Xanthe

Sally went out with Gil a few times before she got engaged to Peter. I thought the irony of Donna ruining Peter's engagement to sweet reformed Sally only for her to realize she had matched him with pernicious Cecile was a delicious escalation. If Donna had had anything other than class against Sally I think Cecile and Peter would have been just more of the same. I didn't feel like Mary Page Keller's Sally was a damsel all the time. She had a sense of humour about a lot of things and she did run her own life (even if marrying David was a bad idea).

Frankly that whole scene being an argument about whether it was worse for Michael to lose his unborn son vs for Reginald to lose his unborn grandson and have that as the climactic issue that finally killed Reginald was gross to me. The harm Reginald did Donna is what should have been the focus, followed by the cascade of damage to Victoria, Marley, Peter, Mary, the McKinnon family, and probably a bunch of other people I can't think of (did he kill both Zane and Sally?). "I could have had a son!" should not trump "You damaged your existing children and grandchildren!"

Wasn't her real father Felicia's ex, Louis St George? But even if she came from a good background, she was more likely to marry for money than for love.

In my experience people mingle with other players of various ages in intra-club racquet sports, so I don't think we were supposed to interpret Donna's escort as being a contemporary of Peter's, especially since they didn't include any details about the other lawyer attending school at the same time. I may be misremembering, but I thought that at the end of the previous episode they actually showed Felicia taking the clips out to let down her long hair, and that Linda had actually been growing her hair out (and wearing it up until the dramatic reveal) for the change. But it's possible that I was simply naive about hair extensions and made a lot of assumptions.

When Kathleen was researching Mary's past, she had lunch with Jake's mother (then called Helen) somewhere near Chicago. Aunt Helen talked about how she had looked after Mary and Vince's children (including baby Cheryl) so Mary could work for the Loves. So at that time Aunt Helen was in Bay City. Jake's family may have lived in Bay City at that time and moved to PA later so he could grow up with Victoria. Aunt Helen rushes off to pick up a friend from the airport, so it seems as if she is likely living not far from Chicago during this period. But she never visited Bay City before or since and seems to be on bad terms with Jake and possibly Vince. I remember when Jake first showed up MJ and Kathleen commented that when they had last seen him he was fat and homely, so obviously they were not supposed to have seen him very recently.

So based on this they were making Rachel and Michael exact contemporaries (both in 8th grade) and their mothers both working single mothers. Michael says he's been away for 19 years which would be since 1967, consistent with Marley and Victoria's conception at that point. But Rachel also claims they were watching The Mickey Mouse Club, which should have been 1959 at the latest. If Michael was in 8th grade in 1959 that suggests he would have been closer to 21 in 1967, about 4 years older than Donna. This version of Michael's early life also seems inconsistent with the version they had when John came on the scene. I may be misremembering but I thought they had Clara living on the family farm. I don't recall if they ever had her cross paths with Ada.

I'm inclined to think that it was less a failure to do homework and more a desire to keep their mature heroines from tipping into middle age. By claiming that Rachel and Michael were contemporaries they blur the lines around Rachel's actual age.

I don't remember the early interactions between Rachel and Donna -- I do remember when Michael was introduced they indicated that Rachel had known him when they were younger, but not as Donna's boyfriend. But I did not exactly picture Iris and Donna as anything as vulgar as neighbours -- as the elite of Bay City I thought they might have met at society functions. And they did both know Brian, although being married to him and using him as an occasional proper escort are of course completely different things. When Marley was introduced she was 17 and Jamie was at least 5 years older, possibly more. I don't remember how close they were supposed to be as contemporaries during the Jensen/Russell Todd/Chris Bruno stages of life, but for people closer to 30 a 5-year age difference is obviously much less significant. Marley and Jamie's much younger aunt Nancy were considered contemporaries during the Ellen Wheeler years as high school seniors.

If I recall correctly, during Anne Howard's time, there was a photograph of Elizabeth Love that looked just like Nicole. I wasn't sure whether Jason's interest was supposed to be because Nicole looked just like Elizabeth or because they intended it to turn out that Nicole was his daughter.

Beverlee's Iris was in fact arrested for shooting Kirk Laverty in 1979.

One of the first things Iris did was to go over to see Michael and Donna and arrange to buy their apartment from them. She introduced herself to Donna [then played by Philece Sampler] as Mrs Alex Wheeler and Donna promptly identified her as Mac's daughter Iris and gushed about how she knew her by reputation. I found myself trying to imagine how Anna Stuart would have played that scene instead. It seemed a little strange that Iris and Donna would not have been supposed to have known each other in the past (even though of course they never interacted onscreen since Texas spun off before the Love family was introduced) in Bay City -- I would have loved it if Donna had mentioned Brian Bancroft to Iris for example.

I had remembered it as Iris explaining her accent by saying she had been in Europe rather than Australia -- or at least I remember thinking that the explanation didn't match the accent. I just watched Carmen's first day as Iris and was surprised that she got the news that she was Mac's bio daughter after all off her chest so early.

