Mitch64

Yea..it's funny, that is when I started tuning out...morose characters in morose storylines...all the fun of the first year of Marland died on the vine. ATWT for the rest of Marland's run was a slog to get through. I don't mind a heavy storyline but it has to be balanced....and poor Woleck was just Holden 2.0 thought looking waaayy gayer..now he and would definitely have helped Hank get over "Charles" and THAT I would have tuned into see.."Andy, I don't really care about your whining, I got to go meet my dyed blonde muscle boy for some fun!" Meanwhile GL had a balance of fun and heavy stories, family, etc and it had way lower ratings...go to show, you never can tell.

Yes, you are correct..thanks!

I hate that they got rid of the Hughes kitchen and kept the Snyder kitchen..though I do have to say that looks like a real kitchen in an old house...(HGTV would want to paint it all white..) Are you sure that was the Hughes living room...Bob and Kim lost their house and had to hang out in the hotel or in the WOAK set that suspiciously looks just like Kims old one. I think the bar is in the hotel right. For the few sets they have, they do look good.

I would had Reva on a fictional Florida key, in a mouldering mansion with a Gothic family(though Reva and gothic don't mix, she has a history with Kyle and CB's Alan who were both of that type.) Still could have the same storyline, I would keep DAM, but loose Cole, who is incredibly weak as an actor, and replace him with one of they guys they originally thought for the role, he played Cass on AW.) The storyline would go as originally planned with Eddie dying. Then instead of hooking "Richie" up with Malibu Barbie..it would be he and Holly, which would be hot. They would not be royalty but heavily invested in Spaulding which would bring them to SF. I would go with the mob. but Carmen would be trying to get out of it, and using Danny's marriage to Chele to get into legitimate SF society, and Mike, the head of the good ole crime commission would come back to investigate them. Oh what might have been.

Agreed... I hated the Clone, the Mob and San Cristobal but none of those were outright negative and ugly as the Conwest years were. Alex being a shrieking monster, (and dumb...) Brad Cole playing a misogynistic pig who we were supposed to see as a cutting edge hero (Cole did not have the chops to pulll of anti-hero thing) Ben, a legacy character reveal as serial killer (of female sex workers of course) who attempts suicide and then has the "hero" of the show berate him as he is dying...nasty, nasty stuff, which you can't say about the Rauch, the King of Chesse's stuff at its worst.

I guess Rauch and MADD were not that effective as we suffered the clone (MADD thought it was a success) and San Cristobal...(that had Rauch written all over it...outdated 80s crap the budget couldn't support, cartoon characters, showcase for who he thought the "star" was..I am surprised Reva didn't to to Eterna or back in time to the Old West) Why did CBS not like GL..what made it different than ATWT? I agree that the real baddie here is Babs Bloom, (the originator of the Clone idea) how that woman had a job all those years...

The show was so good at that time...look at all the characters interacting...whomever screwed everything up in the Fall of 85 should have been fired.

He had an affair with Annie?? But it was FauxAnnie right? FrankieD benefited from Melina's star power and Rozell's Eleni...dull as dishwater. I actually liked Frank with KT's Mindy..but he had more zest to him...(I remember him being a pool boy or something for her and he was cooling off his chest with ice and turning Mindy on..) but he became a bit of stiff middle aged bore...and I never bought him as a police chief. He was a nice optimistic guy, not very smart, so he should have stayed the owner of Meals on Wheels and that was it. And yes, Rick and Frank were nice support...no romances needed...though I wonder if KT came back if she could have lit a fire under both of them.

Which reminds me...remember when Taylor filled in as Quinton, and he and Brown had more chemistry then she and Tylo had this time around. They should have brought Taylor on as a totally new character and left Quint off camera at one of his digs. A new police chief...(save Springfield from that moron Frank Cooper...) and Nola gets nosing around in the latest crimes...

Tony Reardon was all kinds of "hot" no kinda about it! They wrote him as the perfect working class guy, tough, but loved his Mom and his little sister (but had her number) was nice but no push over. I always thought Frank Cooper was a very water down and boring copy of Tony Reardon. While Harley started out as a take on Nola, Ehlers had the talent and charisma to go her own way, not poor Frankie D, who actually is a the luckiest guy to work on soaps. They just..kept him around.

I liked the lead up to Babs going nuts..the explosion, her scars, feeling stupid that she let a man use her again like James did, and her isolation from her family and friends...with James pulling the strings when she moved into Fairwinds and manipulating her. But, she should have snapped out of it and eventually saved the women and they should have had her shoot James in his final moments he would laugh and say, "Now you are truly like me...I win!" and kill him once and for all (I can out sick Shefffer, I would have her bury him in her backyard put a patio down and then have a scene LIsa, " Oh that horrible James I hope he never comes back." Babs..smirking "Oh, maybe he finallyy went to hell and stayed there." That could have made her darker but not silly, OTT crazy selfish stupid that Sheffer made her. Agreed that the disconnect was Kim, Bob and Lisa not even trying to get through to her and loosing that connection. Agreed also on Lisa and Carly...Lisa always took in the strays and bad girls and she was supportive of other women (going back to her managing the bookstore and original Fashions days) Having Carly, Babs and Lisa giving each other [!@#$%^&*] but circling wagons when one was threatened was way past what Sheffer or Gautman could think of women.

