DeeVee

He was a major part of the art smuggling story. But in that case, also, it was more about his infatuation with Christine Valere. Maybe they thought if they gave him a family he would click more with the audience, the way Josh did once he was embroiled with his family/lost love Reva. Unfortunately, the family members flopped, and his subsequent stories (especially the cancer storyline; don't get me started on that one) were not good. I wonder also if they pushed him so hard (Frank D., too) so they had a back-up hunk for when Grant Alexander would inevitably take breaks from the show.

Turns out, you are correct. I checked those episodes and only Lacey is there. I think that was why I assumed their parents were there, too. Good Lord, the actress who played Lacey was worse than I remembered. She would STARE at people in the scenes with her. It's SO weird. I realize she was very young and inexperienced, but casting for GL in general was mostly good. Someone made a big boo-boo signing off on that casting decision. The character also said something strange, that she left home when she was twelve. Who leaves home when they're twelve? Everything about her was weird. That was Teri Keane, who played Martha Marceau on Edge of Night for many years. Clearly, they meant for her to be the Bert replacement. Casting her as Meta would have been a better idea.

I have nothing against Goodwin. He turned into a pretty decent actor as he aged. But, yeah, they mostly just used him as eye candy (which is not a terrible thing; they just never did much to make him more than that). Also, in the ATWT case, the Snyders hadn't been around as long as the Bauers. Nor did ATWT do a deliberate clean-out of the characters/actors that upset the audience. So they were probably more accepting of off-shoot family members.

That story sucked so bad. It was built around Christine Valere, who was connected to nobody. The whole idea that Alan would smuggle art was SO preposterous. It was so unbelievable they wrote a scene where India asked Alan why he was doing it. He said for the excitement. Which was a total misunderstanding of his character. Alan's MO was trying NOT to live on the edge, to keep all his lies and secrets under control so he wouldn't get into trouble. If he had wanted to BUY stolen great works of art for his private collection, that would have been believable. That kind selfishness seems appropriate for Alan. But running a smuggling ring for money? PUH-LEEZ. Johnny being the center of all that was a huge yawn. The character just wasn't interesting enough. You could say the same about Josh in the beginning, but once his family and Reva arrived and they mined the conflicts that had been alluded to, his character started to become more interesting and layered. That never happened with Johnny, even though they tried giving him some big storylines after they ditched his other family members. There were a couple of times where they tried that, and it was always a dud. Like the time Johnny gave Michelle a pillow Bert had crocheted for him when he was a baby. It was so forced, Ed and Mo were practically rolling their eyes. 😂

How both families were introduced is what made them integrate so well into the show, IMO, and why they had staying power while the "new" Bauers flopped. In the Lewis case, we already had Josh and Trish on the canvas, they were talked about for a long time, they did an exceptional job of casting the new characters, and they filled needs on the canvas. There hadn't been much happening in the business storylines since the Mark Evans story wrapped, and Mindy was needed to build up the teen faction. In the case of the Coopers, they gave Harley a dramatic entrance, which immediately set up the kind of character she would be. They didn't introduce Nadine until there was a storyline reason to do so (Harley's wedding). When Buzz was introduced, it was also dramatic (catching Nadine taking off her fake pregnant belly). Not to mention, he was long thought to be dead, setting up instant conflict with his kids. Johnny was on the canvas a while, and like Josh in the beginning, he wasn't much more than the hunk of the moment. But unlike Josh, his family did not get an interesting introduction, nor were they plunged into major storylines right away. They were just THERE, you know what I mean? The casting for his parents was fine, but the girl cast as his sister was a bit of a disaster. I contend if Frank had been introduced without a well conceived, well cast family member like Harley following very soon after, the Coopers would likely have never taken hold on the GL canvas. So even though Long had no interest in the new Bauers when she took over, I think they were doomed from the start. Viewers wanted the real Bauers, and there had been little done to make people invested in the new ones.

I'm pretty certain they were introduced earlier. I seem to remember they (along with Lacey) were at the 1987 Bauer July 4 BBQ when Alan Michael came back to SF by parachuting in. It says in Wikipedia Long came back July 1987, but it doesn't specify if that was when she started writing again, or if that's when her scripts began airing.

Oh, right. Now I remember. (I probably was trying to forget it, LOL). Here's a thought: since the "new" Bauer branch belly-flopped, if the head writer hadn't changed, does anyone think Frank D. would have stayed with the show until the end of its run? Probably not! This was probably a much better outcome. The girl who played Lacey was SO green, I doubt she would have lasted even if Long hadn't returned. Ehlers was good right out of the gate. If they had really wanted to revive the Bauers, they could have brought back Mike and Hope (with a not so quickly SORASED Alan Michael).

Is that the genius kid who Quint and Nola took up with? I remember him on Texas. He played Pam Long's character's secret kid. According the Frank D., he was originally up for the character of Johnny Bauer. But they liked him so much (ahem, thought he was so hot, LOL) that they created the role of Frank for him. I assume they made the character Greek because the actor is Greek-American. My impression of the original Frank/Harley/Cooper dynamic is that they were a new iteration of the Reva/Roxy/Shayne dynamic. Close siblings who had been abandoned by a parent. (Altered so that Frank and Harley were abadoned by their mother instead of father, and later they find out that the father they thought was dead was actually alive). Definitely, Harley was an attempt to create a "Mini-Reva." Didn't they think Buzz was killed in Vietnam? So they grew up thinking their dad was a hero and he turned out to be a deadbeat? If so, yeah, they forgave him WAY too fast.

Many actors talk about how she could be very helpful to other actors. She would have helped him find the character, I'm sure. She knew him, she was comfortable with him. I definitely think it would have worked. (Though Davis probably is not sorry he wasn't cast. He certainly made a lot more money doing The Nanny). If I was picking an actor from Texas to play Alan, I would have gone with Donald May, even though he was a tad too old for the part. I gather he was done with soaps after Texas, though.

Alexandra Neil (Rose) was also a former Texas cast member. He never ended up being cast, but Beverlee McKinsey wanted Daniel Davis, who played Elliot Carrington on Texas, to replace Bernau as Alan. Yeah, the guy who played the butler on The Nanny. I thought that was crazy, too, at first. I watched some episodes of Texas and I could kind of see it. He played Elliot as a very urbane type, it could have worked. (Let's put it this way: he wouldn't have been a worse Alan than Raines).

Josh and Trish Lewis had been on the show since 1981. HB and Billy and Lewis Oil were talked about quite a bit at Spaulding, as early as 1981. HB and Billy were introduced on screen in 1983. Reva and Mindy were not mentioned until they were introduced in 1983. Probably one of the reasons the establishment of the Lewises was so successful is because they didn't drop out of nowhere. A lot of the tension between Josh and his father, for instance, was eluded to long before HB hit town. The show was strong because they wrote some strong storylines (and some not so strong) to sweep out a lot of characters. 1985 is about the time they finished decimating the OG Bauers (I also consider Johnny a fake Bauer) and the Reardons. Charita passed away, and Bernau and Newman left (willingly, I assume). That left a lot of holes that were hard to patch over. I agree it did not hurt the show in the short-term, but over the long-term is was disastrous. I don't think it's an coincidence that the show didn't really start to recover until MZ and MG came back as Roger and Holly, because at least they were a tether to the show's strong past.

I like all the FOJ actors. It wasn't their fault if they didn't work out on GL. The Texas invasion--again, I don't majorly dislike any of the actors. There were a few people who were let go who probably needed to go. It was the decimation of the Bauers and Reardons that I hated. (Chelsea to me is a fake Reardon). So I guess I would say that was more egregious, because even though the show did pretty well for a few years, I think this was the genesis of their long-term problems.

That was the one where everyone in town--literally--came to the airport to say goodbye to her. I thought it was funny, but at least she got to say goodbye to everyone. At least Hillary's and Leslie Ann's deaths were part of an ongoing plot (the Barbados mystery and the Dreaming Death story). Never understood why Maeve stayed on the show a good year past her usefulness to the story. Frankly, I think she wasn't even worth killing off. They could have had her and Ben leave town. (Then maybe we would have been spared the awful grown-up Ben story). I can put up with Jackie being killed off in a plane crash rather than the planned alternative, which was Carrie's alternate personality murdering her. But she was an important character for a long time and should have had a better send-off. Hope's was terrible. She signed the divorce papers, told Alan off, then walked out of his office and was never seen again. Both times Alan was written out was stupid. Running away from Federalis into the jungle, and going on a completely ridiculous and out-of-character rampage and being sent to prison. (Not to mention the end of his character, dying because he was the only blood match to save Phillip, who had copious blood relatives who could have been a match). While Roger's first exit was very memorable, they waited years after MZ passed away to have him simply die off screen and all his enemies joke and cheer about it. I'm not sure why they even bothered. Did it impact the storyline at all? I don't think so.

Kind of. It seemed pretty obvious for a time that they were testing an Alex/Mike/Lillian triangle. No idea why Stewart left. Maybe someone has the gossip. I always assumed that he was swept out with most of the other actors/characters who were dominant during the Dobson/Marland eras.

