relationship with Catlin to the sniveling needy child who would do anything to gain Reginald's approval. More than the casting I think the writing was the root of the problem. When the Love family was introduced we got a very good sense of how their wealth and privilege had affected each of the children differently and yet convincingly. As time went on there was no clear sense that there was any difference in class between the Loves and anyone else in Bay City. (I'm not saying that egalitarianism is wrong, just that where the differences exist it adds depth to characterization to portray them.) I'm struggling to recall any real relationship they had that might have offered Nicole a lifeline instead of her being locked up and forgotten after she went off the deep end. I know when Nicole came back with her vendetta against Barbara Van Arkdale she didn't want anything to do with Reginald and got engaged to Cass (actually Rex Allingham impersonating Cass) in order to get access to her trust fund, while Donna was trying to get pregnant and also some bullshit regarding John that I don't even want to describe.

In 1990, Charles Keating directed a production of Romeo & Juliet in which Stephen Schnetzer played Mercutio. And here it is: