Mitch64

Wow..what was going on in GH during this time..beating our both ATWT and AW?

Well, I am glad someone was!!!! : )

Well, VI was leaving, and while Long admits that killing him was stupid...I do agree with letting him go with a big bang...body missing. They spent a lot of time and money on Infinity, (which I think might have gotten a bit of a better reputation had it not been the harbinger of a total tonal change with the Bauers and Reardon's decimated and its all Reva and the Lewis and the weird people hanging out around Kyle) so they needed it to end dramatically. They could have done so much more with having Alex go after Kyle and Billy, but that ends and she starts moping over weird and boring Simon. With Kurt..what were you going to do.. cute but boring and perfect and with ties to no one (they had a nice little thing where Bea took him under her wing when everyone left but then she did too..) If they had the balls they would have had Rick and Mindy jump in the sack ( I know, Mindy should have learned birth control by then) I would have had it be Mindy who knows about Rick's drug use and she tries to help him...(not that nobody who came and went) of course, Kurt and Roxie misunderstand..that on top of her bad Sampson Girl thing leaves him to leave her temporarily, and in grand soap tradition, Rick and Mindy console each other (again, I would write it that they always really did, and Mindy rushed into things with Kurt) and she gets knocked up, and loving Rick but also Kurt she chooses to believe it is Kurts (which I could see Princess Mindy doing "My life is perfect and I will it that way, this is Kurts kid")But, she had the dumb model thing, then she burned down the house he was building, she tried to get prefers and he dies (but also Kobe was the one who built him up, then she was gone when he was let go.) Ross believe it or not is one of the last of the "old guard" characters, beside Ed (who is now FauxEd) and Maureen, and Henry and Van (who is ties to being the Lewis family mope.) JVD has made jokes that they didn't write him out as they simply forgot that he was there! Reva doesn't even call her mother when she comes back! I never saw the use of Sarah but they could have reunited them and sent her and Hawk out of town together. Hell, I don't like the Shaynes but she should have mentioned Roxie and Rusty. The weird thing is that Dylan had a ton of story and was very important to the Van/Bridget baby custody story. By the time Reva comes back Dylan had only been gone a year so its not like people wouldn't know him..( I liked him and Bridget together...) So he comes back in 97 and acts like it's no big deal Reva is alive so they must have talked off camera. But Reva was too busy squacking about that annoying toothy Marah and blank Shayne to talk about anything else. It's not quite as weird as Van, who obsessed over Peter, comes back to SF and never mentions him...i.e. "I saw Peter this weekend and he so barely remembers me but he is happy with Bridget and Dylan...")

I love how farmboy Hart became a Guido with a thick New York accent. You could tell they never knew or cared what to do with Hart post MH, he was just a hunk of steroids to take off their shirt and have girls fight over him, but I never understood what Bridget, Dinah or Cassie saw in him..(besides the proverbial roll in the hay, now there is a 20 on the dresser get out.) The move from Hilliard to Grillo was really quick and I would like to know the story...was Moniz not liking him? For more on our good old George Pilgrim, read "Unscripted" where he makes a cameo appearance as Sumner Redstone's much younger mistresses side piece. When you read about him you could imagine that Pilgrim was writing his own dialogue as obnoxious J. There is NO way he was a product of Nola and Quint.

I forgot about the Charlotte Wheaton saga....wasnt her real killer that Alicia television woman..it really was a big "who cares" as it involved people we didn't know (I do wish Charlotte would have lived to just be an annoying pain in the ass to everyone as a recurring character...)It didn't help that it was Faux Ed and as you say, VanFleet makes PS look like a live wire! Didn't Fletcher and Mo have a radio show at that time WTF was Long thinking during this time? I saw another clip of Maeve and she is yet again laying in bed as she is preggers..I swear LD must have had it written in her contract that she was to remain off her feet for all of her roles..(wasn't she in a wheel chair on ATWT?)

Blake was a character that was introd right before or during the strike. When Long came back she asked who Blake was talking to on the phone and the producers were like "We don't know!" It was Curlee who pushed to make that character Chrissy...when they were in talks with Zaz to replace Pilon as Alan, (dummies) . I like the idea of another Reardon but yea, Chelsea? I grew to like her but she just seemed to be a kid that Bea fostered instead of a Reardon. Remember when they had a big scene of the Ed and Maureen talking about the "wildest" Reardon coming home, and Rick says, "Nola's coming back" and Maureen says, "Oh no, Chelsea's MUCH wilder then even Nola!" Okay..riiggghhht. I know they mentioned her "jumping in a fountain in Rome," and since they also had boring Tangie do that, this was apparently the wildest thing the writers could dream up (or they watched the "the Birds" too many times.)

