Lujack4Ever

Today marks the 40th anniversary of my all-time favorite Guiding Light character’s death. On December 2, 1985, Brandon “Lujack” Luvonaczek breathed his last at Cedars after being caught in an explosion on the tanker Infinity. RIP Okay so I’m going to now go on a tear with my issues about the handling of Vincent Irizzary, Lujack and Nick. First off killing off Lujack huge mistake. In a SOD interview co-head writer Jeff Ryder said instead of sending him off on a world wide tour of the OUT IN THE STREETS video killing him would catapult those around him into the next chapter of their lives. SPIN…I’m sure I’ve hears somewhere it was Gail Kobe’s sour grapes for VI not renewing his contract to explore a film career. So the character was done dirty and we got to see Beth back with Philip after explaining the last two years why she had moved on and couldn’t /didn’t want to be with him anymore. Now we come to Nick. They went through gymnastics to bring him back as a long lost twin only to pair him with…Mindy! The entire time he was on the canvas they never brought Beth back. That would have been an epic story. After he finally left again he came back for two episodes at Christmas and they did not even write a scene where Phillip who was on the canvas meets Nick. Ball fumbled at every possible turn with Nick. My hope bloomed when FINALLY Vincent left ALL MY CHILDREN. This was their chance to get him back AND if I could only have been on the writing staff not I had a scenario for his return not as NICK but as LUJACK. How? He died on screen? There was just enough wriggle room (especially given all the outlandish back from the dead and other things like clones etc.) to make it work. Remember Infinity was a powerful crime organization. The government could have been investigating it all along and never got anyone even close to it. The explosion of the ship sets off alarms. They found out a critically injured Lujack was aboard. Did he see something value regarding Largo and Infinity. They had to make sure he lived and didn’t want to trust Cedars. Louie Darnell, I believe was the attending physician when he died (can’t have Ed not save Lujack right?!) Long story short they pressure Louie in to doing something that simulates his death after he cried out BETH and apparently died. Remember, when they came back from commercial, he was gone and everyone was greiving. That was when he was spirited away by the government and eventually into witness protection. He chose not to come back because Beth and Alexandra moved on. He was tempted when Nick came but he stayed away. All this is revealed by a dying Dr. Darnell who wants to go out with a clean conscious. Alex and Beth, who were on the canvas at the time begin a frantic search and low and behold ...they find LUJACK. It was doable with a scenario like this. So I voraciously scoured the soap mags for any information on where VI would wind up, fingers crossed….I would have even taken Nick if he could have gotten a Beth/Nick story but no…he went to YOUNG AND RESTLESS as David Chow. When Chow got killed off I prayed he would come back since VI is east coast based…but no GL did not bring him back…every chance wasted and eventually it became too late and the show was cancelled. So yes, the minute the execs decided Lujack had to die they committed a self-inflicted gunshot wound the show would never recover from. This was Lujack we are talking about, a legacy character not some throw away like Kurt Corday or Detective Cutter and they learned nothing from this debacle when they killed off a certain Bauer.

It was still pre-internet so its hard to say what everyone was feeling at home however anyone rooting for them would have gotten their first sign of hope when they were in Acapulco together and were getting along. Everything that came after started there.

1. i knew Nola was the stalker the minute she showed up hanging out at the lunch counter in Wheels & Meals Diner...a place she never frequented before. The whole storyline was a joke...why GL wrote that Buzz was some irresisitable hearthrob I will never know. He was a ill tempered loudmouthed lout. 2. Never warmed to Cassie. To self righteous and it was just plain silly that Sarah too had a secret child. 3. Unfortunately that left zero wiggle room for Maureen ever coming back. Once you start passing out body parts even the most talented writer or producer could never ever be able to figure a way to fix it once the fan backlash started. Painted into a corner.

My take on the Holly/Roger thing was....the writers should have QUIT while they were AHEAD. I can't tell you the year but I remember a particular scene. Roger and Holly were snooping around the Spaulding mansion and were caught by young Ben Reade who tells them the Spauldings hate their guts. What stands out about this scene was Roger and Holly were totally in love and working together....they overcame every dark and twisted thing from their past and were at last happy. They beat the odds and overcame and were finally a true couple. That was how they should have remained until one or both left the show but no...not long after the writers and producers tanked it all and put Holly with Fletcher....a fatal mistep as neither of the characters really clicked with anyone else ever again.

LOL and he wasn't even dead! As far as fake funerals go when they thought Beth was dead they turned in a pretty decent one as I recall as they even brought back I.Q. and Tanya We even had Jackson showing up telling Phillip if Beth had gone with him she'd still be alive.

It could well have been. Its been so many years I don't recall exactly just that it stuck with me that the writers went there. Speaking of Vanessa and funeral services with poor writing the one that stuck out to me was the reading of Henry Chamberlain's will. The horrid version of J no dot Chamberlain actually groaned out loud saying, "Can we get on with this!" The Vanessa I knew and loved would have tore him a new one for being so disrespectful to her father instead of sitting there silently saying nothing.

I was talking quite a bit about him as he's in my top 5 characters. Loved his romance with Leslie Ann...she was so much better with him than Floyd. As I mentioned earlier dumping the abysmal Paul Valere murder on him was such a cheap trick. Still he had one of the best exit lines ever as I remember it to this day. "If this were a Greek tragedy, I would have been the hero." Regarding Amanda...anyone remember the article somewhere that Toby Posner was taken aback how the writers were taking shots at Amanda's hair having Alex make jokes about clogging the tub and wooly mammoth and Posner was to paraphrase" its the Amanda character but its MY hair." The timing is right that this would have been around the time MZ was disrespected as well. Not their best era.

I can't bag on Mark Evans because I saw a LOT of him when first started watching the show religiously due to my crush on Maeve Kincaid. At the time she was squiring him around town. The thing about Mark is (well I was going to say the protype but there may have been more like him long before I started watching) he represents a character type GL would become VERY fond of in the coming years: the seemingly normal man and potential love interest for the ladies who is secretly...evil. Let's see we have: David Preston, Will Jefferies, Daniel St. John, Edmund Winslow, Brent Lawrence and probably a host of others I've forgotten or missed during those horrible Peapack years when I barely caught an episode.

Ooh that's juicy. I had no idea Andy was brought in to replace Roger in the villain department. I've seen so few clips of him but I've always been interested in him due to his connection to Trish Lewis (my favorite Lewis). Holly's saintly mother must have been crushed when her son was busted and sent to jail never to be seen again.

Recently I saw some episodes featuring my favorite Warren storyline...his romance with Leslie Ann Monroe. It was wonderful when he realized he really did care for her when she tried to off her self with pills and they married. I was so mad when they killed her off. They deserved to be a happy couple for a lot longer before the Dreaming Death got her. RIP Warren Burton-he was amazing in that role. As for Eric they should have done more with him. When he was on not one person especially Alex mentioned his son Simon Hall half brother to Lujack and Nick.

Carrie made out better than most. She got to continue on the show. In the 80's it seemed once the writers felt they had used up all the story potential for a character they pinned a murder on them. The great Warren Andrews written off for the murder of a stupid useless villain character intead of having it actually be the alleged heroine Christine that nobody cared about and also it turns out Floyd Parker was obsessed with Beth so he had to go and kill the guy that blinded her. Warren was one of my top 5 characters and I hated they did this to him.

Agreed. That was a total misfire. Why not put him with Lillian now that there would be no scandal or if that was too much for Michelle bring back Claire. Susan Pratt seemed to be willing to pop up from time to time. Maybe she could have come back full time...but Eve? Someone who looked like she could be his daughter?

Well here is the problem Reverend...the producers need to be smart about it. As you can see my screen name Lujack was my all time favorite character. When VI left the show the writers said killing him instead of sending him on a world wide tour for his video would catapult those around them into the next chapter of their lives. They could have accomplished the same thing at the very least with a presumed dead no body instead of dying on screen. He could have been lost in the river instead of dying from injuries from the explosion (someday I will do a post about the tinest of wiggle room how to get past that). So anyway flash forward when VI and the producers came together to bring him back they had to do all kind of gyrations to create the Nick character. As much as I love VI...I will be the first to admit...Nick didn't even come close to being as good as Lujack and some of the choices they made like his romantic activities with three different Mindys and dull as dishwater Eve...compare that to a presumed dead Lujack resurfacing and maybe bringing Beth back from Arizona. It could have been glorious but no since they killed of a legacy character it robbed so much great story potential.

I don't remember the details just that he was some how making money off working with the Nazis. I was barely paying attention at the time as the show had gone over the top. Think about it. Reva was involved in not one but two of the greatest Firsts in human history. Cloning and time travel. You know you are in trouble when such plots make the Mob running rampant in Springfield and fairytales on tropical islands that have blizzards look good. All the Spaulding heirs and their inheritances was complete spaghetti by the end. To this day I don't accept Gus was a real Spaulding. It had to be a lie or a con by the nun. Though I will admit the one bright spot was the grandfather Alan/Rafe relationship. They really did seem to care for each other and that is saying a lot when you are talking about the cartoon version of Alan.

I suppose the real mess is the inconsistencies with Brandon Spaulding himself. He was presented as so many things a sick senior citizen dying in his bed, a dirty old man skirt chasing Annabell's mom during a fishing trip, a tyrant being cruel to his kids and near the end of the series with that time travel nonsense a war profiteer collaborating with the Nazis and through all this we have that glaring anomaly of the quasi noble Brandon Barbados...a romantic man who only wanted to live out his life with his true love in a star crossed romance with his island beauty. Oh and I almost forgot thanks to that atrocious retcon that he was Amanda's real father he was also into the Lolitas. Now that character truly went through the ringer for never once having been a regular on the show.

Since it was clearly established in 1984 that Alexandra was alive before Alan was born I will fanwank this in my head that its how ALAN imagines himself as a child being the bigger stronger one in face of Brandon. It's the only way to get around this egregious mistake or deliberate attempt to retcon.

Was this where they first attempted to ret-con that Alan was the older sibling protecting his younger sister even though we saw a child Alexandra during the Barbados flashback when Alan was being born?

Correct...Founders Day was one and done never to be heard about again. During the Journal episode I still remember Lt. Wyatt saying "Not too many of remember Ol' Roger Thorpe" and then two years later he's back! One more thing about Trish Lewis coming back for big events. When she came for Josh and Reva's (2nd) wedding. I remember getting a chuckle that she was what I called the "Loser's Table" with Rusty and I think Hawk. I called it that because none of the characters at least not Trish or Rusty seemed to have any life....like they were stuck in amber. No spouses, no fiances, no children nothing. No dates to the wedding and they all got lumped together at the table. It was as if their lives had zero progression since leaving the show. At least Mindy came over and had a nice little scene with Trish but that's the only real interaction I can recall.

Trish was always my favorite Lewis. I never understood why they continually brought back Billy and Josh as regulars and if we were lucky we saw her at big events but did nothing with her(she got exactly one line at HB's funeral-I love you daddy.) The above description is so wonderful to see how she was such a viable character once.

And the cruel irony is at the very end GL was 90% locations shoots in drab Peapack that was supposed to be a major Metroplitan city...no one can forget the sad episode where Spaulding Enterprises held a meeting in a field. So yeah we can cherish those great location shoots from 40 years ago.

DeeVee has the low down on Joah and Morgan nicely. I would love to see their scenes in their entirety again. I was so rooting for Josh because I couldn't stand Kelly.

I always prefered Josh as the bad boy cad. This was before Reva reduced him and Robert Newman to her Plus 1 until the last episode. I loved Josh and Morgan as a couple-no matter how breif it was.

Yeah...its like they didn't know who to put Alex with so that was a misfire. Perhaps they needed a new character. About Mindy and Will...the thing is...at least in my opinion...there was that brief time when he lost his memory and actually became a good and dare I say likeable character and that version and Mindy I kind of like. Of course they ruined it by having him get his memory back, shave his beard and become evil again and then just plain crazy.

To this day I am still shocked and bitter at the wasted opportunity that was a Josh/Kyle conflict. They shared the grand total of ONE SCENE together...just one. Yes Larkin was leaving but they should have planned it out better to up the drama of the two men verses each other and Billy caught in the middle. What a missed opportunity.

I vaguely recall a quote in SOAP OPERA DIGEST around that time that Kyle was indeed brought into replace the "good boy/bad boy" character of Alan when Bernau announced he was leaving.