DeeVee

I finished watching Hope's exit story on the German channel, and I have to say... What a WASTED opportunity. It was so well done. It would have been even better if it hadn't been accelerated and compressed, probably in order to get Elvera out by the end of her contract. Because of that, some really important story beats were missing. Can I believe Alan would wake up one day next to Hope in their comfortable middle class existence and decide he'd had enough of playing suburban husband and dad? Yes. Definitely, the framework was already being laid down by PFS and other writers before Long took over. Even the scabs during the brief writers strike in 1983. (There was a really good scene between Hope and Phillip where she comforts him because Alan is too distracted to pay attention to him. She says something like, "He'll come back around to you. Just like he'll always come back around to me eventually." Yikes, that's a sad thing to admit about your marriage). It was a perfectly valid story choice to have Alan revert to being the crumb he was while he was married to Elizabeth. I totally believe he would have wearied of trying to fit into the mold he needed to in order to be with Hope. Again, it was just the rushing and lack of subtlety in the change that bothered me. Plus, just from a storytelling perspective, Alan is much more useful as an egomaniacal narcissist, because that's the type of character who drives story. Once they get past setting the story up, I was very impressed by the writing. The way Alan manipulated and gaslighted Hope was so awful, I wanted her to shoot him. He was SO cruel, tearing down her confidence, one minute bemoaning the state of their marriage, then shutting her down every time she brought up reconciliation. She starts having a flirtation with Warren and Alan shuts it down, mainly because it's rebuilding her confidence. (Yeah, Warren was a scumbag, but some potentially juicy stuff got put to the side, like Warren juggling two neurotic women, Hope and Lesley Ann, while still bootlicking Alan). He also manipulated Trish--dangling a promotion while never really intending to give her one, seducing her by crying on her shoulder about Phillip finding out the truth about his paternity. I feel like they could have skipped the whole acoholism thing because the resolution of it was ridiculously simplistic. Her family intervened, she went to one AA meeting, and she was sober and stronger. It was enough that he was ripping apart her self-esteem. She has a last scene with Alan where she satifyingly tells him off, walks out of his office...and as far as I can tell is never seen again. They must have mentioned at some point that she and Alan Michael left SF, but I couldn't find the scene. There could have been so much more. The story could have gone beyond this, and Hope could have been put into new storylines as an evolved and stronger character. I think the other person who got badly treated here besides Elvera was Rebecca Hollen. I'm pretty sure this is the only major storyline she got her entire time on GL, she did a great job, and after it was done she faded back into the woodwork. She mentioned on the Locher Room that she and Jerry verDorn wanted their characters to be in a romance, but other than teasing it for a while nothing really happened. Then after this really good, really strong character-driven story...they put Alan in that dumb, plot-driven Dreaming Death story. 🙄

I don't recall specific scenes between them, but Vanessa hired Joe Bradley to break into Alan's room at the club while he was separated from Hope. He found a letter Rita wrote to Alan where she declared her love for him. Vanessa sent the letter to Ed anonymously. This is just as Rita left town after the affair with Alan. Before that, Vanessa was at the Spaulding mansion and the hospital a lot. They were both Sarah's patients. They had to have crossed paths.

They never took it there, but Pilon was kind of dour, and she lightened him up. The way they were using each other was interesting. They could even be a bit funny. Not every relationship on a soap has to be star-crossed lovers, but they had the potential to be an interesting pair, IMO.

Me, too. I love the Reardons and hate how they were diminished. They never should have gotten rid of Bea. There's your missing matriarch. If you're going to bring back Nola, have her BE Nola! Yes, she's older, been through some stuff, but the thing about her was she always saw herself as the heroine in a movie. She would NEVER go after Buzz! That's like going after an older version of Floyd! I think you were the one who said she should be a romance writer. That is PERFECT. She could have her fantasies again, only now they would be from her books (and would be WAY more entertaining than that dull novel Phillip wrote). Wouldn't it be wild if she was successful? And that the problem in her marriage wasn't infidelity, but that Quint disparaged her work? So many possibilities...

The plan was always to replace him or write Alan out. Maybe if he had been a hit with the audience, they might have kept him on. But the audience was expecting Bernau back, because they lied about how ill he was, so he really didn't have a chance to win them over. I will say that he and Jean Carol had a nice vibe, MUCH better than with KZ. If they wanted to do Alan in a relationship with a lower class woman, IMO, that had more potential.

I have to say, once Marland left, it was kind amazing to see almost every one of the do-goody types stop being so do-goody. Unfortunately, most were then purged from the show. Watching 1983 now. I LOVED watching Morgan giving Kelly, Amanda, Jennifer, and even Hillary the finger. Jennifer Cook was so blah before because the character was blah. They finally gave her some spark, and then it was "into the garbage pail with you." Same with Hope. I still hate the sudden, unmotivated change in Alan where he loved her one day and was emotionally abusing her the next. But now that I'm seeing more of the storyline, watching Hope unravel and having to face her fairy tale life was never real is quite compelling. It was stupid to use that just as an excuse to write her off the show instead of letting this legacy character evolve and move into new stories.