They never knew how to dress her, and that includes in Rauch's time, but it got worse the older she got. I remember them dressing her up as a Queen doing that dumb ass storyline and she looked like someone's mom getting ready to embarrass her kids at Halloween. Rauch just stuffed her into things (and Reva would NEVER wear a beige pantsuit!)

It's odd, but I hadn't enjoyed Reva (since her Pam Long hey day) as much as I did after the new production. Agreed, his artifice (I never got why the industry thought overly lit beige sets and pastels made great production choices.) In a way, with more money and talent, the production changes could have really benefited GL, a show about families that didn't need masked balls, secret agents or jewell thieves, and Reva, who even when in her 80s big hair, padded shoulders era was a down to earth character. I think Zimmer really stepped up too without the reliance on her acting ticks she had been doing for years. Also it didn't hurt that Zimmer just was "f*ck it" and didn't worry about the weight, which was also a Reva thing to do "There's more to love boys!"

If only we knew how good we had it at the time. Look at vicious Babs and compare her with campy, nutcase OTT Sheffer Babs and the character regression exemplified the show. Marland Babs...fun, and sometimes a campy delight but with depth and motivation ( I love how she is always treated as on of the Hughes family and her true fear of having Bob and Kim and Lisa find out her shenanigans) to...Cartoon Babs jumping out of courtroom windows (how she became a comic super villainous who knows) unscathed and with no real meaty scenes with her family. As soon as HBS left and dour Dolan took over for Margo, she was no match for Glam Bitchy Babs.

The problem began when Rauch made Zimmer the center of the show, well past Reva's expiration date of "heroine" and "love goddess that no one can deny." (and I like Zimmer...but as part of an ensemble..not the STAR...) and she kept getting fat meaty contracts and the ability to write her own ticket and sick her group of "fans" on the press and show anytime they gave Josh and Reva a day off. They made her the only game in town, and they really should have started tapering off on Jeva as soon as Annie left...(write for them, sure, but again, as part of an ensemble.) Just like idiot Cowboy giving Brad Cole a big fat contract...(uh..why???) I don't understand why TPTB didn't see that with an ensemble you have more control over the contracts and can more easily write someone off..(even if they got good press in exchange for breaking bad on their fellow actors...) Who in their right mind..in a youth obsessed industry, would have given the show over to a middle aged actress whose character has seen better days (again, I like Zimmer but come on...) They got the monster they created and I don't blame her for holding their balls to the fire for her contract. She was smart enough to know this was the last hurrah.

I remember it from the late 70s..but I don't know if it was around longer. Its weird that they didn't keep Nancy and Chris set but the Dobson's seemed to hate anything Hughes so we rarely saw them at home. Well, I have made my dislike of the Cooper's well known...(even making Frankie D's wife cry apparently...not that I tried or even knew she was reading online listserves back in the day) They were fine for what they were, the working class family with a dysfunctional parents...Nadine and Buzz both abandoned their kids and Frank and Harley had to create their own family. That was later dropped to be the Super Dooper Coopers the self-righteous family that could do no wrong under Wheeler/Kreizman. I liked Harley as a tough girl, and then an everywoman kind character, but when she became Reva Part 2 that EVERY man fell in love with, and Ehlers lost a lot of her weight and became blond and shrill and sharp they made Harley unbearable. I actually remember the Beth/Alan thing and thinking it had potential.(like a lot or Kreizman's storylines but he could not follow through.) .Beth C made a good bitch and in this instance she had a reason (to protect her family from the dumbness that was Gus) so then as nonsexual partners who were stuck with each other was good. Throw in Alex finally putting her foot down on Beth and the eventual return of Phillip and it would have been good. But they had to have them screw and fall in love which was so nasty. I would have had Beth have a nonLoreli alter, who was actually the one who shot Phillip (an alter created by Bradley's rape..she would have been the one that really hit Blackburn with the oar in defense of Beth) and framed Alan. Alan marries her in jail thinking he could manipulate her to do his bidding but he does not count on the alter not being a push over. And Harley being voted as CEO defies any real world logic..it made the clone look realistic. The stock holders would revolt, the stocks would drop, etc. And Harley would NEVER have accepted that. When they brought that simpering Mandy Bruno in as Marina in a triangle with Alex no less (being made fun of for being "old") I couldn't watch any scene with that family, which means I couldn't watch the show.

I don't think so...remember..McLaiby made her the STAR and later Rauch just seemed to be bored with Van so she just wimped around.

True, but there was really no continuity...it's just like it was a set, and they forgot why Susan lived there. Besides the Snyder kitchen...(and the pond) there were no landmarks like GL...even the eavesdropping porch disappeared...how was anyone to find out who anyone's baby daddy is if the porch is gone!

Anytime Vanessa let loose on Billy on GL was a great time!

