Kane

Sticking with AMC, Charlie Brent. The show could never settle on who it wanted him to be and finally just gave up and wrote him out for good. Tad's arrival probably threw a bit of a wrench on Charlie's development, as a teenage/young adult Charlie might have had some of the stories that Tad had if Tad had never existed. Charles Van Eman's version of Charlie seemed like an attempt to fill the void left by Tad during MEK's absence.

Although I'm sure that Gwyneth was always the intended killer, I'm not sure if Gwyneth dressing as Trisha was always intended as part of the story. Because of where the Killer POV shows up, Gwyneth couldn't have been disguised as Trisha in some of those scenes because she was around people who would have noticed. I was surprised on rewatch by the detail that Gwyneth had bought the wig long before the family even received Trisha's letter. What was she doing with the wig before she started killing people? Playing both herself and Trisha and rehearsing their reunion? The steam definitely runs out. I feel like the penultimate episode does a lot of stretching for time and that what happens in the last two episodes could easily have taken just one. Another problem, as far as The City goes, is that if the point of spinning something off rather than starting from scratch is to carry over some of the existing audience, then they chose the wrong characters to make that happen. I mean, Debbi and Darnell would obviously generate interest with or without Loving, and Alex was Loving's leading man during both Randolph Mantooth's tenures, but Tony, Jocelyn, Danny, and Richard were all characters new characters, and Buck, Tess, and Frankie had only been around for 2-2.5 years and from what I recall of The City, it struggled to find stories for them. Did Buck and Tess even have a story of their own before her cancer story? An exception is Ally, who had deep roots in Loving and had a solid jumping off point as a character trying to start anew after tragedy, but the fact that they were still trying to make Ally/Danny happen was a problem after everything the two had done to each other. Ewing did have the advantage of playing a major part in the show's two big stories during its last months.

I don't know quite what to say in the face of that much praise, so I'll just leave it at thank you. I'm glad you've enjoyed reading along as I make my way through what I have of the show. @Franko The final count on Geoffrey Ewing/Debbi Morgan/Alimi Ballard is 135 for Ewing (+29 from 93/94 combined and #1 for 95), 129 for Morgan (+4 from 93/94 combined and #2 for 95), and 79 for Ballard (+4 from 93/94 combined and #8 for 95). Darnell Williams has 118 and is #4 on the year (behind Randolph Mantooth).

Thanks for posting those. It's always nice to see an episode with the original Jeff. I hope one day an episode with Michael Maguire's Jeff will surface - I imagine he wasn't in very many. I saw a clip of him from Quando si Ama, but it was difficult to get a sense of his take on the character.

The May 1991 episode: I don't usually enjoy Carly scenes because I find her to be such a sour and unpleasant character, but the scenes between her, Kate, and Ava joking around with each other in Burnell's were nice. Loving always moved plots at a fast pace, but it's still sometimes surprising to me how quickly they reset the characters emotionally. Just a few months before this episode Clay was framing Trucker for involvement in the plane crash, yet here's Trucker being totally nonchalant about Clay being around and Trisha considering reestablishing a relationship with him.

If he had stayed gone after leaving Brenda at the altar, that would have been fine with me. I thought he was a good character during his first run and, having recently rewatched that period, I enjoyed his redemption arc (if it can be called that) when he and Luke were working together and he was first getting together with Brenda and there was lighter material mixed in with the darker material. Really, other than the Karen story, I can't think of a point during his first run where I wasn't interested in the character and his stories (even if I didn't necessarily always like him). Him returning and increasingly becoming not only the center of the show, but somehow the moral center, is part of what drove me away from the show for over a decade (along with Luke's never ending vendetta against the Cassadines and the show just generally becoming darker). Best story was Sonny/Brenda/Jax. Sonny belongs with Brenda. Carly belongs in the gutter. As for other pairings, I find his relationship with Nina surprisingly tolerable. Although I didn't like it at the time, on rewatch I think he had a nice, relaxed vibe with Lily.

