Mitch64

The Salem Stalker was, as we all know, dumb and made no sense, but the first "murder" of Abe was well done...everyone was waitiing for him at the church, the bridesmaids were wandering around the courtyard waiting for him, while the bells were ringing ominously. Also the Halloween episode where Maggie was "killed" and the messages that were sent of dancing skeleton with "Death never takes a holiday."

I remember that a soap mag commented this scene that they were obviously burning off people's guarantees by stuffing them in the room, (and really, why would half of these people care and even if its a family member, you don't hang over their bed while they are saying vows.) This was the time to write both Buzz and Jenna out happy...as they were soon going to punish Fiona by firing her and killing off Jenna, and the annoying Selena to try to scream over Deas in their scenes together. From here on it Buzz is just there (and really more tolerable I have to say.)

Yes! People on soaps go into suspended animation when they leave...(we used to make fun of the way on GL Marland would send a character, including Holly, off to Europe, like they are on the moon) Mike Bauer could have married and had kids off camera, having a new set of Bauers to come to town. Hope just, disappeared...what if she had married and had kids also. I do remember that they had hinted that Joan/Alex would have a past with..Ed off camera..I can't imagine Joan having to overcome the sourpuss face, but the thought makes me laugh.

I loved the way Billy called Roger, "Ole Roj" and since he was the first character Nola interacted with on the show, that would be great..(they could have had her breaking into his penthouse and having to hide as he tries to seduce Amanda and Nola makes faces and comments on his style.) We couldn't have nice things as Rauch saw Nola as some bitter hag pining after her husband and living in a Boarding House, the writers had no imagination and really didn't know the characters and ...welll, they were busy thinking of new stupid plots and scenes for Reva..

Ha..I will take older Melrose Place King over Ponytail Keating!!! ( I just remembered isn't there a Will and Grace where Jack goes on a date with King's character, (and of course, Karen THINKS the guys is actually Jack's dad so there is a lot of jokes on "Oh DADDY!") ...They should have begged Mart to come back. It was not like they were going to show Ed as some hot active stud...and he and MG had a good chemistry, he looked like he could be MOL's dad and he had a warm dad vibe that could have filled in the Mo..warm center part.

An older guy, that makes sense, but..Perry King....

I know everyone hated the Stalker Storyline, but I think that would have been a great moment to really have Holly define her character and decide that she is NOT going to be the victim anymore (and not a stalker) and after therapy...(off screen of course, sorry Marland) she doffs the suit dresses and walks around more stylish and edgy with her leather coats, (okay I think MG was sexy in her leather) and goes back to that Holly that Pam Long wrote..more ballsy and not worried what people think. I could see that Holly getting with Alan, and Alan vibing on a "bad" girl, only one age appropriate for once. An Alan/Holly/Ed triangle would be interesting, but it would have to be someone other then sourpuss Simon.

Hmmm. Dietrich Lindsey on the DL....played by someone like Perry King (hubahuba) soaps first gay meglamaniac! ("So Dietrich, just WHAT do you propose I do to pay up that blackmail?") What I don't get is with Holly's money, she is fired at the station, lives in Revabend...MG actually lit a fire under RR in that one scene they had (not counting the hilarious scene when Alan calls her to tell her about the clone, and she is drunk and tells him to go f*ck himself and his b.s.) so it would have been nice to see Holly buy her way into the Spaulding factory of evil.

That would have been great....hell, I would have written RR off as Alan and brought Dietrich on, plus, we could have avoided Fletcher and Holly! Good idea...The could have used Nola and Billy in the search for Vanessa instead of Dinah and &&&& (I LOVE this) Nola and Billy know Van better and have the instincts to get to the bottom. Nola, instead of making her the cynical druge not think Van was alive, could have instictively thought so and shared that with Billy. Billy should have been the one to find her and try to bring her back..but also let her decide if and when she wants to do so. Van would get him to lie to Nola, cause of her big mouth, and the two of them could have scenes together talking about their past, etc. And how great would it be if &&&& to see that Billy found her and she trusts him more. Maybe he would go back to turning tricks by the docks! I also wanted a scene where Nola cock blocks Matt and Dinah.. and have a Dinah/Nola argument..."Dinah, with all of my issues with your mother, even at her worst she had more class in her finger then you have in your whole body. Being a slut is all well and good, but chasing after your step father is trailer trash behavior!"

