DeeVee

I agree totally. While I didn't think EJ on Ryan's Hope was a well-conceived character, I very much enjoyed MG's performance. It's interesting that everyone being named: Alex, India, Blake, Jenna...they pulled back on all of them either because of a romantic connection, or, like in Alex's and India's cases, because of love for their children. If Alex was meant to be a bitch, you don't start off right away with a sob story about her child being stolen from her. I think they tried to harden her after Lujack was killed off, but there were always Alan's children around to soften her. And of course Simon, who for a while practically turned her into a jelly fish. I'm going to say something that's maybe a bit controversial: I don't think Marland liked Morgan. There was a kind of underlying contempt for her, especially early on. Those lectures Kelly gave her were insanely hostile a lot of the time. And it seemed like the audience was supposed to be nodding and agreeing with him. Morgan was meant to be a way for teen girls to dream about falling in love with an older boy (O.K., let's face it--man). The whole storyline was created to attract a younger audience. But I always got the feeling that she was not really loved by her own creator. I believe when Nola talked about hating Morgan, WE were supposed to hate her, too. Supposedly, Marland always meant for Kelly and Nola to get together for real at some point, so it would make sense for him to see Morgan, and not Nola, as the spoiler in the triangle. Regardless of how anyone feels about that, it is absolutely true that Nola was softened a great deal because the pairing with Quinton took off and was very popular with a vocal section of the audience. Which is probably why they had so much trouble coming up with stories for her after she had her second kid. The premise that having a child or falling in love suddenly makes someone a nicer person is very odd to me. (I never found that to be the case in real life, LOL). I don't see why characters like Alex, India, or Blake had to lose their edge because they genuinely loved someone. Roger genuinely loved Christina, but he never lost his edge.

Lenore Kasdorf (Rita) chose to leave, supposedly because she and her husband (also an actor) wanted to move to LA. I think Sofia Landon (Diane) also chose to go. Mark, you mean Katie's boyfriend? Yeah, he probably was not going to last long, regardless of who was writing the show. Peter, too. He was mainly Holly's stalwart fella while she went through all her troubles. No surprise he didn't last long after Roger's exit. There was also Greg Fairbanks, the doctor who Rita thought might be her baby daddy. Again, I doubt he was meant to be a long-term character anyway. Few probably even realized he was gone, LOL. I could be wrong, because I'm not sure of the timing of his introduction, but I've long suspected he was brought in specifically to do the baby drama because Lenore was pregnant. If she had not gotten pregnant, I am pretty certain the affair with Alan would have happened much sooner. The Dobsons were setting it up for a long time. Marland killing off Lucille I've always felt was a mistake. He eviserated all the female antagonists that came with the Dobson era, if you think about it. He never really replaced them. Vanessa never QUITE fit that category. Yeah, she could be bitchy, but she wasn't destructive like Lucille or Diane. @P.J. I think described her as someone who liked to upset apple carts, but it was just to see what would happen more than being actually hurtful. Nola in his mind was his heroine, who did everything for love and to better herself, so she wasn't really bad. The closest he came to a real female villain was Carrie's alternate personality. Now that I think about it, GL was missing full-on bitch characters until the 1990s, with Annie, Dinah, and Amanda (who, IMO, was slated by the Dobsons to eventually become a more villainous character, which is kind of ironic). Maybe the closest before that was Nadine? When Reva was introduced, it seemed she was going to be that kind of character, but that went out the window really fast. Never for one moment could I figure out what Sonni's deal was beyond being a roadblock for Josh and Reva. Am I missing some people?

Let's face it, that's something Marland would not have been at all interested in writing. I bet if she had stayed, he wouldn't have even used her much in the upcoming Ed/Rita/Alan/Hope mess. He probably still would have preferred to have Ed with Vanessa, a character he created. She was wise to go when she did.

So Holly was still on the canvas for quite some time after Vanessa was introduced. But during Jennifer's trial, I think Vanessa was trying to get back with Ross. They were definitely together during Jennifer's second trial, in early 1981. Holly was long gone before Vanessa became involved with Ed.

