Mitch64

No they were out in the open weren't they? What I meant was...Alex did not have to spend her soap after life with Buzz like Lillian did.

No need to bow down to the hours upon hours I spent in my misspent life watching this show! But yea...join me in the hating on Buzz Cooper table anytime! Poor Lillian, she never did have any taste....remember when she was dating Hawk???? But at least Alex, despite her complete character assasination under Conboy, managed to dodge the Buzz bullet....

I wish they had brought Van's edge back after her dumb coming back from the dead storyline...I hated her kowtowing to Billy and sighing over Matt. Maeve could play a cold a** b*tch quite well.

Agreed..he always hated everything and tore it to shreds..which is probably why he was popular! Anyway, did Lisa ever mention "Eve" when Marland wrote the Eldridge's back in? I think it is cool he reached that far back (thought I wish he would have gone an even more soapy route, as he originally was going to, and bring back "Chuck" from the dead...) though it was kind of typical Marland washed out...(Scott should have been a real villain and the mother should have been mean to Lisa, instead of going to her birthday party.)

Well, he is still annoying...(every time little Paul was in danger I was hoping it would take him out...) and why does he not have a shirt on?

Lucci is a smart cookie, she got more publicity off of never winning her daytime Emmy then she would have a second string role on a quickly canceled sitcom. Back in the day there were no Desperate Housewives type shows which mixed campy comedy with more serious moments and as she was not cut out for a sitcom or a serious drama, she was smart enough to stay.

The things you mentioned above were the things that ruined PASSIONS. I actually like it for a bit when I would watch it once in a while when I came home from work to each lunch...somedays it was fresh and funny and a riff on soaps when it first started and was more good humored..(at Christmas when Tabitha tried to get Santa drunk to screw her...or when they had pop up bubbles to have Tabby warn the young viewers not to do whatever ridiculous thing she and Timmy were up to..."NBC's lawyers would like me to tell you not to drive a motorcycle at midnight without a helmet, but I told them how would you be able to see my face...") but I never became invested in it..it was just a collection of skits tied loosely around a really bad soap opera. But then I tuned in years later and there was a lot of rape and serial killing and I missed the days of Tabby and Timmy fighting their "Friends in the basement," It just got mean spirited and I think mirrored JER's state of mind.

She did that to GL too..besides the infamous Brent/Marion (killing yet another Mom and making jokes about it..making a dumb girl believe she is HIV positive) Roger and Holly lost all their nuance and he became EVIL (even wanting to drug Dinah and murder her) Amanda an amoral madame, Josh hating Reva when she returned, AM resenting Phillip when he returned..Phillip thinking anyone in his family, including Alex, who always supported him, could frame him...and just generally all connections between the interconnected families of GL were downplayed...Bridget stopped being involved with Uncle Ed, never talked to Chele, Chele called Nola her aunt "Mrs. Chamberlin" and the same with Vanessa, her Mom's best friend..hell, McTavish even made Nola, a manic depressed loser! That is why I never understood why and how she screwed herself and the show later...she saw what worked and what was successful..why ruin it? Id love to see what they had to say, she seems such an odd person/writer.

Who knows, but Kreizman sure was kissing Harley/Ehlers ass in the writing...when he wasn't blowing Jonathon/Pelphery in the writing. Who was her almost brother? Jim Lemay, I have no idea...was Bridget even mentioned when NotDylan came back? And Susan wasn't nearly as bad as Leah, suddenly being older then her older brother, which made a hash out of the timeline..so Rick did not get drunk and sleep with Harley after Abby left him, he screwed her when he was married to Mel???? Did Leah find some of Cleva's growth serum laying around? Did anyone give a damn about anything at the end? God how I would love to see Chappell and Zimmer having a physical cat fight over a GL prop!!! My money's on Kimmer!