I love the chemistry between Zimmer and Clarke...so I can cut it slack. I loved it best when Billy had her number (while still wanting to f*ck her) but I chalk it up to finding out they had a kid(well Billy finding out) and time passing. Say what you will about Zimmer, she has some great "buddy" chemistry with actors, which is a shame that Rauch turned her into a soccer mom/middle aged temptress so man could not get a hard over. That Christmas was the weird transition period where they were still falling McTavish's outlines and Rauch had yet to exert his...uh..taste on the show. They were bringing people back willynilly for the anniversary and Jordan was one of them (Fiona was supposed to be a few episodes) but it was all so messy and convoluted. They brought Dylan back before the holiday I think so he never had a scene with his dad returned from jail. I thought it would have been interesting instead of the dreaded diner, he got a job at Company and he and Nola started a thing...(how was Brown and Clarke's chemistry...they didn't have many scenes on her first run, besides Billy catching Van's arm when she is acting like she wants to stab her with a hair pin) to get ready for the return of Van...his real love, giving a good run to another Van/Nola conflict and leaving boring Matt to sit it out.

Excuses me??? You didn't find Lujacks video with the Infinity Rings shoot up exciting? I mean, nothing could have made Kurt exciting, except if he was in my bed naked...(hey I was in college, we were the same age..) Oh, that made me think of Billy's trial, when they pulled out the Infinity video and Billy jumped like a dog to shoot Kyle and Malloy's...acting...as he flared his nostrils and screamed.."Love me brother" had all of us howling in the Student Lounge... I never like Josh after the Clone..it was creepy, sick and pervey, and a good excuse for Reva to leave his ass and hook up with hunky, gay island muscle boy. I never understood how anyone could have thought otherwise of that freak show..that made Roger and Alan look like princes. Vigard always looked like an underage, underfed boy to me..which grossed me out on Kelly (who come on, who didn't know JWS was gay back then..) I remember their love scene in the stream with steroid muscles over he skinny frame and her teeth were chattering and I just felt sorry for her.

Not to incite a certain poster with my thoughts but..Mac was gross to me( he looked like he reeked of ciggies) and Nancy was so classy. I know Marland said he wanted to show that romance continued on in older people but...I think Nancy written as Nancy should be (not the sweet grandmother Marland turned her into) would not want another man around, or would make his life hell with her demanding nature. At least show them adjusting to each other, Nancy having to deal that gross Mac is not Chris, and Mac knowing that Nancy is not Bernice...(because of course Mac would be married to a Bernice.) I think the best tentpole was Bert..she didn't seem to ever want to get married (and after Bill could you blame her) and she had a full and interesting life, apart from supporting her family. The writers always made sure she had a job (as a volunteer and later as head of the Patient Advocates) and friends of her own. Which made that scene in the Bauer kitchen, where drops a dish and can't pick it up and feel helpless) even more impactful. I know its part of the genre, but I wish soaps could show more people being happy single, or even just dating and not being single mindedly focused on Grand Love and marriage...soap characters would be exhausting to be friends with!

Well, it's not officially in the midwest but a lot of people I know from there consider themselves midwest...(maybe north?) But its..transitional and I agree, not from Alabama.. I come from Central Illinois and many people still speak with a twang, still left over from the migration from Kentucky, etc.

Jane..that was her name! I loved Jane. I know this was written about before but I can't believe the tone deafness on the network, writers, producers AND the viewers that YR had a black maid named Mamie!!!!! I may be dreaming this, but I think Long wrote a scene where Vera condemned Roger and Alex's tower plans as displacing people she knew (i.e. POC) if so good, and a good op for drama for Vera to quit after she tells Peanut out and that wakes Alex up. Though I will always love Vera for that scene where she is serving coffee or something and leaning over shoves her butt in Blake's face! God the show could be so good back then! I wish they brought Evans back to GL when Hearst left. I could see him channeling his inner Bauer especially since Simon left at that time and they could have recast Mike. I wish that they had Loyd, and whatever the butlers name was, who were at cross purposes at times carrying out their bosses schemes against each other...would have fallen in love and ran off together. Alan would huff and puff and JoanAlex would say, "Really Alan, did you think they spent ALL their time spying for us? Let's throw those boys a nice party at the Towers and start collecting resumes for lackeys!"

I loved Levy and found him oddly sexy, I hated they got rid of him to give DuhFrank the job...if there was every someone who would not be the Chief of Police it would be Frank Cooper. Vera I liked but she was problematic (the "Mammy Maid" thing.) I actually liked Alex's first "secretary" I forget her name but she was Nola's nanny I think and Alex hired her. I never understood why they wrote her off. Wanda I liked but that twang she had..Oklahoma is midwestern not southern and GL never understood that. I hated her writing but Megan McTavish as the Lola Fontaine was good, she was whore that somehow befriended Amanda ....maybe that is where the Malibu Madame came from...) and then Tony gave her a job at Company and she became part of the family before disappearing (when McTavish started writing for the show I would presume.) I loved Leo...someoen to do Roger's bidding. I loved when Taggert was writing and both Alex and Alan had their loyal henchmen. JoanAlex had the Indian guy and Alan had a butler, who if remember was pretty cute.

And next year (granted it was during a writers strike) we had no picnic, no mention of one, we have Barbara coming into the penthouse from shopping (who goes shopping for anything more then Booze and food on the 4th) and finding Rick there. No mention of the family besides "Does Bob Hughes know you are back?" (why would she use his last name like they are slightly connected?) Not an improvement. I would say the Hughes family had become really upper middle class if that by that time..Chris owned a law firm (which seemed to be the only one in town) Bob was a doctor...but yea, they held firm to their middle class "bearing" but in town like Oakdale they would be near the top.

Thanks! I think soaps never really showed their elderly characters gradually failing...if they were they were shipped off camera. Sure they dealt with Bert's surgery, but she was still a firecracker and on it (and only 62 so hardly elderly) The way the show treated Don was really heartwarming and brought a sense of reality to a show ( I wish they had done a bit more and had Andy remark "Grand dad seemed out of it this morning" and have Bob talk about aging being natural and not scary...) I know they did tried to do that with that gross guy they married Nancy off with.. but it just seemed to be one of Marland's depressing "relevant" storylines and not natural or organic like Don's was. I still get tears in my eyes when the Bob gives his toast to his parents on the anniversary and Hastings tears up...and so does McLaughlin (while Wagner's Nancy is stoically calm..lol.) That is the kind of stuff that "binds" you to a show.

ATWT was in pretty good shape when they took over...really in term of the core being in place. Yes, they needed to offload some of the cast..half of them were middle aged lawyers I couldn't tell one from the other. And while I think Tom Tammi is hot...he did play Tom as almost a middle aged uptight guy..I can see why they wanted to reinvent Tom a bit. It was the warmed over stories that they used and how they started off integrating the new characters with the old (Nick with Kim, Lyla with Bob etc) its like they ran out of interest. What did Nancy think of Lyla and her two rebellious daughters who would be part of the family soon..we don't know...did Lyla have many scenes with Nancy and Chris? The set up to Margo having an affair with Bob's stepdaughters husband was good, but Bob was quickly taken out of that mix. Agreed that ATWT was cold compared to GL (while I always loved GL, messy as it was better) but they really distanced everyone from each other. Wagner said that as soon as Don was taken off contract he started to fail...I remember him having scenes after she left and he was fine...also, look how well the show did when they brought him back..he had few scenes and lines, but he was there and he was respected and the way the cast looked protective over him (implied that the characters knew he was failing ) added texture warmth and reality to the show.

I always liked that about GL..they had people deal with issues just like they do in the real world, without a therapist showing up to spout about "there are 1.5 million teen pregnancies a year, most of them in people below the poverty level, leading to childhood malnourishment" such as Marland would stop a show to do...Info would come up, but it would seem more like real people focusing on their problem then a "social issue."