This channel has been uploading a ton of Quando si Ama. The first 13 videos are material from 1983, and the rest have been 1984, with the most recent ones heading into 1985. Some points of interest: 13: June takes the stand at Jack's trial and remembers shooting Garth 14: Shana's introduction 23: Ann returns after a short absence played by Callan White 25-27: Roger's death and funeral 29: I'm not entirely sure if this is Ava's introduction, but it's the first video featuring Patty Lotz as Ava 33: Jim and Shana are in a cabin during a storm, unaware that Harry is lurking around outside spying on them 36-37: Doug and Edy's wedding 45: Jack crashes Tony's motorcycle after finding out Dane is his father 50: Jack sleeps with Ava 59: Roya Megnot takes over as Ava 73: After having a nightmare about Vietnam, Mike grabs his gun to shoot himself and is talked down by Shana 76-80: Harry kidnaps Shana 81: Ann and Dane elope 88: Trisha and Gwyneth arrive

It's funny you should mention that because I was looking over Marland's era not too long ago and it occurred to me that throughout 1984 he ushers in characters that seem like they function as his own spin on some of the characters he was handed. You mentioned Shana and Merrill, who I think have a lot in common and, as you say, Shana takes Merrill's place on canvas in certain respects. Dane literally takes Roger's place in several respects (he's Jack's father, becomes the owner of Forbes Construction, and Ann's husband). Kate comes in and eventually supplants Rose as the salt of the earth, working class matriarch. Trisha fills the void left by Lily as the innocent ingenue, and Garth's characteristics get split between Harry and Gwyneth, with Harry inheriting the violent tendencies, and Gwyneth inheriting the unhealthy obsession with her daughter's love life and the willingness to go full tilt against a rival who isn't even engaging, let alone retaliating (for Garth that's Roger, for Gwyneth it's Ann). Ava comes on the scene right around the time that Lorna's short marriage to Tony ends, which is when Lorna transitions from being a character who makes things happen to being a character to whom things happen (the victim of the plots of Jonathan twice, Rebecca, and Jane). Ava takes over as the resident pot stirring schemer and Lorna gradually starts to become more of a heroine. Of course, having said all of that, I've never read the show bible, so for all I know some or all of these things were planned from the beginning by Nixon.

I think you must be right about Taggart/Guza planning on Beck staying (and maybe exploring a darker version of Trisha, who taps into the power of manipulation that everyone else in her family has). For some time after she leaves, I feel like you can see the places where Trisha would have fit in to how things are unfolding. I've also long felt like Buck was shoehorned into the Kuwait storyline at the last minute in order to give Trisha a reason to go racing into the night, which is why his role in her death is never really acknowledged or explored afterwards and all the characters just decide to leave the questions surrounding Trisha's death unanswered. My dreamcasting for Curtis circa his first 1993 return is Mark Valley. For Clay (and maybe Jeremy) I think it could be a question of pacing. If Clay is in town when Stacey dies, then he and Gwyneth have that conversation about the possibility of Curtis being the killer right away. With him being out of town, that conversation gets delayed to draw things out.

My plan is to finish 1995, take a short break, and then recap the rest of the Loving episodes I have (I have the last 10-ish weeks of 1991 and most of 1992). After that I might recap what I have of The City, but to be honest I don't have very many episodes of it. Thanks for the plug, glad you're enjoying the murders discussion. I hate that storyline so much and instead of steering out of it, Guza and Taggart doubled down by having Gwyn find evidence that made it geographically impossible for Cabot to be Clay's father. And other than Clay's attempt to destroy AE, which abruptly ends after Trisha "dies," and a couple of mentions after Cabot comes back, it never gets mentioned again and doesn't actually affect anything. Celeste Holm hated it, too. I was leafing through an old Digest relatively recently and there was a "why they left" article featuring Holm. This is what she said about the story:

Christine Tudor and Dennis Parlato had chemistry for days and the dynamic they created between Gwyneth and Clay was so interesting. They were possessive of each other, but at the same time each seemed largely unbothered by the idea of the other sleeping with someone else (Gwyneth used Clay to honeytrap Tess, after all). If it weren't for the fact that this was an American soap, I'd say that they could have been used to explore a nonmonogamous relationship. Gwyneth and Jeremy were okay, I thought. They had decent chemistry, Tudor and Jean LeClerc put a lot into selling it, and I can see from a character perspective how a relationship with Jeremy would have been a breath of fresh air for Gwyn, but that's also what made the relationship a dead end storywise. Once Clay was removed as a potential obstacle, there was no natural conflict in the relationship and the show seemed disinterested in creating new conflict for it.

