Broderick

It would be difficult to tie-down exactly when Andy arrived. At first he just flitted randomly in and out of stories. One of the first times I remember noticing him, he was eating spaghetti at Nikki's house (maybe he was the bartender at the Bayou then?), and that crazy Edward, who was stalking Nikki, got jealous. Eventually Andy, Paul, and Danny all ended up being waiters at Jonas's club, but that was after Andy and Danny had both been around for a while.

Victor is searching Ashley's room for clues to her whereabouts while she's missing. Brenda Dickson is watching from the doorway. Braeden is very business-like. Miss Dickson primarily just swivels her hips, rolls her eyes, displays her bosom, bats her eyelashes, and pouts.

Probably so. He wasn't much of a substitute though. Robert Parucha wasn't a bad actor by any means, but just completely lacked the chemistry with Nikki and Ashley that Terry Lester had.

I'd forgotten how determined this truck driver (Vince) was about porking Ashley. I don't blame him, she's pretty and all, but he's got a one-track mind. The dialogue from the motel desk clerk, Vince the truck driver, and Lorraine the gum-smacking, fur coat-stealing floozie is just HOWLINGLY bad. "This dame", "This broad", "Yeah, I dig it." Lord.

That's right. Nikki and Peggy Brooks had become acquainted during the "cult" storyline. Shortly after that storyline closed, Nikki went to the Brooks house to see her mother-in-law Liz about something or another, and Peggy was at home. The two girls reconnected, and Peggy offered her a place to stay if she ever needed one. Nikki had already known Chris Brooks for a good while, as they were married to the two Foster brothers. Nikki met Leslie Brooks when either Casey or Victor (can't remember which) arranged for Leslie to give Nikki some piano lessons, to determine whether or not Nikki had any real talent for the piano. And then of course Nikki encountered Lorie Brooks during that period of time when Nikki was married to the earnest but scatter-brained Kevin, And Lorie was trying to take Prentiss Industries away from Victor.

I don't recall there being any mention at all that Rex Sterling resembled Nick Reed. We know that the two men were obviously dead ringers because they were played by the same actor, but I don't think it was ever brought to our attention in the dialogue. Jill found Brian Romalotti/Rex Sterling asleep in a park and decided he was someone she could dress-up and transform into a suitable date for Kay. No mention was ever made that he looked like Nikki's dead father.

Not very often. Nikki and Greg were usually involved in storylines about Nikki modeling lingerie for Rose DeVille's prostitution ring. And Jill was normally caught-up with Derek Thurston and Stuart Brooks. Their paths rarely crossed. Then they both spent most of the 1980s orbiting Kay Chancellor --- Nikki as Kay's best friend, and Jill as Kay's worst enemy. But again, no crossover in the two stories. I don't remember Nikki and Jill dealing with one another much until about 1999, when Nikki and Brad bought into Jabot, and Jill and Nikki had a little sparring match about which of them was the sluttiest.

That does make pretty good sense, except that Peapack was too small to annex anything at all, except maybe a garden plot 😉

I'm not much of a historian lol, but they did tease us for while. We had several "spirited discussions" about it at my house. One of my siblings was sure it was TRACI ("She's already so insecure; she'll probably leave town if Mr. Abbott isn't her father. She'll think that's why she's fat!") Another sibling thought it was JACK ("He's always trying to win Mr. Abbott's approval. What if Mr. Abbott isn't even his father?"). I always said it was Ashley, because she was the strong assertive one (like Lorie Brooks, who'd already lived through pretty much the same story).

Another Foster house sighting in January 1985, for those following its final waning appearances. Brenda Dickson pops in wearing her fur coat, thrusts her breasts around everywhere, vamps and pouts, and begs Liz for $10,000.

"Dismissive vibe" is a very good description of it. Eileen's Ashley often had this impatient "I don't have time for you" attitude. I've always seen it as the defining trait of the Ashley character, but could never describe it except with the word "aloof'.

