DeeVee

The way they introduced them was terrible. Rick literally picked Mel up in a bar. Their "romance" was SO blah. You would think there would be something sexy about meeting like that, but they had the most insipid conversation. Like what kind of movies they liked. So boring. I don't recall the parents being used signficantly in storylines. (Though I DO remember the mother ending up in one of Reva's past lives during the time travel story, ugh). It was the same losing strategy they used with the faux Bauers: stick these people in and hope they click with the audience. The fact that they had to make Rick suddenly dying of a heart condition no one knew about before--to the point he needed a transplant (and don't even get me started on THAT) shows that they had to make it entirely plot driven because there was little to nothing to draw on from the characters. The reason the Lewises quickly became a permanent part of GL is because they immediately wove the characters into storylines: Billy and Alan's rivalry, which was both about Spaulding and Vanessa, Mindy dropped into a quadrangle with Phillip, Beth, and Rick, Josh feeling like the odd Lewis out, and then Reva rolling into town and throwing a grenade on the whole thing. A lot of this came from character. I want to give them credit for introducing a Black family to the show, but just doing that wasn't enough.

Oh, cool! Thank you!

Heck yeah, that messes up the timeline, since Alan, Elizabeth, and 10 year old Phillip arrived in Springfield--on screen--in 1978.

Well, not totally. We can assume the Lewises had an evangelical background. They didn't talk about it much, but it did surface once or twice (i.e. when Billy named Peter, which was a Biblical reference--I SO wish I could find that scene). It was FAR less of a surprise to me when Josh became a pastor than when he once mentioned in passing that he protested the Vietnam War. THAT came out of left field--like, literally. 😂

All his villains were like that. Andy, Mark Evans, Silas, gosh, even Diane. Diane was VERY different when the Dobsons wrote her. She wasn't a schemer, exactly, more a woman in love with a man she's never going to have but still trying to protect him. It's not hard to believe that that would eventually make her bitter and turn her against him, but she just became a pretty rote villain in the end. I didn't even understand half the vindictive things she was doing. (If anyone can explain how she benefited from having Alan take Phillip out of his will, PLEASE do). In Diane's case it was not being great at writing a nuanced villain and also that she was a woman, because unless the actress was especially esteemed by him, like Lisa or Jane, he didn't write them very well. And I just realized--all the nuanced villains he inherited: Ross, Alan, Roger, Lucille, Diane--were either put on the road to redemption or killed off. (I know MZ, Sofia, and Rita Lloyd were on the way out anyway, but I wonder what would have happened to their characters if they had wanted to stay). Even one he created--Nola--was eventually redeemed. Anyway, we were talking about RN. I always say that actors can surprise you when they get the right material. That definitely happened with him. It's true that this started happening before Long came on. They made Josh less sleazy--he was a good friend to Amanda, he had a complicated relationship with Morgan, he was trying to succeed in business in an honest way. His character was already evolving. I don't think they did a "redemption" thing for Josh--it was more memory holed and since few cared about sleazy Josh, they got away with it. It would have been a little difficult for him to be holier-than-thou with Reva if people were bringing up his past with Leslie Ann, etc.

Maybe a better way of putting it is romantic lead? As opposed to resident creep. Let's face it, pretty much EVERY guy who got involved with Reva was Reva's ***tch. Billy, HB, Alan, Kyle, Buzz, Richard, Jeffrey (did I miss any?) - when they were involved with her, that was their status. I wonder if any of the actors resented being paired with her for this reason.

I don't remember him ever talking about Josh/RN in interviews. I only recall he was miffed that they changed Kelly Louise's name to Stacy. I believe he said that was something that always connected him to Nola and was an issue for Morgan, again implying he wasn't done with Kelly/Nola. The post-wedding storyline for Kelly and Morgan was so flaccid, it was obvious to me he wasn't really invested in them. That may have had something to do with Jennifer Cook replacing Vigard. Tired old "marriage vs. career" story. Then Kelly wanting to have a baby when he was constantly haraunging Morgan about money because they didn't have any. Gag, I couldn't stand Kelly. He was such a jerk. Nola was too good for him. I have to say it's pretty impressive that Long came in and saw RN's potential to become a leading man, and then she made it happen. Of course, that had a lot to do with the chemistry between him and KZ. But also the family dynamic with Billy and HB, and you started to understand why he would be different around them.

