Mitch64

Ha...Dr. Bob can still get it! Were is Ole Suzie Q???? Yes..but who knows.. I do remember an interview when Colleen said Colin was "her" Margo but..and rumors were that Colleen's affair with the Brian actor was causing drama, with Wagner even telling her to calm it down, but...Everywhere Hillary goes there seems to be trouble, but she always seems so "nice" on screen

I think they totally missed out on some really good tension by having Fletcher and Claire together during this time..Fletch would kind of be the middleman and have the push pull between the Bauers and Claire..who didn't need to be a psycho..but an edgy woman who always felt left out (and who is her own worst enemy.) They had time to turn this around as I am watching the Bert memorial..where Claire is being a bit softer...but they could have used Bert's death to really reset the show...maybe recast Ed with MH, bring back Mike for the episodes and reintroduce a recast Hope in anticipation of Alan's return.. (I see the good old soap trope of a flash of a mysterious hand holding the SF Journal with Bert's obituary..the cuffs say AS, and on to commercial) I would have used that time to bring back Meta as we mentioned, and who actually feels a connection to Claire as the black sheep..giving another perspective then Claire the weird high strung baby mama. She would both put a good work in for Claire and kick her ass when needed, which would bother Mo. A really good family storyline with no villains was screwed to make Claire a convenient nut job (I am suprised she didn't kidnap Chelle but I am sure Ryder was planning that...) I think the Bert/H.B. thing was planned from the get go but then Charita got sick...so Long changed course... Well, Zimmer would have a freaking fit is she wasnt paired up...but you are right..I liked Reva the most when she was kind of on her own, when Josh left, Kyle was married to Maeve and she bought a house, worked, was involved with other people then a grand romance (the Cain stuff didnt really count, she was helping him as he saved her.)

God I would have so love for Brent to off Buzz...I would have had him gag him and tie him up first so we don't hear the caterwauling or arms flapping Deas would do. Plus it would have made more sense to have everyone think Buzz left to town and his family as usual. But I still think putting Deenie with Ed would have been good. Maybe Jean could have cheered up old sourpuss Simon up! I can imagine Van, Holly, Bridget, and Nola all giving that the sideeye. I can't decide if Nadine and Nola would be co conspirators or hate each other .

It had to be Claire. They had spent time putting Hillary and Fletch together....( she was the reason he came to SF..) and they gave them a comedic oddball relationship. During the cabin mystery they put Fletch with Claire for no reason and made her try comedy, which was not what the character was involved in before. I think it wasn't so much that they had to give Claire Hillary's plot, (as this was post DD, and after Clarke's time off) but more that Kobe MAY have been pissed and may have thought Clarke was leaving, so why give her a storyline? I think Long had Ed and Claire ONS planned but not the way it ended up (in Beruit, which was really stupid but..) I do think that they had problems with Stewart, and I know people like her but Elvera was not the greatest actress and I did hear she did not like what was given to her...and Kobe had it out for Clarke after the plot season thing..again, Kobe thought as long as Charita was there, all was good, and she actually was planning to put Bert and H.B. together so maybe she thought Bert would be given a whole new family( Bert Lewis????) Producers and writers take out their anger actors on characters all the time...McTrash...Rauchie had Dinah kill Hart because they were leaving and he didn't want them to ever come back (and actually gave Moniz some great material... I really felt Dinah coming apart. Again, I think this era is really interesting. I think Long and Kobe did a great job infusing the new characters into the show without pushing aside the core...but then the summer and fall of 85 the show just abruptly changes course.

Which is odd. Just as GL was going in this direction, ATWT was rebuilding and recentering the show around the Hughes. Its weird that PG would just let both shows flip flop when ATWT had higher ratings with a strong core they would naturally want GL the sister show to follow that?

Great idea...PG could be really, really stupid. I know in interviews Long said she was always really interested in Meta as she had this wild backstory, but then why were they considering her for Hannah? How long between Search ending and Long starting was there? I think Meta could have taken in her cousins kids in the years...say this Jack and Lanie had died when the kids were young and Meta during her time in SF took them in..that would give her a bit of a family ..though I think a now childless woman was perfect as town matriarch..I remember one BBBQ EVERYONE in town was addressing her as "Aunt Meta,".

