DeeVee

Or, you know, they could have WRITTEN him better. He was such a relentless @sshole. He didn't HAVE to be. Characters like that got turned around on soaps ALL THE TIME. Alan didn't get with powerful women. He liked women who were troubled or naive who he could dominate. It would have been cool if they had ever paired him with a woman who would have called him out on his bullsh!t (Jackie was the only one, but alas, neither was in love with the other). Carmen was just as much of a narcissist as he was. Also, Raines just wasn't good at the romance stories. I don't recall him having any real chemistry with anyone they put him with. I shudder at the thought of them in bed together.

I mean, SERIOUSLY. Look, I totally understand that marital rape was not uncommon on soaps back in the day. So was romanticizing it (coughBillandLauraonDOOLcough). General Hospital did not invent that. So you kind of have to look at that in the context of the times. That's one of the reasons Roger and Holly's rape story was such a big deal. I don't think they ever dealt with marital rape in that way before (mainly because it had only recently been criminalized). I'm guessing the Dobsons and Marland were completely unaware of this part of Mike's past. I think Bridget Dobson even admitted they knew very little about the show's history (i.e. they gave Jackie the maiden name Scott, even though Peggy's maiden name was Scott, which made viewers think they were related). All the Bauers had pretty troubled pasts. By the late 70s they became close to sterling citizens. Which is kind of sad in a way because, personally, I prefer gray characters. Certainly, much more than the self-righteous d!ck Mike became during the Marland years. 70s Alan (before he became involved with Hope and was being blackmailed by Roger, I hated him. I thought Elizabeth should have shot him), Hillary (even before SHE became self-righteous under Marland; the character never clicked for me), Greg Fairbanks (Rita's possible baby daddy--guy literally had one job and then became irrelevant). 80s Mike, Kelly, Bradley (yeah, I know we were supposed to hate him, but he literally made my skin crawl), Jennifer, Mark, Carrie, all the faux Bauers, Maeve, Calla, Meredith, Rusty. 90s Neil Everest, Mallet, Buzz, J., Amanda, Ben Warren, Alan, and I honestly had no use for Ed by this point. 2000s Jeffrey 🤢, Jonathan, Olivia, and I strongly object to what they did to Beth.

I think Tony was still the owner for quite some time after he left town. Kurt also ran Company for a while. (He even ran the boarding house the first time Bea left town to help Tony and Anabelle with their kid). Maybe he gave it to Mo at some point. I don't recall that ever being discussed. Honestly, with all the writer changes over the years it, the ownership of Company probably depended on who the head writer was at any given time. I think Hawk and Sarah only ran the place. Where would they have gotten the money to buy it? I wouldn't give Hawk a mortgage. Unless HB or Alan or some other Reva admirer gave them the money.

Oh, this fun: 1970s: Bert, Roger, Jackie, Rita, Holly. My fave couple during this period was Ed and Holly. It seemed to me very obvious they belonged together. They had genuinely fallen in love but the reveal about Christina's paternity wrecked their relationship. Fantastic star-crossed energy that got spoiled because Marland didn't want to write for Holly. I think they always should have been the end game. 1980s: Bert, Alan, Ross, Vanessa, Henry, Alexandra, Harley. Fave couples: Sorry, Billy fans, but for me, Ross and Vanessa also had a star-crossed energy that was never taken advantage of. Alan and Hope: please remember I was very young at the time. My feelings about them as a couple are different now. Rick and Mindy: the hill I will die on. Alan Michael and Harley. I would say Quint and Nola, but they were the type of couple who were done the minute they got married. But up until then, I enjoyed their romance. I thought Henry and Bea were so sweet together. I wish they'd had the cojones to make them a real couple. 1990s: Bridget, Mo, Roger, AM, Annie. I'm having a hard time coming up with favorite couples from this era. A really, really hard time. Which is probably a major reason I was a spotty viewer during this era. I liked Phillip and Harley--Grant and Beth had terrific chemistry. But they didn't write for them very well, IMO. 2000s: Bill, Edmund (yeah, I liked him, shut up), Gus (THAT'S RIGHT, I LIKED HIM TOO). Yes, I liked Gus and Harley. SHOOT ME. Also think the writing went against them. YES, I liked Cassie and Edmund. I will admit I hated myself for it because Edmund was a sociopath, but the actors had fantastic chemistry, which was getting pretty rare on this show at this point. I'll never get over what they did to Bill, putting him with [REDACTED]. At least they gave him a happy ending.

That is wild! (But seriously, she came to the performance in her maid uniform?) I also realized after I posted that it had to be summer because the men are wearing white jackets. Assuming no white for men after Labor Day was still a thing in 1982.

My guess is this is December 1982, either Christmas or New Year's, at the Spaulding mansion. From the way Hope is dressed, I would lean more towards New Year's. Alan and Hope "temporarily" moved back to the mansion from their little cottage for the 1982 holidays so they could properly entertain now that Alan was back at the head of Spaulding. The lady in the maid outfit makes it obvious this is not a venue like Wired For Sound. I don't recognize her as someone who worked for Amanda or Alan and Hope at the time. Floyd had been living at the Spaulding mansion, remember. He must have had his own staff. Possibly, she worked for Floyd. Or she was hired just for the party. So it could be Amanda's, or even the Chamberlains'. It's really hard to tell because of the frickin' camera in the way. 😂 I wonder if this episode is on the German channel. I'm going to look later and see if I can find it or episodes running up to this party.

Reva's introduction to the show was as Billy's ex-wife, brought to town by Alan to break up Billy and Vanessa's relationship. Gee, thanks for pointing that out about Mindy and Rusty, as if they didn't make me want to hurl without realizing they had that relationship. 😁 Unfortunately, Mindy went through a bunch of bad/boring romantic entanglements during the mid to late 80s--Kurt, Rusty, Frank, Will--they didn't seem to know what to do with her. I've said it before, I believe her best romantic partner was Rick and have always felt they missed an opportunity there. It's funny how Frank was chem tested with virtually everyone in a skirt, but in the end they had to literally import Eleni for him. I adored Carl. I loved that he had a prominent New York accent, which made total sense since AM grew up in NYC. Besides having strong chemistry, he and Beth could play humorous scenes really well. I agree that they shouldn't have tossed AM and Harley so quickly. This is a mistake they made a lot during this period--young characters burned through lovers/spouses SO quickly. They could have nursed a few more of them into long-term relationships that lasted for many years, like Reva and Josh or Phillip and Beth.

I have to FREQUENTLY remind myself that this all came out during a very long writers strike. The whole "Reva in a coma and its aftermath" story was SO nonsensical. Not only was this Hope erasure, Alan's problem wasn't an inability to fall in love. It was that he fell in love all the time. (There's a really good scene when he and Jackie are divorcing where she says this to him). The scabs turned SARAH (and holier-than-thou Rusty) into money-grubbers, advising Reva to marry Alan for his money. Writer strikes show why even so-so writers are really important.

I just wish at some time, at some point, Alan Michael had had a kid. It would not just be a Spaulding, it would also be a Bauer. Yes, Blake and AM having a kid would be a supreme irony--it would be a Spaulding, a Bauer, and a Thorpe. Roger would have shared a grandchild with two of his enemies. Lots of missed possible drama over that.

If you think about the soaps that are still on the air today, they do EXACTLY that. The Bell soaps, DOOL, GH--they have always understood that their young characters--most connected to existing families on the canvas, with a few new ones tossed in now and then--are important. Not just because they want to attract young viewers with stories about young people, but because those characters grow up and become major adult characters in the future. Maybe not all of them stay on the canvas forever, but out of each crop you're probably going to get one or two who will stick with the show for a long time. That's how you refresh the show, while still keeping true to the origins of the story. GL fumbled there. Doug Marland understood it, Pam Long understood it, but then into the 90s they faltered. Bridget should have been the future of the Reardon family. They had BIll and Michelle, but as pointed out they fumbled when they didn't put Bill and Michelle together. Sure, Michelle had plenty of story, but it mostly sucked. And, oh, dear, what they did to poor Bill. Dylan and Samantha never really caught on, Stacey was never brought back, J. was--I don't know what they were thinking with him. Don't get me started on what they did to Ben, Marina, Lizzie, Marah, Shayne--they could have grown into the next generation of characters but it just didn't happen. (Possibly partly due to CERTAIN SOMEBODIES who wanted always to be front and center).

