DeeVee

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.

That's because she was Marland's favorite. When the EP thought her character had gone as far as she could and he fired the actress, Marland quit in a huff. He was going to have her kill Jackie. So her eventual body count would have been three. Even with the excuse that one of her alternate personalities did it, I don't see how you keep this character around after that. Those stories were SO DUMB. Sure, I believe that Warren waited years to get revenge on Alan for Leslie Ann's death. 🙄 I agree about Warren. He's the kind of character who enhances the soap canvas, IMO. The bootlicker, who helps the top-tier villains carry out their henious plans. Floyd went from an immature goofball to a gentle sweetie/attentive dad to a murdering psycho. Strangest character trajectory of all time, I'd say. I didn't mind Mike until Marland came in and started writing him as a sanctimonious jerk.

Ed gave Bert's book to AM to give to Harley. Yes, it was Little Women. (You would think he would have saved that book for Michelle, but what do I know...)

Yes, I think I'm remembering now. Henry and Vanessa talked Alan into buying a company that was no good. Yes. Alan knew that the police had the evidence after Diane was killed. He and Hope had just reconciled after Alan Michael was born. He took them to Tenerife for a "second honeymoon" but he was really planning to go on the run. Mike followed them and eventually caught Alan. Alan went to prison for a few months. (And Hope forgave him for lying to her for years about his involvement with Roger. Marland turned her into a total ninny). SERIOUSLY. They wanted the murderer reveal to come out of left field. O.K., fine. Making it Carrie was that, plus it gave Marland the opportunity to have the show focus for months on his "muse" as she's martyred because no one understands what she did. And she refused to tell anyone, so Ross had to run around all over the country getting evidence to get her acquitted. (I think she even went on a hunger strike to get him to stop investigating her past. Or was that later on when they realized there were other Carrie personalities?) Obviously, the audience didn't buy it, because on Ross and Carrie's wedding day, they had a scene where Bea took the trouble to go over to Carrie and assure her the jury all believed she never meant to kill Diane and Joe.

Diane was murdered. It was a big story, with several suspects--Alan, Vanessa, Henry, Ross, Justin, Jackie, and a skeevy detective named Joe Bradley. Then Joe Bradley was murdered. It was part of the ongoing aftermath of the Roger storyline, because Diane had proof Roger had been blackmailing Alan into committing all kinds of crimes, like faking his death. She found out Phillip was Justin and Jackie's kid, so she blackmailed them. She knew Ross had illegally manipulated Spaulding stock. He was in love with Carrie and repentant of his past deeds. He also had become good friends with Amanda and didn't want her to know he had betrayed her trust while he was managing her finances. I think with Henry, she knew about his search for his son. Vanessa, I'm not so sure. Maybe she was still with Ed and trying to keep him from finding out about her fake suicide attempt. I don't think any of the resolution episodes are available online, but from what I recall: Carrie, the woman Ross was madly in love with, killed both Diane and Joe, by "accident." A jury (which included Bea Reardon) acquited her. It was later revealed she had multiple personalities. She eventually ended up in a mental institution.

The writers clearly did not bother spending a little time looking up inheritance laws. Diane made such a fuss about getting Alan to disinherit Phillip because he wasn't a "real" Spaulding. How would that have benefited her? To this day I have no idea. Alan could have left his money to a homeless bum if he wanted to, being a "real" anything has nothing to do with it. Also, no one kept track of any of these sales, because when Amanda visited Christmas 1987, she gave Phillip her proxy to vote her stocks. Maybe if they hadn't done it as often, it wouldn't seem like a problem. They also did it to characters who they made a big deal of connecting to core families, and then, boom, they killed them off--like Lujack and Gus. Again, what is the point of doing that? And look at how they end up bringing some back as ghosts, or fantasies, or twins...it's just silly. It's not just killing people off, it's wiping legacy characters off the board by writing them out permanently. I'm sure when they first wrote out some of those characters, a lot of us didn't expect them to disappear for good. There are lots of instances over the years where their absences seemed wrong. Like Mike and Hope not being at Alan Michael's wedding. There is a Christmas (I think 1988) where Phillip, Harley, and Alan Michael are in NYC. Phillip even tells Harley about Hope. Do any of them go to see her? No, not even a mention of an off-screen meeting. You're right there, go see your mother, Alan Michael, you bum.

Two things: What about Alan Michael? He was born in 1981; Brandon should have found out about his existence while he was in Barbados. Did Brandon find out that Phillip was adopted before he re-died in 1984? Maybe. The reveal about his paternity happened in 1983. So that could explain his exclusion. But if he was keeping track of his family from Barbados, why was AM left out? Probably a continuity goof. Anyone remember if this was discussed?

I think that's one thing that's not hard to explain. Alan is the type who thinks he's the only one who can leave; no one can leave HIM. He didn't want Elizabeth, but he was furious that someone else did. They repeated that motif when Hope was divorcing him. Even though he wanted the divorce, he threatened Warren when he found out they had been dating. Also, if you take into consideration Phillip's trust fund--he did have one, and Alan and Elizabeth did argue over it--he would not have wanted her to be in control of it it they were divorced. With Alan, it's always about power and control over people in his personal sphere. He obviously picked it up from Brandon: i.e. Alex had to be punished severely for breaking away from his control.

That's probably why I don't remember the Brandon connection. The minute Raines and Chappell showed up in Nazi uniforms, I was out. Me, neither. Look, I get why they wanted Gus to have a connection to a core family. Why not make him a Bauer? Mike's long-lost progeny would have made way more sense. And then they killed him off? So what was the point? (My personal soap opera rule: NEVER permanently write out or permanently kill off legacy characters. EVER. It always ends up being a disastrous mistake. GL broke this rule SO many times). I recently watched a scene where Harley somehow got a hold of Alex's wedding dress and was trying it on. Alex had a total meltdown. She explained that the last time she tried on the dress, just before she was supposed to marry Eric, was the last time she was truly happy. Eric took Lujack and left right after that. So, no, they were not married. Which I suppose it why Alex was able to get Lujack to use the Spaulding name. It would have been his legal name. Nope, I never bought that for a minute, not even when Marland was "rehabilitating" Alan. In my head canon, Alan knew Brandon would settle a trust, probably including a generous chunk of Spaulding stock, on his first legitimate grandson. As Phillip's father, he would have been in charge of the trust and could have used it eventually as one of the weapons to bring down Brandon. If you think about it, there is a huge plot hole here. After finding out Elizabeth would never give him children, why not divorce her and get married again to someone who could give him biological heirs? According to Elizabeth herself, their marriage went south almost immediately. Get divorced, have kids with someone else. Problem solved. My solution to filling in this hole: he HAD to be married specifically to Elizabeth because his father insisted on it. I think she was her uncle's sole heir. I seem to remember he had mills all over New England or something, so Brandon probably wanted them to become absorbed into Spaulding. That's why he had to do the baby switch. He couldn't divorce Elizabeth without risking losing the mills, or whatever else it is she brought into the marriage, and Brandon probably would not have settled anything significant on adopted grandchildren. This ties into the Barbados storyline, which revealed Brandon married Penelope because she was a rich heiress and came from a good family, which raised the Spaulding fortunes. It would makes sense that he would have insisted the same from Alan, ESPECIALLY after his sister ran off with someone "unsuitable."