Sometimes it does seem as if people were cast purely based on looks -- although I suppose in some cases it's possible that the audition was strong but the actor found it hard to keep up with the pace of daytime. How much influence does a good casting director have vs the HW and EP? For example I thought the early 80s cast of AW was generally very strong, and my dissatisfaction with the later 80s cast felt very tied to Margaret DePriest's vision as HW, and of course the huge amount of turnover.

While I can't blame Sandra Ferguson for not wanting to work with RKK, I found the Amanda and Evan scenes quite painful. I skipped over Stacey and Derek altogether. It was nice to see Felicia and Lucas, though. I liked her much better with Lucas than with Mitch.

Sad to hear about his illness and his passing. Kind words from Hank Cheyne, Missy Hughes, and Sharon Gabet: https://soaphub.com/days-of-our-lives/soap-opera-veteran-marcus-smythe-dies-at-70/

I think Christine said that she and Alicia were very close, so that could account for her participation. I was initially surprised that Christine seemed so shocked when Kale told about Doug Watson's death but then I realised that she never worked with Doug as Mac. I have to say that Christine was my favourite Amanda and I would have loved to have seen the direction her portrayal could have taken Amanda in 1987 (probably without Sam, or at least a different edge to that relationship). I wonder whether the storyline for Mac would have introduced Paulina's mother for a love triangle. Mac and Rachel breaking up and getting back together was such a well-worn routine I am a little relieved if we missed out on that. The dynamic of Paulina as Mac's daughter in conflict with Rachel and Iris was more interesting. I loved Anna Stuart's story about how she felt strongly that Kale was The One for the role. I enjoyed the introduction of Michael and his interactions with Anna and Ellen Wheeler as Marley and Victoria tremendously. I liked him with David Forsyth as John as well even though the storyline of Donna's overwhelming attraction to John was putrid. But I agree his later storylines with Stacey (and with Iris and the spying or whatever) did not help his character.

Since we have been discussing 1985 I spent too long trying to understand how little Kevin Thatcher had been sacrificed before I figured out it was adult Kevin Anderson referred to here. I thought it was too bad that Alice and Liz took Kevin Thatcher offscreen and he was never relevant again. It was not a flood but a boat trip to Alaska. Catlin and Brittany and their young son Evan all went overboard and were separated from each other. He believed that both Brittany and Evan had died (bodies had been recovered and buried). I don't know if there was ever any clear explanation for why after Zane rescued her they were unable to find Catlin. On the one hand she only knew him as Josh Peterson. On the other he was still using the name Josh Peterson when he came to Bay City, so there could have been a trail? I don't think they intended Brittany to be a villain initially. She was stubborn and single-minded about getting Catlin back, though, which made her treat Sally callously. I think Kevin was the only person she was ever kind to -- all of her other relationships seemed to be focused on getting what *she* wanted (which was always (1) Catlin and then later (2) baby Peter Reginald (secretly called Catlin behind Peter's back)). If they had wanted her to be sympathetic they could have had her support another character instead of always being about herself. I don't know whether it was Sharon Gabet who decided to lean into being unsympathetic or the writers who didn't think there was any reason to shade her character, but they wound up in a really uncomfortable place where Brittany was being abused and threatened by Peter and it seemed close to being a fair punishment for her treatment of him as well as a ploy to make her sympathetic as a victim. Reading through the summary of 1985 I was thinking what it could have been like if instead of Sally, deaf Brittany had been elevated as the Le Soleil Woman and had some interest and conflict unrelated to Catlin and Sally.

The Another World character was Nelson Maxwell. There was a whole mystery about his identity because Cass and Nicole only knew him as Nelson but they were looking for someone named Max.

John Saxon, who played Edward Gerard on Another World, has died. His character was introduced as having transformed Fanny Grady into Felicia Gallant. i always wondered about the casting because before he appeared he ["Monsieur"] was described as if he were very French, and then John Saxon was not at all.

There were also the Soaps & Serials novelizations from the 80s. The Another World home page lists various publications ... http://www.anotherworldhomepage.com/public.html

I had forgotten that Russ was around in this era. It appears that he has forgiven and forgotten how Rachel treated him and Alice in the past. I suppose at this point Rachel was a heroine for having saved Mac and there was no reason to complicate things by having Russ have any comment on whether or not Rachel's babies are always an unmixed blessing.

Wasn't it France where she and Jamie first connected? Or was Italy where Marley went during the who shot Jake trial later so Vicky had to impersonate her?

When would you say Marley's own arc began?

I remember *hating* the Marley wig Anne Heche wore in this era. It looked so stiff and unnatural compared to her real hair as Vicky. I was never a big fan of Anne's Marley in general, and in the scene where she objects to Vicky's intention to keep her baby it feels more like she exists only as an antagonist for Vicky and not a character in her own right. In fact if she were not officially the "good" twin she comes across as at best inconsiderate. I had forgotten that Chris and John had some kind of thing going on, and I kept waiting for John cuddling with Chris to turn out to be her fantasy daydream. And oh, how sweet, John's insistence that she must do the office work because she is too pretty to do construction is apparently fine and not sexist or anything? I sort of liked Mary Layne as Chris but the character was a broad deranged mess. Based on the timing I'm not sure whether this is during the writers' strike or immediately after. There were no writing credits in the end crawl, so maybe during?

Thank you! I could not recognize him at all but now that you point it out of course it is.