Perhaps he thought Kelly and Morgan would suffer the same fate as Scotty and Laura. Married too young, then they would split off into more mature storylines. Maybe he thought Josh would be his Luke? (Yeah, right, LOL). From what Kristen Vigard has said, the whole Kelly/Morgan thing was engraved in stone because they shot the wedding on location way, way before it aired. Which is why they had to keep her until it aired. If they hadn't been stuck with that trajectory the story might have played out differently as Marland was clearly more inspired by Nola than Morgan.

Hey, I agree, but apparently this was Marland's ultimate plan. Remember that Lisa became kind of his muse and he went to a lot of trouble to showcase her talents (the elaborate fantasy scenes, to the point where she even did musical numbers) and to redeem Nola from the manipulative villainess she started out as. So I don't think it's that unbelievable that he eventually wanted her with his male muse. Personally, I think she would have been brought down even more by seriously pairing her with Kelly than with Quint, but we'll never know how he meant to play it out.

For some reason GL was into gothic storylines at the time. Gothic novels were super-popular back then. (I had a friend who kept trying to force me to read them). The previous one was the Lucille Wexler/Amanda story. That ended with Lucille's death. The Quint story was meant to replace that. Quint was originally this super-mysterious, almost creepy guy who live in a creepy house. Like in all good gothic tomes, Nola was the "innocent" who went to work for the creepy guy and ends up falling in love with him. Maybe they were going to do a twist on the story because Marland said Kelly and Nola were his endgame. Maybe Quint was going to be the villain or spoiler for them. But of course what happened is Quint and Nola caught on. Maybe Quint was always meant to be a Chamberlain, but a more villainous one.

I think that's true. She eventually created her own ethnic/blue collar family. I still say a great opportunity was missed by not having the Coopers and Reardons being connected as old schoolmates and neighbors. Some interesting backstories could have been used to create new stories. But we're supposed to believe Buzz was involved with Alan, Billy, Josh, and Ed when he was young. 🙄

Oh, yeah, I forgot he was on AMC around that time! I don't know, though. Phillip and Alan sharing another woman? Ew. (She wouldn't have been the last one, either).

He was tangentially involved in the Dreaming Death story. And they had him and Nola involved with that genius kid for a while. Both very blah stories.

That was a major problem for soaps that introduced these kinds of non-soap-like characters. What do you do with them once their initial story runs out? One day they wake up and they're living in some podunk town with nothing to do because they've settled down and married and maybe had a baby and can't go on adventures anymore. GH sort of solved that by making their adventure characters cops. But I can't see Quint as a cop, and anyway GL had more than enough by the 90s. Didn't they make him a teacher for a while? But for some reason teachers never work on soap operas, unless you set the whole soap in a school, Degrassi-style. I suppose they could have involved him in business through Henry and Vanessa. He was a Spaulding stockholder but then he got rid of his stock, IIRC. Yeah, the minute he and Nola married, the clock was ticking on his character. I hate to say this, but they probably should have killed Quint off soon after he and Nola married. That would have freed Nola and opened up many new storyline possibilities for her. Then the show would not have lost Lisa Brown. But who knows if Kobe & Co. were interested in retaining her?

I don't remember much of the particulars about HER interview with the Locher Room, but I do remember getting the impression that she had been very, very unhappy working on GL. She seemed almost...mad. Yes, and VI did say that, which was great for the convenience of his family, but not so great for casting a part on a show. I only vaguely remember Teresa Blake on AMC, but from what I DO remember, she was a little over-the-top for my taste. Though maybe she would have reigned it in a little to play Annie.

I'm pretty sure she started around March 1980? I would guess she wasn't included but JWS and Kristen were because Kelly and Morgan were Marland's plan to be GL's answer to Scottie/Laura from GH. They were major with a major planned storyline. He didn't seem to have a major storyline in mind for Maeve--besides tormenting Ross and vamping most of the men in town. For a sort-off villainous character, Vanessa was very reactive when Marland wrote her. She went after Ross because she couldn't imagine him really being interested in Evie. She became enemies with Quint and Nola because she couldn't stand the idea of not being Daddy's only child. I've never understood why, when he had this FABULOUS actress, playing someone who had all the makings of a FABULOUS character, he never gave her a strong storyline with a strong throughline.

I was wondering the same thing! I wonder if the artist was given any instructions on who to include and who gets featured or if it was all at his or her discretion. Lenore on the top-that makes sense, she was one of the big stars of the show at this point. They mention the Emmy win and she was heavily featured in that episode. But Maureen was literally on the way out the door, she left a few months later. It's not Marsha Clark's inclusion that I'm puzzled about (I mean, Hillary's a Bauer), it's Lezlie Dalton's, who Marland was already in the process of writing out of the show. Why are she and Janet (Evie) there and not Elvera? (And why isn't her name on the list?) There's even an empty space between Jerry and Stephen Yates where they could have put her drawing. It looks a little off. Now I'm wondering if they were considering getting rid of her at this point. She and Chris were their major couple at the time (with JWS and Kristen as the young love couple) it just seems bizarre she's not there. Which reminds me--why is Lisa Brown not there? Maybe she was still considered relatively minor and hadn't broken out yet. Also weird is that they list Charita's name but don't include her in the drawing. Ageism, maybe? Don and Mart are small and off to the side (I bet Don hated this ad, LOL). And, yeah, why did they make Jerry look like a serial killer? 😂

I was watching a couple of the late 1982 episodes on the German channel. What I really like that PFS did was have Alan go back to being Alan. They were setting up bringing back Phillip and Rick (who was still Freddie). Phillip got into trouble at his private school. Justin thought he had handled it, then Alan sneaks behind Justin's back and goes to talk to the headmaster and bribes him so he can lessen Phillip's punishment. Then he's telling Hope he wants to go back to the mansion for the holidays and pretending it's ONLY for holidays, because God forbid they squeeze Phillip into their cute little cottage. And Hope is like, "Oh, but I love our little house and I'm used to it." Honey, you ain't never going back to that house. At the same time he's being super attentive and promising to buy her beautiful jewels for Christmas, etc. PFS got rid of all that redemption, "I'm going to wear sackcloth and ashes forever to atone for my sins" crap. He was back to lying to Hope, placating her with promises of beautiful gifts, lying to Justin, using his money to manipulate and get what he wants. I REALLY wish PFS had stayed, because instead having Alan decide out of the blue to treat Hope like she was some stranger who broke into his house, she was setting up all these little fissures and cracks that would eventually make marriage collapse. That would have been a good story. I don't know what she pitched to the network/sponsor but seems to me this would have been an ideal time to bring back Rita. I liked that Long gave a decent storyline to Trish, but it was really difficult to buy that Alan was ready to replace Hope with someone so much like her. Pretty blonds who were rather passive and had daddy issues, both alcoholics--they could have been twins. The algorithm hates us! 😂

I wish it was JUST a snore. For some reason, several times when an episode of GL I hadn't seen popped up in my YouTube TL, it would invariably have a scene of RR in bed with Tangie, Claire, whoever. And each time, I'm thinking, "Does algorithm REALLY think I want to see this?" That's an interesting thought. I always assumed they made Meredith Fletcher's sister just so he could have some family on the show. I have always been an advocate for bringing in the missing Reardon sister. To me, Chelsea is the faux Reardon sister, who took Nola's position of the baby away from her, with her very prominent Southern accent, and her name that's all wrong for that family. She had the right look to be a Reardon but nothing else fit. They should have made her a cousin who grew up in the South.

Oh, yeah, I forgot about that! Not every real-life couple has the magic that translates on screen. It's strange they didn't catch on to that really quickly. Unless they were just trying to keep Bryggman happy. I was just thinking if they had brought her in during the mid-90s to play Hope and put her with Raines==WOW, that would have been a total snore fest. It would have made me want them to put him back with Reva. 😂

Ooooh, this is interesting. Anybody know what the rejected storylines were?

I thought about her for Hope, too, but now that I'm remembering her on ATWT, I have second thoughts. She got some really heavy storylines on ATWT. Some actors who seem mediocre rise to the occassion when they get meaty material. She never did. I could never could understand why she was so favored by the writers. So unless they wanted to keep Hope as a simple, sweet character, she would not have worked. I would have wanted a more grown-up, stronger, and more complex Hope if she had returned. Considering how many people from Texas came on GL, I would say Kobe probably preferred to work with Long. Long did some good things, but she was fairly new at soap writing (not always a bad thing). You would think they would have wanted to keep a more seasoned writer like PFS, especially since GL was a show that had recently won Emmys. But Kobe didn't seem to care about things like that, she seemed to want to go her own way and screw anyone who didn't like it.

I could see Coster as Alan. Other people have mentioned him as a good possibility for Alan. He could do the patrician thing. I like Dan Hamilton for Mike. He was on GL twice (the last time was as the prosecutor during the Infinity trial, I believe). He usually played bad guys but he could have played an upstanding lawyer. Ed's a lot tougher to cast, IMO. He's the good guy who has battled demons in the past. They should have begged Mart to come back. She wrote the show for 13 weeks after Marland left, and I really wish she could have stayed. She was the one who started laying down the groundwork for Alan and Hope's eventual breakup, and it was much more gradual an believable than the way Kobe and Long did it (because they were in a hurry to push Roussel off the show). I would totally have been for it if she had come back to write the show.

I can totally understand Alex being drawn in by Roger. At heart, Roger was a grifter. He took advantage of her one major weakness: loneliness. Since Locke Walls, I guess, she hadn't had a successful love relationship. Her brother was gone, (a brother who might have been able to convince her that Roger's intentions were not "honorable"), her son was gone, she needed love and he was offering that. If she could be fooled by Simon, she certainly could be fooled by Roger. Was that the piano guy? He played a pianist in something. He was BADLY miscast in that role. They needed someone with a lot more charisma for that one. Maybe the reason he did so well on SFT is he was working opposite his future wife. They had a lot of onscreen chemistry. He also worked with an extremely young Morgan Fairchild and had a strong storyline where he was an alcoholic torn between a neurotic narcissist and his true love who had no desire to ever have children. Some actors just don't do well playing characters who don't have intense storylines. I didn't mind her that much, it was the whole Michelle and Danny "thing" that I hated. There's nothing worse than when they push a couple because some vocal fans get, well, vocal.

I'm also shocked that Phillip KILLED his Uncle Ross? How do you sabatoge a plane and think anyone is going to survive it? WTH? I'm beginning to think cancelling the show was a mercy killing now. When you're doing dumb stuff like this, it's time to hang it up. I would be for this. Give Stacy Nola's energy. Maybe have the story kind of mirror Kelly/Nola (without the desire to trap Rick with a pregnancy). A lively woman with a staid guy...like in the old screwball comedies. Write to MOL's comic talents (and reign him in a little bit so it's not just pointless mugging). I actually thought of RVV as "the fake Ed." Or, "Dr. Chuck Tyler, who took a wrong turn into Springfield." I really think PS would have been less of a drag if they had written some decent stories for Ed. For instance, if they had done a better job with the fallout from Mo's death--have him go back to drinking, for one thing. And wouldn't that have been a PERFECT time to bring back Hope? To help her uncle get back on the wagon. But, no. It was just, "Mo's dead, whatever." So many missed opportunities...