From what I remember of the time travel story, Ron Raines and Crystal Chappell (Alan and Olivia) played the villains in all the time periods Reva traveled to. They played German Nazis in France during the 40s. Was it revealed that Brandon was an actual Nazi collaborator? I don't remember that part. Many American businessmen found ways to continue to do business with Nazi Germany. (Coca Cola invented Fanta for this exact purpose). It's one thing to say "collaborator," as in, they betrayed their country by collaborating with the Nazis. But it is absolutely true that many American businesses found ways to do business with Nazi Germany. TBH, I was more offended by them making Reva's romantic rival a Nazi. It seemed to me insanely over-the-top in an effort to make Reva the heroine and Olivia the villain. She just wanted her man, not to take over the world and kill certain groups of people. But, you know, wanting Reva's man is the ultimate sin. Along with the clone, that storyline belongs in the dustbin of soap opera history. This is another retcon that made no sense. Why did Brandon leave his money to Amanda but not Lujack? You would think he would prefer a male over a female heir. We know why he didn't leave money in that will to Victoria. They did a whole story to explain that. Of course, when that story was written, there was no Alex and Lujack. But it left a hole there. I've often wondered why Brandon didn't leave his money/stock to Phillip. If he wanted to give Alan a poke in the eye on the way to the grave, seems like that would have made the most sense. Amanda being the heir was just a plot device to put Amanda in Alan's orbit. I don't think it was ever revealed, but in my mind, Alan told Brandon Phillip wasn't his biological grandson as part of his revenge against his father. That makes him settling everything on Amanda make more sense.

YES! I actually remember Brandon as the sick, abandoned old man in the rest home. You could almost feel sorry for him then. HB and Bill Bauer were also portrayed as pervs during the fishing trip story, with only Henry--who was telling the story--and Tom Reardon coming out as gentlemen. Sometimes Alan and Alex would talk about Brandon as a strict but caring father, other times they talked about him as an abusive a-hole. It would have been nice if they had had some consistency. I do like how they had the male Spauldings repeat history, portraying generational trauma. At least that was consistent.

I don't think this can be blamed on the scab writers. Unless the air date on the YT upload is wrong, the strike started March 7. This would have been written and taped before that. But this kind of thing is hardly rare on soaps. When Alan and Elizabeth arrived in SF, they had no house and were living with Jackie. No mention of a Spaulding family mansion, and Alan was supposed to be from Chicago. That was changed by the Dobsons themselves, who created the characters.

I knew he was ill, but OMG...I can't even begin to express how he and his character impacted viewers when Scorpio first appeared on GH. My college friends and I loved him! I remember going with some of them for a weekened at a hotel resort and before we even hit the pool, we sat down in the room to watch the Friday episode of GH. It was the one that ends with Scorpio and Tiffany running into each other in the jungle. It's silly, but we SCREAMED with delight! R.I.P Tristan. You brought something really different and special to daytime.

I'm not kidding, back in the day I thought they were going this way--with Bert! I could not otherwise understand the scenes where he was walking around bare-chested and in speedos around her.

You're welcome! I think the reason they don't show Brandon's face is to make the scene in the point of view of the children. He's this faceless monster to them. LOL, I was thinking last night while watching these episodes that I can't believe I dressed and had hair like that back then. Michelle Forbes is like 23 in these episodes and she looks 35 because of the hair and makeup. Josh's verging-into-a-mullet hair was also triggering. 😆

Here you go. The flashback starts around 13:48. Now I look at it again, Alex is definitely younger than Alan in the flashback scene.

I'm not good at telling the ages of children, so I'm not sure if he was meant to be older. The one thing that makes me howl about that scene is baby Alan is dressed in a crisp white formal suit with long pants. Who dresses a child like that? No wonder he was so messed up. 😂

I'm glad I'm not the only person who has noticed this! It's pretty much EVERY character who leaves the show. It's like they leave SF and their lives completely stop. MAYBE you'll hear something new, but it's usually negative--like Hope falling off the wagon, or Roxy being in a sanitorium in a foreign country, or a couple that left together broke up or got divorced (I think that's the case with Alan Michael and Lucy). The same happens to Mindy, too, IIRC. When she comes back for the Four Musketeers reunion during the finale--it's like nothing happaned to her while she was off the canvas. It was like she was waiting in the wings for that exact purpose. Nola and Bridget come back--no word of boyfriends/spouses, or Bridget having more kids (she mentions Peter, though). The only exceptions are when they bring back a character to be in main stories--like Holly having married again to Mr. Lindsey (but she never had more children--until Meg, that is). It's always bugged me. Especially when there were opportunities to bring in new characters connected to core families.