It's so funny how your reaction to actors can change over time. I couldn't STAND Tylo back then. I loathed that whole Indiana Jones/Jane Eyre hybrid storyline, so I didn't like him. Now, I watch the same stories, and I think, dang, he was a handsome dude.

This is SO funny that you bring up beards. When Alan was first introduced on GL, I didn't think that much of him, as far as handsomeness. I thought Bernau was attractive, but that was about it. Then, when they did the desert island story, he grew a beard. And I was, like, hmm, he looks really good with the beard. Of course, as soon as Alan and Hope were rescued, he shaved off the beard. I was SO sad. It's no secret that I did not care for Daniel Pilon as Alan. BUT...towards the end of his time on the show, he grew a beard. And I was like, hmm, he looks really good with the beard. I could maybe get into him as Alan with the beard. And then, of course, he was permanently off the show. Fast-forward five years, and they announce Alan has been recast. I watch the first episode and see Ron Raines, who has a beard...and it does NOTHING for me. 15 years, he kept the beard the whole time...NOTHING. 😂 I don't mean to always be picking on him, but like you said, just not my type, I guess. 🤷‍♀️

Feature role usually means a supporting role. Sounds like this was a low-budget film. I don't see it listed on his IMDB page. This probably means it never found a distributor and never got any kind of release. Or possibly it went straight to video. You might have found it at Blockbuster back in the day, but the fate of those was often a quick trip from the bargain bin to landfill. ☹️ I worked for film distribution companies during the 80s and 90s. There was a pretty healthy independent film scene back then, but getting movies made was still very difficult. It was even more difficult to get a distribution deal, especially without stars or big-name directors.

I found these pictures from when Robin played Hope while poking around Pinterest:

LOL, I never said You Light Up My Life was a good movie. BTW, I don't know if this has been mentioned yet, but Michael did theater, including musical theater. I saw a show he did in 1980 called Onward Victoria. It was about Victoria Woodhull, a suffragette who was the first woman to run for president in the US. Michael played the male lead. Jill Eikenberry played Woodhull. What I remember most about it is Michael's tremendous stage presence. Even though the show closed opening night (I saw one of the preview performances), Eikenberry and other surviving cast members did a concert performance of the score a few years ago. So I guess it has a kind of cult following.

O.M.G. I forgot about that! Yes, I'm old enough to remember how popular that movie was when it came out. But it was theme song that surpassed it in popularity. (It was on the radio ALL THE TIME). In spite of its box office success, the movie was a critical flop, which would explain why the movie's stars (including MZ) did not get a career boost out of it.

I watched an episode recently where she mentions she was in the same situation as as Fletch was in with Ben after Maeve died because she never adopted Michelle.

One word: amnesia. Yes, it's trite, yes, it's a cliche, but it's way better than Mo being dead-dead. If we can accept TWO characters who dated each other surviving falls off a cliff, we can accept this, too. 😂

AND... she's pregnant! (Why not? There have been way crazier soap miracle pregnancies). Roger has a double reason to hide her because he has always felt Ed robbed him of his relationship with Chrissie.

She was legally married to him and lived with him for years in that house. She absolutely had a claim on it, at least half of it. And Ed openly living with Holly and committing adultery? She could have probably won the house in a divorce case. The problem for her was that Ed and Claire never allowed her to adopt Michelle. Ed could have used that as leverage. All that because she briefly lusted after Fletch in her heart. When you think about it, an Ed/Mo breakup at this point should have been way jucier and more dramatic than it ended up being.

Now that I've figured out to use the translate subtitles feature on YT, I've been watching Springfield Story and had a few thoughts: 1. I started with some 1983 episodes. Most that I've watched so far seem to be from the brief period where Pat Falken Smith wrote the show after Marland's exit. I kind of like what she was doing. The break-up of Kelly and Morgan's marriage was well done, actually exploring the inappropriateness of their relationship in the beginning. Same with the subtle but obvious cracks starting in Alan and Hope's marriage, which was handled in a very ham-handed way once Kobe and Long took over. 2. I don't recall ever seeing the episodes where Wayne Tippit briefly replaced Chris Bernau as Alan. I remember him quite well from Search for Tomorrow. Even though he wasn't that much older than Bernau, he came across as a lot older and the scenes with Hope were a little on the icky side. 3. I was impressed by scenes where Hope was really letting Alan have it about something or other, then I realized it seemed that way because she was screaming at him in German, LOL. 4. They erroneously credited Jennifer Cook as Kristen Vigard. Ouch. 5. I am SO confused by the story about Maureen's ex-boyfriend who showed up just as Ed proposed to her. (Matt? Is that his name?) The translations are hard to follow (I was joking with my roommate that it might be easier to follow them in German) but he comes across as a complete jerk. A cute one, but a jerk. Not sure if he wants her to go with him to support him while he does his residency, or that he is offended by the idea of her supporting him while he does his residency. Glad he didn't last long. 6. Hope set Ed up with TRISH? What? Wasn't she still dating Mike? It seemed that way when Alan was pursuing Trish later that year. Continuity issue because of the writer change, I guess? 7. I switched over to a different playlist when I noticed there was one for 1981. I thought, GREAT! Maybe they have the episodes with Alan and Rita's affair! Darn it, no. 8. As difficult as it is to follow some of the dialogue, I really appreciate this because it's plugging in a bunch of holes. So I'll keep trying to detangle the translations.

