Mitch64

Oh, I had a horrible vision of Bert, marrying H.B. and then becoming a "Lewis" and that would solidify them as the "core" family, and i would not put that past Kobe. Erickson wanted to leave..Rauch told him they had story for him..(i.e. with Drew) but he wanted out. I don't blame him they wrote more for Pilgrim (who didn't know his claim to fame was going to be as the boytoy of Sumner Redstone's mistress! )and J. just stood around following Chele around who was running after that weird angel character. A good intro for Stacey and an exit for Quint would be for for her to write to N & Q that she is seeing an older man. Nola is suspicious and they find out the older man is actually Quint's old enemy Silas Crocker...(maybe BH could be borrowed from ATWT for a bit) who is out for revenge..and eventually he and Quint struggle fall of a cliff and Quint dies a hero's death instead of just disappearing.

Curlee always wanted to write for a Nola type character...and I think that Stacy, a Chamberlin with a rich archeologist father (odd, on her return they always acted like Nola was..not rich...) who traveled the world, would be too sophisticated. Instead of Drew (brought on with that dumb music producer storyline, connected to no one) they brought Stacy as Chele's rival. She would be a couple of years older and more wordly then Chele, and she has the Nola genes for subterfuge. That was stupid..she cheated herself out of a career....(I actually don't think she could handle the acting challenge of playing a drunk.) Well, he did become "J...no dot" under the acting of soon to be infamous George Pilgrim, and they threw him into a relationship with his (adopted) cousin...really Chele, the world is that small? Then they recast with that bland pretty boy and there was a kinda triangle with him, his cousin, and an angel..so the character was doomed.

Agreed...a great format to have a twisty mystery that leads into another one (and as a viewer, if you not THAT into the current mystery, you could check in once in a while to keep up and wait for another good mastery.) They could also set it in a urban area with a mix of ethnicities and economic levels ( I think that is what BTG's is missing, a mix of different economic levels...and the setting is way too bland. I think do think every soap needs a Spaulding or Whitney family..pulling the strings behind the scenes.. and what a great way to get rid of a problem actor or someone asking for too much money...kill em off or send them to jail.

The should have brought Floyd (hardened and tougher) back for a short run during Lisa's second run and have Stacey return. Did Stacey even know Floyd was her dad (probably never discussed as she was a kid when she was on last.)

Yea, the Dobson's created him, an he had a quasi- Three's Company thing going with Hillary and Katie (well, he was Katie's bro so he was not perving on her...)

Ha..when they had Lisa doing her Dolly Valentine gossip column it should have been in the "Key Hole" (great name for a rag...) which she secretly bought.

A news anchor posted on his FB page about meeting her during this, and he fanboyed out! Mentioned that he and his mother would watch GL over dinner, and how it was not just meeting a star but the good memories that came back of watching the show with his mom..it was really kind of sweet and I think really is spot on how these shows bring back those memories more then any other genre. When I hear Bob, Kim, Lisa or Nancy's voices I think of my Mom and grandmother. I didn't know she had cancer? She looks really good. The Gates need to bring her on as the matriarch of a working class family

I think the younger actors in that scene were jazzed to be part of it. The thing I liked about the Meta character is that she didn't really have a family of her own...(i.e. kids) so it made sense she would want to come back to her hometown and adopt these nephews and niece and the whole town. As someone really without a "family" to take sides with it made her more accessible to the rest of the characters. I also like that she had a past and would understand people's slightly left of the moral center. But they kind of threw it all away (and Stuart became ill.)

Well, there was a reason that their relationship was just going to events..etc..Henry was a big ole QUEEN! (watch some clips where he is just rolling his eyes at Vanessa, or Billy, or Alex, or Jenna, or the new curtains at the Towers...) I can see Bert more with H.B. then Henry. Henry was old money (and I always presumed lots of it) and of the manor born...H.B. was new money (as Alex would sniff her nose and say) and worked his ass off for it. He was more down to earth and also raised a family. I think Bert would accept that ..and unlike Bea, she would be on to Henry, but respected the facade...: ) Alex and Mike I could see as they would challenge each other and there was more story then being with that drip Lillian. For a maternal prescence I would have just brought back Bea, but write her stronger...( the woman raised 7 kids and ran a boarding house, she should have been tough stuff.) The perfect time to expand the Bauer family was when Simon left during McTrash...Mike should have come back and maybe he is married and has an entire new family which would be close to AM 's age. Have a young earnest son just going into law enforcement, I can see Poser's vampy, horny Amanda going for it much to the concern of both father's reginiting the Spaulding/Bauer feud. Edited to add..if they brought Mike back then..it would have been interesting to have him married to Jennifer (they could still have had kids off camera) so she comes back and resumes her contentious relationship with Amanda (who actually finds Mike to be a more supportive father figure causing conflict with Alan, and Morgan could come back...resuming her conflict with Nola (now this time Morgan is the bad girl, going after Quint for revenge...or maybe a recast Kelly returns.) Of course a Mike/Jennifer thing would cancel Amanda going after Mike's son, as even Poser's Amanda would find that an issue. Meta did talk about her past, during one of Vanessa's Shady Ladies of SF support group thing she talked about it, and it actually was well written.

Of course, the "dead gays" trope comes out again. But also it shows a naivety on writing for gays that these two guys in their 20s or 30s or going to ride off together and stay together their whole lives. But I think that is the problem with soaps, they have this silly ideal that the end all and be all is to be in a relationship, and each relationship on the show has to be geared toward the soap money shot of a wedding...only for them to break up six months later. I would have been happy for Reid just not to die (and of course say, "Luke, your a nice kid and a great lay, but that's all it is, your a silly little man dive and your annoying to spend more then the night with")

I could not stand Hansis or Luke. But he was the token gay, the gay audience was so desperate for representation that they pushed "Nuke" as if they werent the dullest couple on the face of the earth (like with Otalia on GL...) I also think they kept him around as he was totally bland and sexless..I never saw any passion between him and the first guy (granted, he was an uncharismatic block of wood) and any sparks were totally generated by the Reid actor. Too bad they didnt make Casey bi, and if Reid was somehow related to John, reignite the Hughes/Dixon tension..(and of course they gay audience would go nuts over the Casey actor shirtless.) and I could totally see Scott Holmes Tom as a homophobe Dad with Bob and Kim being supportive and especially Lisa getting involved (come on , you know Lisa had a gaggle of Queens around her from her restaraunt staff, etc.) I can't believe GL kept Frankie D and other nonentities and not kept Brown's Nola around. She should have been running Company and getting her nose in everyone's biz and mothering the young characters as the eccentric landlady bar owner. Or ATWT didn't bring her back to constantly have it out with Lucinda.

Your right, they were gearing up for an Alex/Mike/Lillian triangle, and there were scenes heading into that...(Mike taking Alex up in his plane, Lillian mistaking the intentions when Mike asked her back to his place for "dessert") Then it was dropped. It wasn't that Stewart didn't get along with Bev, it was that she was "too old" for him, and he could be, as most actors are, a pain. That must have been when Kobe fired him( and I don't blame her...I would have just recast him immediately.) I have a feeling that the long game was for Mike and Alex to be together when Alan finally came back. I think Long had every intention on continuing to use the Bauers...Mike with Alex and Bert with H.B. (and I think that Bert would have been in the thick of things no matter with H.B. or not...Kobe felt that as long as Charita was there she could fire the entire cast and people would stay tuned.) But it was Kobe the driving force (and Charita's death caught them by suprise.) But there were many times that producers could have restored the Bauers, (Kobe could have recast Mike right before CB came back...but I think she was hesitant because FauxEd was not working out at all.)

He is handsome..I wonder what kind of actor he is and if they could have recast with him when Don left.

I thought Luke/Reid was way more interesting then Luke, and that other guy, who couldn't act, but agree that Reid was more interesting on his own..the weakness was Luke, who was as annoying in his "perfectness" as his mommy was, but also the actor was annoying on his own. MB was talented enough to make Lily sometimes sympathetic while being whiny and spoiled an having everyone worrying over her, this actor could not. But how interesting it would have been if Reid was created earlier in the shows run, to have a gay character who was smart, professional, arrogant and shady...like John, not a villain, not an anti-hero (on soaps they all have to wear leather and drive a bike) and not a hero.

It is bit arch, and I love how Hank is so...generic and nice and as this is Marland...polite (but if we had a "Hey Babs..you betta just quit being a Ho for married men!" people would have freaked!) ATWT was really ahead of its time there and it never got the credit...though I hated how Hank just disappeared. I love the scene of Bob yelling at John about the technician and then John blows it over to ask how long has he known about Hank, and Andy being around him...and then how EVERYONE in town seemed to know about Hank's HIV test...because as Bob said.."We asked him to tell Andy about it" Okay Bob..be sure to do the same when you go for a STD test from banging Suzy Q!!! I love soap conventions!

When Quint was back the second time and the Quola reunion got sidelined during the writers and exec switch..I thought it would have been interesting if they had Quint having POA over the Chambelin portfolio now that Henry and Vanessa (fake dead) were gone. Instead they had the Spaulding talking to Matt, who no moron would put in charge. I think having vixen Amanda trying to seduce Quint, and then falling for him might have interesting...having Amanda be another woman gaga over Roger was kind of stupid. I can imagine the campy cat fights between Amanda and Nola. And it was odd, while this was happening...Marland was just starting to dig into ATWT and restablishing the Hughes family and the vets. You think PG would have made GL follow suit.

Yea, Quint only worked well as a short term character..an archeologist really has no long term story potential. When Lisa came back in 95 it was the perfect time to just have them break up without any third party, Nola always resented having to twist her life for Quint and Quint really just was an egg head archeologist/adventurer and was bored being a family man (I always thought Nola was really looking for a replacement for the dad she never knew and Quint wasn't it..) When Henry died they could have brought Quint back for the funeral and show that there was no animosity between them, they just "grew apart" as Marland would write.. Lee was back on recurring until Long came back and Bea just disappeared. Again, having Bea around at the Boarding house as support for all the young characters living there made more sense then Sarah Shayne, who was just stuck listening to Reva, though I did love her giving Hawk hell.."You old FOOL!" They did some chemistry testing with Josh and Jenna, they even had Vanessa teasing him about her..."So you think she's pretty???" (I always liked Van and Josh's sister/bro chemistry,,, I am glad they never screwed the up with having them together....)

I thought Jenna and Josh (J & J ) had chemistry when they were testing them, but then he left. In writing out RN when Kim left was more about him leaving, what six months later? But I know they would just want to have a big blow out for Kim to leave...I just thought the logistics of bringing her back from the dead were messy, but they were not handled well with McTrash.

They hadn't written for Nola for at least a year, right after the Lake Elizabeth story, and she had A.J. The Haunted Cottage was a story that Nola should have been all over, investigating the cottage and dusting it up with Ms. Piper(who Nola would have been fascinated with. ) She just stood around listening and then they gave them the dumb story with that kid scientist. Lisa was sick of it and wanted out, but the Quint actor wanted to stay, and even suggested killing Nola and letting him have a Mr. Mom storyline...(luckily they just wrote both off, which is what they should have done with Josh and Reva once Kimmer left, and we would have been saved the ghost and San Crud.) Tony, Annabelle and Jim both wanted to leave, and by that time Lee Lawson wanted out as well as she was just standing around doing nothing. I don't think that Long understood Quint, but got Nola..and liked her I think. She was just tied to Quint who Long had just turned into a dorky uptight professor to Nola's quirkiness, so there they stood. Qula was one of the first fanatic fan bases and they would not tolerate breaking them up (I would have had Quint die in the explosion rather then Hillary, what does Nola do once her dream ends...I say go back to the scheming Nola of old.) They could have also had Quint taking Henry's spot at Spaulding and he and Van competing while Alex is interested in him...but then they had no interest in the Chamberin's at that point as Van was hog tied to the Lewis campy bandwagon.) I do remember an interview with Jeff Ryder, when ATWT was having its comeback as Marland just got there and they asked him if he was taking note and of course he said, "no" but he did say he asked Lisa to come back and that he promised to write for her this time but she wasn't interested.

I don't think they did get a send off..Jim just vanished but I believe it was because he was supposed to come back but the actor had another gig and Kobe let him off (she invented the "friends of" way before JFP) The way Nola and Quint left was truly stupid. It was rushed and all the characters including Bea and Henry, made Nola feel quilty for wanting to stay in SF and run her business (as dumb as Nolaaerobics was) while Quint went off..I can't believe that in 1985 they were still, "You need to be by your husband's side" ) The did do a scene where Henry told Nola she could have time to write and she says, "Oh yea, maybe the adventures of Nola" which would have been a great way to bring her back in 95, she is an author if potboiler romance/adventures (under another name) who resented being force to move for her husband all those years ago and comes back triumphant and rich to spar with Vanessa and whomever else..(much better then the sad mopey Nola whose husband cheated on her.) It would have been funny if they had her write a roman e clef on Springfield, with her heroine having a bitchy, stuck up sister in law and a brother in law is a multiple adulterer...(and a mousy nurse who has an affair with him...) That trial clip really does show how boring and weird the show was becoming...the Lewis in the center bugging their eyes, Maeve in bed...(for god sakes she spends the better part of the year laying in bed being boring..) India chasing after Simon..with his dumb magic show...faux Ed showing he has no charm..I can't believe the execs thought this was an improvement.

You forgot Larkin Malloy shouting "Brother, love ME..BROTHER" flaring nostrils, while extras run and the rest of the cast look on in shock...(embarrassment???) I was in college and the lounge erupted in laughter...and I would think we were the audience that it was aimed at. It is sad that they didn't purse a Mindy/Rick pairing with her screwing it up and then they have an off/on like an ATWT Bob/Lisa. And yes...all of Rick's pairing were boring...Abby was better just because of the actress's charm and they had chemistry...but it would have been more fun a kind of slutty deaf Amish woman taking Rick for a ride!

I never knew why they broke up Rick and Mindy so fast, again, of course, making Mindy the vain self involved girl(she had changed a bit from her old ways) so Rick jumps over to good ole down home Roxie... I still think Mindy this version) was Rick's best pairing, and besides being more conventionally cute.. Kurt was not that much different from Rick, and they could have had the same storyline(though I think Mindy, growing bored with having a med school husband, would become like a young ATWT Lisa and start spreading it around town...) I know that Mark Lewis wanted time off and they just fired him, but really, Kurt story had ended.

Ha... I think they were looking for Kyle's flared nostrils to find a place to hide their contraband....(if they even had contraband..who the hell knows...) I think the Mindy wedding was just a jumping off point for the "New GL" totally written around the Lewis family and Reva. What did they think they could do with Kurt and Mindy after this and God I hope their big idea was not to have them argue over her role as the "Sampson Girl" (to promote what..what did Sampson Industries actually produce???) Poor Kurt was just introduced in the worst way, Married to Amnesiac Prostitute Roxie, then, with a speargun forcing Reva and Kyle to jump out of an airplane..with Reva in full mink just to land in an Amish barn..Mark Lewis was so cute, but WTH?

Infinity rode off of the fumes of the last year of Long/Kobe, which I will say was really good. Everyone was in play and most of it was as grounded as a soap could be in 1984. And what you said is true..all those temp characters...(Suzanne Saxton,,, that David whatshisface...Jackson Fremont...) running around...anytime you see a record company on a soap you know its gonna suck...everyone ran around with big hair and shoulder pads as "Sampson Industiries " was added to a medium sized midwestern town...it was all really stupid...(and what was it that Infinity wanted exactly....and who the hell was Largo...) and Mindy and Kurt's wedding, while beautiful...led to nothing for them or anyone else.

That cast always seems to be like a close knit bunch...(unlike every cast on every show who says they are.) God I am old, Sandy had a stroke???!?!