I'm watching the aftermath of Reva falling in the freezing water winter/spring '88, and it's aggravating me so much I want to SCREAM. I really, really hope the parts that I'm finding so ridiculous were written by the scabs during the strike. The one part that I had seen before was the scene between Alan and Alex where she threatens to tell Josh she knows Marah is his child, but Alan persuades her not to by reminding her how they had always protected each other when they were children. They had a flashback that showed how they lived in utter terror of Brandon when they were children. That was a really good scene, even though I still found it absurd that Alex would agree to keep it a secret. For some reason, Alan is intent on getting custody of Marah. Because Josh is her father "on paper," he has to get Josh to sign a paper relinqueshing his parental rights. All this while, A. Alan is not remotely related to Marah, B. He and Reva aren't even an official couple at this point, they went on like two dates. Yeah, yeah, he's super-rich and can bribe a judge, yadda, yadda, yadda. He barely pays attention to his own children but yeah, yeah, this is a totally a power thing. Why, why, WHY would Sarah, Hawke, and Rusty be FOR this? (Yeah, yeah, Alan promises they will have plenty of access to Marah--WHY do any of these people TRUST HIM?) Everyone is pressuring Josh. He keeps insisting he'll never do it, but this is JOSH, the world's biggest cluck. So after a lot of yelling and threats over MANY episodes, the dope signs the papers. (Threatening to shove the paper down Alan's throat if he harms Marah in any way--like that would do any good at that point). Somehow Alan also gets a judge to perform a wedding service with the barely conscious Reva. So what was the point of all this? Alan and Reva's wedding is quickly annulled, and as far as I can tell, Josh signing those papers has ZERO impact on the future story. The only part of it that sort of impacts the story is Alan is so distracted he signs away his entire fortune to buy some phony mine, and that's how Phillip gets him kicked out of Spaulding. Sure, this was a way to make Reva the center of the universe even while she was in a coma, but couldn't it have made at least a lick of sense?

I think '87 was built around the anniversary of the Springfield Journal. I recall them showing "headlines" that reflected things that happened during the history of the show.

I think the Founders Day was done only once because it was part of the set-up for the Barbados story.

It was controversial recast. Geraldine Court, who played Morgan's mother Jennifer, criticized the show for replacing Vigard (who left voluntarily) with a generic blonde actress. Which is a little unfair to Cook. She's no great actress, but she was O.K. and IMO was growing into the role towards the end. Vigard wasn't exactly a great actress, either.

It's kind of wild that you haven't. She's Amanda's half-sister. She has a history with Josh and a little bit of a history with Phillip. She should have at least been mentioned when Amanda returned in the 90s.

Another example of how a basically boring character only became interesting once they decided to write her out. Morgan decided to dump Kelly's controlling ass for Josh. Kelly and her mother Jennifer had a meltdown over it. (Jennifer even went to Kelly and Morgan's marriage counselor and tried to get her to talk Morgan into staying with Kelly). Morgan finally acquired a backbone, pretty much told them to pound sand, and refused to leave Josh. But then Josh wasn't that interested in a committed relationship, so they broke up. Morgan left soon after.

I'd say buying real estate was HIS fantasy. 😂 What I remember about Rita was he bought her expensive jewelry. That he did do with every woman, including Diane, Hope, Trish, and Reva. I'm pretty he didn't make Trish an executive. He kept promising he would. He palmed her off on Ross for his D.A. campaign so he had an excuse not to do it. When she pressed him about it he implied she was of little use beyond being a Lewis. That's when she told him to drop dead.