I'm very fond of the short Guza/Taggart run. There are some big flaws, but I thought they struck a great balance between heavy and lighter material and I find those episodes very rewatchable. It sort of unravels at the end, with a sense that they're throwing anything and everything against the wall and seeing what sticks, but even then I find the stories they're laying the groundwork for (a Trucker/Angie relationship, a Dinah Lee/Alex/Ava/Jeremy quad, a Clay/Gwyneth/Buck/Stacey quad) intriguing. I'm mixed on Agnes Nixon's 93-94 run. I think the Dante Partou storyline is great umbrella story that draws the canvas together after the chaotic ending of Guza/Taggart's run, the Deborah/Clay/Steffi/Cooper story is one of my favorite Loving stories ever, and I think that Steffi's bulimia story is really well done in that instead of wrapping it up in a couple of months with a nice, social issues bow, it instead ebbs and flows through Steffi's other stories throughout the year and into the next. On the other hand, the show feels less balanced during her run than it did during Guza/Taggart's because it tends to focus intensely on one story for a few weeks while characters who aren't part of that story just disappear for lengthy periods of time; and I dislike how several of the characters are approached. Egypt is brought back just to be destroyed, which was a waste (instead of ending Ava and Jeremy's relationship within a month of Alex's return, I think it would have been better to keep that relationship going until Egypt's return, see what kind of chemistry Linda Cook and Jean LeClerc had, and turn it into an Egypt/Alex/Ava/Jeremy quad with Ava and Alex ending up together and Egypt and Jeremy ending up together). Stacey is treated as though she's nothing outside of Buck and just languishes on the sidelines for months while he has a series of other stories. Dinah Lee becomes so reduced as a character that her relationship with Trucker becomes her entire personality. I hate that Curtis becomes the show's whipping boy, and I hate that the show gives up on Shana, who barely appears during her last six months on the show. I'd really like to see more of Marland's years and more of the Taggart/King years.

I remember reading a piece in SOD, I think it was circa the start of Timothy Gibb's run, where they looked at each actor who had played Kevin as an adult and described what they had done onscreen. When it came to Kenitzer it just said something to the effect that he put on his coat and left, his stint having been so short that the character didn't do anything of note during his portrayal.

I have mixed feelings about Brown & Esensten, but one of the positive things about their regime is that they actually wrote for and prioritized the black cast members. I won't be at all surprised if it turns out that Alimi Ballard had more episodes in 1995 than in 1993 and 1994 combined. Ewing, too, actually.

Thanks very much. I believe this episode is from the week of October 19, 1987. Couldn't help but laugh at 19 year olds Trisha and Steve showing up dressed like an old married couple while Stacey stands there dressed like a tween.

To underscore how pointless it was: Rhonda wouldn't even let Karen tell Lee and Gail about it, reasoning that that should be up to Scott, so there wasn't even a scene where they react as proxies for Scott. And Karen is so weirdly nonchalant about being forbidden from saying anything and about the fact that Rhonda kept her from having any family beyond her. Given how rough Karen's childhood was, you would think that she'd be pretty mad that she could have had a father and grandparents in her life, especially with Gail being a psychiatrist who might have recognized that something was wrong when Ray came into the picture. Instead Karen just sort of shrugs it all off and then leaves with Jagger.

If I recall correctly, Damian wasn't trying to make a profit, he was just doing it to mess with Lucy (and ELQ). I can't recall what Scully's motivation was, but afterwards Lucy was trying to get revenge against them by teaming up with Sonny and Luke against Scully, who had come into town and expected a piece of the action from everything Sonny was involved in, including the club. The story ended with Scully kidnapping Lucy, Luke and Sonny rescuing her but getting caught by Scully, and Mike coming along just in time to take a bullet meant for Sonny, who then shot and killed Scully.