Ha..not to mention...de-aged Susan (such a vanity cast for Ehlers) and her boyfriend, the hit guy Grady (?) looked like they should be on the street corner dealing meth. Totally agree. I LOVED Collins as Alex...she brought back the humor, the determination, the sly put downs, the coolness of Bev..and also the warmth Bev had..(her Alex was gentle with her friends and younger people..well, younger people who didn't cross her...) The thing I noticed about Marj is that her Alex is totally and completely unpleasant..(oddly enough she reminds me of recast Dick Sargent on Bewitched..who seemed to determined to make the character unlikeable at all times.) It seems odd to see Ed, Ross, Rick, Lillian or anyone just talk to her as "Alex" when you would run the other way if you saw her shrieking, huffing self coming. I thought Joan gave Alex her power back (though that was also the writing) while sprinkling in sultriness that Bev did not have. MADD was happy with her, what she was not happy with is her paycheck and that the ratings didn't jump...hence they brought back Marj who was cheap. Also Rauchie left and he knew how to handle an old style diva (by all accounts the cast loved Joan, but she is a STAR!) It wasn't her fault that Alex had so much airtime at a time that Rauch was fighting Taggert and changing scripts right before filming..no one but a seasoned soap pro would be able to handle that. Yes, the budget was bad enough with Rauch, but Conboy totally f*cked it up...if they had done the move a few years earlier, and moved the sets to some other place and filmed as usual all would have been good. Again, blame MADD for not being a strategic thinker and biding time before she could grab her golden parachute.

I have no idea..I just heard that some people were offered it (could have been more of the usual suspects) and no one wanted it..due to PG and network interference...the pay...and everyone knew GL was going to be cancelled. I will take JLH over Kreizman anyway..she has written a few L & Os and Kreizman was writing for pro wrestling for a while and the crap show Days...well, nuff said. As much as I don't agree with her on many things (the Cooper family is her comfort family..yuk) she got GL and she was responsible for writing the returns correctly and the great scene with Ed and Lillian at Mo's grave..which came about 10 years too late but....I know she was one of GA's favorite writers. Born is only a few years younger then Raines..and at least Alan would have been sexy again...but I think he would make a better Kyle Sampson recast..he always seemed for "feral" under his business suits. But I do agree, both Alan and Alex should have never been recast..I get that they needed to recast Bev as she left abruptly but it should have been a temp recast or JFP should have begged Bev to come back just to wrap things up...(i.e. make peace with Nick and Mindy..) Bring back a recast Amanda (sorry, Cullen was a washed out bore) or have Van run Spaulding...then AM...then Phillip. Alan should have never been recast but they also kept RR around too long where his snidely whiplash antics were a bore...Alan should have died years ago and the new generation could have taken over and fought it out.

Ha...that was Wheeler also talking about Harley opening her kitchen cabinets and you can see real pots...huh..they did that on sets too (not to mention Harley's crap house with the walls not drywalled.) And she compared it to Desperate Houswives and you can believe the show as it films outside...nothing about DH was realistic or wanted to be...that is even if you could compare the junkey backyard of Harley to the meticulous take on a fantasy upscale suburb where everything was perfect..on the outside. No one would take the HW job at that time...not work the hassle or the bad pay. I do say JLH really loved GL and "got it" and she was mostly responsible for the last week of returns, etc. Kreizman just sucked.

The 7-11 embarrassingly enough was a supply closet at CBS and the church was Wheeler's office...(the altar was really her desk I think..tho I am shocked she had an office and not a folding table in a hallway.) It could have worked given more money spent on it (the key word here) and more care (and if it happened a few years later when hand held were much better.) Peapack is a beautiful area (Reva's aborted wedding to Kyle was filmed there) and I actually thought some of the sets looked nice...the Towers set and Company looked better than it had in years. The sets were actually more like they did the old time soap sets, which stacked next to each other and ran a camera down the middle of the sets to film, so when Lisa was being overly dramatic on one set, Nancy was waiting to film in the kitchen. So if they had kept cameras, filmed and lit the sets better and kept the handhelds for outside..it could have worked..at least better. I remember the first week of filming...Reva and FauxCassie wandering around the woods, and Jeffery being filmed from across the street with weird camera angles which in the old days meant stalker was watching...and I got excited he was going to be killed off....the worst was the Spaulding press conference in the field..(CBS couldn't let GL use a real boardroom or offices) the best was that Kimmer really adjusted to it and Reva 2.0 finally became more of a real person(stories still sucked) instead of overly dramatic love goddess. Agreed...it still had some good things occasionally happening, but it was Conboy and Westen that put the nail in the coffin and that is attributed to MADD letting it happen.