I remember this being in the soap press at the time, they were going to be focused on rebuilding the Bauers, Reardons and Spauldings..and we saw they kind of just created a new Reardon (Chelsea when Nola was always supposed to be the youngest) a new Bauer with an offshoot of the main family,(Johnny) so I am sure they were going to do the same with Alan. New writers may have changed all that..(Long later brought back Amanda for the Christmas episodes...leading into Alex/Phillip dethroning Alan.) I thought Poser should play an different character then Amanda...maybe an adopted daughter. We know Alan had a woman who he lived with in San Rios, they could have had her die and to pay her back for saving his life he adopts her daughter and trains her in all the ways to be a Spaulding. He pays a debt and he has a secret weapon to unleash on the family when he needed to so he keeps in his back pocket.

Interesting..this is more then likely why I found Reva 2.0 boring and annoying..she had everything she wanted...now what else is there but some outside evil person or clones? It also might have been one of the reasons McTavish had Quint have an affair..it made Nola loose her Prince. But unfortunately they didn't do anything with it but made Nola a sad sack whiner. I wish they had her write a book..of course, some tell all which would make everyone pissed at her, especially Van. Long was desperate to sideline Van into the Lewis hole. They had Van working at Spaulding again in 85 around the time Alan came back. I would love to have had Henry and Van tired of Alex dragging some nobody blond guy and trying to install him as a Spaulding, and fight to get their part of the company back. They could have used Ross to help them and of course, Billy would be p*ssed off that Van wasn't sitting at home and her old sharpness comes out.

She could have easily tied them into the Cottage Mystery...(they could have easily explained going on adventures with Bea, babysitting) The house that Tony and Annabelle lived in could have been the coachhouse of the property that Qualo and Henry live in, or at the very least Nola would have been totally in on ghosts and secrets of her brother's house. But they kind of just sat around for months. The clip of Van and Billy's impromptu wedding shows how sidelined Nola and Quint became...Nola isn't even around butting in on them getting married, its all Reva (though it is a more interesting Reva where Mindy and her or going at it and insulting each other..THAT Reva was fun.) I loved it when those two would go at it. Somehow they could have resurrected that antogonistic relationship and not have Billy worshing at the throne of Reva. When they brought JC back on recurring they should have had him at least warn Annie about Jeva pulling her down..."Darlin' I love my brother, but when he has ole Reva in his sites he will drop any woman to try to win her back...and then he will get bored with her...she's like booze is to me and you...he hates it but he needs it..get out while you can!"

I thought it was weird, as it would be more relatable for young viewers to see college students..or maybe they think young people have a fantasy of being "adults" but not really? Mindy could have had her dumb model storyline while still being in college, Beth could have been there, Rick in med school (though I realize a whole med school thing would take too long) but Bolger's Phillip didn't look like he has been in college in ten years, unless he was the humpy professor everyone was in love with.

Bolger was good..just not as Phillip..he came off as older then Phillip (who along with all of the 4 Ms, forgot they should be college students) I dont remember any scenes with him and Rick, its like they were no longer friends. He was one of the few guys who had that kind of chemistry with MKA..but they threw her at Simon and tried to get him back with Beth, who he had no chemistry with. It would have been nice for Phillip and India to have a love/hate relationship of fighting and sex, for a bit before they found someone with proper chemistry with Bolger, and of course, India had Alan waiting for her, which I thought was interesting but they didnt do anything with it.

A proper recast for Alex, who pulls the strings behind the scenes (and doesnt HATE Amanda like MarjAlex did) would be great..at that point I see her having her fingers in the pie just to make sure it all doesnt go to hell. My rival for Phillip would be my fan fiction of a kid of Ed and Ritas. Somehow Roger got a hold of him, made him think he was Alan's kid ( I would think Rita would push him as someone who could get a piece of the Spaulding) and secretly raised him to HATE Spaulding and work to take them all down...of course the truth comes out that he is Ed's kid, so we have a "bad" Bauer who is Phillip's match, and Rick is stuck in the middle trying to make a relationship with the brother who HATEs his best bud.

