DeeVee

That would have been a great outcome--core family member joining her uncle in his practice. Or maybe becoming a prosecutor and going up against him in court. Yet another squandered opportunity for some really interesting drama.

Lezlie never bothered me, but Elizabeth was a pivotal character in a major storyline that went on for years. I thought getting rid of the character was insane. Recast the role if you don't like the actress. But I think the actual problem was Marland didn't like the Phillip baby switch story to begin with, which is why it never got resolved until they cast Grant and Long came in. By then, Jackie was dead, Hope was on her way off the canvas, and Phillip had virtually no relationship with Elizabeth anymore. So many beats of that story that never got played.

Oh, so it wasn't just Marland who didn't like her. 😆 Unlike with Alan, where they could easily reverse the "Marland Redemption Leading to Male Neutering Syndrome," they couldn't do that with Ross for one simple reason: he was the ONLY regular attorney character on the show for years. So he had to take Mike's place in the role of righteous upholder of the law. It's another one of those cases where you wonder why no one stepped back and said, hey, we could use at least one more main character on this show who's an attorney. Something like that also happened on Y&R, where after Lauralee Bell went into semi-retirement Michael Baldwin was the only attorney--so he went back and forth from defense, to corporate, to D.A. because there was literally no one else to take those roles. (He became D.A. even though he was a convicted felon--and I'm mad about truth serums that work when they spill on you, LOL).

What kind of drug works if it spills on you? Yeah, I know, we're talking about a show that had a drug that ages you, whatever. This is one of the reasons I abandoned most soaps by the late 90s. Be SOMEWHAT realistic, FFS. I love sci-fi, but I'll watch sci-fi for that. I'm a BIG fan of using history and wish GL had used it a lot more, but why in the ever loving heck is RICK getting letters from India? They were not friends. 🤦‍♀️ Again, Ross had almost nothing to do with India, she was almost exclusively in the Spauldings' orbit. The whole storyline was ridiculous from beginning to end. No matter how bonkers Holly got, I can't imagine her kidnapping children. One of many really low points going forward on this show.

Justin and Elizabeth were married sometime in the autumn of 1979 (in one of the August 1979 episodes recently uploaded, Jackie and Elizabeth discuss Justin and Elizabeth's impending marriage). Ross was already working on Roger's defense in the rape case, which started earlier in the year. In fact, Jackie had to already have been married to Alan when Ross was introduced. It's likely Jerry just forgot that when he came on the show Jackie was his ex-sister-in-law. Or maybe it was a flashback scene? At any rate, he was kind of a rotter when they first brought him on the show, even to the point of sleazy. But that started to change when he got involved with Eve (already happening in the August 1979 eps) and later when he regretted somewhat how he treated Holly during the rape case. It wasn't until Marland started writing the character that he really turned around, because he still did dickish things like messing around with the stock Amanda inherited.

Yes, that is correct. Ed's house was next door to the Spaulding mansion, which came into play in stories several times. Rita and Alan would spark each other through the fence. I think he let her use his tennis court, while he and Hope would use Ed and Rita's pool. (Why wouldn't the Spaulding mansion have a pool. I mean, really. But as a way to force certain characters together I guess it made sense). Also, the proximity of the houses became pivotal during the Roger storyline when he came back to town after Alan helped him fake his death the first time. Christina (later Blake), then a little girl, was living with Ed and Rita while Holly was in prison for "killing" Roger. Roger kept track of Christina by hiding out at the Spaulding mansion, much to Alan's distress.

By the way, that's a YouTube account. They just uploaded some episodes from August 1979. Not sure yet if they're some that have already been uploaded to YT. That is the period when Alan and Hope are stranded on the island, Jackie has a miscarriage, and Rita is upset that she isn't having orgasms during sex with Ed.

Ooo, oooh, a little Christmas present for GL fans, check this out:

I believe it was mentioned a few times that Mary was named Mary Maeve after her mother.

As a former New Yorker, he SEEMED fairly normal back then, though there were red flags (i.e. he divorced his first wife to marry his cousin). 9/11 skyrocketed his national popularity--people even talked about him becoming president one day. It was not unusual for the mayor of NYC to be a national figure back then. Late 90s, even before 9/11, he was already known and somewhat popular outside NYC, so it's not that surprising he would get booked for a gig on a soap.

She briefly was trying to get a photography career going. Did they EVER mention that again after her return? I don't recall it. Since they were never going to get that out of Raines' Alan and Zaslow was gone, the show DESPERATELY needed someone like that. It makes you wonder why they never seemed to stand back during those years to look at what the show was lacking: a matriarch, a likable b!tch, a la Erica Kane, a suave, slightly Machiavellian businessman (or woman, like Lucinda Walsh or Katherine Chancellor--Vanessa could have filled that part), more kids born that would eventually help prop up their core families. Sigh.