I love Springfield real estate! Despite how haphazard the history was against ATWT, as compared to that show, GL kept many of it sets and landmarks like..in real life. Yes, there was retconning...but at least it was connected to history, as yes, the Spaulding mansion as an old house did not exist. Alan had a mansion, drippy Hope didn't like it, they moved to a house that shared a back yard gate with the Bauers, which of course allowed Rita and Alan to get their nooners on when Ed and Hope were at work. That later was retro written to be the Spaulding mansion land abutting the Bauers but it stayed that way to the end. The Bauer house was the Bauer house to the end, Company and the Boardinghouse stayed until the end (though they called the living quarters a being "above" Company when the skanky Coopers lived there) the Carriage house lasted a long time, Reva Bend did indeed become Holly Bend when Holly bought it, but then it suddenly became the Jessup farmhouse when Cassie moved in..Vanessa and Billy's house she "gave" to Jeva, who lived there until everyone lost their homes (I heard it was so old that it was falling apart) the Bauer cabin and Cross Creek stayed in play, 5th and 7th Street still were there, as was the "Hill" that the Spaulding, the Bauers and at one time the Lewises lived. You could never tell the georgraphy or the homes on ATWT...Chis and Nancy'ss house disappeared, as did Bob and Kim's thought the kitchen became a set at WOAK..etc ATWT didn't have any long lasting landmarks.

I can see what made ATWT so popular, even reading the synopsis kind of mesmerizes you in an odd way. People planning a family fourth of July, who is invited, who is not, all the while melodrama going on, Lisa, outcast with an "illegitimate kid," (no one would bat an eye now) dithering between Michael and Bob (and you can read between the lines that she wants the safety of the Hughes family) Bob blind...David being blackmailed, Claire , an interesting character, older, neurotic and horny still as we see, a different take from Irna's matriarchs (the Claire, Michael,Lisa triangle is a forerunner to the Alex,Roger,Mindy triangle on GL)Dan and Susan...all of this drama against a simple "Hey, who do we invite to the BBQ" which the viewers could totally relate to. It looks as though Irna got a bad rap..it seems that there are a lot of gray characters on this show and Lisa, Susan and Claire all were women dealing with their own sex drives and not "evil" Interesting stuff.

India was going to be Beth's cousin...kind of slutty and trashy but when MKA read for it Long, a smart cookie when picking talent...created India. She then created Roxie (or she was in the works) to take care of the slut factor and poor Jesse just became Beth's boring bland cousin, a watered down Beth.

That was all to give them something to do, and of course, they were thrown together because they were in the same "age category." Though supposedly Claire Labine "loved" them but TPTB weren't into it...(I think they had Holly tasting Buzz vs. Billy's chilli in a contest..yes, its as that boring.) A nice long Billy/Vanessa/Matt triangle would have been great...they were all on at the same time, I never understood why they didn't. Billy understanding and appreciating that Van was a savy business woman and Matt wanting her to return to her boring sighing self (I actually thought Matt and Beth could have worked if they didn't have Van worrying about her age and looks, which was just not Van.)

Agreed.having her at Lewis Oil was stupid, and the whole concept of Lewis Oil was stupid. One multinational corporation on each show is enough. They could have just said that Lewis Corporate Offices moved back to Tulsa and just said Trish or someone else took over and kept Lewis Construction..keeping all the corporate intrigue at Spaulding. They did move her back to Spaulding and even unmasking Vickie but then they brought back Alex (for a bit) and dropped that. At that point a Van/Matt/Beth triangle could have worked, tossing out the old thing and just having Matt frustrated that Van was knee deep in Spaulding, and helping Beth on construction of a rape crises center...and then it slowly evolves, no need for villains or ageism.

AND he hung on for a couple of years...they tried to pair him with Chelsea...why in hell would an English record producer hang out in midwestern Springfield? But at least we had a great line from BevAlex... Jackson: "Madame, I am an ARTISTE!" Alex: "Who told you that, the clerk that sold you that earring?" They seemed to still be working on McTavish outlines but I could be wrong. It just changed from Vanessa telling Roger that Alex boasted to Henry that she had a file on Alan that was her failsafe for when he got out of hand, to that. Rauch was right to get rid of Lucy/AM at that point. AM was played by that horrible actor and Lucy did not have the previous AM to support her in scenes. I think Marj/Alex needed a "rest" at this point, JFP and the writers screwed the character up so bad...(all she did was obsess on Alan and shriek at him..) I wouldn't have minded the focus on Alan and his two children...(not sister) fighting each other over Spaulding while Alan manipulates them just as he manipulates Annie. Unfortunatley we got Amanda as his sister, Phillip mooning over Harley and seeming to never go to work, and Amanda mooning over Roger, and Annie manipulating Alan instead of the other way around. The funny thing is, Vanessa could have filled the Alex void...(she was declawed as soon as Long brought Alex on the canvas) with the Chamberlines owning almost as much of Spaulding as the family..and her return from the dead she could have gotten her old feist back, instead of mooning over Matt and wanting a baby with him, I would have loved her to take on Alan and Annie. I think it was MADD or the network that wanted Marj cut.