prefab1

I'll say this for Sasha: at least she's not Willow. And I do kind of like her C-story romance with Cody. But it does boggle the mind that GH has somehow kept both Sasha AND Willow on the air for 6 years, often in frontburner stories, when they're functionally the same character.

I think Lucky Gold doesn't get enough credit for cleaning up the Labines' mess. I remember tuning into my former-favorite soap GL in late 2000/early 2001 when Labine was writing, and I basically found it unwatchable. (The main story I recall involved Cassie and Reva going undercover dressed as prostitutes to uncover some kind of people-smuggling ring in San Cristobal). When I finally tuned in again in late 2001, I found Gold's GL to be compulsively watchable, even when it was frequently ridiculous (e.g. Reva time-traveling through the painting). More stories revolved around long-term characters I cared about, and they had emotional stakes again. True, anything was better than "Mae the cigarette girl" and "Reva, savior of the boat people," but I felt like Gold's run was a rare highlight in GL's very troubled early 2000s era.

Hope he sticks around for a while. Then maybe they could cast Eric Sheffer Stevens as an irascible new doctor at GH and watch the sparks fly.

Which is astonishing, because the character of TJ has been on GH for 12 straight years now! We ought to have an excellent sense of his motivations, and he ought to have deep relationships with characters from all over the canvas. GL definitely had some problems writing for its black characters, but they were never GH-level bland.

Aww... I really grew to like LSV's Remy, and I thought he had great chemistry with Karla Mosley's Christina. I also really liked how his relationship with Ava developed, culminating in the great twist where her baby was born and his skin color was a dead giveaway that the father was Remy and not Bill. But I agree that they could have spent more time on Remy's backstory. I thought the subtext was clear enough--that Mel and Remy's high-achieving intellectual parents had put immense pressure on them to be educated professionals, and Mel followed their wishes wholeheartedly while younger brother Remy rebelled, instead opting for more blue-collar work. But we only really got to see that dynamic at work when Montel Williams would put in a guest appearance as Clayton Boudreaux. When a soap isn't willing to put in the time and money to give its Black characters fully-defined family lives, it's no wonder that they often come off seeming like ciphers.

Totally agree, and I'd add Karla Mosley as another actress who makes this a must-see for me. I've loved her since her Guiding Light days, and she was the only reason I ever tuned into B&B (briefly, when her story was front-burner). I'm so glad that they're finally getting a chance to be on a show that, from the start, treats them as true leading ladies and doesn't have them playing marginal characters who can easily be removed from the narrative at a writer or producer's whim.

Given that John Driscoll is in the stills, this must be from March 2005. Driscoll joined the previous Fall, and Laura Wright left later in the year.

Nancy probably would have been quite good in the role, but I wonder if casting her as Rita would have been too hard on older viewers who remembered her as Kit Vested in the early 70s.

Great question! I think Lauren Koslow has the right combination of sensuality and smarts to be good in the role of Rita, and if they'd snatched her up after she left B&B in 1992 (and before she started Days in 1996), that could have generated good stories for Ed and the newly returned Alan.

Oh, Tonja as Hope could have been great! And she would have filled the vixen gap that happened in 1998 when both Annie and Amanda left in quick succession. I can just imagine her sparking in a love/hate relationship with Ron Raines' Alan.

I loved Poser's campy take on Amanda, although I admit I was unfamiliar with Dobson and Marland-era GL when I was watching her. Now having seen Cullen, I can admit Poser seemed to be playing a completely different character, but I also don't feel too bothered by that (although I do wish the show had done a better job of directly addressing the character's 180-degree turn). But it makes me wonder: are there any conditions under which it is acceptable to totally reinvent a character? Amanda had been off the show for 12 years when Poser came on, and although she was a fairly long-running character, I'm not sure if she'd really been a beloved one. Part of me wonders if GL should have just used this tactic more often--bringing back very old characters who were written off because they were the "boring one" in a core family, but recasting them with more vivacious actors. All I'm saying is if, in the Rauch era, they'd wanted to bring on a recast Trish Lewis played by Tonja Walker, I'd have tuned in for that.

