Mitch64
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Posts posted by Mitch64
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On 10/21/2023 at 9:55 AM, Donna L. Bridges said:
You include the clone & I don't understand that. We know that it was mandated by CBS. We know that Rauch fought against it. Do you include it because it's result fit the pattern, no matter its origin? Or, something else?
It fits the pattern and I don't know that they fought it all that hard...MADD still felt that the Clone was their biggest success. It also had to come from Rauch on a certain level..remember when they were face tapping KZ to play her younger sister..but there was no way that was going to happen? So the old "Dual Role" thing was in play being bounced back and forth to give birth to the clone.
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22 hours ago, GL Oldtimer said:
Television just wasn't as brave then to share this sort of journey. I think there's a chance that it would be shared today though as I think television is more willing to take risks
I think soaps were much braver in the 60s and 70s...in the 80s they all became generic copying Dynasty and Dallas and but the time the MADD one and Rauch got their hands on the show, no one wanted to take chances. Add to that MADD/Rauch's "formula" story (bad girl, dumb guy, good girl traingle) and anything that did not fit that formula was out...(the Clone was just another triangle we all saw before..) I always wish they had brought back a son of Roger's at that time to act as his mouthpiece and fill in if Zaz could not work (in my fanwank mind it would be the son of Rita's who Ron believes is Alan's so he adopts him off camera to hate the Spaulding's and the Bauers and be his ultimate revenge on both, but it ends up being Ed's son...) thus helping with production and creating a "what next" bad guy who has a sympathetic back story ( and I always wanted a bad Bauer..)
21 hours ago, soapfan770 said:There’s been anecdotes of Grillo having bad on-set behavior over the years going back to his Prison Break days, including an altercation of sort between him and Ryan Reynolds a while back. Grillo in interviews tried to come off as some macho tough guy
Grillo can thank his lucky stars on his own narcissistic personality and that he has a family member connection in the film industry (thus the Marvel casting) or he would just be another run of the mill ex soap star. The relationship of he and Moniz were destined to break up given their beginnings. She gave up her career to be a stay at home mom apparently....I think she did great on Yellowstone and hopefully she has more character work like that. Yea dumb move to have Dinah kill Hart (if Roger was alive would you believe he would let that go unpunished..) so when she came back it looked ridiculous she got off (and the only time I ever agreed with Cassie..) But Rauch wanted to burn their bridge and let Moniz and Grillo (neither one a cast favorite) know that they could not come back easily.
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On 10/18/2023 at 4:47 PM, Soapsuds said:
Alan Locher had a birthday live chat today.
Tidbits:
Alan said everyone knew both GL and ATWT were going to be cancelled.
It just happened that ATWT lasted longer. They were sworn to secrecy and weren't suppose to let anyone know.
Kim Zimmer appeared and said Frank Grillo was difficult on the set. Would call the scripts garbage and AC, Kim husband, who was directing GL at the time told Frank, that he could just leave and do Shakespeare if he wanted to. He had no time for tantrums when the crew and actors had lots of dialogue to tape.
Alan said he was going to have AC on his show. Kim said that he had more tea to spill and they all started laughing.
Grillo always sounded like an ass..I don't know why they didn't take that opportunity to recast Hart...(I love Weary's comment...) For being a mediocre talent and just another lug...he sure spun a career...he must have given great slobbers to someone, somewhere...)
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13 hours ago, Soapsuds said:
Shannon aka Casey was great when she premiered. Duncan was no different when Barbara brought him to Oakdale to stop Shannon's wedding to Brian.
As a couple they were fine for almost a year and then Shannon became annoying and to dependent on Duncan. That was not Shannon. Duncan became annoying as hell. It got worse when Duncan's first wife Lilieth came to town to disrupt their lives and later "kill" Shannon.
Agreed, Shannon was fun when she first came on and her and Harriet had fun scenes together. Duncan was a sly cad and the mystery of the castle and all that was also fun at first. But of course, Marland had to make them both earnest and dreary, so Duncan's weird sister is found out to be his daughter (which is kind of a drag...Duncan should NOT be a dad...) and then we get Shannon talking about "honesty" in a relationship along with also obsessing about Lily along with the rest of the town and it became a drag. (didn't Shannon at one time threaten to stick Babs head in the toilet at Mona Lisa...if so I think another writers snuck that in it was sooo not Marland.)
Lilith was fun and campy (loved her setting bear traps to kill people and shipping bodies of victims to people as a warning...) but seemed out of place in Marland's newly dour world..its like she got confused in her directions and missed Rauch's Llanview and ended up in Oakdale.)
The castle was dumb but it stuck around to be the "Earl Mitchell Home for Wayward Youth" even though Earl wasn't really dead...Again, I never understood how a ghost just followed the bricks of the castle to the midwest.
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On 10/8/2023 at 4:21 PM, Soaplovers said:
I'm guessing Marland kind of envisioned Lily/Holden to be a sort of Taming of the Shrew done from 80s teen perspective... spoiled rich girl meeting her match in the stable boy.
If you read Marland's bible..that was exactly what he envisioned..though it was sexier on paper then with the actors...Lily was bitchier (that Lily would never have jumped at the chance to be at the Snyder farm) and there was some dynamic with a horse whip...(you can tell Marland was a gay boy from the midwest with his fascination with sex in barns and field with hunky farm boys..and well...it was fun...) but they had to tame it down because..Martha..God love her..did not exude that kind of sexuality ( he channeled that into Emily Stewart.
But yea..only Marland could manage to find an even less sexual performer in the Lily recast and still write it like every steroid farm hunk in jeans was in love with her.
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On 10/15/2023 at 4:31 PM, Khan said:
In a way, I see Rauch's point. For one thing, because ALS remains incurable, we do know the outcome, so the suspense is already gone. (As Agnes Nixon reportedly told Michael Malone after OLTL's Megan died from complications of lupus: "And then what?"). For another, I think it's just depressing to watch even a fictional character go through the stages of a disease that we know is real and can result in only one outcome. You want to entertain and even educate your audience, but you also want to give them some hope, which you can't do when the disease they're battling is an incurable one.
I got that..I think more then the "suspense" factor..(who didn't know post 1997 what was going to happen on GL...) I think it's the fact that having a major storyline around an actor who may not be able to work on certain days, is more of a problem. They of course could have filmed his scenes ahead of time without certain actors but the immediacy of say, MG's Holly dealing with having to support Roger when he was "weak" would have been lost. On the other hand, seeing MG' Holly doing just that with MZ..given their history and their ties..would have blown away a Double KZ marathon we were treated to. If they cared and they were smart they could have done it..even for a six week storyline to wrap things up..I actually think the writers and Rauch had the talent to do it if they just would be allowed to be creative.
But as usual, Rauch and the industry got it wrong..it wasn't the suspence.. there are no new stories in drama..it is the characters interactions that get you there and that is where MADD and Co always failed. Of course, the last time something happened on GL which you couldn't predict...blew up in their faces (Mo's death) so I can see where they were leary.
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I love Rauch's quote when the writers wanted to address the ALS.."We all know what the outcome of that storyline is..." or something to that..as if we didn't know what the outcome of the "Clone" would be (well maybe the morons the show was pandering to didn't) or any of the Java storylines...they break up, make up, yap about "always" and then do it all over again. Same with Manny, etc.
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19 minutes ago, Gray Bunny said:
Around 11/10/86... on GL, I believe this was when Reva/Kyle's wedding got interrupted by Maeve, and later Josh returned and appeared to Reva after she got hit by a truck while wandering outside (on location).
Another episode I remember watching in real time...only drama queen Reva would wander around in her wedding dress after her aborted wedding, (and finding out that her fiance was such a d*ck that his exwife would have to hide the fact that their baby lived) wandering around the country side (and looking GREAT, Kimmer was a knock out at that time) which, believe it or not, was actually Peapack!
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11 hours ago, Soapsuds said:
Yes, it was the famous Friday cliffhanger Hello Barbara.
Margo also loses her baby while hunting down one of James henchman next ratings period.
Remember this like it was yesterday..in the CBS TV lounge in the Student Center....this football player who LOVED ATWT and GL....yelling "James f*cking Stenbeck!!!.Barbara get ya ass out of there!"
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On 9/30/2023 at 2:05 AM, DRW50 said:
I appreciate how in her original run Reva had close relationships with men that were platonic. Other than some of her interaction with Billy, and once or twice with Philip, they didn't bother with those nuances in her second stint.
That is one of the things, among many that really stood out during Reva 2.0. She had always had guy friends...(when she was first introduced her best friend was a hair dresser in the salon she worked at...never mentioned but played a bit gay by the guy who played Brad on ATWT and he was actually good.Reva needed a gay bestie to fix her wagon once in a while..) Reva really, really liked men, not just for sex but she just liked them, and it really seemed realistic that Reva would make friends with guys faster than other women. Phillip, Johnny, Rick, both H.B. and Billy after their breakups, Fletcher...(she was the only one who made him tolerable...) And then she returned from the dead and it was all about Josh and then her shrill sister and she jumped from plot point to plot point and became a cartoon of her old self. Long really knew how to write for and appreciated friendships. Mindy and Frank were just a little side story but he was only ever interesting and sexy with her (I could never get over FD's frosted highlighted hair...same with Rusty's pouty mullet and tail he had...)
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On 9/25/2023 at 4:31 PM, chrisml said:
TPTB on soaps had such icky views on women and sexual assault. In the eighties and nineties, it seemed like rape was happening on all the soaps. I wonder if the writing of Laura's rape on GH was the catalyst for all these rape stories/glorification of the rapist idiocy. I would like to think attitudes have changed, but I'm not sure they have on the soaps, but I don't watch any of the current ones so I'm not sure.
They did...I hate when it's used as a sweeps stunt. I even hated Margo's rape as well done as it was..it took a strong funny character, and she became a morose shell of herself after that. I know the point was strong woman are raped, but old people are abused in real life and I didn't want to see Nancy Hughes being batted around. The worst is when JFP threw away a promising character like Brent Lawrence, to try to make the audience like Lucy Cooper, by having him raper her. Cynical bullshit.
However, I think the producer is as inept as his statement is, was trying to say that Roger and Holly were totally dysfunctional and it was both their fault...which is why I loved them over other dysfunctional "super couples" like Jeva that TPTB could never call them out as. I don't think he was trying to blame the rape on Holly but that she brought as much crazy as Roger did.
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On 9/21/2023 at 10:11 AM, MarlandFan said:
It's no surprise why the show hit #2 in the ratings; ATWT was running on all cylinders during the spring/summer/fall of 1990. Andy's alcoholism reached it's climax with him going to jail for hitting Lien while driving drunk. That story (in part) caused Bob's dissatisfaction with his marriage and he slept with Susan which blew-up his marriage to Kim. The Margo/Casey right-to-die story was gripping and emotional. These and other stories (Julie marries Caleb then sleeps with Holden, Shannon's "death", Duke's paternity and Lucinda's machinations), helped ATWT win it's 2nd Emmy for Best Show that year. Plus - Jimmy Wlcek was super hot (still is!) and seemed to be shirtless throughout most of that 1990 summer (thank you ATWT producers).
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.
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19 minutes ago, RavenWhitney said:
I believe it was CBS exec, Wendy Fischman, who created the clone story.
Yes, you are correct..thanks!
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35 minutes ago, NothinButAttitude said:
Seeing those pics of Kathy [Hays] getting emotional brings me to tears. Kim always had a soft spot in my heart. The pics also piss me off as I see that Snyder kitchen set that grated my nerves. I grew to hate that set. It unnerved me how they simply couldn't slap up a set for Bob & Kim or Lisa or Lucinda at the end of the show. All that aside, I get happy to see something about ATWT popping up. God, I miss this show...
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..)
35 minutes ago, DramatistDreamer said:I recognize the Hughes living room, the beverage bar at the Walsh mansion and ever other landmark set and scenery.
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.
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13 hours ago, Donna L. Bridges said:
So, in my version San Craptobel was gone & with it Bradley Cole & David Andrew McDonald. Then I got rid of the mob. Danny turned out to be a grandson of Mike Bauer.
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.
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22 hours ago, MichaelGL said:
GL:
Garden of Eden Murders once it was revealed that Ben was a serial killer, and Marty West's Shayne got with Marina.
I was already half there with Alex being turned into a drugging, gaslighting, stalking, mustache twirling villain, that just sealed the deal for me. Thank you ConWest.
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.
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On 9/18/2023 at 8:55 AM, Donna L. Bridges said:
Good Morning! Today is Monday, September 18, 2023 & that makes it the 14 year Endiversary of Guiding Light which broadcast its last show on September 18, 2009, concluding a 57 year run on CBS that began on June 30, 1952. My God, do i ever miss GL! Honk if you miss GL! Well, that was supposed to be an emoji of a goose.
So, last night I was talking to a close friend who worked at GL at the end & we were reminiscing & talking about how much we miss GL & also how much we miss the whole NY soap scene. We of course got on the subject of CBS & P&G & ATWT & GL & even NBC at AW. We both said how both Paul Rauch & Mickey, MADD Mary Alice Dwyer Dobbin, no matter how much there might be to say critical of them, one thing was clear which was that they were ferocious in their defense, and offense, of their shows! He also made me aware of a CBS Daytime VP named Richard Mensing who was a champion of GL ... until the time he was gone & at that point all of those champions of GL were gone. And the show was left with non-fans Barbara Bloom & Les Moonves at CBS. No one at P&G. And, strictly on their own, EW at GL & Goutman at ATWT with no one to either do battle for them or even stand up for them in moral support! It was a sorry state of affairs that things had devolved to.
Anyway, here's to many great years at GL & legions of excellent fans!
So, this CBS guy Richard Mensing who was a champion of GL was gone as of 2002. That's the same year that Paul Rauch left. And, MADD left in 2005. Conboy was unfortunately the EP 2002-2004 with his special friend Ellen Weston the HW who could not even be properly interviewed as a writer because she wasn't one, 2003-2004. Not for the first time I appreciate Ellen Wheeler, Jill Lorie Hurst, David Kreizman, Donna Swajeski, Chris Dunn & Lucky Gold for everything they did from 2004 to the bitter end. And, yes, I understand that they made mistakes. EVERYONE makes mistakes. It's called being human. Oh, and I appreciate Carolyn Culliton also as she was the co-HW to Weston, surely that was a thankless job!
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...
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On 8/29/2023 at 10:59 PM, Soapsuds said:
Here's the episode
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.
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On 8/16/2023 at 10:49 PM, soapfan770 said:
As @DRW50 mentioned FD worked fine as a support role. Obviously the best was FD with Melina’s Eleni. But once we got to Frank and Rozell’s Eleni…major snooze and the show just stopped writing for them.
Frank having an affair with Annie Dutton was intriguing but then It just collapsed and nothing further occurred outside of Frank dumping Eleni.
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.
On 8/18/2023 at 12:28 AM, Vee said:Frank D. was very hot back in the day. By the time the 2000s or mid-2000s rolled around he was kind of dumpy and sad and was clearly kept around out of loyalty. The same could be said for Michael O'Leary, but amazingly MOL has had a bit of a glow-up recently (a la Michael E. Knight, who has grown out of what I termed his uber-depressed "Suicide Tad" years of the 2000s on AMC). He was a bit of a silver fox in, of all things, Halloween Ends, getting slaughtered by Michael Myers.
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.
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22 minutes ago, Gray Bunny said:
He was the Josh Taylor of Guiding Light.
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...
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On 8/13/2023 at 1:05 PM, GLATWT88 said:
I was watching a bit of Nov. 1981 GL on YouTube yesterday prompted by the 80s ratings thread and I was just thinking to myself woah "Tony" is kinda hot. John Wesley Shipp too...
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.
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7 hours ago, NothinButAttitude said:
he vendetta she had against Rose, Emily, and Carly made perfect sense. I always felt that Babs saw three versions of herself in them. I think the plus side to it all was that it revitalized the importance of Barbara on the canvas. I just wish that Hogan would've been smart enough to utilize Kim and Lisa during that time as they were her two moral compasses. There should've been tons of material of them talking Barbara off the cliff.
I've said too that ATWT missed out on the Lisa/Carly/Babs dynamic the last decade. They should've tossed the three into each other's orbit and had them form a fashion house, which consisted of a lot of comedic backstabbing and undermining one another while forming a sisterhood. I've always hated that Carly and Lisa's friendship was never repaired.
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.
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6 hours ago, Donna L. Bridges said:
And then in her book she did an awful thing & threw Costume Designer Shawn Reeves under the bus saying something like it was beneath him to shop in the chubby girls section.
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!)
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12 hours ago, Vee said:
I have made many complaints about the Reva Show era in the late 90s-early 2000s over the years. I even think some of the truly bad changes to the show were ironically to Kim's advantage as a performer, stripped of a lot of the Rauch-era artifice.
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!"
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Guiding Light discussion thread
in DTS: Cancelled Soaps
Posted
I love that sexy Rita knows the "back entrance by the pool so you can by pass the lobby" as you know she has been there more than once!
Despite her outfit, I love devious Van and don't know why instead of recasting Alex they didn't have Vanessa partially return to her old ways. They could definitely have done it during Rauch's time when they fired Marj...and Van returned....anything to get her away for sighing away with boring Matt!
Oh how the show screwed up by not recasting Mike and Hope at anytime. "You KNOW how intimidated Alan is by Mike Bauer" then in later years they only had Alan go up against....Buzzard!
I love the old 4th floor nurses station and all the action...love sneaky Nola great times on the show.