I've mostly only watched BTG this year, so my picks are going to be confined to that: Best Couple: Dani and Andre. Bill and Ashley Who? I love that they made them a for real couple. Worst Couple: Ashley and Derek, with Jacob and Naomi a close second. Snore City. Hottest New Pairing: It's early days, but I have great hopes for the Eva/Izaiah pairing Most Entertaining Character: Shanice. Leslie/Dana is a little too over-the-top for me. Shanice somehow makes even boring-@ss characters like Derek and Ashley a tad more watchable. Most Overexposed Character: Ashley. We don't like her. Just stop. Stop trying to make her happen. Most surprising twist: Hayley being a Black Widow villainess. I got to admit, they fooled me. I thought the phony pregnancy thing was insanely stupid, until they made it make sense. Bravo. Best Casting: Ambyr Michelle as Eva. She is fantastic. I would be very surprised if she stayed on the show longer than the run of her contract. Wort Casting: Alex Alegria as Tomas. I get casting for looks more than acting skill, but he's so dull that I can't believe women are fighting each other to win this guy for anything other than a one night stand. Either dump the character or recast him, PLEASE. Best Enemies: Kat and Eva. Hopefully, it's dawning on them that Tomas is bringing this potentially great soap rivalry down. Either, way, I love watching the two of them go at it. It's not just two girls being b!tchy with each other, there's a lot of emotion and real hurt. Most Ruined Character: Vanessa. Ugh, ugh, ugh. Unless this is going to be another big plot twist, where she's trying to get evidence against Joey for killing Doug, her downfall to mobster moll is kind of gross to watch.

I always assumed she was brought back for the "Blake is Christina" reveal in anticipation of Roger's return, but I never heard that was supposed to be a temporary gig. IIRC, that happened Christmas 1988. I think Zaslow returned January 1989.

I don't think it was her decision. That came about because instead of doing a permanent Alan recast they decided to bring back Roger. Same with Blake being Christina. I don't think that was Long's original plan for her.

If Roger, Holly, and Christina (Blake) hadn't been written out long before Kobe arrived, I'm guessing they probably wouldn't have had the longevity that they eventually ended up having on the show. (Zaslow of course would have been on much longer if he had not become ill).

Nola started as a stock character that was around a LOT on soaps back then--the poor girl who dreamed of raising herself up out of her lower class status, usually through marriage. That character has pretty much disappeared now, partly because it seems a bit regressive, and partly because if you're not rich on a soap, you will be eventually. Bobbie was the same on GH--the Laura/Scotty/Bobbie triangle was basically transplanted to GL with Morgan/Kelly/Nola. So I don't think it was so much that she lost her edge, and it did make sense for her to be a dreamer. The positive reaction to Quint/Nola was unexpected. Supposedly, Marland always planned to put Kelly and Nola together (I totally don't get why, but whatever). And it was kind of interesting (for a while) to see the girl fantasizing about being the heroine in a movie actually becoming a heroine in an Indiana Jones style movie. But that doesn't go very far on a soap. Bobbie lost out in the Scotty sweepstakes but she went through a lot of stuff over the years. Making Nola a happy wife and mother of two put her in a corner. I'm not saying they couldn't have come up with stories for her, but clearly Kobe and Long were not as enamored with her as Marland was.

True, I remember in the beginning that Bea had a much harder edge (and was shown sucking back beers with Floyd). You could understand a little bit why Nola was embarrased by her origins. Later, it was more like she was unreasonable in her disdain for her family. It is a shame they lost their edge.

It's been a tough couple of days after the deaths of Tony Geary and Rob Reiner...I was always a GL viewer first and foremost, but I did keep up with GH through the magic of the VCR back in the day. I came across something really interesting, the very first scene where Geary appeared on GH. This is very brief (and there's also a sweet little tribute to Geary from the late Jackie Zeman at the end...man, that show has had a lot of major losses), but I immediately got Tony and Nola Reardon vibes from it: I believe Marland was the writer at the time (I've seen conflicting dates, but he was definitely there in 1978). And it got me thinking...Geary and Zeman were on their show as long as they wanted to be on the show, the characters stayed on for DECADES. Shouldn't that have been true of the Reardons, too? Of course, I don't compare Beecroft to Geary, but Lisa Brown was a breakout star on GL, and it's just frustrating that they couldn't figure out a way to keep her on the show as much as she wanted to be on it. She deserved that as much as Zimmer ever did, IMO. And also Mo, of course, we've talked about that a million times. As much as I've criticized Marland about certain things, he created some incredible characters on the various soaps he worked on. I just wish GL had found a way to keep his best ones on more consistently over the years.

