DeeVee

It did become a popular name at the time because of Manning, but I don't think either Alan or Beth were sports fans. 😂 I was wondering if they ever actually explained why they picked it.

I never saw the episode where they named the kid. Does anyone know where they came up with the name Peyton? I think I heard that when they thought it was Rick's they AGAIN made a failed attempt to name someone after Bert, and came up with Bernadette. (Which I'm guessing is why they made her Alan's kid, so they could change the name).

It says a lot that the least cringy thing she did during the later GL era was get involved with Edmund. I watch older episodes of Alan and Beth when they were played by Chris and Judi and can't help thinking, "Ew, these two end up married and having a baby."

I was going to say how can anyone think that about MKA, but he should not have said that about any woman. Such a relentless creep. Let's face it, Beth was one character who was done dirty in MANY ways during the show's later years. It's fine that she grew out of being an idealized ingenue, that she became more complex and imperfect, but she was unrecognizable after a while. That goes for relationships she had with other characters, too.

That's what I meant, if they ever dated again. Didn't he also take off on a wild goose chase to try and find Reva? Not surprised Harley told him to pound sand, if that's the case.

I did find the episodes where Harley met Matt Weiss, the Jewish character Long introduced. The scenes were not nearly as over-the-top or cringy as I remembered. (Maybe being dubbed into German made a difference, LOL). Anyway, I thought it was nicely done, BUT I just don't see how they were going to weave them into the canvas. They set up this guy as having a successful business in the fashion center of the world. It's hard to believe he would move to SF. Unless they were planning to have Harley break off from SF and have a story about her pursuing her fashion career in NYC. Personally not a fan of multiple locations for a soap opera. So I have feeling this was doomed from the start. Watching these eps also reminded me how much I liked Josh and Harley as a romantic pair back then. Newman left soon after and that was the end of that. Does anyone remember if they ever revisited it? I can't recall.

Oh, wow. Interesting that she felt so strongly about it. Possibly, if she had had the chance to see it through the characters would have been well developed. Thank you! I'm going to see if I can find those episodes. I'm curious to see how I feel about them now. If they're not on YT maybe the German channel has them.

I am going to hazzard a guess that this being dropped may have had little to nothing to do with Long's departure. I suspect that this was dropped more because the network/P&G/producer chickened out. I remember this very clearly. My mom and I were very interested in seeing how they handled this, as we are Jewish. It was awkwardly handled, in our opinion. It was more about Harley reacting to these "exotic" people than about creating actual characters. During the 80s-early 90s, soap audiences were still pretty conservative. We've talked before about how GL failed for a long time with creating a Black core family, even though they said they intended to do it. Besides the Barbados Spauldings, they tried to create a family around William, who worked at the Blue Orchid. They introduced a brother and sister for him, but nothing came of it in the end. There was Hamp and Gilly later on, but it wasn't until they brought in Mel's family that you had a real attempt to create a Black core family. I think it was probably the same thing with the Jewish family. They made it a big deal that they were going to do it, then yanked it really fast. Maybe they got complaints, maybe they just couldn't figure out how to weave them into the canvas. OR, yes, it could just be the incoming HW didn't want to write for those characters. But my mom and I when we heard they dropped it were like, "Oh, yeah, they chickened out." I don't know what the timing was, perhaps our friend @kalbir can tell us exactly when Long departed for the last time?

Maybe some people wouldn't count it as a suicide attempt, but I was thinking of her driving the car into the ocean.

I did a little digging around to see what I could find out about this storyline since I never saw it. I stumbled onto a post that quoted a bunch of cancer survivors DRAGGING the storyline. Mainly because Reva attempts suicide. (I know it's a serious topic and they're not wrong to be angry, but those who said Reva's a "fighter" and "survivor" who would never do this apparently forgot she attempted suicide twice before. Three times if you count Dolly the Clone). They also didn't like that she kept it a secret from her loved ones.

Could be. A little hard to be sure when you can't compare voice.

I did not watch the show during Reva's cancer storyline. Did they REALLY do that? She had two sisters, a brother, a bunch of kids and a niece and nephew but HE was the match? 😂

I don't know if it would have meant much to viewers, but while the whole "Alan sacrifices himself to save Phillip" thing made sense character-wise, it made NO sense medical-wise. Phillip had like a gajillion Marler blood relatives, including a full sister, who could have been called on to save him. (I get why they refused to let James do it, as he had done that for his sister. But everyone else? Come on). Alan did not share any DNA with Phillip, it had to be the wildest coincidence of all time that he was a match to be a donor. Not to mention, he had a heart condition and they would have rejected him as a donor. Yeah, yeah, yeah, suspension of disbelief, but there were other ways to accomplish the same thing. If Alan had thrown himself in front of a truck to save Phillip--THAT, I would have believed. So a return of Samantha might not have been high on anyone's list, but at least it would have made sense.

