Xanthe

Watching the Netflix series The Residence and did not recognize Julian McMahon (Ian Rain on Another World) as the Australian Prime Minister until I looked him up.

If Reginald had had more dimensions he probably wouldn't have been killed off and Carl might not have been brought back to fill the international supervillain role. I think though that the Loves were also severely damaged by the way Nicole and Peter were made irredeemable and written out. I definitely feel that loss more than the loss of Reginald, primarily since they were good characters to begin with and were only ruined during this period.

So many things would have had to be different for Mary to want to go back to Reginald. It could have been interesting if it had been handled completely differently but as it was we had a very black and white Mary good/Reginald bad. If she had been able to ignore his worldly crimes and how he treated his own children there was still the fact that he had separated her from her children. Maybe if they had shown us more intimacy and affection between them and had allowed him to have real vulnerabilities it could have worked but as it played out they didn't do much to present him with any sympathetic hook. There are a lot of ways to define wanting things to work. Fans are mostly thinking of preserving or restoring characters and an atmosphere that drew them to the show. The sponsor may only be thinking of the bottom line. When a producer or HW comes in and decides that their vision will deliver for the bottom line and they need to fire most of the cast in order to do it it can feel very much like not caring.

I would argue that Another World never played "everything" for laughs. Even when there were comedic scenes in some storylines there were other storylines that were not intended as comedy. You give 1988 as the end point, and Mary was on the canvas from August 1986 to February 1989, so she must have overlapped with the despised laughs you are referring to at least half of the time she was there. I honestly can't recall any real comedy that Mary would have been part of. I don't think she was lighthearted about choosing between two husbands, MJ's prostitution, Kathleen's death, or even her son Scott dating her daughter Cheryl. I would have said that the amount of comedy depended on the head writer and there was more comedy under Richard Culliton and Gary Tomlin in 1984 than subsequent headwriters. I guess there was an outbreak of more comedy when Cecile kidnapped Cass from his wedding in 1986, but in general the Sin Stalker wasn't presented as funny, Mitch's return wasn't funny, John's arrival wasn't funny, Reginald wasn't funny. The tone was serious even if the plots verged on the ludicrous. And maybe that's what you mean -- but I would make a distinction between intentional comedy and storylines I can't take seriously for other reasons.

Thanks for letting us know. Take it easy and don't risk your health -- whenever you're in good condition is soon enough.

"To give her child a name" just means to make the child legitimate and be able to take the father's surname.

Denise was the best thing about that otherwise ridiculous plotline. I wasn't familiar with her work on Days of Our Lives or General Hospital but I could see her warmth and charisma as Mary even though the Another World storyline was a bit lacking.

Didn't she know when she involved him in her scheme, before the character was introduced? I thought she tracked down Janice's son and poisoned his mind against Rachel in order to get him on board. It's a bit confusing because in the summer of 1988 we get a lot of Drew Marsten (whom I had forgotten was Nicole's ex) and mentions of a mysterious Countess and also Reginald working to undermine Cory. Drew disappears around the same time Evan arrives, and gradually we get the reveals that he is in cahoots with Iris, Janice's son, etc.

The Cosby Show recorded in the same studio in Brooklyn. AW had had more black characters for a few years after Quinn first appeared. Not all of them lasted a long time, but we had the Morgans (Bob, Henrietta, RJ, Mary Sue), Quinn's brother Ed, Abel Marsh and his twin Leo Mars, Roy Bingham, Lily, and finally Carter and Grant Todd.

Felicia and Rachel were suddenly represented as friends when Mitch came back to Bay City in 1986 in order to try to add tension to the storyline of Mitch and Felicia getting together. I suppose we are lucky that Margaret DePriest didn't eliminate Felicia as she did Quinn and Maisie for being outside the "core families" of McKinnon/Love/Cory. Felicia was more antagonistic when she was first introduced. She brought Carl to town not knowing he was Donna's ex. She was carrying on an affair with Cass while he was sneaking around with Cecile behind her back and was livid with him when she found out. She was resentful when Cass signed Julia to Winthrop Publishing. She was friendly with Lily though IIRC.

I blame Mitch.

Carter & Thomasina were also stuck with a baby almost immediately and didn't get much to do after they finished high school. Carter's father was killed off and Marley drifted out of their friend group because of Jake. They left town after Carter's father died (of tomb dust!) and before Quinn died (unreasonably murdered by the Sin Stalker for dating Zack Edwards).

I'm trying to think whether AW had anything remotely resembling that once Steve was killed off and Alice left a widow. So many young love stories were wrapped up either by marrying and leaving town or marrying and killing off one party. Maybe they acted in the final year as if Vicky and Jake had been that couple all along, but they both had better other mates along the way and also Jake was actively hostile to Vicky at too many points without any subtext of caring about her.

I enjoyed Sally's story from her engagement to Peter all the way through to right before Majorca, so I would have a hard time giving that up for the sake of trying to make Amanda and Sam theoretically better. I thought the escalation of Sally's troubles from Donna's interference, secret love child, engagement to David for the wrong reasons, falling for Catlin, jilting David, trying to take Kevin from David leading to David's murder and Catlin's absolutely stupid confession to take the blame for her, and then Catlin's trial and aftermath all kept the story moving in directions you wouldn't necessarily expect but all made sense. Full disclosure: I don't really care for location shoots on soaps where most of the time outdoor scenes are clearly in studio. It feels weird to see the cast in natural light under real trees and sometimes the destination doesn't make any sense. And although obviously it was good to get a resolution to the murder mystery and get Catlin off death row (probably too harsh a sentence for the crime), the motive and the criminal were not very satisfying. Even though she had started dating Peter, Emily Benson still had minor character written all over her. But also the transition into a lower key daily life, the introduction of Brittany and the recasting of Sally were all less effective. Catlin was limited to occasional private detection work and being protective of Brittany, but he didn't have much else to do once Blaine and Larry had left. (He should at least have been dealing with raising Kevin but Kevin and Liz had also been written out. He could have interacted with Donna more over Brittany but his fling with Donna was mostly ignored once Sally was gone.)