I agree that Zaz's illness (well really his firing) through a wrench in part of the Meg story, they wrote that really great scene where after Holly and Fletcher argue over the Ross/Blake twin's thing, and Holly says "Roger is right in this, family comes first, even over honesty," and then Holly overhear's Roger having a moment with Meg talking about being different. I think the intention was for Roger to bond with Meg leading Holly to break her walls down (she always thought she was a terrible mother and having a special needs kid really pushed her neurosis over) Roj NOT Fletch, which would piss off our sanctimonious bore to no end...and then have Holly and Roger take sides with Blake, would have been a good story that they were headed to (I just couldn't take the Roger and Holly are TWU luv thing...) I think that is why I think Ed was better for Holly, she gets screwed up guys...and Fletch was just too shallow to be screwed up in the way Holly is attracted to. The Abby transplant thing got short shift because it was the Bauers...Rauch didn't know how to do a "real" story, and remember, this was the summer of San Christobel and RESCUE REVA that he and TPTB thought would skyrocket the show to the top...remember Kimmer in her usual b.s. touting her storyline (until it collapsed) that said viewers wanted "Calgone take me away" fantasy..(not if your in the tub Reva thanks!) There was no room..that was the summer there was no Bauer BBQ..the boards were lit up over both those things at the time.

Well, this was a misguided story from the start, developed by an earlier lamented group (McLaibey) and did not fit the character of Holly...However she existed and it would have been good to bring her back for visits played by an older actress. I wanted Ed and Holly reunited before the last episode...two supremely damaged people who somehow work, and could form a basis for a different king of core couple ( I can't see Holly sitting around the Bauer kitchen listening to peoples bullshit problem without rolling her eyes.) and I can see Ed talking her into forming a relationship with her. Maybe Fletch marries another woman who really is better for whatever her name was. The problem is when you introduce a clone the whole concept of reality goes out the window (Michael can grow a fetus but did not put research into some real developmental issue?) And yes Sean had a great chest and he was good with Dinah, but he came off as Reva and Dinah's gay muscle boy bestie..I never bought the dead wife story Sean..sorry!

Agreed...I really liked their GL (what I could remember of it) and kept the traditions there that Long kind of got rid of (the Christmas Eve kids party at Cedars..Mike singing there..the Bauers as the center...) but really ignored the Hughes (to be fair, they really used the Stewarts..) I don't take the argument that it was TPTB totally, as good old Bridget didn't let anyone strong arm her. Maybe Nancy was a hard matriarch to write for after the warm Bert? Maybe a long time married core couple was hard for them? I think they didn't want to write for ATWT and didn't care until the second time around, which was better. It was so cool to see Hastings on the Locher show, as soon as he had the Bob smile it was like, "Everything is okay." just like watching the show. I actually loved Dolan's personality and which they had infused some of that humor is her dour Margo...Hillary looks GREAT but she is my fave Margo...Marx's voice is sex on a stick still...and Zenk looks ageless as always. I didn't notice any tension between Zenk and Smith but probably years have gone by enough ( though when Zenk mentioned Fulton supporting her through problems and men, Smith had a knowing smirk...) I liked that Smith I think said that the shows family feeling behind the scenes was a great experience. I do love that Smith, or was it Dolan said that Wagner and Fulton kind of had some pushing up against each other (no wonder Wagner was always so good with those "Now Lisa DEAR! " admonitions!) From all reports Wagner was a bit "Nancyish" and Fulton seemed to share Lisa's impish sense of humor so I can see it, I wish they had followed up on it.

They aren't..these were from November and we had Dee's murder trail etc. These were actually good stories but again, they ripped out the core and it just didn't have that ATWT feeling (poor DM was put on recurring at this time and then he just disappeared before Tom and Margos wedding and when Marland brought him back) Fulton leaves in the spring, and she is gone for over a year I think,

Lisa in her annoying fluttery jittery phase...between her and Meg Ryan's Betsy.... Poor Chris..just..standing there like an extra that no one interacts with.

I think it was Sheri Anderson who brought in Sarah...that was during the bad corporate espionage thing of Lewis Oil and Josh was hiding a pregnant Reva and brought Sarah in...my question...did Long or any of the writers ever mention Sarah...I thought she would be a trashy battle axe but they made her seem like a sweet country mother...why had she not spoken to her kids? But yea, all we needed was another family member of Reva...(it would have been funny if Sarah was an old battle axe who gave Reva hell."My daughter is a slut, sure..damn where are my ciggies????"