Mitch64

Love this era of ATWT...we hadn't gone into the super morose, overly polite era of Marland (where EVERYONE who had a bad day needed to go to their therapist.) I love how Marland covered history, to catch everyone up, in a fight (I gotta love that only on soaps to people go to other peoples houses just to trade insults..) I also love that Kim is doing a normal thing like cooking while this is going on. I just wish they had made Sabrina something other than the boring drip she was...a real boozy slut would have been fun. "I was just over at Mum's house, and this Susan woman came by..boy she seems like a real tw*t!"

I saw this...it's a nice house...love the grounds. Wasn't her kid saying she was having problems paying her medical bills?

When Nola came back didn't she find out about Lillian and gave her and Ed [!@#$%^&*]? I am not sure how that played out or how she found out, or actually if it even happened.

That's wonderful for both, but that doesn't mean I have to like their characters. I don't care if I meet an actor or actress in real life. Hopefully they are nice if you do meet them....(and this coming from someone who met Lynda Carter a decade a go and freaked out..but you know..she's Wonder Woman!)

Funny episode..I love the Bauer sequence! I am sure Parker loved lampooning her Mrs. Cleaver role...though Jay Hammer continues to annoy no matter what. It was a bit clunky to have Alex hit her head on a rock to put her to sleep.

Post Marland the Spaulding Mansion grounds backed up to the Bauer House (at one BBQ Alex offers to show the dreaded Lucy Cooper the mansion, "Its right next door," ) But I remember it as a house Alan bought to appease Hope to be more upper middle class as opposed to super rich. Oddly enough they remembered that the there is a tunnel in the Spaulding Study behind the bookcase also.

Taggert was Collier..that was one of the worst periods of ATWT ever..post Dobson/pre-Dobson return...when it was very easy to turn the show around, they tanked it even further. She did indeed get better!

GL during the Dobson's blended perfectly a family/community dynamic with sophisticated characters and plots. They never did that on ATWT and always wonder if they resented being sent to ATWT..even though they quit and came back...I would love to hear that story.

Sexy Rita was bored with being a doctor's wife, and was very impressed with the life her niece in law was having with sexy Alan Spaulding. Marland wrote Hope as an early privileged Karen type..not wanting to live in the cold Spaulding mansion, but wanting her rich husband to buy yet another home for her to live in (but still nice don't you know..)In what was supposed to be Hope appealing to Alan's softer side, made her look like a nag (honey, you know what you got into) So they have a house that backs up to Ed and Rita's house (which later became the Spaulding mansion) and with a nice gate in between the two yards to..come and go. Both Bauers were clueless about their spouses growing attraction or the issue a gate between the yards might cause (Ed didn't even get it when Rita spent all of Christmas staring at the crystal glass set Alan gave them ...going on and on about the nice things that Hope has, like being a doc's wife is putting her on skid row.) Well one thing led to the other as it does with two sexy amoral people who were constantly in each other's vicinity. What I like about soaps then, this stuff could happen and it was not like Rita was the total whore chasing Alan or Alan was the mustache twirling villain after Rita, they were both people who would destroy any relationship they were in, and well let's face it...sexy..with a gate allowing easy access. Alan had the upper hand with his money, influence and surface respectabitly (he wasn't RR's Alan yet rubbing his hands together at his latest dumb scheme.) Roger was more feral, especially at the end. He was a loose canon who wanted all the things Alan and Ed had, money influence, and most importantly love of Holly and Christina (what Curlee and Long missed on bringing Blake back was that she was would always consider Ed her dad and be torn between him and Roger.) but he could never quite get it. Roger was more dangerous then Alan (you didn't know what the hell Roger would do at any given time) but Alan always had the upper hand. I don't think Zimmer indulged in as many of acting ticks as she did the second time around...she always OTT but that made sense with Reva. But at that time she also had this energy and sexiness that was believable that guys would fall all over her. And she was not the CENTER of everything (I hated how Rauch turned her into Vicki from OLTL) and she had heavy hitters around her to keep her in line. Reva was the scrappy sometimes annoying outsider and it worked.

That summer GL was on fire..and the material leading up to the summer set it all up. All the families had equal time and were mixing together...and the Bauers were still the core. Charita was just coming back from her surgery and was prominently featured and the cabin mystery started off good, with hints of the supernatural and a mystery before it went off the rails...(and Nola should have been more involved...did anyone ever hear if Brown and Long/Kobe had issues.) And yes, Reva was really interesting at that time and Zimmer was actually on fire..for real, not like her fans kept saying later on during Rauch every time she chewed the scenery. Then there was an abrupt change of style and focus...and I never understood why that happened as the ratings dropped.

