Mitch64

Pam Long said in an interview that he had Monty's pic on the bottom of the toilet and she said, "Douglas, you need to let some things go!" She also said he would serve dinner in a velvet dinner jacket but would grab a rifle to shoot it off his patio..so DM was more interesting then we thought!

Recasting Ed was definitely a Marland decision,...excuse me for this but he was acting like a pissy queen calling the previous actor "fat" because supposedly he dissed Marland's writing.

I think they were chemistry testing him with Fulton during the scam time, (they also tested her and Nick which might have been interesting) and when they had them flirting it was after the trial during the strike material so they didn't know what to do with either of them. Originally the plan was for Lisa to come back to town involved with Brian McColl, not his dad..so I wonder if they were going to do a son/Lisa/father triangle which would have been interesting...without the Whit the Wig actor. Fulton wanted a relationship with Cal (who I thought was sexy) but they said no, so when he was murdered she wanted to wear a veil and cry to indicate that there was a thing off screen but they wouldn't let her. Oh boy, your starting something now...lol..I actually like Block as Craig and thought he was sexy..(I never liked whiney Craig Bryce but I know that's sacrilege here...) but can understand he got annoying after a while in that he ALWAYS won ( agree on Finn Carter..ugghhhh.) I wish soaps had done that more often..had people grow apart...on GL there was no reason to have Quint have an affair and have bitter mopey Nola around..all Nola had to say was she was tired of going on digs, being dirty, being away from her family and life with Quint wasn't as glam as she thought it would be ("Try taking a shower with cold water and scorpion...it isn't a movie.") or when Harley and Mallet broke up...they just drifted apart. But these shows build these dumb super couples up so much they can't have real relationship problems..

The credits weren't right as the Dobson's were writing and Bartholemue was exec. The rumor I heard was that Munker was fired as she was instigating issues between the two..tho I have no idea how Shultz who seemed so..morose all the time was popular. Odd storyline for the summer...a young person dying and everyone sad..for about two days, then Babs is having a masked ball, Annie is getting married to scuzzy Brad and no one mentions Melinda again. The scary thing is, after the Dobsons left and they went through headwaiters and a strike they tried to pair Lisa and Brad...EEEWWWW...Michael Shea would be better!

Exactly!!! You wouldn't need an Aunt Meta...(not that I didn't love MS) but you would have buttinsky Aunt Nola getting into everyone's business!

Wow this is good! This is an umbrella storyline that works...Bauers Chamberlains, Lewis, Reardons and Marlers all having a legitimate stake in this. If only Nola were back to take up Bridgets side. Then of course, it's the Buzz Cooper fill in that takes the momentum out. I always thought Ross and Vanessa should have been end goal. If only Matt and Blake had been the ones to screw.

O'Leary could be good as the big brother, best friend, nice reliable guy, connector in town everyone feels comfortable with and that is what a show needs. He is not a romantic lead or a dramatic actor and while he has a humorous charm, the show needed to really pull him in (like Deas, Zimmer, Dusay, the show just let the actors lean into their worst instincts.) Of. course, back in the day I like Rick over Phillip (the intensity was too much..) but Long wrote for him (most of the time) to his strengths. The Abby pairing was going to go nowhere..as she was just too nice (even Bert and Maureen had their time not being super nice...) I did wonder how Rick and Bridget would work...maybe Peter gets sick and he is the doctor and they grow close (bugging the crap out of Roger) and they have to bring Hart back for a blood transfusion or something...a better entrance then the one McTavish wrote for him. Both Rick and Frank needed a partner with a bit more of an edge or spark.

Agreed..but it is weird..Frankie D was going to be Johnny's brother and she came back and put a stop to it...and created the Coopers..so you would think that would stick in her mind a bit. Her excuse for the Reva exit thing is that the Florida keys isn't even a place she is interested in ("Barbados yes, but not the Keys...) but that could have been chosen for production purposes, etc. I also thought it was weird when the host said that her treatment of the Bauers was the number one question people wrote in about (even though he goes on to say, "I don't think that is fair") and she was just off hand like "Well, if I hurt your feelings (the audience) I am sorry," in a sarcastic way. I guess it's just a job for these people.

MH was the Ed I watched growing up so he is Ed to me. I didn't think PS was bad until after Mo died and he was just sour and pursing his lips all the time. I think after Charita died we needed a warm "cuddly" Bauer to anchor the show so I always thought that they needed to bring MH back. I think MOL could have been that Bauer but Rick becomes a mess on his rerun in 95, screwing the woman he thought was his sister growing up, harrassing her about the baby, and seem ing not to feel the least bit of guilt that he screwed the wife of the guy who was like an uncle to him really took the nice out of him. Not the least of which is MOL can't do "intense" without it coming up...weird. I just listened to a podcast where the host asked Pam Long (from the audience's questions) why she didn't like the Bauers. It's weird as she says she created Johnny (she didn't) and says "Well I didn't kill any of them," (she killed Hillary. She also says Jeff Ryder knew the history of the show and loved the Bauers, which didn't show on screen.

I think it went back to Gautman not getting the "midwestern" vibe of the show (which he admitted in an interview.) I guess the Snyders kitchen was enough for one show but it seems odd that the core couple did not have a house..and people were going to talk to Nancy at that stupid diner (that and the Cooper diner were the ugliest sets on earth.) I don't old Gautey relized that outside of NYC, people spend a great deal of their lives in their kitchens. But it did burn me that they even had the set and wouldn't use it correctly!!!!

Yes, she would be up in his business still, with Holly mentoring her so that would get her out of Cooperville, plus, I always find cops written on soaps to be cheesy and the lines pulled out of prime time ("Rusty, I have had it up to HERE with your renegade ways, from now on your going by the book..") and the sets so...depressing. Maybe when they brought her back she could have had a change of career....maybe she got shot in the line of duty and had post traumatic stress and that is why she and Mallet broke up. Or maybe for once a cop/lawyer whomever on a soap bent the rules and had real repercussions and she had her badge pulled...(maybe she got a little rough with a wife/child abuser and that would also give her and Beth's rivalry some nuance instead of just chasing after d*ck.) I just saw a post on FB on Rachel Miner...Does anyone know if it was JFP or Malone who fired her on GL?

So when Jeffery was calling Harley "Terrier" it was a call back to JFP history! I think Harley would have been better as a reporter..it might have fit Ehler's sometimes exhausting persona a bit more.

Hmmm, good point! I kind of liked Margo as a cop in the early days Colin/HBS days when Margo was strong willed, determined, and put her foot in her mouth constantly butting into things. But Harley agree, should never have been a cop but at least she was more realistic then her stupid brother being Chief of Police (wow, the other candidates must have been in comas...) GL during the JPF days and until Rauch had a good run of having a latter of "blue collar" life that cops typically represent on soaps. You had the Coopers running a diner and being cops, the Reardon's, running Company, the Boardinghouse and Matt being in construction, the Bauers and the Marlers representing upper middle class and the Spauldings, Chamberlains and Lewis representing the rich (and is the case of the Lewis, as BevAlex said derisively "nouveau riche") That all went away with Rauch, where even Matt was running around in a suit jacket and tie.

Ahhh..that brings back memories..dimbulb Roxie on that riding the electric bull!! LOL!

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.