1. Judd returns to Corinth either just as, or just after, Linc and Rebekah leave. He gets involved with Ava, who sees him as her next meal ticket, but he's constantly tossing her aside to go after other women. He abruptly moves back to Wyoming at the end of 1986, leaving Ava to start a relationship with the show's second character named Tony. 2. Greed. They were rich, but she wanted them to be richer and Zona had inherited considerable land holdings from her family that Rebekah wanted to control. 3. I've only ever seen episodes with Brian Taylor, who I quite liked. I don't understand why they dropped him when they did. There was definitely more drama to mine from the Linc/Lorna relationship. 4. Yes, I believe so. I'd add Giff, Buck, Cabot, and of course Trucker to the unusual names list. I've also always thought that Cecelia, while not necessarily an unusual name in and of itself, was a strange choice for such a hardscrabble character.

Thanks! I gather that that must be one of Laura Wright's first episodes. Interesting to see Shana in conflict with Stacey and Trisha since so much of what she gets up to in 1991 ends up getting swept under the rug later, with them all acting as though nothing has happened even though some of Shana's actions (helping Clay get custody of Tommy, paying Dinah Lee to try to break up Jack and Stacey) should have been friendship enders.

Part of a B&B breakdown - Ridge's level of arousal was apparently of vital importance:

I became a soap watcher in the mid-90s when I was in middle school. If I was home during the day, then I watched the ABC block from beginning to end, checking in with other soaps during commercials. If I was at school, then I taped one show during the week and watched the episodes over the weekend - which soap that was usually depended on which show best hooked me during the summer. I was pretty ABC loyal, but I was a daily Guiding Light viewer for a while, and Sunset Beach was pretty big with me and my friends. I was lucky because at the time in Canada the affiliate aired Days at 4 and Y&R at 5, so I could watch both of those daily, and so did seemingly everyone else. There was also a show called Northwest Afternoon that aired at 3 and had 15-20 segment dedicated to recapping the day's soaps, so it was easy to keep up with what was going on even when I wasn't watching a certain show, which in turn made it easy to pick up a new (to me) show. Soap magazines were plentiful and easy to find and occasionally a publication would put out special editions (I still have special issues dedicated to soaps' "Greatest Couples" and "Greatest Moments" put out by Soap Opera Update in 97 or 98) that filled you in on the major stuff that happened before you became a viewer. The idea that the genre could die out wasn't really on the radar because there was always talk about potential new soaps being pitched and some of them even came to fruition. I remember eagerly anticipating the debuts of Sunset Beach, Port Charles, and Passions because they were opportunities to get to watch a show from the very beginning.

I've been watching a lot of early 90s General Hospital lately, which means I've been watching a lot of Jenny and Paul. Although I haven't gotten to that point in the story yet, my recollection is that they didn't even get an exit story. Ryan crashed Mac and Felicia's wedding with a bomb and then Jenny and Paul got married in Mac and Felicia's place and that was the last we saw of them until Jenny made a cameo a couple of years later. That got me thinking about other couples who were pushed as big "it" couples, only to lift out of the canvass without even leaving a ripple behind: In 1995 Guiding Light sometimes felt like it was built around Lucy and Alan-Michael, but once they left it was without much fanfare and despite Alan-Michael having been a major character for the better part of a decade, it would take nearly ten years after his departure for the show to bring him back. Antonio and Andy on One Life to Live felt like a major couple when they were on, but then left without leaving much of a void behind. When Antonio came back alone a few years later he explained their split, but was that marriage ever even acknowledged as part of his history after that initial return story?

I think Trisha & Steve would be Loving's example.

Mel Hayes on OLTL. I think his run was just short of two years, but he was important enough to Dorian to make ghostly appearances even a decade later. Also, Patrick Thornhart. He was only on for two years, but was impactful enough that Thorsten Kaye's return to daytime a few years later had him playing Patrick's brother on Port Charles.

Philip Brown (Loving/The City, Search for Tomorrow) is in a new BMW ad: