Kane

Worst: Erica's unabortion on AMC Best: The introduction of Nikolas on GH, although maybe that doesn't count as a retcon since it just filled in the story of what happened to Laura during the period when she was absent and didn't actually re-write what played out on screen. Worst: Luke's a philanderer who cheated on Laura left, right, and center

Dimitri was always my preferred Erica pairing, but among the men she actually married my second choice would be Adam. It wasn't a love match by any means, but I always loved watching David Canary and Susan Lucci together.

Thanks - that's a great find. He's generous about including clips that he's not featured in. I've been hoping that more of 1987 would show up online. It's such a strange year, with so many characters being introduced and then jettisoned without leaving any trace behind.

Janie/Elise Neal was a real shot in the arm for the show - she clicked with everyone they put her in a scene with and there were so many different directions they could have gone with her. The only thing I didn't like about her story was that the show had her lusting after Buck which, much like the Gilly/Griffin relationship on Guiding Light, was just too far over the ick line. Writing her out not only wasted all that untapped potential for story, it diminished the resolutions to the stories she was already in (Angie practically disappears between getting the bone marrow transplant and Jacob showing up in early 1995; Frankie gets shoved back to the furthest edge of the backburner until he gets a new love interest, again in early 1995; and Buck finding out that she was his daughter would have been more meaningful if he actually had to deal with her as a person whose feelings about him probably would have been complicated, rather than developing an idealized picture of her and what their relationship could have been after death) and it doesn't make for a very satisfying resolution to the Ava's predictions story because Ava didn't know Janie (Ava is told twice who died - first immediately after the crash, and then later when she gets another visit from Harry to tie up the story and spell out all the resolutions, and both times she's like "Who?"). If the show felt like it had written itself into a corner with the predictions and had to kill someone off, the logical solution would have been to just kill Gilbert at the end of that story. To add to that, by the end of the year Cooper and Ally had started dating and were engaged all over again. The amount of story that Cooper/Ally/Casey were rushed through in 1993 would have played out for a decade on Bill Bell's Y&R. As a slight aside, I've always thought it was odd that even before Ally became pregnant, Isabelle was pushing for her and Cooper to get together. Her not supporting Cooper's relationship with Hannah, I get (even though Isabelle wasn't always a dragon lady, she was always a snob), but socioeconomically there's not a ton of difference between Ally and Hannah, at least from the lofty vantage point of the Aldens. Isabelle should have been pushing for Cooper to get together with someone like Staige.

Johnny gets returned to Sherrie and Tug at the beginning of July/86, bringing about a swift end to Ava and Curtis' very short marriage. If Loving had lasted longer, I would have liked to see the show bring Jack back from the dead and then bring back a teenage Johnny, who would basically be a male version of early Ava - devious, ruthless, and ambitious. The press around Jack's return from the dead would lead to Johnny finding out that he was once thought to be Jack and Ava's son and then he'd come to town with a chip on his shoulder over his parents trading him in exchange for the funds to pay for an operation for his sister as well as them taking him back and robbing him of the chance to be an Alden heir. His goal would be to regain his "rightful" place as a member of the Alden family. Ava would be forced to contend with the sins of her past, Jack would try to have some kind of relationship with him despite his resentment towards JJ, since he would see JJ as having the life he was supposed to have (or, alternately, Jack would start to bond with him as a result of being rejected by JJ, who is so bonded with Buck that he now sees him as his father), and Stacey and Ava's feud could be reignited.

Did anyone else ever watch this half hour Canadian soap that was simultaneously short and long lived? 3 seasons aired between 2001 and 2008, each separated by several years due to funding issues. The first season aired 50 episodes and the second and third each aired 26. Set in Ontario cottage country, the show starts with a murder mystery and features a lot of sex and gratuitous nudity. I recently discovered that the production company put the first two seasons up on youtube and have been enjoying a rewatch. For anyone interested, the first episode is here:

The use of "Smooth Operator" was perfect. It reminded me of a scene from late '91, when Gwyneth overhears that Dinah Lee is seeing a married man and "I'll Be Watching You" is playing in the background. It's almost too on the nose, but it works. I'm really hoping some more 1985 gets posted. In particular I really want to see an episode with Rebecca Staab as Cecelia; I'm curious about her take on the character.

I don't mind at all - thanks for the plug!

@j swiftThank you, that's very nice of you to say. I enjoy writing about the sets, but it can be hard to find good shots that really show them off because obviously the characters are often in the way. As an aside, if anyone knows how and when Rocky and Rio were written out, it would really help me out for an upcoming character profile. I gather that it happened sometime in September of 1991, but they disappear from SOD's recaps after a mini buried treasure adventure with Trisha and Trucker that happened in August.

Rick's original purpose was to move the two Clays plot along. When the truth about Rick's parentage came out, Ava wanted Clay to get a blood test, but Clay said he was going to take Gwyneth at her word and considered the matter closed. Ava, in typical fashion, decided to go behind his back and have a blood test performed in secret and in the process discovered that her Clay and the real Clay had different blood types. I think you're on to something about Albers' Curtis becoming younger to make room for Rick. Unfortunately they over did it and made it seem like Curtis was younger than Trisha (even though Albers is older than Beck).

I agree about Rick. Although I haven't seen very much of his run, I really like Ron Nummi's performance before the show starts taking Rick off the rails. He and Lauren-Marie Taylor had good chemistry and I like the early dynamic between the characters when he's encouraging her writing ambitions.

At the 9:12 mark is a promo for the Gwyneth secretly had a baby in high school story (with a dash of brother and sister start dating not knowing that they're siblings, courtesy of Rick and Trisha). A modified version of the promo is repeated at 38:23.

I'll second that and add Lucky, Emily, Nikolas, and Elizabeth as another favorite, as well as Y&R's Billy, Mac, Brittany, Raul, and JT cohort. Didn't care for the Scott, Laura, Bobby, Anita, Kelsey, and Kevin group on AMC. Other than Kevin, they were all kind of unpleasant and grating (although Scott became less so when he was recast with Daniel Cosgrove).

Days - the Salem Slasher. Roman ending up on the run with Anna, Alice helping Bo and it causing friction between her and Tom because she's constantly having to lie to him, Roman's "death," Bo keeping Roman hidden and later Marlena, Eugene, Abe, and Alice finding out that he's alive, Marlena finding out that she's pregnant and Eugene stepping in to explain how that could be so when Roman has been "dead" for months, Anna getting swept off her feet by Tony then discovering the real Tony imprisoned and learning that Andre has taken Tony's place and then getting locked up with Tony, Bo trying to stay away from Hope and Larry moving in on her. And, of course, Stefano turning out to be alive. Also, the Maison Blanche-Possession-Aremid cycle and all the side stories that sprung out of them. All My Children - the introduction of Wildwind with Angelique being revealed as Dimitri's proverbial woman in the attic, Edmund coming onto the scene and trying to be recognized as Hugo's son, Dimitri and Erica's affair, Edmund kidnapping Erica in Budapest and then her deciding to work with him against Dimitri, and Helga falling to her death.

It became a running gag after the storyline that they would refer to themselves as Thelma and Louise, but disagree about which of them was which.

I stand corrected. My recollection was that she didn't come into significant money of her own until later. Natalie knew all along that Timmy was Alex's, right? Or did she really think there was a possibility that Jeremy was his father?

She was, but she either got cut out of the will or was only left a small amount. Her being in need of money was why she became Palmer's nurse. I don't recall Ray being part of it - but it's been a while, so my memory is a bit hazy. My recollection is that they just happened to look alike.

I'm pretty sure that Jeremy inherited it all and then split it with Tim, putting his portion in a trust. It wouldn't have been very like Jeremy to keep all the money and not share it with his brother, particularly the brother he originally thought was his son. Speaking of twins, the great pitch/poor execution thread had me thinking about the Tad/Ted story, which I've always thought could have been an interesting story if the show hadn't been so timid about what happened to Ted when he was abducted and had actually explored his trauma and fleshed the character out instead of just sacrificing him at the altar of Tad and Dixie.

It didn't help that Karen Lynn Gorney was bad during that '95 return. I rewatched that period a year, maybe 18 months ago, and I was shocked by how unpleasant that performance was to watch. There would have been no point in reviving the Tara/Erica feud because KLG wouldn't have been able to hold her own. Frankie is interesting because the problems with giving him an identity weren't just contained to AMC; Loving and The City had the same problem trying to figure out who he was, what made him tick, and giving him meaningful things to do. I'd also add Charlie Brent as a character who didn't live up to his potential. His existence drove so much story in the show's early run, but by the time he was an adolescent/grown up, the show could never seem to settle on who it wanted him to be. He was an earnest kid who wanted to become a doctor, then he came back as a caddish player (taking over for the absent Tad, I suppose), then came back again and became a PI (taking over for Tad, again). By the time he left for good, he didn't even really get a send off. He and Cecily walked out of their wedding reception and then just... went away.

