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She appeared onscreen not long after Rose Livingston and Sara Montaigne, and we found out that Sara was Rose's estranged daughter. I wonder whether Peggy might have been part of that family group -- or else they were just juggling a few different potential mysteries so that they could develop whatever seemed to be getting the best response from the audience. They didn't do anything much with Rose and Sara really either. Maybe Rose would have become more prominent if Rachel and Mac had split up over Mitch, or if Sara had really flourished. In some ways I can picture Cheryl being affected by MJ's prostitution similarly to how Josie was distressed by finding out about Sharlene. But I can also see that Josie as a Frame being involved with Matthew would have different stakes for Rachel and Sharlene than Cheryl being involved with Scott. I do think the solution for Cheryl would have had to be a badder boy than Scott -- either a real bad boy who would do her wrong, or the kind of bad boy (not Chad!!!) who is essentially misunderstood and other people just don't understand. Cheryl would also have been better off with some friends her own age. Matthew and Josie benefited a bit from having other teenagers to interact with.

I think Cheryl was essentially replaced by Josie, and it seems likely that Lemay wanted to bring the Frames back into the picture and for a variety of reasons that it would be McKinnons who would make way for them. Cheryl didn't really get many layers -- she was pretty and kind and sweet and faded into the background so that Scott could participate in the AIDS storyline with Dawn. Looking at the AWHP, other than (not very) shockingly being in love with her mother's adopted son Scott, Cheryl apparently went out with Sam and flirted with much-too-old-for-her John Hudson and MJ's ex-boyfriend/pimp Chad. I know MJ told Mary that she had been a prostitute, but did she tell Cheryl and did she tell anyone about Chad's pimping?

Garneau was in the Liberal party and his riding was in Montreal. He was the first Canadian in outer space.

Astronaut Marc Garneau has died. He had also been an MP and Cabinet Minister until 2023. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/marc-garneau-passes-away-1.7552640

It has come up in this thread before that early on it was specified that Another World was set in Bay City, Michigan, but somewhere along the line the references shifted to Illinois-ish. I have tried and failed to find any specific clear reference to Michigan, although there have been some circumstantial details that suggest Bay City is not in Illinois. i notice that the AW Bible begins by describing the location as simply "not far from Oakdale", but things do change (the bible calls Pat Cynthia) and we can't take that as pure canon.

Dragging this quote over from the Texas thread just because it shows a reference to Bay City as a fictional location at least as early as 1981. It doesn't quote Gail Kobe as saying it directly but the point she is making about the Houston setting of Texas does seem to take it for granted that Bay City is not real.

I know we have discussed the location of Bay City in the Another World thread and the fact that originally Irna conceived of it as being the real Bay City MI, and it was later writers that treated it as a fictional Bay City [probably IL]. This article seems to suggest that that idea was well-established by 1981. I wonder when it started.

Very sad to hear. Because of The Powers That Be, I always pictured Valerie Mahaffey as Maris on Frasier. I still occasionally think of her in a Little Orphan Annie costume at the Annual Raisin Festival Masquerade Ball in the soap spoof miniseries Fresno.

She never was a villainess. At most she clashed a little bit with Cass and Felicia when she first came on only because she didn't just do whatever Cass wanted in his scheme to find Cecile. I agree she didn't resemble Nancy Frangione and they only got away with the body double storyline because Nancy was nowhere nearby while Kathleen was making decoy appearances in a blonde wig. And I am more grateful than not that they cast Julie Osburn because she was a great sister for Kathleen Layman's MJ and also fit in with Cass and Felicia without being like Cecile.

I feel a little bit similar about Ben Schnetzer since I remember so clearly when he was born. But obviously not quite the same since it was not his mother onscreen.

I had forgotten that. Didn't Julian also keep company with Dannii Minogue? (Kylie is also in The Residence as herself.)

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.)