It seems to me no writer besides Marland knew how to write this character. The heart of Nola's character was wanting to be the star of her own movie. If you remember Opal on AMC, she also was very quirky like Nola and also had high aspirations. It was a GENIUS move by AMC to pair her with Palmer, who was filthy rich but brought up in similar circumstances to Opal. Nola needed something like that. To fulfill her desire to live life large, but with someone who would understand her origins. OR, as mentioned before by some of us, she could have found a way to harness her rich fantasy life so she could achieve fame and fortune--like becoming a romance writer. I don't think anyone loved anyone in this triangle. In fact, I seem to recall soap critics drubbing this storyline. I think there was a movie that came out around this time with a similar theme? Never understood the appeal. My mom thought Jesse was cute. 😁 For me, Maureen's appearances made me mad all over again that they killed her off.

That's one of the reasons they lost a lot of their audience. I totally get liking problematic characters. I like many myself. But there's a red line. Making the victim responsible for the perpetrator's subsequent behavior and putting them in a romance with the person who raped them is gross. Roger didn't just hurt Holly, he was a serial rapist and a sociopath who committed many violent crimes. The worst part is, Roger NEVER paid for his crimes. At most he spent a night in jail when he was first arrested, while two of his victims--Holly and Alan (yes, this is one time Alan was a victim; blackmail is a serious crime)--ended up in prison for things connected to him. I'm REALLY glad GL pulled back from a Holly/Roger romance because if they hadn't, it would have tarnished the legacy of the groundbreaking story they did in the first place.

I agree. Especially considering that Holly was not Roger's only victim. He had a long history of violence against women.

Don't forget, he was also going to kidnap her child. The woman falling in love with her rapist trope was unfortunately extremely common on soaps back then. AT LEAST GL never tried to turn Roger into a hero or make Holly's feelings for him seem like a good thing. Yes, the "explanation" for the rape undermined the history of the relationship. That was bad and no way would I defend that. But Holly was obsessed with Roger since she was a teenager; clearly she had issues that were never dealt with, so her inability to totally sever the relationship was not that unbelievable. More importantly, they never gave into the obvious wish of many fans to make them a star-crossed romance. And good for them. It's a very low bar, but it's way better than how many other soaps would have handled it.

There was a period during the late 70s through the mid-80s when soaps shooting in foreign locations was pretty common. I think the first soap to do it was when Ryan's Hope went to Ireland in 1977. (Strangely enough, I don't think they ever did another one, though they did a lot of local location shoots in NYC). You have to remember that during this time period, soaps were the networks' cash cow. Daytime made so much money it literally paid for their nighttime shows. It became extremely common for soaps to do foreign location shoots at least once a year, sometimes twice. Some of the location shoots for GL during this time were St. Lucia, Santo Domingo, Jamaica, the Virgin Islands, and the Canary Islands. There might have been a shoot in Switzerland. I seem to recall Mike fighting some villain on a ski tram. I'm not quite sure where exactly that was shot, though. By the late 80s, the trend was ending because soaps' fortunes were beginning to sink. More women were going to work, more people were getting cable TV, younger audiences acquired during the heyday didn't stick around as they aged up. By the mid-90s, the O.J. trial had dealt a death blow to soaps. Networks slashed budgets and it spiraled from there. Some soaps might have still done a location shoot now and then, but it was too expensive to do it regularly. It really was an amazing time when they did them. I think one show even went to Hong Kong. But it all ended due to money problems.

That looks like Robert Gentry to me. He played Ed during the late 1960s. He came back to the show briefly during the late 90s, so the timing for this is right.

Yes, that's a really good point. Slimy villains have their place on soaps (usually short-term) but they don't work over the long-term. No one...and I mean NO ONE...could have come out of that Mark Evans story looking good. Not only sleeping with her mother's husband, but when he tells her he is entitled to Spaulding SHE HELPS HIM. She betrays her entire family for this clown. Yeah, they were recently acquired family, but they had all been loving and good to her. Girl, no guy is worth that. Definitely not THAT guy.

I'm going to defend her a little bit here: People need to keep in mind how young she was at the time, and how much was put on her shoulders. She was front burner for almost 2 years, and had to play a lot of stuff (like being a rape victim) that would be tough even for an adult actor. Genie Francis went through something similar when she was on GH, playing love scenes when she was only 15 years old. She talked a lot about how difficult that was for her as she was not even been thinking of things like that in her real life. People were also furious when she left the first time, and she wasn't even accused of unprofessional behavior. If Vigard was so "woefully deficient" when it came to emotional range, Kelly and Morgan would not have been so popular. This is a male adult critic trashing a barely 18 year old girl. It's kind of gross. In the Locher Room, Vigard said they let her go at the end of one of her 13 week cycles because they knew she wasn't going to sign again, as her first 2 years were almost up. The wedding scenes had been shot on location way ahead of time, so they kept her until then. Cooke was hired just before she and a large portion of the cast went to Tenerife to do a big location shoot. The timing of letting her go, PLUS the sort of recast they did (a more conventionally pretty actress to do the upcoming modeling storyline) seems to me to make her version of why she was fired much more plausible.

I did not know that! Yeah, she would have been a tough recast. The difference with Niki Smith was they were careful to have her not do anything TOO heinous. She was different from Viki personality-wise, but not really a bad person. One of my fave stories they did with her was when she witnessed a murder, then reverted back to Viki. They had to bring back Niki to save Tina from a murder charge. Now THAT was clever writing. Yes and yes. It would have been worse if Marland had stayed on the show. The original plan was for both Jennifer and Amanda to get pregnant. 🤢

Possibly they were looking into recasting the role? That's why they sent him off for a time? And Marland's departure got in the way of a return? You might have a point about scuttling him off the show to give Carrie more airtime. Diane and Joe Bradley were killed off soon after. I really have a problem understanding his reasoning here. Three villains were tossed within a short time. One, at least, was a really good one with perhaps years more of story (Diane). They had recently lost Rita, who was not a villainess, exactly, but the kind of gray character who generated story. During this period Alan was (pardon my French) de-balled, living in suburban paradise with Hope and swearing to everyone he didn't miss being at the head of Spaulding. With Carrie, you have this character who is behaving very violently, with the intention of having her kill yet another main character. Unless he was planning some amazing twist, I don't see how she could have remained on the show much longer. He then brings in Mark Evans as the new Big Bad, and he's even less of a success than Andy. What a dull-ass character. I think Marland just wasn't very good at writing villains. Maybe he did better on ATWT? James wasn't his creation. I can't recall if there were others during his tenure.

Yes, Andy is Holly's brother, and he was a pretty nasty guy. He wasn't just a blackmailer. He also abused women. Both Trish, his ex-wife, and Katie, who was his girlfriend while he was in SF. He was a grifter, insinuating himself into people's lives by flattering them. He got close to Alan by claiming he wanted to write his biography. That's how he found info to blackmail him. When Alan and Hope were separated, he gave Hope his shoulder to cry on--the implication being he would eventually marry her after she got a rich divorce settlement. Like I said, he didn't click with the audience, so he was hustled off to jail.

I hadn't checked out Spauldingfield in a few days, and when I saw they had just uploaded a February 1981 episode with Lenore Kasdorf's image in the thumbnail, I flipped! FINALLY, someone found the episodes of Alan and Rita's Jamaica affair! SIGH. NOPE. They labeled it with the wrong date. It's an episode I've seen before from a few months later, just before Lenore left the show. 😭 Anyway, since we were talking about the Diane murder storyline, I was looking for 1981 episodes...and noticed something I hadn't noticed before. 1981 was STUFFED with HUGE storylines. -Jennifer's second trial and the reveal that Amanda was her and Alan's daughter. -Elizabeth's decision to give custody of Phillip to Justin and Jackie, leading to marital troubles for Hope and Alan because Hope insists he comply. -Alan and Rita have an affair. -Andy gathering up a sh!t ton of blackmailing info on just about every major character. He's soon caught and sent to jail (clearly, TPTB decided Andy wasn't working as a replacement for Roger and cut their losses) but he sells the info to Diane. -The introduction of Carrie Todd and the insta-love between her and Ross. -The introduction of Quint McCord and Nola working for him. Lots of possible mysteries surrounding him quickly introduced. -Hope and Jackie are pregnant, leading to the births of Alan Michael and Samantha. -Alan and Hope break up when she finds out about Rita. -Alan and Diane hide Dr. Moreno, the guy who faked Roger's death. They keep staying a step ahead of Javert...er, I mean Mike, who is obsessed with bringing down Alan. -Rita leaves town and inexplicably disappears. -Ed and Vanessa start an affair. Vanessa has a letter Rita wrote to Alan confessing she's in love with him stolen so Ed will get a quick divorce. -Diane blackmails and threatens half the town and ends up murdered. The blackmail material is stolen at the same time. Slimy detective Joe Bradley is also murdered. -Now reconciled with Hope and aware that Diane had possesed proof of his crimes, Alan takes Hope and baby AM out of the country, with the plan to go on the run. Mike follows then and eventually catches Alan. Alan almost escapes, but instead saves Mike's life, leading to a truce between the two enemies. Alan voluntarily turns himself in and faces the music, eventually serving a short prison term as Hope virtuously stands by her man. -Carrie is revealed to be the murderer. She is eventually acquitted of both murders as Ross proves they were "accidental." There's more, of course, stuff to do with newlyweds Kelly and the recast Morgan, Tony and Josh getting chem tested all over town, Leslie Ann was introduced. (I think Warren, too?) That was a PACKED year, with lots of consequential events. Notably, about 80% of it is Marland bringing to a conclusion most of what he inherited from the Dobsons. Got to give him credit for taking almost 2 years to do it instead of hacking up the cast (ahem, as some would do later). And yet he still spotlighted his own creations, like Carrie and Nola. Quite impressive. '82, OTOH, was taken over by the dreadful Mark Evans story, Carrie popping her cork because of her other personalities, Alan going on his redemption tour, lots of scenes (SO MANY) at the disco, and Indiana Jones-style adventures with Quint and Nola. Not nearly as good, IMO.