I don't criticize the Dobsons a whole lot, but pairing Mike with a woman who couldn't have children was also short-sighted. Maybe they planned later for Mike to make another woman pregnant while he and Elizabeth were together/apart. (Jackie? Anne?) Of course, they couldn't know they would be abruptly switched to writing another soap. None of Marland's attempts to pair him with someone worked out. (And there were the rumors that Stewart didn't like any of the actresses/characters they were pairing him with). As has been pointed out, there was no reason why off-screen Mike couldn't have remarried and fathered more children. But on GL, characters taken off the canvas went into some kind of cryogenic storage where their lives never again progressed. 😁

That's hilarious! That period when the scabs took over was pretty dreadful, so I believe it. 😂

From what I remember, she definitely was hiding something. She was always talking on the phone to someone. The impression I got was that she was speaking to someone younger, like a sibling. No way to know if the scabs made that up or if they were working from Long's bible. Maybe she was supposed to be Rita's kid originally? Although that's a character Long never wrote for, so probably not.

It is very jarring to watch the dubbed episodes. But I'll take what I can get. 😊 It helps to plug in the gaps in my memory. I almost cried when I saw the Italian ones didn't have captioning. I can solve that problem! Peggy remarried after divorcing Roger, Billy, now Will, has taken his stepfather's name. Just like Blake had her stepfather's name when she came back to SF. Which reminds me: did they ever explain where the name Blake came from? Did she just use it because she liked it or was it her middle name?

That's so funny that you posted this because last night I was on the German channel watching episodes from this time period. I was determined to find the scene where Ross demands Diane explain why she wants Phillip left out of the will because the copy on the Spauldingfield channel loses the audio at just that moment. I found it. I don't know if it's the wonky translation, but I STILL DON'T GET IT. Something something about getting Phillip out of the way (she assumed Amanda was already out of the way because of her breakdown). Then all she would have to do is get Alan Michael (a newborn!) out of the way and she would control Spaulding. It makes ZERO sense. I was thinking since she had caught Ross buying up stock, she should have forced him to continue doing it so she could do a takeover. That probably wasn't realistic, either, but at least it makes some sense. Marland was not bad at doing character-driven plots, but when he did something totally plot-driven it stuck out like a sore thumb. Also, I noticed in this scene between Carrie and Diane they act like they don't know each other, when later on they retconned a whole past association between them. 🤔

I really like this idea, because Roger had an actual relationship with Billy. IIRC, Roger was fond of him and a decent stepfather. Which is one of the reasons Peggy took his side during the rape trial. (Roger was sh!tty in many departments, but he genuinely liked kids). @alwaysAMC You are now irrevocably down the rabbit hole. 😂 Yeah, the story is insane, but it doesn't last that long, so there's that.

I think (but I'm not 100% sure) that it was mentioned at some point that Lainie had three kids. Regardless, they could have retconned it because most would not have remembered (as I do not, lol) as her married life took place off screen. The would have been great. Though two problems: ANOTHER Bill/Billy on the canvas, there were already so many! 😂 The second problem is they probably would have had to recast Peggy, as Fran Myers was mostly writing soaps after she left as Peggy. Though I think she did still occasionally act. Maybe she could have done a guest turn to reintroduce her son to the canvas.

I briefly thought about Alan Michael. He really should have been the head of the next generation of Spaulding, not Phillip, and he should have had a family. But it seemed like every regime preferred Phillip, as they had him knock up as many women as possible.

I adored Melissa. She so impressed me from the baby storyline. Yes, they should have groomed her to eventually become the head of the Reardon family in SF. Not sure I like the idea of her with Rick, but that's probably because I am forever on the Rick and Mindy train. Although with the problematic recasts after Simms left, that would not have worked out. Here's an idea--have Rita return with Ed's son. That should have happened at some point anyway. In spite of Rita's humble beginnings, she would probably see Bridget as too low for her kid. She always was very upwardly-mobile.

The short that I saw said her intention was mainly to record news programs, but she recorded everything 24/7. By "everything" I assume that means network TV, not cable.

So I just watched a YT short about a woman named Marian Stokes who single-handedly recorded EVERYTHING broadcast on TV from 1977-2012 (her death). She did it 24/7. She did this because she was afraid technology would eventually be able to erase history. (Not a totally crazy notion, as it turned out). Of course my first thought was: SHE RECORDED EVERY GUIDING LIGHT EPISODE FROM 1977 UNTIL IT WENT OFF THE AIR! Apparently everything is being digitized by an internet archive company; they've been working on it since she passed away. And, yes, I did wonder if it will ever be available to the public. 😊