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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.

I know we have discussed the fact that Another World seemed to be planning a location shoot in Finland that got cancelled. I came across this item from the syndicated Soapbox column published June 14, 1982. "Soap operas have been experimenting extensively with on-location shooting in recent years to enhance storylines and increase their viewing audience. A major drawback is the added production costs involved. Another World, for example, cancelled a special trip for Victoria Wyndham (Rachel Cory on the show), who was scheduled to shoot scenes in Finland. The producers felt that the high price tag, along with resentment of the cast members who also wanted to travel but were to be left behind. was enough to scrap the whole project."

The first one is Cass Winthrop dressed as Krystle Lake on Another World (not from his original creation of the character to hide from the loan shark Tony the Tuna, but at a romance convention trying to find out what had happened to Felicia who was missing). The second one is also Another World, Jake McKinnon as Doris although I don't recall what his purpose was.

Charles Grant first appeared as Evan in September 1988. I was surprised to come across this item from December 1985, almost 3 years earlier: "Lots of action behind the scenes at Another World . . . I have bad news for fans of Christopher Holder (Peter Love). He will be leaving the show in the new year. I have heard that the producers are recasting the part and are also seeing actors for new roles. One of the main characters this spring will be Marlee [sic] and Victoria's father. The producers have been talking to Charles Flohe (John "Preacher" Emerson, Edge Of Night) about another new character to be featured. I will fill you in on the results as soon as I know." It seems obviously too early for anyone to have been planning to introduce Evan Frame. Based on the context he's not being considered as a recast of Peter. Maybe they were considering him for the character that turned out to be Neal, who started around the same time as Marcus Smythe as Peter?

I was looking at the AWHP synopses from the period where Quinn had a stalker in 1984 and it refers to pranks and phone calls. Does anybody remember what the pranks were? Or were they just disturbing phone calls?

I looked up Just In Time (Broadway jukebox musical about Bobby Darin that just opened) after seeing Jonathan Groff perform Beyond the Sea on The Late Show and noticed that Joe Barbara (Joe Carlino on Another World) is part of the cast.

Unfortunately I think in addition to the cast turnover, the story was hampered because it didn't try to give characters enough depth and it didn't build up strong networks of relationships. Which made it easy to write useful characters out permanently when their romances fell apart instead of shifting focus. I don't think the Sin Stalker's view of women was even internally consistent. He was killing prostitutes and then escalated to killing businesswomen he deemed slutty as well as Nancy's ex-boyfriend Greg. Ultimately it was revealed that he did this because he had been obsessed with Lisa Grady since she was a teenager and her slutty mother had been his patient. Ultimately he abducted Lisa and would have raped her except she revealed to him that she had been raped before and was therefore not the desirable virgin he had fantasized about. That is not a realistic serial killer story.

That story seems to have been a mess. Maybe it would be easier to understand in hindsight if Rachel and Mac had successfully built new relationships and continued in separate storylines, but it just seems so strange that Mac became engaged to Alice during his custody trial over Amanda and then back-from-the-dead Steve was in True Love with Rachel. Regarding the tomb dust, the whole Lesoleil/Chapin/Egypt/Arizona story was a weird distraction. The tomb dust itself was a strange magical weapon in a convoluted plan by Carl to kill Mac and I didn't mind Chris Chapin working to diagnose Mac's mystery illness. But I don't think they did a great job of balancing Nancy's romance with Chris vs Marley's romance with Jake. For both couples the resolution of Arizona brought them together. Jake and Marley got engaged not long afterward while there was a whole big thing between Ada and Nancy about whether it was OK for Nancy to live in sin with Chris. I'd also list Lumina among the worst plots. Maybe cancellation caused them to rein in something that would have paid off better, but what we got was an unpersuasive attempt to portray Amanda's love for Cameron as a grand romance.

Core families are useful insofar as they provide reasons for characters to interact and be affected by others on the canvas. New blood is useful to prevent impossible levels of endogamy where the next generation is first cousins with absolutely everyone. But I am not convinced that characters tied to core families are inherently less successful than brand spanking new characters. We would need a control where casting and writing can be completely ruled out as factors.

I don't remember the storyline with a camera behind a mirror -- what was that?

Jerry Lanning did sub for David Bailey in 1989, and he was the corrupt judge at the trial for Grant's murder (for which there were so many suspects I no longer remember who was actually on trial -- it must have been Paulina because I remember Tito in the judge's chambers) and I don't recall Lanning being more charismatic than Bailey. But then I liked Bailey well enough.

I have never seen Endless Love but I would say Russell Todd looked too handsome and buff here to be cast as a regular teenager. Was Tom Cruise in there as well?

I believe it's that the article describes Ada as the matriarch of the show for a quarter century, when Mary Matthews was the original matriarch until 1975 when the character died.

Not to take away from how those stories showed Rachel to advantage, but the boardroom conflicts at Cory were not as interesting to me as the lower-level office atmosphere in the early 80s with Pat and Cecile and Jamie and later Sally and Peter working together. I will never forgive Margaret Depriest for taking Jamie out of publishing to put him in the hospital. I don't remember how they handled Rachel's career as a sculptor during the later years other than the odd plot point. She was working on a bust during Lumina -- was it that she sculpted David Halliday and when the bust was cracked she recognized it as disfigured Jordan Stark? Or did she sculpt Stark and from that recognized the resemblance to Halliday? How similar was that plot to the bust she was working on when she was blind after the accident with Steve? Did that bust play any part in her realizing that "John Caldwell" was really Mac? That was on my mind after watching the AWHP photo montage -- the bust appeared to be clean-shaven so I presume it was of "John Caldwell".

And this is when I realised that I have been vaguely imagining A. R. Gurney's "Love Letters" every time I thought of the show Wyndham and Keating did. Although the SB actor didn't pan out and RKK was hired, I thought it might be possible that the "heart-wrenching" story could have included Ryan's organ donation somehow. But it's equally possible that it didn't.