Very nice, funny, sad story...thanks for sharing. I loved the comment section, not only people who were on the show (who confirm it was a crazy, sometimes dysfunctional family) but the viewers remembering Nola and Reva and that GL and soaps were communal kind of viewing. Yes.... I am sure it was GB...he was the stud up to that point and had to act like a big brother figure to Lujack. Its too bad, I loved Tony and GB was sexy as hell and I now know why they never brought him back..(I wonder what a Tony/Reva pairing would be like...)

"Open House," is a very midwestern thing which isn't used much anymore...(My parents would have a lot of them...) it just is a party that goes from a certain time and people drop in as they can....have a drink and then on to something else...they were held mostly during the holidays when there were a lot of parties taking place a one time. Bob and Kim were friends together for so long and seemed like an old married couple even when they weren't that it can be confusing, but seemed more "real" I thought that Nick and Kim were fairly popular (more due to Kim) but I do remember that KH said she got a lot of hate mail when she was getting into the sack with Nick when he recently found out his wife was really alive. It seemed odd and lazy for the Dobsons to throw the "back from the dead" storyline at the same time Joyce was having that same story, and to have Kim have yet ANOTHER bitchy ex dogging her, when the Kim/Dan/Susan story was still fresh and kind of iconic. Andrea didn't last long as she didn't go over and really, it was like they had no plan for her other then.."Im ALIVE" I never understood why they just didn't make Steve Nicks son from a youthful indiscretion.

Oakdale is gearing up for an ice storm and black out... soon Lisa and Joyce are going to have their one millionth confrontation and Joyce will "accidentally" light Lisa's skirt on fire! Its weird..this is right after Margo finds out she is John's kid, but there doesn't seem to be much drama pumped out of that...she just seems pissed at Lyla and annoyed at John. I know he gets run over by a car and goes blind, but I would like to not only see the episode where Margo hears she is John's kid, but when and how Margo got to be so protective of John. Like Maggie's coat and think she is a really interesting character...making her Lyla's sister is so clunky....so while living in Sweden, she just happenes to meet and start screwing the son of the guy who is engaged to her sister. I wonder if Deas and Colin were starting to be an item yet?

Sad day.. the day my Mom found out she was pregnant with me...she will always remember coming home from the doc and turning on "World Turns" as she would call it, and hearing the news here. I can't imagine what it was like for people at home sitting down to watch "their show" and to find this horrible news (well, depending on how you look at it, my Mom got two pieces of horrible news that day!!!) Imagine a show dedicated to if you were going to invite your ex daughter in law to Thanksgiving dinner...much more relatable then the ridiculous plots we were subjected to over the years, and really what Wheeler and Co. should have done with the new production model on GL.

I think Sheffer and Kreizman both used characters they could live vicariously through (Craig for Sheffer, Jonathon for Kreizman) which is fine, except that those characters were never allowed to loose, and if a character is ALWAYS going to come out on top, all the stakes vanish.

I forgot about the Nursery Rhyme Stalker storyline, which everyone seemed to hate, but I loved. Holly was clever and wiley and MG looked hot slinking around town in her leather (like we didn't know she was the stalker, she was the only woman in town who didn't wear a pastel dress.) I just wish that Holly and kept the tude and the leather afterwards, no one besides BevAlex was as good with a withering ironic takedown of someone like MG/Holly when they wrote her that way. And yes, Brent/Marion was great and I did not see that switching HIV test results was any worse than any other partenity/medical test done on soaps over the years.

During the Phillip goes nuts and hurts the poor widdle Coopers story on GL, Harley donned disguise to investigate in Spaulding (apparently the hiring process and security at Spaulding was very lax) and GA rightly was pissed off about it, as it was obviously was Harley and so he incorporate eye drops in a scene. A really good actor and character wasted on trying to make the audience like Lucy Cooper and the actress, one of JFP's friends.