Thanks! Your cast list has been a godsend for completing the episode cast lists.

Agreed. If either Patrick Johnson or Michael Lord had worked out, I imagine the story would have been extended - circa the end of Lord's tenure the story is pulling so hard in the direction of a Clay/Dinah Lee affair that them just going their separate ways after Curtis leaves town doesn't make much sense in terms of where the characters are at emotionally at that point. I've been wondering lately whether the Deborah/Clay/Steffi/Cooper story borrows from the original outline for Clay/Dinah Lee/Curtis, perhaps with Tess slotting into the role Deborah plays in the later story, Curtis playing the Clay role as the person with the secret he's desperate to keep, and Clay/Dinah Lee playing the Cooper/Steffi part as they team up to try to figure out what Tess has on Curtis only to end up getting closer to each other in the process.

I think she was let go. I think Barry was fine given how the character was used during her tenure; the problem is that Isabelle was written completely out of character because the show tried to turn her into Cabot. Hindsight is 20/20 of course, and I doubt the show knew when they let go of Wesley Addy that James Horan would be gone 6 months later, but I think the show would have been better served by having Clay go to prison for the cover up about the plane crash/the frame up of Trucker rather than have Cabot take the fall on his deathbed (or "deathbed," as it turned out). Have Curtis leave town afterwards, since the show never knew what to do with Albers' Curtis anyway, and then have Cabot bring him back to town in 1992 for the purpose of keeping Dinah Lee "occupied" as Trisha and Trucker deal with the fallout from his affair. He then falls in love with her in earnest, but then she finds out about the original set up and breaks up with him. Then bring Clay back, have him and Dinah Lee play out the "falling for each other without knowing each other's real identity" plot, and then launch the Curtis/Dinah Lee/Clay triangle. Thanks. The naming of his characters is very weird to me. He comes on in February '93 as Fred Graham, the FBI agent investigating Ava and Dinah Lee for murder. Months later he turns up playing a cop named Charlie Martin and then about a month after that he's renamed Pat Graham, the name change made necessary by Geoffrey Ewing's debut as Charles Harrison in between those two appearances. I'm curious about the thought process that went into having him play a whole new character, presumably unrelated to the first, but with the same last name.

Thanks! Jeremy is so high on the list largely because of the amount of story he had with Ava, though you could also argue that he's the show's leading man from January-September, when Alex comes back (fun fact: Jeremy and Ava finally get together and are a couple for exactly 1 week in real time before Alex returns). He's involved in a lot of stories that year - he steps in to resolve the gaslighting plot then he and Stacey have a long will they/won't they type thing, he's teaching the college cohort, Hannah develops a thing for him which results in him being investigated by the university and having conflict with both Clay and Dinah Lee, he's a little bit involved in the Trucker/Tess story (he recognizes Tess as someone he crossed paths with once in Monte Carlo), he gets involved in the Ava/Leo/Shana triangle, and then he and Ava end up on the run in Florida. I'm pretty sure he had more story in those nine months of '93 than he did in all the rest of his time on the show.

For anyone interested, I recently finished a complete watch of 1993 and did episode counts as I went. Top 5 are Lisa Peluso (168 episodes), Laura Wright (141), Jessica Collins (139), Jean LeClerc (133), and Dennis Parlato (132). Full results are posted here.

Bianca's coming out isn't really pre-social media. Facebook and Twitter might not have been around yet, but message boards were and I remember a fan campaign that was organized on the old Television Without Pity board to bring attention to the Bianca/Lena pairing. I'm not really sure social media would have changed much, if only because soaps had a sort of proto-social media even before the internet. Fans found each other through fan clubs and other means and organized letter writing campaigns and call in campaigns and organized efforts to send a specific item en masse to a show to demonstrate displeasure with something. If anything, I think that was probably more effective than social media as we know it now because you can cherry pick which segments of online fandom you want to pay attention to/cater to, but it's a lot more difficult to ignore receiving hundreds of cans of whatever at the office. The fact that it's easier to write an online comment is why it has less weight - someone had to feel really strongly about something to go to the trouble of writing a letter and mailing it, whereas a casual or sporadic viewer with little actual investment in a show might write a negative comment online because it's so easy. I would like to think that a lot of the redeemed rapist storylines would not have happened if social media existed then, but as @titan1978 pointed out, society's understanding of things like consent has evolved since those storylines originally played out. I mean, women were screaming "Rape me Luke!" at Anthony Geary in the 70s and "Rape me Todd!" at Roger Howarth in the 90s.