As badly as it pains me to say this (because I ain't much of a fan of Eric Braeden), he was the only male actor on the show who could hold his own with Eileen Davidson in a believable fashion, aside from Terry Lester, who played her brother. Ashley was given three different love interests between 1982 and 1984, and each of them was a dud. There was the dude in the lab at Jabot (Brian Forbes), Eric Garrison and Marc Mergeron. Eileen Davidson was always "doing something" in her scenes --- rolling her eyes, scratching her head, biting her lip, twirling her hair around, exhaling loudly, rubbing her eyes. Her three love interests just stood there with bewildered looks on their faces like stooges and allowed her to "steal" every scene that she was in. They couldn't keep up with her. They wouldn't try drowning her out. They wouldn't try developing some interesting mannerisms of their own. They just didn't play off her "technique" very well. Terry Lester did, though, because he was full of quirky and bizarre mannerisms, just like Eileen was. And Eric Braeden worked well with her, because he was older and was a more experienced actor. So sadly, Ashley was stuck with him, because he was about the only choice at the time. The ideal love interest for her would honestly have been Terry Lester, but he played her brother. lol.

One of the STRANGEST aspects of Stuart and Liz's "disappearances" was the uncertainty of what happened with their reconciliation, or lack thereof. When Liz reappeared briefly in about 2003 to kick-off the "Jill was adopted" storyline, Julianna McCarthy was listed in the credits once or twice as "Liz Brooks" and once or twice as "Elizabeth Foster', indicating that not even the current head writers (Kay Alden and Jack Smith) remembered what had happened between Stuart and Liz, lol.

Yes, it appears that she recurred sporadically (without a contract) from late summer/early autumn of 1984 to early 1985, and then she just vanished without a trace, without a mention, in a puff of smoke. We found out in 1986 that she'd been living in London with Snapper and Chris during her "missing period".

I think it's the final "60" and "61a".

Oh, my ideas were too juvenile to even discuss. I was heavily influenced by MTV (lol), so I assumed that everyone wanted to see all these quick cutaway shots, stories that began with the conclusion and then worked BACKWARDS to the beginning (I guess I was VERY confident of my ability to maintain day-to-day interest, even after shooting my wad by revealing the conclusion in the first scene), more "stage business" than actual dialogue, and music thumping through every scene. I had NO concept of budget restrictions, so naturally my cast was HUGE, so that my bisexual Harvey Weinstein character could prey on dozens of dumb asses who were too busy singing and dancing to say, "Keep your hands off me, you pervert." It was, in hindsight, pretty innovative, but only in the most childish and amateur manner. Let's just say the concept didn't age very well.

Y'all are killing me. Everything that I tried to write as a teenager was full of "Martin Bartons", and featured "Lakeviews" without the lake. lol.

I never understood why they opted to write Mary Williams as such a "cartoon meddler" from 1999 onward. Yes, it was sometimes funny in small doses, but Carolyn Conwell was MORE than capable of playing a fully developed, well-rounded character who tended to be overly zealous about nosing into her children's lives. The Mary we see in the old clips from the early 1980s was certainly "overly involved" in her children's lives, but she was also a likeable and well developed character.

Biloxi, Mississippi, is a pretty famous city actually. Neil Simon wrote a trilogy of plays -- "Brighton Beach Memoirs", "Biloxi Blues", and "Broadway Bound". "Biloxi Blues" was made into a successful movie staring Matthew Broderick back during the late 1980s.

Yes sir, my recollection is that Liz is just gonna disappear in a puff of smoke somewhere between late 1984 and early 1985, the way Stuart Brooks had just disappeared into thin air in 1983. When Jill gets shot in the spring of 1986, John Abbott will call Liz in London to give her the news, and Bill Bell will make a huge production of ret-conning in the dialogue that Liz had moved to London to be with Snapper and Chris, which everyone on the show seems to accept as a fact, although none of us at home knew what on earth had become of her.