There's also a new Sense & Sensibility in the works. 😠 To me, the Emma Thompson/Ang Lee version is close to perfect. We don't need another. I love Austen, but ENOUGH. There are other books. And you can cast them properly and understand the characters and story the author wrote. Back to soaps, I feel those are the two key aspects: character (especially staying true to character history) and casting. When those things are right, it's the best. Like for instance, I think it was a mistake giving Roger a sudden son. The whole thing about Roger, one of his best qualities (and one of his worst, because it became an obsession) was his love for his daughter. Bringing in another kid watered that down. Not that they couldn't have still brought in Hart as a character, but did it matter that much that Roger was his father? He could have been a long-lost son of Mike's, for instance.

Ugh, ugh, ugh: "I don't regret my marriage with Alan." Well, the rest of us do, honey. Didn't Gus know at this point he was Alan's son? It seems to me that was revealed around the time of the (puke) Maryanne Carruthers storyline, which was in 2004, I'm PRETTY sure. Boy, looks like they had a really warm relationship.

Thanks so much for finding and posting this. Yes, it does feel flat. But I just realized--Cassie had the most incredibly bad luck with her children! Tammy died, her kid with Richard died (because EDMUND deliberately killed it, but he still became her boyfriend because, whatevs), the kid she adopted with Richard was taken from her (some succession BS to do with San Christohell), and now Hope was taken away from her, too. The only kid she ended up with was R.J. Did the writers ever stop to think, hey, maybe we should stop killing and taking away her kids? Maybe we could think of a different kind of story for her? It's terrible but it's also making me laugh because someone mentioned that Larkin Malloy left the show because he didn't want to do another baby story.

At this moment, there are big arguments happening on SM about the correct level of handsomeness required for Mr. Darcy in Pride & Prejudice and the correct level of ugliness required for Mr. Rochester in Jane Eyre. This is because of new adaptations coming out soon. There are those making fun of both discussions...but these are actually VERY important character details in the respective books. They matter to the story and reveal a lot about their protagonists. And don't even get me started on the newest adaptation of Wuthering Heights... The point is: DETAILS MATTER. The fact that we're still upset about how they messed around with GL history almost 20 years after it went off the air shows how important they are.

Honestly feel like this was a poke in the eye to long-time viewers. They kept Hope off the canvas for over 20 years, had her inexplicably miss all her son's major milestones, when they talked about her they made her into an incurable drunk. Then it's like, "Hey! We didn't forget about her--let's have her cousin who doesn't know her at all keep her name for her baby!" Like they should get points for that. 😠

And Lizzie named after Beth...or was she named after Phillip's mom Elizabeth? I don't recall if they specified. Random kid names like Harley and Rick's kid Jude. I remember the scene where he was named. Harley was talking about how she couldn't decide, so Gus asked her what her favorite song was. She said, "Hey, Jude." Decided. Babies who didn't seem to have been named after anyone, or at least I don't remember anyone saying they were: Ben (was he Sampson or Reade?), Marina Cooper, Daisy/Susan Lemay, Samantha Marler, Kevin and Jason Marler (hey, the Marlers went against the tide, LOL), though Ross and Blake's daughter was named after a character in Blake's romance novels. Phillip and Olivia's kid Emma? Or was she named after someone? Anyhoo, it's a fairly short list.

I remember that scene really well. He referred to the Biblical Peter, and how his name meant "rock." He wanted Peter to be strong. I thought that was a lovely scene and perfectly appropriate to the character. While the Lewises never talked much about religion, you could imagine they all took Biblical studies. (Didn't Josh end up a minister by the end of the show, or am I dreaming that one?) I wouldn't expect any of them to know the history that well. Hey, but we can dream.

Now I am disillusioned, LOL. And it never worked. Never ocurred to anyone to invent a middle name for Bert that was more trendy. "Hey, did you know Bert's middle name was Sophia? How's that for a cute name for the baby?" In THAT case--bring back a divorced (and recast) Lainie. Who would maybe confess to Ed that she had wee crush on him back in the day... There are workarounds. She raised Blake. Yeah, I know, but if we're going by that criteria, NO ONE on the show was stable enough to raise a child. Heck, I wouldn't give Beth a puppy to raise. Here's a workaround: she didn't raise them but now their mother is dead and Deitrich is hitting town, maybe looking to reconnect with Holly. We did say in the past bringing in Deitrich had loads of story possibilities.