Oh God..no...Zimmer was already eating up the SF scenery like Godzilla..we didn't need two of her. But you are right there was a perverse love of watching scenes of Rauch and the writers massaging Kimmer's ego at that party where everyone was in AWE of Reva's skin and complexion...not knowing it was the clone(this was right when Kimmer was starting to show her age in Rauch's overlit sets and turning into the battle-ax we all know and love..) I do think that Reva 2.0 gave us a bountiful feast of entertaining bad stories from Josh being drugged by FauxAnnie (Sit DOWN Josh) to Reva the Queen of San Cristobal and things like the Matt and Josh repeling over a wall, where the camera pulls back to reveal they could have walked around it, the chase of RN on a motorcycle going "Grrrrrrr REEEEVAA" to the residents of midwestern SF being lined up in front of a firing squad (what kind of justice system did this dumb place have and did they not think that might not cause an international incident and Reva after dimRichie runs off to stop it...sits there drinking her coffee and staring into the distance when her friends and family are about to be blown apart) and of course, the Toliet Bowl of Doom when Eddie dragging Reva around in a gown and a tiara (looking like a very big drag performer) tries to drown the "Kentucky Fried Venus" to unfortunately..no avail. Reva 2.0 gave us enough bad stories, cheesy sets. The Clone seemed downright ..intelligent!

Good point, this was before or at the very beginning of the Stalker Storyline where Kim found a dead body in the woods behind her house and called Margo. I remember Shannon being a jewell smuggler but I have no idea what became of that or the body in the woods. How could Shannon start off as a jewell smuggler and turn into such a Marland bore worried about Lily and honesty? John and Lisa were both red herrings in the stalker..John with the card (why would John Dixon send out cards to anyone, much less Lisa) and Lisa still being in love with Bob (which started pre Marland when I think when Harding LeMay was consulting) and doing some fun stuff like pitting Kim against Nancy (who LeMay or someone had as her usual stern self) by not telling Kim Nancy headed kidney pie or something) Lisa broke down crying telling Babs she was still in love with Bob and yes, Marland was great in dredging up the Ellen/Lisa feud of Ellen not trusting Lisa (and in one scene insulting her handwriting "Lisa, I never could read your handwriting...') fun stuff that made the characters seem more real. Marie was brought on as the spoiler in the Kevin/Frannie thing..but that was as about as interesting as a wet cracker, and Marie was killed during Shannon's Halloween party when she was dressed as Madonna.

I think I may have said that. I don't think Cheatham would be a good Alex...Alex is cool sophistication...and I think Maree is move volatile..which is what Marj was so it never worked. Maree or Marj would have made a great Ms. Sally..(especially since she hated Reva and both actresses are as LOUD as Ms. Kim.)

Agreed...that is why I would have had Fletcher get killed by Brent/Marion(and not just because I dislike Hammer and Fletcher so much) He is on to the story of Alan working with Brent to steal from Spaulding...Alex frames Roger for it...Fletcher, being dumb annoying self righteous Fletcher is loudly pursuing Roger for it (in no small part out of jealousy) and Roger gets pissed and beats the tar of out Fletch just as they actually had him due in a scene. Holly sees the violence in Roger...Brent kills Fletch as he trips over the truth, and then frames Roger, and Holly( and all of SF ) go full on to get Roger convicted. After the truth comes out Holly realizes there will always be violence lurking under Rogers skinny and that she can never truly trust him and they go their separate ways though colliding into each other very often. I always wondered about Holly and Ed together as a tentpole..she would be no Maureen in the kitchen, but they are two damaged people who "get" each other and have an understanding of life.

I thought the first guy was hot...and then they go to kind of a typical soap villain, sleazy, mustache twirling. Original recipe Iva was different then Nola.. more edgy (Nola at her worst was just a girl who wanted more and knew how to manipulate to get it) more mature, and more jaded (Nola would never be jaded as she was a dreamer...which was why her return to GL failed, Nola would never be a lonesome looser depressed by Quint's affair..she would fight the good fight to get him back and if she lost she would tell him to go f*ck himself..that's why I would have just had Quint disappear presumed dead so Nola could move back to SF without him) Iva was a fighter but one more...tired then Nola would ever be. I never understood why they just made her a depressed bore. I see Liaison was a producer during this time...(again, didn't he learn something from working on Marland's ATWT) and I know he brought Brown to GL, so maybe Nola sad sack ways was something he wanted and Brown naturally went to after Iva.