During Taggert Alan mentions Amanda as his "daughter" while that most likely is a writers slip up, I like to think it was a retcon. They never have Alex, on any of her frequent trips back mention Amanda as my sister, etc. I know they just want to forget it and Amanda was probematic in her marriage to Roger (i.e. MADD's decree that Roger will never be mentioned again..) Again, they could have easily brought her back with a handwave from Alex or Alan saying it was a trick from Brandon. There is Amanda, AM and ALL the various offspring Phillip created. Plus head of family means head of Spaulding. I would have thought it interesting if Phillip becomes more like Alan (but in the gray area he always was, not outright cartoon villain RR Alan) and AM comes back with more of his Bauer coming out and wanting to do things on the up and up..maybe AM became a lawyer like his grandfather in the missing years...and Amanda could play both sides against the other. But also they could have brought someone like Kyle Sampson back to rival Phillip and the Spaulding (maybe Amanda married him) but then, of course there would be ANOTHER man horning after long in the tooth Reva!

Well, you wont be happy at all because I think Marcus of all people shows up..you know they have to have a scene were Dahlia is swimming and Marcus joins her..despite the fact that he is a decade older then her. You could tell they were trying to make them the next big thing but then, just dropped it. The whole wedding was also one of the reason McLaibey was so short term.

I would have to say FD was the luckiest man in daytime who stayed way past any reason for him to be there, but yes, totally agree that Alan should have died at that point, which would have spared us more years on mustache twirling bombasity. I know it was a big get to bring Joan Collins on, and I loved her Alex, but it would have been great at that point if they had just brought Amanda back. Phillip is named by Alan and Alex as the successor or head of family and head of the corporation, with the board and investors approval. Amanda (who is back to being Alan's daughter, it was one last "screw you" from Brandon to try to get Alan and Alex at each others throats) gets pissed and comes back to stake her claim and be a thorn in everyone's side. Meanwhile Liv is suddenly REALLY interested in Phillip as he will have a longer self life then Alan. Things unfold much as they did with Amanda coming back to thwart Liv as Alex did..and when the truth comes out Alan really does have a heart attack and kicks (for real, for good, no fake outs, no returns, he's dead..dead.) and then AM comes back (as Taggert originally planned before Weston came to stink up the place.) to make his claim also. Phillip' guilt over Alan's death and having no final reconciliation ( On his death bed Alan could say, "I am proud of you son, you have finally become a real Spaulding," right before he kicks. ) I also agree that Phillip was not always likable, which really I give GA credit for being brave enough to make him that way, which is exactly how Phillip should be. Ed and Chelle were there, but she ran off the plane to chase J...(I kid you not, that is why we started calling her Slutchelle) and Ed ran after her. The reason they, and no one else was at the wedding was obviously to save money, so it would have made more sense to have it on an existing set then that dumb Universal Studios thing.

Agreed that Phillip most definately needed to stay on the canvas if GA was going to play him. Too much history going back to the Dobsons there. Also, they were not hamstrung on Phillip/Beth the way they were on Jeva, so the characters had room to move on to others logically and stay in each others orbits...(I am not saying what they chose to do with Beth in Ruachieville was good but..) I think Reva should have been brought back to cause trouble for Josh and Annie, go through angst, get together with Josh and leave town together. There was no where else to go with them after that as post Annie is when all the ridiculous things happened to keep them on screen. But Zimmer had been in Hollywood where a Khan said about O'leary..."Realized they couldnt get arrested" lol and she was bound and determined to keep going (not that I blame her, a check is a check) and the Jeva nuts (prompted by Zimmer and Newman at times) would scream if they were off screen for 5 minutes. The only possible story for Reva was for Josh to be killed or for him to finally have enough of her and leave town. I thought Reva was most interesting during that weird post RN period when she broke up with Kyle and was living with Cane...she had jobs, she was involved with a lot of different people and was not always the center of the story.

Oh, poor Henry had to wait for the grave to finally come "out"! The whole things was McTavish plot dictated so that Hart could have money to pull off his scam of Roger later. The fortune is totally forgotten later. Which reminds me WHY did they fire Hilliard who actually could kinda pass for a midwestern farm boy..from JOISEY Grillo? AM and Lucy's wedding has got to be the weirdest wedding up to that point and really exemplified the McLaiby cheesy run. Universal Studios? And the Spauldings shut the place down for the wedding that only involves 6 people??? Its not even that weird that Bridget and David arent there...they didn't even invite AM's Mom or Grandfather...

Eve was one of those characters that had the "Jessie Brewer"role. They had heavy storyline, they burned through it and now they are there for support and a touchstone in the community (Marland wanted to give Jessie story, but I agree with Monty...she best served in her connecting role, and keeping that damn Amy Vining busy so she keeps her nose out of things) So charcters are important and why they should have kept characters like Bridget around (even as she is more volatiles then Eve) who didnt need a big storyline but could have been behind the bar making connections and expostion, but Rauch wanted JEVA/JEVA/JEVA and DRAMA (which to him meant a lot of yelling and stupidity.)

This is where McLaibey falls apart. It becomes clear that McTavish had not thought past Brent/Marion...so the energy drops and she starts throwing things at the wall (Blakes twins, Lonatrat.) Fans HATED this funeral. Everyone is mad at everyone else, which is fine, the death of a beloved community figure would give people a reason to come together...(Quint and Nola could come together at least for a bit to support each other, Nola and VAn could finally admit they kinda, sorta like each other) Its just an example of McTavish's mean writing. I have a feeling they were going to make Dahlia Frank's kid but they chickened out. Making Tina a prostitute didn't help, they could have been lovers when they were young but felt society pressure to part. Marcus took over David's role (you can't have two young black men at that time...) Get used to it...this will happen, the same storyline over and over until the end.

Oh Hope..I remember Ben, and well, he has been the pass around boy for 15 months..THAT might be why he is not into you that much.

Thanks, interesting and so believable (no Lonatrat or Clones...)Instead of the Lewis family he should have made the Oil family Granger...even if the audience didn't remember that one off character it would have been interesting to tie it into the fictional GL world.

Oh but those "Pharleys" were very adamant that they stay together and be featured everyday (though I did like their websites and the recaps they gave each day.) I agree, they were interesting at first, but the longer it went on the more Harley became this sad sack jealous wife, the more Phillip became a dumb Josh type character torn between two women and the more Beth became a pathetic looser chasing her ex. I think after Beth came back it would have been an interesting triangle of three "good" people trying to find a way, and I did like the "Who killed Carl" and how Harley and Beth had to work together there, but we all know Phillip would have dumped Harley to get together with Beth, Harley would have been hurt but dusted herself off and moved on, and eventually Beth and Phillip would implode. They didn't bring back one Reardon or Bauer for Mo's funeral...did anyone think they would waste money and energy on poor sad Nadine?

I HATED Infinity (I could care less about Kyle Sampson and his hanger ons and the dumb Lujack video, and Mindy and Kurt were strong armed into being a fave couple and married off way too soon (Jeva didnt get that big of a wedding.) I did like the Fishing Mystery (despite the changing of history..it was murky enough that it could be fudged) and the Cabin mystery started out good ..I thought Tony was hot and I liked Annabelle, it had supernatural elements but they did not overtake the story (i.e. Reva traveling through time..) and I love a gothic mystery.. however, it was bizarre that nosy Nola wasnt in the mix...she barely seemed interested that her sister in law was psychic, there may be ghosts in her brothers house, etc. I don't know if there was a behind the scenes issue with Brown and Kobe, or if Long just wanst interested or felt tied up writing for Quola. I would have had Quint blow up in the cabin instead of Hillary but..The big problem that the end result was...boring. Okay so there are black Spauldings..and they disappeared...so what now? Not only was J gross...(I can't believe the actor IS actually just as obnoxious as J) they made Chelle into an airhead horn dog going after her cousin. Yes, by adoption but still her cousin. I wondered why she was not calling Nola "Aunt" when she first arrived, and they barely acknowledge each other ( I would think Nola would glomb on to mothering her sister's daughter, especially with Stacy not in town, much to Ed's chagrin) but it was in service to...this??? Wait until Chele gets all horny for an angel...oyyyy! No one else in town reacted to Nadine's death,, cause Deas had to have his big dumb over the top reaction scene to Deenie's death. I can't imaging watching that scnene and thinking he was a good actor!

She was the Town Historian, who knew a bit too much about Brandon and the infamous cottage. SF was still a pretty normal place at that time, with Nola and Reva being the most outrageous citizens....seems that Carrie Pipper would have stood out a bit more for people.

ANYTHING to get her off the screen..she COULD have been interesting if she and Van had a few face offs..(there was a mild one of her going back to work...but I wanted something meatier "Bitch, I am Vanessa Chamberlain and I don't take advice from someone who followed the..career path you did!" I did like Alex's outright disdain for her.