Yea, that section of the Bauers came on after Long was there a while, when Johnny had cancer. If Long was going to ditch Bea ( I have no idea why she had it in for her) I could kinda see them bringing an extenion of the Bauers on that hadnt made it to the upper middle class...kind of going back to the orgins of the family. I liked the actors (I wish Lainie had been cast as Meta) and taking over Company/Boardinhouse ( I could see Meta taking over from Bea...especially since she had no children left, she could been the mother hen of all the young new characters who invariably lived at the BH first) made sense with connection to Maureen..they just werent written for at all..and Johnny was the only son brought on, and he was kinda dull and squeeky clean. Now an actual "Todd Bauer" someone who resented his cousins wealth and prestige would have been interesting, obviously Frankie couldnt play that type of character, and a Lacey who was the same (again, another actress) with other siblings, etc...COULD have worked. Its just odd that Long created them put them on contract, and they just sat around with Hawk and Sarah.

Transcripts are werent good then...I saw it and I remember her saying it, but a lot of people were talking at the time..

During one of the Locher shows...she said she "thinks" she was fired to free up money for "Justin." I am sure during the Rauch years Deas took pay cuts, just to continue working and getting that insurance, which I think is fine but as someone said, if only it was on a show I want watching. The writers did love writing for him, one of them was Hurst, who couldn't believe it when I posted something about not liking Buzz or the Coopers. She has mentioned that she felt the Coopers were like a warm blanket for her but I don't think she got them, or at least the Pam Long original intention (I actually like Hurst, she is willing to take criticism of the writing when she was there, admiting that there weere a lot of chefs in the kitchen.

The GL director told him to calm it down...Deas says he got pissed and just started sleepwalking through the scenes...which was fine by me!

Yea, it was so weird after the life she built up...one minute she was pushing Dylan away, and chasing Hart, and the next she is like "Oh, I'm going to go live with Dylan.." No goodbyes to Nola or her family, (but by this time she and Chele acted like they hardly knew each other...) Yea, that is weird..they could have had a short story where Bridget and Dylan get together again as she supports him through the Reva/Annie trial...(but then everything has to be ALL about Reva) This was the perfect time to have Jenna and Buzz leave town together happy..(after this they made Jenna a bad soccer mom, then killed her, and Buzz does really nothing) I am surprised that Ed got a party send off during McTavish...later on he just disappears.

Im good with that..they did have Nola say to Bridget..when asking who she was interested in but won't say, "Frank? I mean he has a nice body but he's married." My concern would be that they would make Bridget a Julie...chasing after Frankie while poor dull Eleni is at home, or as they made Nola chase after Buzz and made the Coopers look down their noses at the Reardons. Now if they sent Eleni packing, like they eventually did..say she goes to Greece to take care of that weird MaMa and those two dumb brothers for a bit...and Frank can't come for work, and Bridget and he eventually fall for each other...but soaps at that time didn't do triangles unless one side was EVIL and the cards were stacked for the good people.

This was the perfect opportunity to revitalize the Bauers...when PS left during McTrash they needed to bring a recast Mike back and slowly introduced his teenage kids..maybe his wife died and he starts dating Lil again, getting a huge sideeye from Van.

Yea, they were setting him up with Alex and with Lillian. Stewart did not want to be paired with women his age...big dummy, and he was a bit of a pain..so Kobe took it as an opportunity to whittle the Bauer family down more, so she fired him. The problem was, that left Alex hanging out with her gaybestie Warren, Kobe recast Ed and killed off Hillary at the same time...so we really lost three Bauers at once. Kobe thought she could get rid of and recast the Bauers as long as she had Charita, but right after killing Hillary, recasting Ed and firing Mike, Charita was too sick to work and passed away. It was a mess and Kobe did nothing to climb out of it, (i.e brining back PS or MH, recasting Hope or Mike) then on the other side all the Reardon actors were quiting and then she wrote off Bea, who was the last character on canvas who could have filled it, at least for a while, for Bert. Kobe ranks up there with JFP as crippling GL at a point where it could have really gotten even stronger.