Did she and Crystal Chappell get along? It seemed she mostly disliked the actresses who were the third wheel in her love storylines.

I hate to say it, but Zimmer probably didn't like anyone who had the chance to steal the spotlight from her. Coleman was going to be playing a crazy character who was going to get a lot of opportunities to emote--and take time for that away from Zimmer.

Yeah, it is odd they never resolved the story about her missing child. I do remember that she was very jealous of someone Mike was involved with (maybe Jackie?) and she got her on tape saying something not flattering. At the last minute she decided not to give it to Mike, admitting to herself he was never going to love her. For a hot minute it looked like they were going to turn her into an obsessed spurned potential lover, but they chickened out, I guess. Then she just basically suffered in the background. And they did have the odd "frienemy" relationship between her and Diane. Eventually they replaced her with Lainie as Mike's assistant...who also kind of faded away.

Here is a post that sums up much of the ending of Spence Jeffers time on the show, it explains a lot of what you're asking about: https://boards.soapoperanetwork.com/topic/32166-guiding-light-discussion-thread/page/1160/#findComment-2021617 Paul has posted many summaries of GL storylines during the 1970s, you can search his posts for more.

LOL, I thought that might have been the beginning of the time travel story, but I realized just now that's much later, after all the San Christobel stuff was introduced. Here's a funny (and totally unrelated thing) that I discovered over on Wikipedia while looking for something else: In the early 70s, Hope Bauer had a close friend named Christie Rogers...played by Ariana Munker. Who would later go on to play CHRISTINE Valere. Valere of course being her married name. I know, this is probably a TOTAL coincidence, but one can't help but wonder if this was deliberate, and about the possibilities if it were. There was talk around that time that they were considering bringing back Hope. Wouldn't that have been something if Hope had returned to find out Alan was involved with her childhood best friend? That would have been WAY more interesting than all the art theft garbage. Oh, the missed opportunities...

Yes, I believe that is an accurate assessment. Amanda being Alan's child was revealed to the audience when Brandon was killed off (the first time, LOL). I think this was after Alan and Hope were rescued, so it should have been sometime around autumn 1979. It was definitely before the Dobsons left. A mysterious woman swathed in heavy black veils showed up at Brandon's funeral, and everyone wondered who she was. The obvious implication being it was Amanda's real mother. Marland picked up on that later on, doing a flashback where Jennifer was wearing the black hat and veils and arguing with her husband about going to the funeral. But as far as the rest of Jennifer's backstory that played out once he took over, I'd be VERY surprised if it wasn't all his invention. It just seems like the kind of thing he would come up with: Alan involved with the two sisters, one of them unnecessarily dying, Jennifer being consigned to a jerk husband and the humiliations of the poors because she once slipped off the straight and narrow, coming to Springfield, rather foolishly going to work for Lucille to be close to Amanda and dodging Alan for a year so she wouldn't be found out. He did like a convoluted backstory. I have no idea where the Dobsons were going to go with Amanda's mother. They might not have even worked it out yet, because the next part of Alan's story was his involvement with Hope and likely an affair with Rita, which they had foreshadowed for quite some time. Oh, yeah, the affair with Rita--that's something that Marland could have used from the Dobsons' projections. I loved Rita Lloyd but I don't how much further they could have gone with Lucille. She killed Brandon (sort of) and tried to kill Ben, at least twice. It was definitely in character for her to try to kill Jennifer.

Oh, yeah, I forgot they wrote the Dee/John story, a REALLY poor imitation of their Holly/Roger story. For some reason the women (well, men, too) they wrote on ATWT didn't have the same nuance as on GL. You can't just transplant a story to a different set of characters--a big part of why Holly and Roger's story worked so well was the long history the characters had: Holly, Roger, Ed, Rita. Brad was such a snooze that when he and Dee finally got together they flopped so hard the characters broke up for good almost instantly. They tried to make Maggie, the lawyer who defended John, into a female version of Ross. It just did not work. I agree, it would have been better if Dee had fallen in love with John the way Hope fell for Alan, because of the history. Marland did use history with Alan and Hope's story, mining Mike's resentment for Alan. I will totally give him credit for that. I'm not saying I hated what Marland did with their story, I was actually pretty into it at the time, only that the Dobsons had a different plan. Both story choices were valid, IMO. (Except for the redemption, thing, LOL, I never understood why you would neuter a character like Alan).