DeeVee

I'm more of a GL fan, but this conversation about the Dobsons era on ATWT is so interesting to me. I was so mad when they yanked the Dobsons off GL. We've talked about this many times on the GL board about how this was a huge mistake. I did watch ATWT during this period. I think part of the problem for ATWT is the Dobsons adapted what they were planning for GL for ATWT. Sometimes it worked, and many other times it didn't. To me, it's obvious the James/Barbara/Margo story was created from elements of the Alan/Hope story on GL. Instead of the redemptive love story Marland wrote for them, I am convinced the Dobsons were going to take them in a much darker direction. You see elements of that in the John/Dee story as well, a contolling older man who did not have a great reputation with women and a naive young girl. I remember thinking at the time the Brad character was one of their biggest blunders. All these women crazy for him. I just didn't believe it. They even had a scene where Dee and Brad finally made love and it was such a flop the characters immediately split up. I think he was probably somewhat based on the Ben McFarren character on GL. While Stephen Yates wasn't the most exciting actor, he had a laid back sexy vibe that made you believe so many women wanted him. Sometimes it's not just the writing, casting is also so important. With 20/20 hindsight, it's so obvious that the best fit for Marland was ATWT and the Dobsons should have remained on GL a few more years.

Interesting fact: Kim Zimmer replaced Turner as Nola Dancy on The Doctors, and also co-starred with her in the movie Body Heat. Their physical similarities was a plot point in Body Heat. Turner became a movie star until illness forced her to cut back on her career. Zimmer made a few attempts to crack primetime, but eventually went back to soaps. I don't think anyone has mentioned Kevin Bacon? He actually did Animal House--a humongous (and very unexpected) hit before he went to soaps. Once he left Guiding Light he did Friday the 13th, got some critical attention doing theater, then landed roles in the movie Diner and Footloose, which propelled his career in movies. Blair Underwood: He did a very brief spell on OLTL (he was FANTASTIC, my mom and I were crazy about him). He was offered a permanent gig but turned it down. Though he never became a movie star, he did many movie roles and has had a very robust primetime career.

That's so funny you said that--there have been people swearing up and down that FROM is superior to LOST. I just finished watching the first three seasons, and....no. It's not. Not even remotely. It's an intensely mediocre show. There are no iconic characters, no heart-rending love stories, and it just picks up various horror tropes and does nothing really special with them, the way WIDOW'S BAY does. It's watchable--I'll probably watch the final two seasons when Netflix picks them up. But am I waiting with great anticipation for them, like I waited for the new seasons of LOST? Nope. Right now I'm half-way through THE LEFTOVERS, which also gets compared favorably to LOST. I'm still on the fence. I definitely see how in some ways it deals with similar themes to LOST, and the acting is superb. I'm just not vibing with it in the same way. It's funny how so many people complained that it was impossible to understand the mysteries of LOST. THE LEFTOVERS is WAY more esoteric than LOST ever was. Maybe it's because it was a cable show and not a network show--probably it had a more patient audience.

All good filns--The Money Pit and Outrageous Fortune are underrated gems. She was kind of the Katherine Heigl of her day--rumors of her being difficult, people mad she walked out on a hit show, etc. Speaking of The Money Pit--most people forget that Tom Hanks started out on TV. (Another underrated gem, Bossom Buddies). He jumped to movies, but during the 80s was mostly in low-budget comedies that were not critically favored. Then he had a bonafide hit with Splash. But I would say it was Forrest Gump that propelled him to super-stardom.

I'm pretty sure if Lenore had stayed on the show, Rita would not have become rivals with Vanessa over Ed. It was going to be Rita vs. Hope/Diane over Alan (if Sofia had also decided not to leave). You would think they would have had Vanessa eventually trying to win Ed over Maureen. But possibly they felt PS and MK had no chemistry? Other than Ross, Ed was pretty much the only real relationship Marland wrote for Vanessa (Tony and her other various conquests were only sex buddies). It isn't until Long arrives that she's given a real romantic story with Billy. Which is a little odd, considering Vanessa was Marland's invention.

I think it would be a challenge to find a storyline where she's NOT annoying. 😁 BTW, I was watching The Leftovers the other night (my THIRD attempt--so many people say it's such a fantastic show, but I'm still on the fence). Anyway, in episode 6 of Season 1, who should suddenly pop up in a scene? Ellen Parker! I almost didn't recognize her at first, she had a lot of hair in her face and she was wearing large glasses. Then she started to talk, and I knew it was her. I looked it up. It is her last television credit (2014). She has a couple of film credits after that. Anyway, it was a pleasure to see her even in such a brief scene, especially since we were talking about her recently.

Diane's origin story is kind of weird. She was Phillip's NANNY. This was while he was still married to Elizabeth. He hired her because he was trying to make Elizabeth feel like she was not a good mother. He humiliated Elizabeth by taking Diane and Phillip off on trips--I think they went on safari once. Elizabeth finally found some backbone and fired her, so Alan retaliated by giving her a job at Spaulding. (Alan was SUCH a d**che nozzle in the beginning. Any way he could, he would torture Elizabeth). She quickly rose in the company and became Alan's most trusted ally. She helped him when Roger was blackmailing him. She was his accomplice in everything he did, including helping Roger fake his death. By then he had totally moved on from her as a lover. He treated her like a really close friend and associate, but nothing more. (Still enough to make both Jackie and Hope suspicious of her). She still believed he would eventually realize she was the right woman for him and marry her. Strangely, she believed this through BOTH his marriages with Jackie and Hope, I guess because she knew she could destroy him. But some pride, I guess, made her want him to come to her willingly. (As was said, she was a very layered character). She completely lost it when she found out about Alan's affair with Rita. I think she knew Jackie was never really in love with Alan and saw Hope as naive and easily manipulated. But Rita was a real threat to her. She was so mad she turned on him and threatened to use the evidence she had on him against him. Soon after that she was found dead in her apartment. Half the town was suspected of killing her. She was blackmailing a lot of people: Justin and Jackie (she knew they were Phillip's real parents), Ross (she knew he had illegally bought Spaulding stock with Amanda's money), Henry (she knew about his long-lost son), and Vanessa (I'm not 100% clear on what she had on her, Vanessa was doing so many dicey things, LOL). When Carrie was introduced, they retconned Diane's past. In the beginning they made it seem like she had no business experience, that she had leapt from nanny to executive solely because she was Alan's squeeze. But Marland created a backstory where Carrie and Diane knew each other at a company in another town. Diane did a lot of underhanded things at that company, destroying Carrie's boyfriend, resulting in Carrie having her first breakdown. Which also gave Carrie a motive, and indeed, she ended up being the killer. But she didn't really mean to kill her, so a jury acquited her.

I'm pretty sure this would have been after Cullen had her baby. After Amanda lost her baby, Cullen was still pregnant. They had her have a mental breakdown where she regressed and dressed in poofy Shirley Temple outfits to hide her baby bump. They also shot her sitting down and mostly at the piano. At this point they might have been trying to hide a postpartum weight gain. Though if you look at episodes a year or two later, they were still putting her in dresses that looked several sizes too big for her. Maybe the costume department didn't like her. (If they did like her, I'd hate to see how they would have dressed her if they didn't).

For some reason, Amanda was often on the unfortunate end of the transitional 80s fashions back then, when it was moving from the 70s Boho style to the 80s futuristic style. The two styles are totally fighting each other in that gown. My money's on Boho.😂 Dare I hope there might be more episodes from this time period coming? This is right after Alan and Rita's sojourn in Jamaica. Very hard to find. LOL at Rita being "uncomfortable" being around Hope. Well, that's what you get for shagging your niece's husband. Andy was a very ineffective villain, casually dropping stuff he learned by breaking into Sara's notes on her patients, like Jackie being pregnant. More 70s fashions that hadn't quite died yet. My dad wore stuff like that. That has to be one of Vigard's last episodes. She left very soon after the wedding. It might even be her final episode. That could have been the original long-term intention, but Pilon was never going to stay (he was supposedly very unhappy at GL). Also, at that point they kind of owed it to the "Jeva" fans to give them a wedding.

The one exception would be when her old boyfriend came back to town and she briefly considered going back to him instead of marrying Ed. It was super-brief, like blink and you would have missed it. A couple of the episodes with this guy are on YT still, I believe. He wanted her to support him while he finished his residency or something like that. I think she even slept with him while Ed was still waiting for her answer to his proposal. That got dropped really fast. Probably because it would have made Ed look like a fool for once again being involved with a mercurial woman who was flitting from him to another man. She ended up this perfect wife and stepmother (Rick, before he was played by MOL, was always praising Mo for how well she took care of them). At the hospital, of course she was always loyal to Ed. Just about the only time she was in opposition to Ed was the beginning of the Claire pregnancy storyline and when they separated. So unlike Nola, Tony, and Jim, Mo was the only Reardon sibling who never drove any storylines. (Chelsea, who I have a hard time thinking of as a Reardon sibling, also ended up as mostly a reactive character after her introductory storyline). As well as a counterpoint to Ed's previous women, she was also probably meant to be a counterpoint to Nola--the dreamer who wanted more than anything to marry a doctor so she could escape the boarding house. Something Mo achieved without trying very hard. I think it's telling that Mo never physically cheated on Ed, even though he cheated on her with three women. Possibly, the writers thought she was too dowdy for a love affair. Which is stupid, IMO. All this stuff about EP being frumpy is only because of how they dressed her and made her up. Certainly, she wasn't any frumpier than KZ, who had men panting after her all the time.

This is an interesting discussion because when we talk about Maureen, it's usually about the rage over JFP killing her off. I would say most of the affection for Parker is retroactive. We discovered we liked her AFTER they killed her off. Partly, because of those final scenes where she got the opportunity to show how much she could have brought to GL if they had written some decent storylines for her besides just being a devoted wife and Vanessa's wine buddy. IMO, Maureen was originally created specifically to be a counterpoint to Rita, and even Holly and Vanessa. Ed had been worked over by three mecurial women. Mo was more salt of the earth. Although there was a brief storyline before they got married where Maureen was tempted to get back with an old boyfriend, the assumption was Maureen would never do to Ed what Rita and Holly and even Vanessa did to him. Dolan did bring that "Reardon" energy so she didn't seem just nicey-nice, but I never really warmed up to her. Parker was softer but strong underneath. That's why I mentioned those scenes between her and Alan when she was still working at the hospital--was it possible they were thinking of breaking her out of that rut? Maybe, but it never happened. The closest was when she had an emotional affair with Fletch, which made Ed so mad he insisted they separate. I've always assumed that Marland planned to bring Rita back at some point, hence the need to have someone like Maureen as a counterpoint. The fact that Dolan's Mo was not a pushover could have made that an interesting story. It never happened with Rita, but it kind of did eventually with the Claire storyline. That could have been a much better story if they hadn't made Claire go psycho (and then took it back with a tumor, or whatever). That's a good point. Parker came in just as Bea was being phased out. I remember a scene where she visits Tony and Anabelle, who just had a baby (they weren't shown). Bea was helping take care of the baby and eventually Bea was assumed to be living with them permanently. So Mo was basically the last of the Reardons until Bridget and Matt were introduced and later Nola returned. Without that anchor to a solid core family, she was pretty much just Ed's wife.

I always thought it was madness to write Alan out of the show when Roger returned because theirs was one of the great soap enmities. Mike was enemy to both. It was a missed opportunity. I totally get the practical reasons why they did it. Pilon was not going to stay, and if they did a recast it would have probably brought up in soap magazines the circumstances around CB's death. I think that's one of the reasons someone came up with the "brilliant" idea to recast Alan with Zaslow--it would have avoided a big casting search and most of the focus would have been on Zaslow returning to the show. What I don't get is writing Alan out of the show for five years and never bringing back Mike at all. So much history just waiting to be mined. Mike would be that naive, LOL. Oh, no, the government hiring CRIMINALS? Wiping out their criminal history? Say it ain't so. They tried to have Ed be Alan Michael's moral compas, but it didn't really work. It would have been better if Mike had taken on that role. Would have loved it if AM was torn between Spaulding and a possible legal career, mentored by Mike. Again, more history just sitting there waiting to be picked up.

So I went over to the Sentieri channel, and turns out there are some others that are dubbed into English, plus some that have the closed caption feature enabled...and some that have neither. Of course, an episode I was very keen to see, which includes a confrontation between Alan and Maureen when she was the hospital administrator, is not available either dubbed or close captioned. I've wanted to see these scenes in English because I've wondered if this was a chem test, with the writers (whoever they were at the moment) possibly toying with the idea of an Alan/Maureen pairing. Which might have been quite interesting. It could have explained the random mention of Rita between Ed and Alan, if Alan turned out to be after another one of Ed's wives. But this was 1986, the year of the head writer revolving door, so that could be one reason it never happened. If it was ever planned in the first place. Even if that wasn't the plan, it looks like Maureen is doing a really good job standing up to Alan, which alone would make those scenes worth watching.

I think of all the actors who were introduced just before Long left, Larsen got the worst of it. She was really good on Texas. I'm sure Long would have written the character as much more nuanced than subsequent writers. Did she know Reva before she left? Either way, YES, they missed an opportunity to do what they didn't do when Maureen was killed off--there were obvious after effects that were never touched. They made it more about Vanessa than Mo's family (or even Ed and Lillian). That channel doesn't use the closed caption feature, so they don't have any subtitles available. If they had Italian subtitles, you could set it up so they are translated into English. That's what you can do on the German channel. Maybe they're planning to do just that. Which would be great, as there are some episodes you can only find there. I'm going to keep an eye on that and check it now and then. Do you mean if the show was revived today? Or in the past?

Alan was off the canvas all of 1985. Bernau left 1984 and returned mid-1986. Ross and Vanessa were it as far as major characters/actors from the Dobsons/Marland eras. Maybe Rick, if MOL started before that. I think Dolan was also still there in 1985. All you have to do is watch that horrific memorial for Bert, with lots of people who had had few or no scenes with her, to see how decimated the show was. He played Long's romantic partner on Texas and was definitely not a psycho in that role. I think he could have credibly played a good guy, but there's no way to know now what was intended.