I LURVE Rick and Mindy..they should have gotten Krista back as she was one of the ONLY women that MOL had great chem with..you can see them as friends and more. Can't believe they waited until the end to bring her back and then had to have that Twitter thing after GL was dead where Mindy tries to settle into married life and being a new kind of Bauer matriarch..which would have been great to see on the show as the years went by. They both would seem to be the cute, nice suburban couple down the street, which just a bit of kookiness to make them interesting. I actually could see Bridget being the start of bringing in a new family to SF..another blue collar family, maybe a Latino family...(not the Santos) Maybe a cop who keeps coming into Company...in a perfect world that Zaz didn't get sick it could be a cop investigating Roger..causing friction..Anyway, Bridget should have stayed ..she didn't even need huge storylines, just behind the bar at Company and at BH connecting all the dots in town even as Ms. Exposition..as long as the Cooper don't stink up Company!

Speaking of Bridget, I know people don't agree but I think she had matured enough going into McTavish that they should have stared working on her being somewhat the new Mo. I think that the actress had a warmth along with the sass to keep her from being boring. I wonder how she would owrk with MOL...going from a sisterly relationship with him to something more...(both burned by people who don't love them and then Peter gets sick and Rick is his doc and they grow closer...) Roger would have a fit, Ed and he could have some clashes, and Bridget sees that Rog does care but doesn't take his crap....Rick needed someone with some edget to keep him interesting. Abby was just too damn perfect.

I think Susan and John would have remained viable characters without taking the edge off them too much. I loved how snippy Susan was when she first came back...and the perfect co-conspirator with John against the Hughes/Stewart "alliance" as John used to call it! Marland blanded EVERYONE out. And yes, John not being involved with James when he returned was a big miss, especially with James getting involved with Lucinda...(though I will grant him one of my fave scenes James in the Hughes kitchen lying out his teeth talking to Paul that he wanted him to grow up with the values that the Hughes have...with Kim with her mouth open and Nancy barely popping her eyes out..the Dobsons would never had James in the Hughes kitchen...)

Of course Buzzard had to be hogging in....what the hell was this deep friendship with Jenna too? Brown was supposedly put on recurring, why wasn't Nola around...(it almost seems that some of Jenna's scenes were written with Nola in mind, taking Matt's side at first and then coming around to Vanessa's side would have been much stronger with someone in the family and with history.

Irna lived in Chicago, so I do think that it was supposed to be a suburb ..like Oaklawn or Oak Park. When Lisa left ATWT she took a train to the city, but it seemed more than a commuter train to get there.

I kept thinking they were going to bring Joyce back...that would have been fun...Lucinda..."Oh, Lisa..I hired an old friend of yours as my secretary, Joyce Coleman. Oh she says the two of you go back years and I believe shared some of the same husbands..."

I think that they had a little too much zest to them and he had to sacrifice John to the altar of Snyder. He never was good at writing grey characters his villains were either cartoons or they reformed due to "twu love" and the need for "honesty" I have no idea how Lucinda survived all those years..but John got watered down..look at others..poor Lisa was strapped with "Earl" who despite being an agent was bland as hell....Tom and Margo lost all their sauce and became morose...

I remember back in the day, a poster on the old MD board called them the "Blister Sisters" but they meant it as a compliment, and I saw it for what it was...too drunk traitor trash mean girls teaming up and backing each other up...which would have been fine if people called them out on it, but they were always right. They had a chance when REva pulled the plug on Stiff Dickie but they glossed over that!

You have reached the point when GL officially goes off the rails never to return. It now become GL Reva/Zimmer Power Hour and we get Reva shoved into stupid storylines just to keep up with that huge guarantee she has...with everyone else getting leftovers.

Great scene...John was upset that his old sparring partner wasn't up for it! Who WAS Ralph related to (I love that Lucy said the same thing...God I hate that Marland had to puss out and break up John and Lucy making mischief all over town) Ralph was so damn boring he made Whit the wig look good. That dialogue was so much better then Larry's "Well, he finds my wife as attractive as I do.." Okay, Lar..we still think your gay..

Dinah should have ALWAYS been angry and "bad" I would have originally written her as this carny girl who finds herself in a load of cash and then tries to emulate young Van..lording it over "River Rat" Harley,etc...to Van's chagrin. I can see characters changing, especially ill defined ones like Dinah...they just need to give a reason. As for Amanda...I know people are used to Cullens' drab version, but she was always chasing after men and having a mean girl background..she slept with her Mom's gross hubby so yea, she was no saint. Malibu Madame...no...but a mean girl who was not going to let ANYONE take her on, who had found her sensuality while away, yea, I can believe it.