This is something I've never understood. Why did almost EVERY baby have to be named after someone? You left out Marah (named after Josh's mother Martha and Reva's mother Sarah). Shayne I don't mind so much because using the mother's maiden name is kind of cool. You end up with a lot of kids who have to be renamed (Stacy, Michelle, J., Zach) or with clunky names (Alan Michael, R.J.) and repeat names (Billy, Bill, Will). And when Beth and Rick thought her kid was Rick's, they picked Bernadette as an alternative to Bert. WHY? Again, they end up renaming her. I liked when Billy chose the name Peter--because he liked what the name meant. You know, like a NORMAL person naming their kid.

I'm sorry I asked. 😂 DINAH carried a baby for CASSIE? (Edmund stealing a baby, OTOH, sounds totally believable). Those later years were a thing and a half. 😂

There were so many young characters, already existing or "sudden" they could have brought in: Stacy Chamberlain Lainie's kids - we know she had at least one and I think they mentioned at some point that she had three. Sean Reardon's other kids. NotLana Reardon's kids--supposedly she had at least two. Tony Reardon had at least one kid. Poof! I just invented a bunch more! Amanda had an existing half brother--Matthew. Suppose Morgan had been pregnant when she left town? Pregnant with...Josh's kid! (I personally would have loved seeing the look on Reva's face when she found that out, heh). Lujack could have had a kid out there somewhere. Nurse Katie Parker married and probably had some kids. Mike and Hope Bauer were off the canvas for ages--both could have remarried and had other kids. Holly could have had stepchildren from her marriage to Dietrich. There are literally like a zillion possibilities. BTW, something occured to me when people were talking about Michelle's baby Hope. Why on earth would she name her child after a living cousin she barely knew when she could have named her after her dead aunt Hillary?

I read an article where Sharon Gabet said she had the opportunity to move either to AW or OLTL, and she made the choice to stay with P&G after EON. Which makes me wonder why on earth GL never thought to bring her over, especially when they cast Larkin Malloy. The two of them were very good friends and said in interviews they never had as good chemistry with anyone else. Not necessarily bring her in as Maeve (ugh, boring). I always thought she would have been a good recast for Rita. With Alan off the canvas at the time, she could have gone after the Daddy Deeppockets who took his place. Might have spiced things up a little during that dreadful period.

There were a lot of menopausal women on soaps who had babies. She was hardly the first. Ruth on All My Children, who had to be well into her 50s, had a surprise baby. I had always assumed the reason she adopted her sister's child was because she was infertile. The only characters who don't have babies are the ones who've literally had their reproductive organs removed. And who knows, someone might come up with a work-around for that scenario one day (other than the obvious, a surrogate). Nothing is permanent on a soap opera, whether it's infertility or death. 😂 As far as crazy Reva stories, it's WAY down on the list.

Thanks for pointing us to this. Ironic, that 1982 was actually Marland's weakest year at GL and he was out before it ended, as @P.J. pointed out. The most overwhelming thing I get from this interview? "It's my way or the highway." He thought the head writer (i.e., him) should be involved in everything from casting to costumes--and I understand wanting that power, but the reality is those things are ultimately the producer's domain. Like it or not, media like television and film are colaborative efforts. I think the era of the soap opera writer having a lot of power died with Irna Phillips. Long had her opinion overriden about casting at least two times that we know of--she didn't want Zimmer at first, and she wanted a different actress to play Samantha. He wanted no pushback, no "negativity." (i.e. "Hey, your multiple personality storyline is a clunker and is turning off viewers, maybe you should end it.") It goes very far to explain why Marland walked out when Elliot was fired and he was forced to end her storyline. Long also left her final tenure because they nixed her desire to add a Jewish family to the cast. So I'm not saying it's just him. Unless you're a Bell whose family still owns the show, it's the reality of the genre.

Hey, you left out the BEST PART: Kyle's father was a Catholic Cardinal, who Sally the Madam "let go" so he could take his destined path as a priest. One of my favorite bad GL scenes is the reunion between Kyle and his father who is a Father. Kyle's friend David, who was just a TAD too fond of Kyle...come on, we all know it. (If only they had made that more explicit, that might have livened this puppy up). It's a toss-up between Infinity and Dreaming Death, both obvious tries at catching some of GH's viewers. The difference, of course, is that GH had wildly popular characters like Luke, Laura, Scorpio, etc. And GL had...Jim Reardon, Hillary, Claire and Fletch. Lujack and Beth were popular, so they rewarded them by killing off Lujack. But, yes, at least Infinity was based in a family conflict, unlike Dreaming Death.