On a well-written show, Sonny shooting Jagger would have long-term consequences that would deeply impact most of the characters on the canvas. On this show, I expect everyone will have completely forgotten about Jagger within a month.

Interestingly, I don't think ATWT got much backlash when they actually did an intergenerational storyline, one that was a lot trashier than my idea. Remember when Larry Lau played Lucinda's boyfriend, who was actually a closeted gay man and developed the hots for Luke? But that relationship seemed fairly one-sided and never progressed beyond kissing before Lau's "bad gay" character was ushered offscreen.

Of course, with Ellen Weston and John Conboy helming the show at the time, we would have just ended up with burned spicy 😆

I think they could have had an interesting opportunity to bring Kelly back after Shayne had his car accident (circa 2003). John Wesley Shipp might have done it too, since he was done with Dawson's Creek by then. And there's several directions they could have taken a story, depending on how spicy they wanted to go. Mild: Kelly comes back to town as Shayne's doctor, helping him recover. Fed up with his father, who's been pushing him to become a baseball star, Shayne begins to idolize the compassionate doctor, which makes Josh jealous and ignites old rivalries between Josh and Kelly. Slightly spicy: All of the above, only Kelly is now bisexual. Josh gets it into his head that Kelly is trying to corrupt or even seduce his son, even though nothing has happened between them. A scandal ensues, with the town picking sides. Very spicy: All of the above, with Kelly as bisexual and Shayne exploring his sexuality. Kelly and Shayne try to fight the mutual attraction that develops during Shayne's rehabilitation, but they can't. An even bigger scandal ensues, with the town picking sides.

I think ATWT was in an especially good position because many of the characters/actors who stayed around for decades started off as troublemakers (e.g. Lisa, John, Susan) and never quite lost that edge, which made them more dynamic characters than, say, Dr. Bob. And that's not to begrudge Don Hastings' contributions to the show--every soap needs a Dr. Bob--but you can't have too many stolid, regular decent guy characters like that. In GL's case, they ended up writing some of their best troublemaker characters from the 1960s and 1970s into a corner and then killing them off: see Charlotte, Kit, and Roger. Thankfully, they were smart enough to bring Roger back from the dead, which drove story for another decade. But there weren't that many morally complex past characters to draw from, and they kept nearly all the most important "troublemaker" characters introduced by the Dobsons and Marland: Alan, Ross, Vanessa, Josh. The only one they could have and should have brought back was Rita.

Kobe and Long deservedly get a lot of flack for the cast turnover that happened from 1983-85, but honestly the problem started much earlier, as earlier eras didn't leave them with many beloved older actors/characters who could really serve as tentpoles for the show. I guess they could have brought back people like Barbara Berjer (Barbara Norris), Robert Milli (Adam Thorpe), or Millette Alexander (Sara McIntyre), but none of them had very deep relationships with the characters driving story in the mid-80s.

I think you've watched more of this era than I have. Don't things only get worse in 1986, after Long leaves?

Yeah, this is such a weird era of the show. The episode DRW50 posted is still quite watchable, as Long is a solid writer. But a viewer who hadn't tuned into the show for two or three years would recognize absolutely none of the characters, aside from Ross and Vanessa. And although it's to Long's credit that she appreciated the value of multigenerational storytelling, it's bizarre to have all the middle-aged and older characters to be newbies too (e.g. Calla, Miss Sally, Warren). In a well-run soap, those roles are played by veterans who've been on for more than a decade. Mind you, aside from maybe Don Stewart (Mike Bauer), I can't think of any 1970s or early 1980s GL actors in that age range who would have really worked in these veteran roles.

Josh had been holier-than-thou for years, so making him a minister seemed like a logical next step in certain ways. But I can't remember the show getting any actual juicy stories out of it, unless you count that campy story where Cassie's son Will (played by the actual kid from The Omen) pushed another kid offstage to get the lead role in the church Christmas play.