I'd honestly forgotten that we had the Fake Nikki during the Children's Hospital Benefit scenes with Jack. But I agree -- that girl Robin did a pretty good as Nikki, which is probably why I'd forgotten that Melody Thomas didn't perform in those scenes. And for those of y'all keeping track of the Foster house set, it appears once again in one of the August - October 1984 clips, with Liz Foster and Jill having a scene inside it. There were some (partial) closing credits included with that clip, and Julianna McCarthy (Liz Brooks) had been demoted to a recurring character; her contract days were over. Jeanne Cooper (Kay) was the "senior" cast member from then till her death.

Storyline-wise, I believe there was maybe some mention that Vanessa Prentiss had over-exaggerated how serious the surgery would be, because her "scarred face" was always her main tool for keeping Little Lance tied to her apron strings. Production-wise, Conboy and Bell probably wanted to get Miss Stevens out of that veil, because in the 1970s she was still a recognizable movie star from the 1940s and 1950s, and it was getting silly to just have her eyes peeping up over that veil, lol.

To me, the Kevin/Nikki pairing was just a goldmine. (And I'm sure it was merely a result of Melody Thomas' real-life pregnancy and the last-minute rewriting of an entire storyline by Bill Bell.) Melody Thomas has always indicated she preferred playing comedy, and Nikki's dingbat antics while married to Kevin gave her a golden opportunity to skew her performance toward comedy. Chris Holder puts so much passion, earnestness, and stuffed-shirt sincerity into his air-headed yuppie Kevin Bancroft character that he becomes the perfect foil for her. Their fights and disagreements make me laugh out loud. Don't know how Melody Thomas and Chris Holder made it through some of those scenes with straight faces, but they sure did manage it, and that makes it cute as hell. There was a nighttime show on CBS during this same timeframe called "Newhart", and it featured a dimwitted couple VERY much like Nikki and Kevin. They were portrayed by Julia Duffy & Peter Scolari. I can't remember which came first --- Thomas/Holder or Duffy/Scolari, but watching these clips in retrospect, you can't miss the similarities.

My recollection is that Meg Bennett wrote (occasional) scripts from about 1981 to about 1987, but claimed that out of fairness, she didn't write any scripts that included the Julia Newman character. Still, I wonder if she "tweaked" Julia's dialogue a little bit, because Julia's dialogue always seems a bit more crisp, sophisticated and sarcastic than the other characters' lines, and Meg delivers the lines with such confident "worldly authority". Watching the clips, I'm amazed at how entertaining her character was in this second incarnation. Brenda Dickson was my favorite Jill, too. But I really find it difficult to "hate" Deborah Adair's Jill even when she's scheming, because Adair seems so GENUINE and COMMITTED, no matter what Jill's up to. And it's hard to "love" Brenda Dickson's Jill even when she's insecure and vulnerable, because Dickson usually seems so POSED and SELF-ABSORBED. Hard to explain. Very interesting to watch the Jill character develop with each new (or returning) actress.

Stuart wasn't "dating" Gina; he was just facilitating the sale of his daughter Leslie's club to Gina, along with the adjoining lot, in case Gina wanted to expand the size of the club. (When Leslie left town, she gave her dad the power of attorney to execute the deed of the club.) Kay Chancellor saw Stuart meeting with Gina about the deed, and she misinterpreted the situation as a "date". Kay ran to Liz with the "breaking news" that Stuart was "dating a girl about the age of his four daughters", and then Stuart had to fuss at Kay for causing so much trouble. All of that is included in the clips. The premise of Kay Chancellor's plan was that she would offer Liz a return gig as her housekeeper. Jill would then naturally pitch a fit and announce that it was inappropriate for the mother of Mrs. John Abbott to be working as a maid. Stuart Brooks would ALSO be embarrassed that the newspaper publisher's wife was working as a maid. Kay hoped that Jill's shame and Stuart's embarrassment would prompt Stuart to become more proactive in encouraging Liz to reconcile with him.