I know soap ages are all over the place because of SORASing and de-aging, but what? Beth is several years older than Dinah. Vanessa had Dinah when she was 17. She would have had to have been a pre-teen to make her Beth's mother. Sure, they were using the age difference to cause issues between Van and Matt, but jeez, that's going a bit far. This is one of my biggest gripes with soaps. Overturning established paternity seems to be a sport for them. (Amanda is another example on GL). It's one thing when the audience is in on the secret from the beginning (like Marah being Josh's kid and not Kyle's). But to just say, "HEY, we were KIDDING!" is so mean and silly. And it rarely leads to anything much story-wise. Honestly, I'm surprised they didn't come up with some wild tap dance to make Alan Phillip's biological father.

That's normally where a soap romance begins, LOL. And didn't he start pursuing her after he briefly put her in charge of Spaulding with the intention of proving she was incapable? When he came back it was humming along just great even though he had people trying to sabotage her. So he decided to marry her, both because he thought they were well suited to each other without having to bother too much with romance, and it would diminish any chance of her getting too much power at Spaulding. It's really a shame CB left in '84. Except for the stupid Dreaming Death thing there were a lot of good story possibilities in place. Maybe that's also why the Ross/Trish thing petered out...maybe if he had stayed, that would have gone on. Oh, yeah, that mouthy woman who was always hanging around Company and even ended up being the bartender for a while. One of the most annoying characters GL ever had. 😂

I'm guessing the reason she was chosen to be the "other woman" was because she could credibly be put in Alan's orbit. Trish had been floating around not doing much for a long time. It couldn't be Vanessa yet because they were building up Vanessa and Billy as a major couple. Thank God Rebecca/Mona was already gone, or they might have picked her. It's too bad, because it was Hollen's only real storyline. In spite of the similarities between Hope and Trish, I thought she did a very good job. Why they didn't use that as a jumping point to build up more story for her is a mystery, especially as she was a Lewis and the Lewises were being brought forward at the time as a major core family.

Raines definitely did not have onscreen chemistry with his romantic partners. He could have had that on stage, but that doesn't always translate to a different medium. Watching him have love scenes with Tangie and Claire...just, no. It's not that every pairing for Alan worked with Bernau (the one that gave me major icks was Christine Valere) but he could be flirty and funny and sexy. I loved watching him and India skirt around the possibility of a romantic connection, or when Alan and Rita had their, "I would love to tear your clothes off right now but our spouses are in the other room, let's talk about tennis instead" encounters. I probably would have enjoyed him and Kim more if Alan wasn't (at least at first) using the fact that she worked for him to try to get her into bed.

That is SO FUNNY you said this because a while ago I watched some of the Peapack era. There was a scene of Raines in a drugstore, holding a shopping basket, and picking shampoo or whatever off the shelf. Something about that seemed so ridiculous, I couldn't stop laughing. Again, not entirely Raines's fault. Why did they write that scene in the first place? But, yeah, I could see Bernau doing that and it not seeming bizarre.

I got the feeling that the reason he got bored with Elizabeth and Hope was because they were very easy to control. Hope forgave everything (which was SO anticlimatic, after years of all the secrets Alan kept from her). So it's not unbelievable that he would be attracted to both Van and Reva. (Trish being so much like Hope was the one thing about that storyline that seemed off to me). He knew Vanessa during her "vamp" years. Maybe he thought they were both cosmopolitan enough to turn a blind eye to any flirtations. I doubt he expected a dutiful, faithful wife like Elizabeth or Hope.

IMO, the "new to daytime" route was the right way to go, I just don't understand why they landed on him. Other "new to daytime" hires were usually at least in some way known to daytime audiences: people like Eric Braeden, Phil Carey, David Canary, etc. They weren't BIG stars, but they had a familiarity to the audience. No one knew who the hell this guy was. Even that wouldn't have been a problem for me if he had had some of the qualities that Alan needed. Bernau's Alan could be funny and charming. Manipulative and mean. Cold and calculating. Sometimes all at the same time. Even Pilon could handle some of that. Raines was just too one-note. GL desperately needed a character like this. The first years Raines was on it might not have seemed so bad because the show still had Zaslow's Roger. Once he was gone, that left a big gap in the show. They should have realized this and either done another recast or written Alan out and created a new character to take that role. Heck, they could have killed off Alan much earlier and had Phillip fill that role on the show. I'm sure Grant could have handled it. Well, yes, you are so right, he can't be blamed for everything. The writing for the character was definitely a big part of the problem.

I'm going to have disagree a little. I think Alan's purpose during this time was to be the spoiler for Josh/Reva. Josh and Reva were always Long's endgame. Even after she left, it stayed that way, mainly because fans wanted it that way. If Larkin Malloy had chosen to stay, he would have functioned as the spoiler. (Even off-screen he kind of did function as the spoiler, because of the whole DNA switch thing--that Alan engineered). I believe someone here said one of the reasons Malloy left even though he could have stayed was because he knew he would end up being the loser in the triangle. I don't think Bernau cared about that kind of thing (if he did, he was REALLY quiet about it, I don't remember him complaining about storylines he was in). But to me, it was a waste of his character. If a Alan/Vanessa/Ross triangle had happened, he would have been an actual contender. It would have come more from character. He and Vanessa would have been on an equal level and would have understood each other in ways that Ross never understood her. Even when Alan was with Hope, he was never her puppy dog, like he was with Reva. He definitely would not have been Vanessa's puppy dog. I'm pretty sure they didn't. I'm not even sure if Ed and Vanessa's affair had started before MG left. I recently watched the whole Reva in the hospital thing on the German channel. It was SO stupid. (It's likely the scabs wrote most of this). The thing with Alan decorating the hospital room and taking over a whole floor of the hospital is something they got out of Dynasty. SO out of character. I would have LOVED watching Alan and Reva using each other for their own purposes. That would have been fun, and believable. This crap about her being his one true love was an insult to the audience. The funny thing is, if Lenore Kasdorf had stayed with the show, I bet that's exactly how Rita and Alan's relationship would have been. She wanted the lifestyle from being Mrs. Spaulding, he had the hots for her and liked that she wasn't judgemental about things he had done. Oh, yeah, they had Rita write Alan a letter confessing she was in love with him, but that could have been calculated. Some were also saying he would have been a good Ed. Yes, he just became the bombastic cartoon baddie. All the naunce and layers of the character were gone.

Oh, DEFINITELY. The funny thing is, as soon as Marland left, everyone forgot that there was a period when Alan and Ross were good friends (mainly while Ross was married to Carrie). Ross kind of wanted to BE Alan. If they had pulled on the threads of Ross and Vanessa's history, and Alan and Ross's erstwhile friendship, it could have been very interesting. We're talking about a show where a woman slept with a father, his two sons, and the half-brother of one of the sons. That had a guy romance a girl who he once thought might be his daughter. Not to mention the cousin sex way down the road. The family connection between Rick and Chelsea is pretty mild in comparison. 😂

Yes, I feel the same way. I get the reasoning behind hiring him. He was playing a very similar character on RH, and they were in a pinch. I also found his accent very distracting. But then, Bev also didn't sound like she was from Illinois, and it didn't bother me a bit. That said, I've always had a great deal of sympathy for the situation he was in. It's never easy to take over from someone popular with fans, and how the TPTB were always insisting he was coming back eventually was another issue. Hearing he was going through it in his personal life on top of that makes me even more sympathetic. I found the article where it mentioned he had worked on both soaps at the same time. This was written a while after he left the show. Interesting that he was open to returning and that fans were asking him about when Alan was going to get out of jail. To this day, I don't understand why they kept Alan off the canvas as long as they did. He should have been there in the thick of Roger's return (without the dumb attempt to kill him), especially while he was married to Alex. To me, Raines was lacking in a lot of qualities needed for Alan. I think he would have been a better Mike Bauer. They took five years to bring Alan back. They could have found someone better. No one is irreplaceable. Anyone who took over the role would have been different from Bernau. But somewhere out there was an actor who would have had the suaveness, intensity, and charm that IMO the character needed.

Great rundown of Long's second stint. Now you got me wondering...and again, thinking how real life impacted the direction of the show. We were talking about how practically the minute Long landed back on GL, she wrecked Ross and Vanessa and threw Alan and Reva together. Soon after, Alan started pursuing Vanessa again (because he was SO afraid of the "real" feelings he was having for Reva for the first time in his life, LOL). It's like she was determined to do an Alan/Vanessa/Somebody triangle at some point. She started one with Billy as the third side (well, actually, Alan was the third side) back in late 83/early 84 before Bernau exited GL the first time. So she had to drop it. But since Billy was gone this time, she seemed to decide, hey, I'll do it, only with Reva as the missing side of the triangle. Then Maeve left, messing that up! So I wonder, would she have had Alan and Vanessa marry? Maybe not, but I doubt Vanessa would have taken kindly to being overthrown for Reva. Could have been done in a really humiliating way, like after the invitations went out or even at the wedding. Maybe she would have helped Phillip with his plot to dethrone Alan. Lots of interesting possiblities. I did like the way this story was handled. Chelsea was clearly more in love with Phillip than he was with her. Even "dead," no one could compete with Beth. So it was always doomed, but they showed how Phillip lost his way because he was obsessed with getting back at his dad. I also thought the relationship between Alan and Chelsea was a little...strange. He was very much in favor of their relationship, even though she came from an even lower background than Beth's. She also always fiercely defended Alan. Which has made me wonder if--ick--one of the many writing teams was thinking about putting them together romantically. (Of course, in my headcanon, where Alan has a youthful romance with the never seen Reardon sister, his fondness for Chelsea then makes perfect sense.) I always wondered why they never thought of putting Chelsea with Rick, especially after they butted heads over the death of her fiance. Seemed like a no-brainer.

Again, Bernau's illness impacted that. It's pretty obvious Pilon was always meant to be temporary. I read an article from that period that said he was working on both Ryan's Hope and GL at the same time. So he wasn't on contract for either show. (Maybe that explains somewhat why his performance was so low energy, because he was overworked doing two soaps). Later, they put him in the opening and in commercials for the show. That must have been because they were certain Bernau was not returning. Around that time, they approached Zaslow about being the permanent replacement for Bernau. He turned them down and suggested coming back as Roger. Pilon stayed so they could re-introduce Roger and write an exit for Alan. I'm guessing if MZ had not wanted to come back, they would have had no choice but to keep Pilon (which I don't think they wanted, or maybe Pilon wasn't interested) or send out a casting call for a new Alan. I think they wanted to avoid that because they were really determined not to let the nature of Bernau's illness to become public knowledge. At this point, they were still keepin up the fiction that he was going to return even while this stuff was happening BTS. Yeah, it seems crazy now, but people forget how stigmatized AIDS was back then. I'm convinced the idea to ask Zaslow to take the role came about so they could replace Bernau as quietly as possible. Everyone would have been so surprised it would have taken the focus off Bernau not returning. It makes a kind of twisted sense. Still, thank goodness Zazlow said no and they said yes to his suggestion to return as Roger. The way everything worked out gave GL a few more strong years. I guess it's the nature of soaps, you never know what things in real life will end up strongly impacting the show, both negatively and positively. (Something just occurred to me. If Zazlow HAD said yes to playing Alan...he would have had to play being in love with Reva. 😱)

I keep forgetting a huge chunk of that year was written by scabs. You're probably right, because by the time the strike was over, they were likely planning an exit for Alan's character as it must have been obvious by then that Bernau was not going to return. If he was still there, it's also doubtful they would have approached MZ and MG about coming back. Wild.

I don't remember that. What I recall is Alan living at Revabend, working as a farm hand and listening to Reva b!tch about money. Truly, I felt sorry for Pilon having to play that. 😂

Yeah, that was an outlier for Long. She usually wrote women really well. For some reason she must have had a problem with Ross and Vanessa, because shd seemed really intent on wrecking them fast. We know why she did the Alan thing. Someone had to worship Reva until they were ready to put Josh and Reva back together.

Was that when she put on the"Slut of Springfield" red dress and made a complete ass of herself at the CC, so of course Alan fell madly in love with her on the spot?

Yeah, it was a big deal because Josh and Reva were finally married at that point. Of course Reva never told Josh and kept it from him when she found out Dylan was her kid. Also, for the first time since the characters arrived in SF, Billy admitted he never stopped loving Reva. (Because no man does, really, LOL).

When she was first introduced, nothing much was said about the baby's father. Dylan was created later on, after AM and Harley were married. I think he had gone to jail? And he was mad that Harley didn't wait for him, and very upset she gave the baby up for adoption. (Because all teen boys want to be fathers...🙄) No idea if the plan always was to make Dylan Reva and Billy's son. I mean, it's kind of a WILD coincidence that a child who was conceived and given up for adoption in Tulsa just happened to grow up in the town where both his parents ended up moving to years later. But I guess they learned from the Cameron thing--he probably didn't catch on because he wasn't connected to a major family or character. (Beth--the character Beth--was an exception--the original actress really caught on with the audience, and Lillian ended up being a long-running character).

Let me give you a little background on Harley Davidson Cooper: She was introduced as an unmarried pregnant teen being looked after by her big brother Frank. She and Frank were involved in an auto accident on the way to the hospital while she was in labor. Alan Michael and Dinah were on a motorcycle that AM stole when they crashed into the car. Harley gave Dinah a phony name, Fallon, who was a character on the 80s TV show Dynasty. She even told the adoptive parents, the Lemays, that was her name when she surrendered her baby Daisy to them. She seemed to be very blase about giving up the baby. Dinah (who was COMPLETELY different back then, virginal and sweet and concerned about everyone) took an interest in Harley and tried to befriend her. I think they were trying to strike lightning twice by recreating another Four Musketeers group. There was a kid named Cameron who dated Harley for a while, but he and Dinah eventually got together. AM and Harley were the odd people out, and very miffed about it. Dinah and Cameron left town together. AM and Harley didn't even seem to like each other, but they bonded over the romantic disappointment. Then AM found out if he got married, he could get his trust fund early. Alan, who was at this point, um, "short of funds" (Phillip had set him up to take the fall for swindling of Spaulding funds so he could take over Spaulding, so all his assets were frozen) encouraged AM and Harley to get married, so he could get his hands on some of the trust fund money. Of course, Phillip and Alex lost their sh!t over that. They saw Harley as too low class and as a gold digger, and they didn't want Alan to get money so he could get revenge over the Spaulding takeover. Harley was pretty open about wanting a rich and famous lifestyle. They thought they could use it against her. Phillip pretended to be in favor of the marriage. He set things up to look like he and Harley were sleeping together. (BY THE WAY: back then, a LOT of people noticed the chemistry between Grant and Beth, and some speculated Phillip and Harley might get together at some point. Which they eventually did, as you know.) AM and Harley got back together and realized they truly cared for each other. Even though Harley was joyful at having access to the SPAULDING LIFESTYLE, WHICH SHE ADORED, Phillip eventually came around and realized there was more to her. They became friends. He even promised to help her navigate her new sphere in life. AM and Harley had a splendid wedding at the Spaulding mansion. Of course, there's lots more, but that's the gist of Harley's origins.

That is also INSANE. Holly would never do that, ESPECIALLY after living through that very public rape trial and many, many people not believing her. Including some she loved, like Adam. The only thing I seem to remember from this period is the clone story, but it was a real low point for the show. (Not that it doesn't eventually go even lower).

Huh? She was literally married to a Spaulding. She married him BECAUSE she wanted the Spaulding lifestyle. Holy cats, that's just a ridiculous rewriting of history. Of course, Harley has grown up and changed over the years, but to completely memory-hole all that is CRAZY. They could have paid a loyal, long-term viewer or two help them with their continuity. There were probably people who would have done it for FREE.