Maybe if they had leaned into actual characterization instead of letting plot drive the whole story they could have made something actually interesting out of a spoiled princess too young to have a baby, but it seems to me transparent that they wanted to drive conflict by first of all making Amanda's lover Mitch (Mac's worst enemy!)'s brother and then forcing her into a shotgun marriage ... but of love. It would have been more interesting if she had had the abortion, or put the burden of raising the baby on Ada, or with or without the baby become estranged from Mac and Rachel in order to be with Sam. Amanda never had to really reckon with being spoiled and privileged -- she just took it for granted and built herself an implausible career at Brava. I liked Christine Tucci as well because she was a stronger performer and I thought the writing was more willing to make Amanda look less than perfect.

If Sally Field had been more generous about the writing I would say that her assessment is really very fair. I found Soapdish very funny. The cast is great. Delirious with John Candy and Mariel Hemingway (and Emma Samms!) came out the same year and I had expected to prefer Delirious, but Soapdish is one that I can watch repeatedly.

His original motives were unclear and all we knew was that he was working for Iris. But when it was revealed that Evan was Janice's son we found out that he had fallen in with Iris not because he wanted to follow Iris specifically but because he had his own anti-Rachel agenda. Charles Grant had more charisma than the later recast Eric Scott Woods who seemed younger to me.

I think it was definitely a surprising reveal in the storyline. I had a hard time appreciating Evan because I couldn't get behind his interest in Amanda. But that's because I never thought Sandra Ferguson made her a compelling character (although to give her credit she occasionally had decent emotional scenes with Mac or Rachel).

Thanks for these. I can't recall -- did Evan's vendetta have any position on Mitch, or was it all about Rachel? @Maxim have you seen any Frames intreracting with Mitch in any way?

The thing that I am stuck on is that the in studio scenes in Egypt started airing in mid-October. It seems very strange that they would have planned to have a couple of weeks of studio scenes airing before they started showing location footage. Normally even though some scenes in a remote-infused storyline are in studio, they would start airing a mixture of studio and location footage at the same time. I suspect they had put Arizona in their back pocket well before the Achille Lauro (hence Hawk arriving in September) and possibly moved up the Egypt in-studio action so that the remote Arizona piece unfolded during November. The Achille Lauro may have been the final straw but I would bet it was not the first time they considered the risk. I have found one somewhat contemporaneous reference published on October 19th but pinned to an October 7th* "diary entry" mentioning that the location shoot in Egypt had been changed to Arizona. "International terrorism has its effect on daytime drama, too. Another World producers had scheduled an elaborate and expensive location shoot in Egypt this fall, But with the serious military attacks and hijackings going on, they decided to play it safe. They are going to Arizona instead. The cast members involved were disappointed but understood the decision." *Undated, but specified as the Monday before Melody Thomas's wedding to Ed Scott. But of course it's possible that the first draft referred to Egypt and was revised after October 7th to mention the cancellation before it went to press. But even making the decision the week of October 7th seems tight to get the Egypt scenes to air on the 17th/18th. I would love to find something from a daily news cycle that would be clearer about the dates.

"Aunt Blanche" first appears toward the end of this episode, about 57 minutes in.

Sorry, I don't know the non-AW ones. In addition to the 2x Cass disguised himself as Krystle (1984 to hide from Tony Jones, 1994 investigating Felicia's disappearance), there was one occasion in October 1987 where Cass imposter Rex Allingham dressed as a woman and, claiming to be Nicole's Aunt Blanche, disrupted her date with another man. (At the time I don't think the audience yet knew that it wasn't Cass.)

I found the reference in the AWHP synopses -- it was 1995 but not directly related to the loanshark.

The timing is strange, though. How far in advance would they normally be on location? The Achille Lauro hijacking was on October 7, 1985. Nancy had arrived in Egypt in the storyline by October 18. But the character of Hawk, Chris' Native American friend from Arizona, had already appeared onscreen by September and brought a letter telling Chris to be in Egypt by October 25th. Why did they already have the link to Arizona before the reason to cancel the shoot in Egypt? The dust and the jar it came in were from Egypt though. Nancy bought it there and sent it to Mac as a gift before she came back to the states and followed Chris to Arizona.

The transition from Neal to Adam was very abrupt, and to be honest my theory is that the character of Neal was designed so that we think he is super shady but then it turns out that he was on the side of good all along so Neal could have seamlessly become a hero of the BCPD with no need for Adam. I don't know whether Robert Lupone was hired on a short contract or if he was fired from a longer-term contract because they decided they wanted someone who was more of a leading man type, but I can imagine a scenario where Charles Grant did both the undercover Egyptian treasure/flirt with Victoria and the straighter-arrow day to day police investigation. But in my imagined scenario the MJ prostitution plotline probably doesn't exist and instead he probably continues a relationship with Victoria. The story seems very odd to me. I assume that David Canary would have been included only because a plotline where Steve is going to Finland in which only Rachel is seen in actual Finland seems unlikely. The synopses explicitly mention that Alice can't go with Steve but would whoever was playing Alice at that time have had the kind of clout to get the remote cancelled? It also strikes me as unlikely that production would have approved the expensive location shoot and *then* cancelled it only because of jealousy. It seems more likely that they rejected it because of the expense but then the jealousy part got added to the gossip speculatively, possibly because while it was being worked out they justified not including more castmembers because of the expense.