Broderick

If you watch Lisa, Craig, and Betsy's scene with the volume off, it looks as though you're fast-forwarding, because Eileen Fulton's arms and hands and eyes are all moving at such break-neck speed. 

I sure will miss Gina.  When she came along and made the Phyllis character into a real person instead of an annoying, giggling, hip-swiveling, wind-up toy, I hoped I'd laid eyes on Stafford for the last time.  No such luck. 

Yep, Kay Chancellor rendered Casey obsolete in Nikki's life.   And while Roberta Leighton obviously had more chemistry with David Hasselhoff than Lynn Topping (the new Chris) did, Snapper and Chris were sacred to Bill Bell, and he didn't wanna break them up.   Like Eileen Davidson later on, Roberta Leighton was just one of those girls who sorta overpowered most of her male co-stars, which I felt was why she didn't work with Brock Reynolds, Lucas Prentiss, and Jonas NoName.  She COULD have been an interesting character because the past abuse she suffered from her father, but after the initial revelation of Nick's abuse, Bell seemed shy about digging too deeply into that.   And without that being explored, what the heck could you do with her, except just have her walk through a hospital room with a stethescope around her neck announcing, "She's holding her own for the moment, but she's not out of the woods yet."   lol.      

To be honest, Bill Bell couldn't think of anything to do with Casey Reed even in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when she was young and cute.  I always liked Roberta Leighton and thought she was an interesting and sorta unusual actress, but Bell seemed to have a really difficult time writing for her.   He brought her on the show basically to be an obstacle for NewSnapper & NewChris, but then decided he couldn't have Snapper boink anyone besides Chris.   So then he sorta tossed Casey to Brock (didn't work), to Lucas Prentiss (didn't work), to Jonas (didn't work), and then out the door.   There was a LOT that could've been done with Casey (specifically the abuse she suffered at the hands of her father Nick and her resulting iciness towards men), but Bell was a whole lot more interested in showing us Nikki being boinked by college professors to increase her GPA and boinked by drop-outs to up her self-esteem and getting VD.   He just didn't seemed invested in Casey.   Then Roberta Leighton botoxed & collagened herself half to death, and that was about the end of that, lol.    

Lola is a piece of work --- she makes a federal case out of a purse that costs more than $10, but she doesn't bat an eye about snatching up a new liver and a married dude.   Her priorities are bizarre. 

Eileen Davidson's version of Ashley just had so many strange nuances, quirks, and tics to her character that it was almost impossible for Bill Bell to pair her with someone initially.   Although Eileen was only 22 or 23 years old when she first came onto the show, she read as older, because of all the eye-rolling, hair-flicking, head-scratching, and impatient cutting off of other character's dialogue that characterized her portrayal.   (We don't usually think of such a young ingenue as developing such a "take charge" personality in scenes, but she definitely did.)   The poor little boy in the lab --- Eileen just ate him up and spat him out.   Same with Eric Garrison and Marc Mergeron.   Eileen just stole all the thunder from their scenes and made them look like patsies.   Eric Braeden was old enough (and experienced enough) not to let Eileen steal all of their scenes together, and I think that's why their pairing initially worked.   Braden and Terry Lester were about the only actors on the show who could "control" Eileen's tendency to snatch a scene completely away from her partner. 

(And this is why I felt Brenda Epperson bombed epically as Ashley.   Epperson was a very pretty girl, and did a good job of portraying a sweet soap opera heroine, but in no shape, form or fashion did she ever embody the quirky mannerisms that we'd come to expect from the Ashley Abbott character.)         

lol .... Yeah, that's little Marc Mergeron dancing with her.

22 minutes ago, Legacy said:

They still til this day never had a send off for Mary or a episode where Paul is dealing with his mom's passing or them developing some material for it.

Well, on the show Mary's been dead a pretty good while, and they've moved past it.   Remember, when Dina stabbed Nikki and/or torched the Underground last year, Paul was running around angrily threatening to arrest her.   Jack finally told him, "Look, Paul, my mother has Alzheimers.  Think about how you'd feel if this had been Mary, God rest her soul."   The implication was that Mary's been dead a pretty long time. 

The story seemed designed from the get-go that Carl wouldn't regain his memory and return to Mary, giving it a "tragic" undertone (which I enjoyed).  But as for the story itself, despite some good dialogue and some high quality acting from Doug Davidson and Carolyn Conwell, it all fell flat with me because I never thought Carl was dead in the first place.  I'd been thinking for 8 years that he was "at the station" or "in the other room", lol.  All of a sudden they were saying he was dead, and then Cricket was telling us, "No, he's not dead", which I didn't think he was anyhow.   Bill Bell just didn't lay quite enough groundwork to make us believe he was dead, IMHO.   

Of course even Mother Mary herself wasn't immune to being dumped.    During the Cassandra storyline in the late 1980s/early 1990s, Carl Williams and his policewoman partner (Salena?) were contract cast members, but Mother Mary was recurring.   By the late 1990s, Mary was back on contract, and of course Carl was completely missing in action until that wonderful, edge-of-your-seat Norfolk storyline. 

6 hours ago, vetsoapfan said:

 

At the time of the Williams' family introduction, William J. Bell gave the breakdown of the kids' ages as follows: Steve was 25, Todd was 22, Paul was 19, and Patty was 16. 

Hey, great information!  Thanks so much for providing that.   We could see in 1980 that Steve was a grown-ass man with a college degree (so 25 makes sense), Paul was constantly being badgered by Mother Mary for not being in college (so 19 makes sense), and Pip was always announcing her age.   Todd was more of a mystery (since he wasn't on camera), but I was pretty sure Mary made a comment one time to Steve about "your two younger brothers", so I figured Todd was intended by Bell to be one of the younger three kids. 

2 hours ago, BoldRestless said:

 And wasn't there originally a third Williams brother? 

Yes, there were four kids.   Steve was the oldest;  he was  preppy, confident, yuppie-type character who prized his virginity and delivered heart-warming lectures to everyone about making the most of their situation.   Then there was floundering teen Paul who was a drop-out and a complete disappointment to his parents.  And the little girl Patty (a/k/a "Pipsqueak" or "Pip" for short) who was about 15.    And then there was the unseen brother Todd who was "away studying to be a priest", which delighted Carl and most especially Mary, of course.   (Several lines of dialogue in 1980 indicated that Todd was probably even younger than Patty, or at the oldest, was slightly younger than Paul but slightly older than Patty.   He seemed to be away in Catholic prep school (high school) studying to be admitted to the seminary.  But by the time the character was finally introduced thirty years later in the form of Corbin Bernsen, he'd morphed into the oldest brother.   That didn't seem to be the Bill Bell's original intention for the character.  The idea was PROBABLY that we were going to meet him as a seminarian, as "The Thorn Birds", about the tempted priest, was very popular at the time.)     

Wasn't Carl Williams another Unneeded Father Figure who just vanished like Stuart Brooks and Neil Fenmore?    (In about 1999, Bell & Alden went through that whole agonizing harangue of Cricket running into Carl in the Norfolk airport, and Paul and Mary revealed that they'd been "grieving" over Carl's "death" for many, many years.   But I don't remember Carl Williams ever dying or any grieving.  I was thinking he just vanished in a puff of smoke sometime after the Cassandra Rawlins storyline ended and wasn't mentioned again until the Norfolk storyline.)

32 minutes ago, will81 said:

Liz was definitely still around until at least Jan 1985, maybe a bit after. When Kay held her dinner for John and Jill and planned to show her 'Winter Cabin Memories' slides, Liz served dinner. Jill had pawned all her jewels to try to get the money to pay off Esther for the negatives and Liz was around for that story. She was definitely gone by the time John found out about the affair though in the summer of 85.

That sounds right.   I remember that Liz was still around for Kay's facelift in 1984, still around for Nikki's wedding, and yeah, right on up through the beginning of the Kay's Photography Exhibit, lol.     Liz was dropped from contract status to recurring status a few months after Stuart was (I think he was bumped to recurring in 1983, and for Liz maybe it was 1984.)   Stuart basically said, "To hell with y'all" (evidently) and ended his availability for taping soon after the change in his contract status.  Liz, though, soldiered on for a year or so on recurring status.    And then it seems like she just disappeared without a trace, and I was wondering whether she'd reconciled with Stuart, or whether she was still in the (unseen) Foster house, or where she might be.   I remember when Sven popped a cap in Jill in 1986, I was curious if anyone would bother telling Liz that her daughter had been shot in the shower.  All of a sudden John Abbott told Mamie or Ashley or someone, "Oh, dear, I need to call Jill's mother and let her know what happened.   She's in London with Snapper and Chris, you know."   And I was like, "Really?  When the hell did she go there?!"  lol.  Next thing you knew, John Abbott was making a phone call, and there was old Liz, answering the phone in Snapper's London kitchen and gasping, "Poor Jill!"          

51 minutes ago, SoapDope said:

 

 

Bell seems to have given Robert Colbert (Stu) the shaft the way he done Dorothy Green (Jennifer) years prior when no longer had any use for the character he played. Green complained to the press about it and how her character Jennifer and all the older women on the show like Katherine/Vanessa/Liz/ were written as downtrodden mothers. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Liz was definitely "downtrodden", but the other three women over 40 --- Kay Chancellor, Vanessa Prentiss, and Jennifer Brooks --- the main thread linking them was that Bill Bell tended to write those three as very vain, selfish, weak-willed women, who always put their own needs above everyone else.  It was strange to have three self-absorbed "matriarchs" on the same half-hour show. 

During the Brooks/Foster purge of 1982/1983, I didn't feel too badly for most of the actors who got the boot.   They were mainly bland recasts (Leslie, Chris, Greg, Lance) who hadn't been around very long, or later-developed characters (Lucas), or actors who'd already left at least once in the past (Peggy).   But I really did feel badly for Stuart and Liz, who'd been there from day one and could've served as a link between the "old show" and the "new show". 

It was definitely a confusing period for those of us who watched daily.  Granted, Bill Bell used the Chris character wisely (having her work at Jabot and "validate" the Abbotts to the audience), and he also got some benefit out of Leslie (having her be the defacto step-mother to Angela Laurence, who was always interacting with Traci Abbott, Paul and Andy).  So Chris and Leslie, during their final months, helped pave the way for the younger characters that we'd get to know in the coming years.   It's just a shame that Liz and Stuart couldn't have been utilized in a similar manner.          

19 minutes ago, vetsoapfan said:

 We can assume Stuart died sometime along the way, but at the time, he just vanished into thin air, without explanation.

I've seen a couple of websites claim that Stuart Brooks died in 1984 (off-screen).   If that happened, I sure missed that episode, because I've never heard any character on the show give an *update* on Stuart Brooks at all.   I'd assume he's probably dead by now, since we haven't laid eyes on him in about 36 years, but I've sure never heard any reference to his "death" on the show itself.   I was hoping maybe that would be addressed a few years ago when Liz Foster died.  But Liz's death was just a plot point for the Jill/Lauren storyline and didn't really answer any of the questions I had about Liz and Stuart's marriage and separation and Stuart's state of being dead or alive.    I think maybe that's just a can of worms no one on the writing staff is brave enough to open, lol. 

8 minutes ago, Legacy said:

I do remember reading about this but I have no clue what was beyond there first interaction, I read on stuart brooks character and they keep making it sound like there was a little triangle going on between Stuart/Liz/Gina for a small bit before it was obviously dropped like most storylines

I don't believe that's historically accurate.   There certainly wasn't a "little triangle" of any sort, because Stuart Brooks was rarely seen after he was bumped from contract status to recurring, and the actor was angry enough about his demotion not to return in 1984 for Nikki and Victor's wedding.   Juliana McCarthy (Liz) stayed with the show for a couple of years after being bumped to recurring --- she was still around in 1984 for Nikki's wedding to Victor, and for Kay's facelift ---  and then she vanished as well.   My recollection is that Bill Bell wanted to preserve the studio set which had previously served as Pierre's, the Allegro, and Jonas's, so he had the Stuart Brooks character pop up rather randomly and sell the restaurant to Gina Roma, and that was about it for Stuart.  (Leslie couldn't sell the building herself, because Victoria Mallory had already been fired, lol.)   To my knowledge, there never WAS any resolution to Stuart and Liz's temporary break-up.   Liz moved out of the Brooks house because she thought Stuart was being too hard on her son Snapper;  Chris and Snapper urged her in a couple of haphazard scenes to reconcile with Mr. Brooks, but Liz said she wasn't ready to yet.   After a few weeks or months, Stuart was dropped to recurring and more or less vanished from the show, then a few months later Liz was bumped to recurring as well.   I never knew whether the two characters had reconciled or not.   Even Bill Bell didn't seem to know (or care).   When Liz appeared in 1986 after Jill's shooting by Sven the masseur, it was retroactively revealed that Liz had moved to England to be with Snapper and Chris.   We never saw her pack her bags and move there, though; she just disappeared sometime during 1984.   Nevertheless, she left England, picked Little Phillip up from boarding school, and raced back to Genoa City (to introduce the Phillip III character to the audience).  During her return, some days she was listed in the closing credits as "Elizabeth Foster Brooks", and other days as "Liz Foster".  It seemed the production crew didn't know or understand the status of the Liz/Stuart reconciliation.  This same confusion occurred in 2003 when Liz, Snapper, and Greg made a brief reappearance in Genoa City;  some days Julianna McCarthy was credited as "Liz Foster Brooks", and other days just as "Liz Foster".         

The only scene that I remember between Gina & Mr. Brooks was the episode where he brokered the sale of Leslie's restaurant to Gina.   Didn't it just basically go, "Hi, Miss, I'm Stuart Brooks.  My daughter wants to sell this restuarant."   "Hi, Mr. Brooks, I'm Gina Roma.  I'll buy it."  That was about it, wasn't it? 

15 hours ago, Paul Raven said:

 

 

After all that Derek and Jill went through they didn't get a farewell scene? I guess the fact that Brenda was gone contributed to that. And whatever happened to Derek's salon? That was his dream yet he seemed quite happy to go to work at Chancellor.

 

Talking about favorites, I think Bill Bell liked Deborah Adair as he used Jill to introduce the Abbotts. From the youtube episode of Bond she seemed fine so who knows why she was dumped.

 

 

Derek and Jill (Bond Gideon) did have a farewell scene.   It was one of Bond Gideon's very first scenes in the spring of 1980.  Derek stopped by the Foster house and told Jill he'd better stay with Kay and keep a low profile for the time being.   (This was just after that bizarre scam where Suzanne Lynch "kidnapped" Derek, demanded a $50,000 ransom for him, Colonel Austin kept the cash and delivered a shoe box of newspaper clippings to Suzanne instead of the cash.)   Inspector Carl Williams suspected that Jill might have something to do with the "kidnapping" (which she didn't) and threatened to investigate.   Derek quickly told Jill they should call things off for a while.   Derek gave Bond Gideon a long, lingering kiss in the dimly-lit Foster living room, and when he pulled away, there was a LONG STRING of SALIVA hovering between his lips and Bond's lips.   They played the rest of the scene with that spit strand bouncing between them like a tightrope.   It was one of the most fascinating things I've ever seen. 

In 1980, I wasn't impressed with Bond Gideon at all.  But now, looking back at the You Tube video of Bond playing Jill, I think Bond did a perfectly good job.   Maybe she wasn't as "nuanced" as her replacement (Deborah Adair), but she certainly seemed appropriate for the role, and she had an interesting look about her. 

Yes, I think Bill Bell liked Deborah Adair pretty well.   I believe the Abbotts would've happened with or without her, though.  It was actually Bond's Jill who initially met John and Jack (Brett Halsey and Terry Lester), and from the moment Terry Lester appeared, it seemed Bell was determined to add the two younger sisters and round-out the Abbott family.  Right off the bat, Brett Halsey's John started referring to his two daughters who were away at school, the mother who had abandoned the family, etc.   It seemed to take a WHILE for the story to develop (with Brett Halsey mysteriously vacating the role, and Jerry Douglas not appearing till several months later).   Everything seemed to be on-hold for a while during the cast changes for the dad, but once Jerry Douglas came along, it wasn't very long before Eileen and Beth were added.   Seemed that was the plan from the beginning.  I'm sure Bell's confidence in Deborah Adair helped expediate it. 

Derek got "bored" with the Golden Comb when Kay suggested that he might be suited for "business".  (The implication was that Derek, as CEO of Chancellor, might be able to bilk Kay Chancellor out of more money than he could at a salon.)         

1 hour ago, Paul Raven said:

 How were Derek and Suzanne written out?

They never explored Derek's son Jamie either.

Key got stranded on an island with Felipe and then I think Jeanne was offscreen for several months before she got involved with Cash the stripper/escort.

 

 

Didn't Suzanne Lynch just disappear with no explanation?   There was a brief period where she teamed up (platonically) with Colonel Austin, who wanted  to plant a spy at Chancellor Industries.   Austin wanted the spy to advise him whether or not Derek was sabotaging "dear Katherine's" corporation with mis-management.   Suzanne happily volunteered to be the spy, so that she could spend more time around Derek.   She made a big production of announcing to Colonel Austin that she was taking a job in the Chancellor Industries cafeteria so that she could watch Derek closely.   (Guess she thought Derek spent all day in the cafeteria, lol).   Anyway, after the big announcement that she was going to work in the cafeteria, I never laid eyes on Suzanne again.  As far as I know she's still working in the cafeteria, lol.  

Derek Thurston had an actual send-off, though it was more focused on Kay Chancellor than on Derek himself.    While Kay was on the island with Felipe Ramariz, Derek was at home drinking too much liquor and halfway losing his mind.  (Kay had been presumed dead, of course, when she jumped off the cruise ship.)  Derek, ousted from Chancellor Industries by Victor Newman, started staying at home, drinking all day, and fantasizing that he was seeing Kay's ghost.   He pulled Phillip Chancellor's pistol out of the desk drawer and started randomly shooting at objects in the living room that he mistook for Kay's ghost.   That girl from Chancellor Industries (Judy) who'd been Derek's administrative assistant kept popping over to the Chancellor house to assure Derek that he was only imagining Kay's ghost and urging him to put the pistol back in the drawer before he wounded or killed someone.   The audience's fear, of course, was that Kay would ultimately return home from her "island getaway", and Derek would pop a cap in her, mistaking Kay for the "ghost" he'd been shooting.   Sure enough, Kay eventually reappeared in the living room, fresh from her Gangrene-Footed Island Vacation, and Derek fired a shot right at her heart.  Fortunately, he missed.  Kay realized how utterly pathetic Derek Thurston had become during her absence, and how weak and foolish she had previously been to put so much importance on Derek over the years.  (During her time with Felipe, she had come to the realization that she didn't need all the trappings of wealth --- and a younger husband --- to be a person of value.)   She delivered a blistering monologue to Derek about their moribound relationship.  "You have taken advantage of me for years, Jerrick -- yes, for YEARS! --- and I have allowed it, I have ab-so-LUTE-ly allowed it, but those days are over, Jerrick.   No.   Don't interrupt.  Listen to me.  Lisssssen tooo meeee.   We are finished, Jerrick.  Your free ride here in my beautiful home has come to an end.  Your free ride has mercifully, finally, ab-so-LUTE-ly come to an end.   And I suggest that you clean yourself up and start afresh somewhere else.  Dear God in Heaven, you must.  You ab-so-LUTE-ly must.  It's a pity our relationship lasted as long as it did.  Good-bye, Jerrick."  And that was the last time I remember seeing Derek Thurston until he reappeared at the famous wedding in 1984.   The implication, although we didn't see him pack his bags and leave, was that Kay was literally finished with Derek for good after she returned from the island and threw his ass out.

And yes, you're correct.   Jeanne Cooper took off for three or four months after the Felipe story concluded.   Immediately after leaving Felipe and the island, she threw Derek Thurston out of the house, then visited Colonel Austin and told him that she didn't need him either.   (Remember, the reason she jumped off the cruise ship in the first place was that Derek Thurston and Colonel Austin were each pressuring her to dump the other one, and she was afraid she would start drinking again if they didn't both leave her alone.)   Her time with Felipe put a fresh perspective on all of that, and she decided she needed neither Derek NOR Douglas.   She also popped into Newman Enterprises and thanked Victor for taking care of Chancellor Industries during her presumed death.   After her initial "welcome home visits" with Derek, Douglas, and Victor, we didn't lay eyes on Kay Chancellor for several months.   I believe she returned from the island in about MARCH of 1981, and we didn't see her again until about JUNE of 1981.     A summertime episode (probably in early June) opened with Kay Chancellor standing in her living room, looking in the big gold-framed mirror, griping to herself about all the lines in her face that were the results of drinking and smoking, and talking to herself candidly about how she had over-complicated her life with poorly-executed love affairs with undeserving men.   (The scene made an impact on me, because I hadn't seen her in so long and was beginning to wonder if she'd been written-out as well.)   After her monologue in the mirror, Kay picked up the phone and called the male hooker (Cash) and arranged for him to drop by and satisfy her sexually, which commenced the storyline of Kay and Cash.   By late summer, Kay was in England for the Royal Wedding and for Leslie Brooks' concert (where Lorie Brooks wore a gown that was split all the way up to her pubic hair.)  Cash was Kay Chancellor's intercontinental paid escort during the trip to London, which Liz Brooks frowned about, because she felt it was another poor and vanity-based decision on Kay's part.   After Leslie's concert, Kay again disappeared for several weeks, with the explanation on the show being that Kay and Cash were going to Zurich so that Kay could interview some potential plastic surgeons, as she hoped to look "younger" for Cash's benefit.    Nothing came of this venture, and I always wondered if Jeanne Cooper was seriously considering plastic surgery as early as 1981, or if it was just a storyline-dictated decision to explain Kay and Cash's absence for a few weeks following the concert.   (And I'm not sure why Jeanne Cooper was off-screen for all of those months between March and June.   Might've been personal reasons such as rehab for her drinking problem, or Miss Cooper might have been contemplating plastic surgery, or it might've been a planned vacation due to overwork during the Felipe storyline, or it might have been that Bill Bell simply wanted a few months to put Felipe, Derek, and Douglas in the past before reintroducing the Kay Chancellor character to the audience as the wealthy patroness of Jerry Cashman, the male escort).             

Yeah, I think Bill Bell was overly fond of  several of his characters/actors, and really didn't care much about several others.    Among the Foster children, he seemed to love Jill (as played by Brenda Dickson) and Snapper (William Grey Espy & David Hasselhoff).   He didn't seem to give much of a hoot about Greg.  Among the Brooks children, he clearly loved Lorie (Jaime Lyn Bauer), Leslie (Janice Lynde), and Chris (Trish Stewart).   He didn't appear to give a damn about Peggy.   Among the Prentiss kids, he obviously was crazy about Lance (John McCook), and kinda didn't give a rat's ass about Lucas. 

By 1982, he'd lost ALL of those "teacher's pet" actors except David Hasselhoff and Jaime Lyn Bauer.   He still had the Leslie Brooks and Chris Brooks characters, but they were played by fairly bland recasts.   He still had Jill, but she was a recast.  He still had Lance, but he was a recast.    And I never got the impression Bell was terribly vested in Peggy, Greg, and Lucas, regardless of who played them.   The spring of 1982 was really DOMINATED by David Hasselhoff and Jaime Lyn Bauer.    Practically every episode was built around Snapper's relationship with little Chuckie, or Lorie's manipulation of Victor.   As a viewer, I felt that I was watching THE SNAPPER & LORIE HOUR.   Within months of each other, David Hasselhoff and Jaime Lyn Bauer both bailed.    You could tell that Bill Bell was left with a sort of "second-tier" cast of chacters that he hadn't bothered to develop nearly as much as he'd concentrated on his two favorites.   It was pretty inevitable that he would sweep Chris, Leslie, Peggy, Stuart, Liz, Greg, Lance and Lucas out the door as quickly as possible.  (I expect Jill would've bitten the dust as well, had she not been anchored so closely onto the Kay Chancellor character, who was VERY well developed.)  It was just time to start over and develop some of the newer, younger, characters --- and Bell was clearly blessed to have Terry Lester, Eileen Davidson, Melody Thomas, Doug Davidson, and a handful of other young actors on hand to work with during that period. 

I do remember Howard as Greg Foster.   I just remember him as being "serviceable".   He wasn't a scenery-chewing, over-the-top diva like Wings Hauser (the 3rd Greg) tended to be, and he wasn't as raw/untrained as Jim Houghton (the 1st Greg).   He was more like Brian Kerwin (the 2nd Greg), who just delivered his lines believably and went home, lol. 

I don't remember that Jill's pairings during this period seemed as "haphazard" or "screen-testy" as some of y'all do.   Most of her interactions seemed fairly organic and character-motivated.

Jill had been caught up with the "Mrs. Stuart Brooks" storyline for a while, and the endless triangle with Kay and Derek.   By 1980, Jill was kinda "down and out" and seemed depressed to realize she was a grown woman with an illegitimate son, still living in her mother's home and working as a beautician.    All her dreams of becoming important and wealthy had been thwarted.   Steve Williams was a preppy, upwardly-mobile, Catholic boy who went around lecturing everyone that they should make the most of their lives (and keep their virginity intact).   Jill was exactly the type of "project" that Steve thrived on, and Steve was exactly the kind of "motivational therapist" that Jill needed to encourage her to make something more of her life.   I don't remember much romance between Jill and Steve.   He mostly just took her out for a drink, told her that she had a lot to offer, and encouraged her to pursue her dreams.   It was Steve who talked her into applying for the job at Jabot, in order to become more "white collar" and less "blue collar", a position which of course Jill ultimately did apply for and win.   (Peggy Brooks, meanwhile, had been unsure whether or not she wanted to date Steve, since the two of them worked together at the newspaper, but seeing him at the Allegro with Jill, whom Peggy hated, inspired Peggy to go ahead and accept a date with him.   Bill Bell's end-game here seemed to be spinning Jill into the Jabot storyline which ultimately happened, and spinning Peggy into a storyline where she was engaged to Steve but sleeping with a more exciting man which ultimately happened.   All of this made sense at the time in terms of the characters.)

Once Jill had secured the job at Jabot, her relationships again seemed organic.   John Abbott represented the old-money sugar-daddy type characters she'd married in the past (Phillip Chancellor and Stuart Brooks), while Jack Abbott represented someone young and exciting to Jill.   The triangle among John, Jill, and Jack seemed to flow pretty naturally, especially since Jack had a lot of "Daddy issues", and Jill was the pet employee of the reserved and icy John.   All of this crashed around Jill, of course, when John discovered that Jill was sleeping with Jack, and John packed-up and moved to New York.  Jill and Jack subsequently had a falling-out and a lawsuit, and she was out on her ass from Jabot.   Once again, her dreams of becoming a high-falutin' old -money mistress of the manor had been thwarted. 

That's when Andy came along.   Andy represented everything that Liz Foster wanted for her daughter.   He was grounded, nice, easy-going, he was a coach, he had a great relationship with Little Phillip, and he wasn't judgmental about Jill having produced a child outside of wedlock.   In Liz's mind, Andy would've been the perfect match for Jill.   But Jill, as had been the case from the very beginning, had dreams of being rich and important.   She didn't mind throwing Andy under the bus for a second chance at being with the wealthy and important John Abbott.   Liz gave her PLENTY of lectures, "Jill!  Are you gonna throw away your relationship with that good boy (Andy) to chase after some pipe dream with Mister Abbott?!   Haven't you learned ANYTHING!"  It just all seemed to flow naturally and made sense in terms of Jill's character and motivations. 

Ditto for the relationship between Peggy and Steve Williams.  He was very preppy and upwardly-mobile and was happy to be engaged to his boss's youngest daughter.   But he insisted on waiting till after marriage for sex.   Peggy had already been down the "frigid road" before (with Jack Curtis circa 1975), and she wanted to make sure she and Steve were sexually compatible before their wedding.   Since Steve refused to let Peggy pop his cherry, she let Jack Abbott (whom she'd known in college) bang her a few times, which ultimately led to Steve deciding that she wasn't the girl for him and leaving town for a job in Washington DC.   Like the Jill storylines of the same era, I found Peggy and Steve's relationship to be informed by the characters' histories and not just randomly slapped together.   

6 minutes ago, Paul Raven said:

One strand that was briefly mentioned when Eve came on was that she had crossed paths with Derek previously.

Eve moved in with Jill and through Liz managed to get a job with Stu. Stu/Liz/Eve triangle never really developed.

Yeah, after Liz married Stuart and moved into the Brooks home, Jill was all alone at the Foster house.   Didn't she put an ad in the paper seeking a roommate to help with expenses ("another single mom preferred")??   Eve Howard, a new character, was the girl who answered the ad.  She and Jill bonded over their illegitimate sons (Phillip and Charles Victor a/k/a Cole), became friends, and Eve started working as Stuart's assistant at the newspaper.   We all assumed that Eve was about to snatch old Stuart away from Liz.   Through backstory, we learned that Eve and Derek had crossed paths before, and now they had the same agenda --- revenge on Victor.   Eve was mad because Victor wouldn't acknowledge that he'd fathered her child, and Derek was mad that Victor had ousted him from Chancellor Industries.   Together, Eve and Derek figured out that Victor had undergone the first of his 738 vasectomies, and they broke into the doctor's office, got a copy of his medical records, and mailed them to Julia (who'd just found out she was pregnant).    Seeing that Victor had undergone a vasectomy, Julia assumed she'd gotten pregnant by her affair with Michael Scott, but really it was Victor's superhuman Goat Juice that had fertilized her, even after the first of his 738 vasectomies.   

Regarding the "last hurrah" of Peggy Brooks and Greg Foster, my recollection was that both characters were simply dumped with no explanation at the beginning of what promised to be a VERY dull and predictable storyline.   Peggy Brooks had broken up with Steve Williams, and Greg had been dumped by both Nikki and April.  

Greg and Peggy were both feeling alone.   One evening Greg stopped by the Brooks house to see his mother (Liz), but Liz and Stuart had gone out to dinner.   Only Peggy was at home.   Greg and Peggy ended up visiting for a while and having a good time.  They decided to go out together the following night.   They had a couple of benign dates with each other.    A few days later, a man whose last name was Dixon contacted Greg about setting up some dummy corporations to hide the fact that Dixon was a slumlord who owned numerous run-down properties in Genoa City.   For a large fee, Greg would be the registered agent of the corporations and would appear to be the owner of the dilapidated rental properties.   Meanwhile, community-minded Stuart Brooks decided that the newspaper should do an expose' on slumlords, and he turned the assignment over to his daughter, Peggy, who worked at the paper.   Peggy was VERY excited about the prospect of breaking open some of the various dummy corporations she'd encountered to publicize the names of people who were involved in leasing dilapidated housing to Genoa City's poor. 

It was pretty clear that Greg and Peggy were about to become seriously involved, and then Peggy would discover that Greg's newfound "wealth" was the result of working with the very people she was trying to expose in the newspaper.   A few weeks passed with no sign of either Peggy or Greg on camera, and it became clear that Bill Bell had simply dumped both of the characters into the trashcan, along with the entire storyline about the slumloards (which would be resurrected about ten years later via Cricket Blair and the dullass "Rainbow Gardens" storyline).  

This was indeed a period of transition for the show, where storylines were just randomly dropped when it became clear that they weren't working out.  I think most of us can remember April Stevens, her twin sister Bobbie who looked NOTHING like her, and their blue-collar parents Wayne and Dorothy.   One day out of the clear blue sky, Bobbie suddenly announced that she was moving to New York and was taking her parents and her sister with her.   In one episode --- poof! --- the entire Stevens family was over, done with, and gone.    I remember someone at my school asking me, "What happened to the Stevens family?   Are they still on the show?"   And I said, "Naw, one day they all just moved to New York.  Thank God."   If you missed that particular episode, I guess you didn't know what happened to that entire family.    It was really a transitional period for Y&R, and the ratings drop between 1980 and 1982 reflected the viewers' confusion.    By 1983, with the Abbotts and Jabot, Paul's detective agency, and the love story of Nikki and Victor, everything had completely turned around into a cohesive show that was probably actually an IMPROVEMENT over the 30-minute show.   But those first couple of years of the hour format between 1980 and 1982 --- strange stuff indeed!    

On ‎3‎/‎26‎/‎2019 at 8:26 AM, Legacy said:

 

You know what would have been interesting if they had done a triangle with Stuart/Liz/Vanessa that would have been golden and Katherine gettting involved to help Liz  

Bill Bell seemed to be toying with the idea of involving Stuart Brooks, Vanessa Prentiss, and Liz Foster in a triange of some sort, either in the fall of 1979 or the spring of 1980.   I remember a scene where Vanessa (talking to herself) speculated that she and Stuart Brooks had a lot in common, as both of her sons were married to two of his daughters.   Vanessa even went to the bother of "prettying herself up" for Stuart a time or two.  But then one of Stuart's daughters (either Lorie or Leslie) mentioned to Vanessa in passing, "Oh it's wonderful that Dad has such a great relationship with Liz Foster.  Hopefully, they'll be getting married soon."   Vanessa's face fell into a big frown, and that was the end of that.   And it's possible that there was never gonna be a triangle.   This was possibly just a scene to show us that Vanessa was sad and lonely, depended on Lance for companionship, and helped explain why Vanessa was so anxious to remove the competition (Lorie Brooks) from Lance's life.