Andy came back to SF in 1980 or 1981, I think? He was introduced just before Trish Lewis, who followed him to SF because she was his estranged wife. Andy had the appearance of a golden boy, charming, handsome, affable. He got close to Alan by proposing writing a biography about him. In reality he was a creep in every possible way. He abused Trish, did the same to Katie, who he dated for a while, and was blackmailing half of SF, it seems, including Alan. I think he broke into Sarah's office to get dirt on people. When Alan and Hope separated, he ingratiated himself with her, possibly hoping he could marry her after she got a divorce settlement from Alan. He was eventually caught and sent to prison. His reign of villainy was fairly short. I think they were hoping to make him into a Roger-like villain, but he never really clicked.

Not going to disagree on any of this, but 1988 was a year with some major upheavals. Bernau's exit, a long writers strike, then after Long & Co. returned they had to find a way to insert Roger into the story. So I give them a little bit of a break for 88. (There is no excuse for the mess that was 87, though). I was just thinking while watching Reva and Josh investigating Sonni in Venezuela that Sonni and Roger had BOTH survived a fall off a cliff. Too bad Forbes left, it's like they were made for each other. 😂

Thanks for the link! I had fun looking around at other images and article clippings from GL back in the day! Didn't someone say they wanted to see a picture of Jordan Clarke when he was playing Tim Ryan on GL? We'll, here's a picture of him with Lenore Kasdorf (Rita) and Janet Grey (Eve):

No, it was a guy named Brad, who I think was married to her sister Annie? And after all that drama, when Brad and Dee had a chance to be together, it was a total bust and they broke up almost immediately. Not the Dobsons' best work. I'm pretty sure Ian had already died when Dee married John. The lack of care when it came to naming characters on GL has always been a pet peeve of mine. That was definitely a big one. A while ago we were making fun of all the young girls the same age with names that start with "M." Someone mentioned earlier Claire's brother. When Michelle was born, they were going to name her Samantha after Claire's brother Sam. Claire changed her mind and put "Bertha Bauer Ramsey" on the birth certificate. Then Fletcher started calling her B. B. (or Bibi, or Bebe, don't ask me). Then suddenly Claire was telling everyone to call the baby Michelle. CLEARLY, someone remembered at the last minute that Justin and Jackie's daughter was named Samantha, and that it would be awkward if they brought her into the story later (as they did eventually). Then someone thought it would be a good idea to have a tribute to Bert/Charita. Then they realized "Bert" or even "B.B." were not names for a modern soap character, so they quickly slapped Michelle on her. (I guess as a tribute to her Uncle Mike?) Then there were multiple Williams, Billys, Bills, Wills . . . Somebody really needed to gift the show a baby name book.

When the Dobsons moved to ATWT they did another marital rape storyline with John and Dee Stewart. So at that time, yes, I think they were modeling him at least somewhat on Roger. That story was a major disappointment to me, because they made it a "he said, she said" story, with Dee eventually admitting she was "mistaken." Which makes me think that MZ and MG did really have an influence on how their story played out on GL, as it's possible the Dobsons would have taken that road with that one, too.

This is exactly what they did with Bernau's exit. They pretended there was a chance he would come back. With Zaslow there was also talk about temporary medical leave, blah, blah, blah, but from things MADD said, it's clear to me they knew he wasn't going to recover, and we also know they did not want to write his illness into the show. The reason they didn't get away with it with Zaslow is Zaslow was outspoken about his illness and treatment by TPTB. As far as I know, Bernau never spoke about it, probably because he wanted to keep his illness private.

That's another thing I noticed during this period. They were trying to do some screwball-style comedy. Some of it actually worked with Harley and Alan Michael. Harley told him she needed to use protection. While she was in the bathroom he was all excited taking off his clothes and drapping himself on the bed. Then she comes out fully dressed and walks out the door. (I'll admit I chuckled. Beth and Carl had nice chemistry). But they also tried with Phillip and Blake, which for me went over like a lead balloon.

It seems like they were repeating some older stories. Before, Johnny was fascinated by Chistine while ignoring down to earth Roxy. Now they have Johnny fascinated by Blake while ignoring down to earth Chelsea. And Meredith is like a repeat of Claire. SO similar in personality, she's also a doctor, has some strong parental issues, and ends up having a baby by the wrong man. Alexandra Neil, who played Rose, was another Texas alumni. Maybe they just wanted to throw some work her way. (Throw away is a good way to describe her relationship with Rusty and her storyline). Sure, I'll cut them some slack because that year had so many upheavals: the strike, Bernau's exit, the writers having to fix what the scabs did (ESPECIALLY the Sonni/Will thing), then having to find a way to bring back Roger. It was a pretty big mess.