I like that idea, but I think there are a lot of interesting directions the show could have taken Josh if they just gave him more storylines that broke the "Josh has to choose between Reva and another woman" mold. For instance, when Josh was exploring his spirituality and becoming a reverend, maybe he could have reflected on the fact that all of his wealth and power came from being heir to a freaking oil company! Or to use your idea, they could have had either Marah or Shayne become an environmental activist and call him out on the ways Lewis Oil was destroying the planet. But despite the show's move towards UK-style drab realism in its later years, this was one real-world issue it seemed afraid to touch.

This might actually be a point in GL's favor, because compared to Nikki, Cricket, and Lily, Reva IS much more interesting. Post-Amish Reva, I'm not sure if I ever bought her as the sex goddess whose milkshake brought all the boys to the yard, but I could definitely buy the idea that men would be attracted to her DGAF attitude, sense of humor, and interesting experiences. I thought their arguments were much more realistically written than their reconciliations (which felt dictated by fan campaigns, not character logic). So over the years the show managed to convince me that Josh and Reva were much better apart. When the show ended, I really wanted to see her with Jeffrey--a man who seemed to actually like and respect her--but I knew I wasn't going to get that because the Josh/Reva superfans were still so vocal.

I think Mel and Rick could have worked as an anchor couple if only any of the writers had actually taken an interest in fleshing out Mel as a character beyond "black professional woman" and gave us more insight into her motivations and backstory. I think that Lucky Gold, who created the Boudreaux family, gave us a few hints of that--for instance, how she felt pressure to live up to her academic parents' high expectations of black excellence, while her brother Remy rejected them. But I can't recall that ever getting explicitly discussed on the actual show, even though it would help explain otherwise absurd stuff like Mel starting off as a doctor then switching careers to law. I think you probably could have gotten a good set of small realistic storylines out of issues like "Mel is busy with law school and feels like Rick isn't pulling his weight with childcare" or "Mel and Rick have clashing perspectives on raising a biracial child." But during the early 2000s especially, the show was not interested in telling those kinds of grounded realistic stories.

Michael Brainard is an interesting choice, because his Jake on AMC was a fairly similar character. But I don't think a recast would have helped the problems with Rick post-Abby, which plagued a lot of the aging "good guy" characters in the cast: Frank, Matt, even to some extent Josh. They were almost interchangeable, giving off the same "sad dad" energy (while occassionally slipping into judgemental self-righteousness). And they just seemed adrift most of the time, as if they were waiting to be partnered with a more dynamic female character that they could act as the straight man for. If they had paired Frank up with Blake and Rick up with Mindy a little earlier, rather than waiting until the final week, both characters would have had more purpose. GL was blessed with a lot of extremely well-written long-running female protagonists, who had distinctive flaws and points of view that made each of them unique. But for some reason, they couldn't figure out how to do that for most of their male characters, who seemed relatively flat in comparison.

Coming out of lurking to thank you for posting those great June 1994 scenes and then to sheepishly admit that I was one of those Matt/Vanessa fans. In fact, they were the storyline that got me into watching Guiding Light that summer, a habit I'd keep off and on for 15 years. I rewatched some of those scenes a few months ago, and I was struck by how how much they focused on Vanessa going on a voyage of self-discovery and reconnecting with her own desires, apart from her socially proscribed roles as mother and pillar of the community. It was the kind of storyline that even today you don't see very often in American TV or film; maybe you'd see it in a French film starring Juliette Binoche or Isabelle Huppert. It helped that they really took their time setting up the story with Matt, and he had a bit more of an edge to him in those early days. I think that subsequent writing teams just lost sight of what was interesting about Matt and his relationship with Vanessa. Matt's pride and his very different class background should have been a source of organic conflict for years, but the writers instead manufactured conflict through idiot plots like Vanessa faking her own death.