But in the Dobson's defense, the storyline was started by other writers who brought in the drug ring and mentioned "Mr. Big," I liked it at the time, (I was in high school) and I do appreciate that it attempted to be a bit more intelligent then GH in that the clues were hidden in literature. But yea, Deas and Colin's chemistry carried it. It was less successful when they went looking for "Bilan" in the summer. Agreed that the miscarriage was unnecessary and sent Tom and Margo into Marland's despressing storylines. I remember at the time Fulton said she was getting tons of hate mail as they blamed in on the "grandmother clause" but she said she had gotten rid of that years ago.

I thought I was the only one who thought Tonio was both a bad villain and too boring to the ladies man they made him out to be...though maybe it was PB's diction (trying to sound latin) that just took forever for him to finish a threat or a come on. LOL on the first sentence...I love writers bringing in these characters and they just disappear..they tried to make Miranda intersting by being snobby and having an issue with Frankie, but they dropped that and really, what was the purpose of "Bilan." ? Colin and Deas are really on fire, though the material is not. As Tom and Margo they are this weird, flakey, eccentric but lovable couple. While I can't see their version of Tom and Margo in Kim's kitchen talking to Gram... I could see them eventually maturing into the couple Marx and Smith played, but they would NEVER have become Holmes and Dolan Tom and Margo.

Everyone in Oakdale during the mid to late Marland period, acted like they were on Xanax..perhaps that came with Marland's love for "therapy." Even live wires like Lisa were more downbeat..the only one to escape with Lucinda. It made me kind of love people like Lillith, who, while being calmly nuts..maybe would plant a bomb at the "Earl Mitchell Children's Center of Boredom" and get everyone to wake up!

I don't even remember this storyline. I did remember Burke, and remember thinking he was sexy...non soap operas...a big guy, who wasn't a cut muscle "hunk" and thought his character was refreshing in that he wasn't so placid and polite as the rest of Oakdale at this time, but he got lost in Marland's endless "Ambitious guy is bad, but reformed by love" he started with Ross Marler and...would...not...drop. Even if that annoying Courtney was his sister...(who was trying to be a "model" though she looked like a normal person..another storyline Marland loved to recycle.) But Gail??? She looked like Marland was setting her up to be killed. What happened to her?

Agreed...but I think the poster might have a point...the last ten years of GL had Reva and Josh acting like they were still 27, passionately "always," until they are not..lather rinse repeat...boring. Josh acted more mature without Reva being a dad and friend, but as soon as they were together (part of that was the actors egos to be on all the time, but ..) Alan Spaulding never changed, etc. the show would have been much better by allowing the actually at that time 40 something crowd of Rick, Phillip Harley, Beth grow up, appropriately age up there kids ) and using the older generation of course, but not having them repeat the same damn stuff over and over.

I thought it was historically in character and Long set this up for Alex after Lujack died with the horrible Simon storyline. Simon comes to town and claims to be Brandon's son, no evidence nothing and Alex begins to believe him and obsess over him. Then suddenly Ross has evidence he wasn't (to mercifully end the storyline.) Alex had to loose a lot of brain cells for that. But of course, I never thought Alex would let Roger near her but she was a hard character to write for, a smart tough cookie. Oh yes to this! And its weird, when you see VI interviewed he seems charming and nice...I know it's a character but could they have let him infused his character with a little of that. No one was going to put a foot up his ass, especially annoying Fletcher who when not nagging Alex was totally supportive of Nick and not telling him he was an being an a** to both women.

I didn't mind Alex outing Mindy...(Alex admired loyalty above all else) it was the constant grind of Alex going after Mindy that got too much. I can see Alex not loving the idea of Mindy getting together with her son, and subtly working against it, but Alex became the boring "rich bitch" that she never was. I also thought they set up Mindy's affair with Roger well, she was feeling left out of her friends life (they were covering up Phillip being alive) and a disconnect with her family, and she DID have a daddy complex...so. Curlee being toxic..hmm, I didn't see that..she was very respectful of the actresses and really wrote to Alex's feeling of having a longer hottie blond unsurp her, without belittling the character...compare that to the way the writers wrote Van/Matt/Beth and how they wrote Alex during the insipid "triangle " she had with what's his face the jewell thief and Marian...Alex on her death bed would not be intimidated by "Marina Cooper"!!!

Frank was always a character much like Fletch who was just there, and his popularity stemmed more from MK's star power than his. But characters like him make the show more believable, but I never got the show trying hard to make him work like making him a cop and chief of police especially since it didn't suit the character or the actor( keeping Frank, like the actor, a nice sweet guy, who is the sane person in the family worked but not an authority figure..and keeping him and Deas on contract over JVD was a crime. Lillian is another support player and a show needs a nurse...I just hated how she supported Beth's new personality without calling her on it. With PS gone I would have recast Mike and got him and Lillian together but having her as the Bauer matriarch might have blown peoples fuses! I would have brought her back during "Who shot Phillip" and she would have been the one to fake his death and hide Phillip as he got well...the character had her her own money and her own mental health issues, so it would work.

Definitely Bob Hughes....Chris and Grandpa Hughes must have been good too, but that was before dad's screwed their son's spouses so they were run off the mill. Bob had an active sex life (hello Susan, and horny Lisa was always ready to get her claws in him preKim so you know he was a good lay) but he still managed to act like a dad! And I love Henry too and H.B. later incarnation, when he first came on the show he was a horny old coot loving to cause trouble (and more fun too) before he became the voice of reason. Long wanted to eventually pair him and Bert but Charita became ill, they would have made a great team.

Don't forget...Pops..who died in a fire...(how many times did that damn diner burn down) I always thought Frank and Harley were just Tony and Nola all over again, but whatever Pam Long... But yes, they were always the fringe family but JFP elevated them and for some reason Hurst and the other writers and Wheeler thought they actually were the core family...(those dumb ass touch football games just because they could shoot them outdoors.) Frank and Harley, originally recipe were good and a contrast of the rest of SF, and Nadine..well, she was way too pretty..she always should have been trashier, and that might have been fun (I wish they also would have made Sarah Shayne a "Hello Doll" kind of rough battle axe. Also that the 5th Street Fire, JFP wanted it to be a Buzz only episode but a wiser network exec said no. But still she got a chance to give Deas a platform for that Emmy.

Of all those people Caso was forced to retire????? THAT is why soaps died a miserable humiliating death!

Wasn't McLaibson from AW? I can't figure out why at least with JFP, she was tanking so they move her to their traditionally lowest rated soap.

Whoever the director was who told him to calm the hell down deserves a medal...I would say it was after JFP but MLaiby had him swinging those stubby arms around as the cliched "ethnic" actors stood around him in a circle jerk proclaiming him the King of Fifth Street! He must have loved NY or you know JFP would have hired him away to devour another show.

After a year or two, I would say during McTrash's stint, Buzz became this super duper father, community anchor. There was a couple of times that someone would mention Buzz's past as a sh*t head, (amazingly during ConWest when Frank and Rick had an actually real conversation about their fathers' failings, and how neither Buzz or Ed were solid dads like "Ross") and Deas did play his wisdom giving later as world weariness (that may have been after a director told him to "tone it down" and he checked out.) LOL..if that was Tom Reardon I too would have left him to rot at the bottom of Lake Elizabeth! Bea was an interesting character, when Charita gone she was the natural persons to fill in at least part of the matriarch gap...she ran the BH and could nurture all of the boring new "hotties" that came to town..they brought her back to usher in Parker as Mo...and then she was on recurring when they brought in Chelsea but as soon as Long came back she was out. Long seemed to want to place Sara in that role,(cause it's all about Reva) but she was confined to the Shayne Lewis orbit and did not have an effect of the rest of the town. If you watch Marland's staff, Bea was more of take no [!@#$%^&*] Mom, and Long made her more passive.

I HATE Buzz and Deas "Look at me Im ACTING" acting...but early Buzz was funny and entertaining as he was supposed to be annoying scam artist and everyone in SF looked at him like he was Mars. It's later when we are supposed to see him as this great romantic hero who was always right, even when he treated both Nadine and Jenna like crap....that I hated him, and then they turned him into the 5th Street Bob Hughes..ughhh. I didn't watch the clip but if it was the one when he is working at Lewis Oil and acting like he was talking on the phone to impress Van, and she calmly walks over and says "This might help" while plugging the phone in the jack...was hilarious. I liked her as Mindy..she had a hard act to follow with KS...(not Anne Hamilton) I think if they wrote more of an edge to her (a pissed off Mindy is sick on men telling her what to do, and is not going to take anymore [!@#$%^&*] from Alex) it would have worked. Plus, she actually had chemistry with MOL, who also needed a partner with an edge to wake him up...(the Rick Abby thing made my teeth ache...)