DeeVee

Hey, you left out the BEST PART: Kyle's father was a Catholic Cardinal, who Sally the Madam "let go" so he could take his destined path as a priest. One of my favorite bad GL scenes is the reunion between Kyle and his father who is a Father. Kyle's friend David, who was just a TAD too fond of Kyle...come on, we all know it. (If only they had made that more explicit, that might have livened this puppy up). It's a toss-up between Infinity and Dreaming Death, both obvious tries at catching some of GH's viewers. The difference, of course, is that GH had wildly popular characters like Luke, Laura, Scorpio, etc. And GL had...Jim Reardon, Hillary, Claire and Fletch. Lujack and Beth were popular, so they rewarded them by killing off Lujack. But, yes, at least Infinity was based in a family conflict, unlike Dreaming Death.

For me, it was the Dobson era. I didn't see all of it; I watched sporadically from late 1976 (I was in high school and we didn't have a VCR yet), becoming a regular viewer in early 1979 during the Roger/Holly rape story. Unfortunately, except for 1979, not much is available from this time period now. While I complain about it a lot, I mostly enjoyed the Marland tenure, and also the early Ryder/Long era. The Dobsons created the Spauldings, they turned Roger and Holly into one of the greatest toxic couplings on soaps, they wrote all the characters, but especially the women, as very layered and nuanced. Not everything they did was great (they are the reason Sara McIntyre went from major heroine to side character) but overall to me that era of GL was the most engrossing and best written. 1985-1986 was an awful period. As mentioned, they gutted the cast and many new characters flopped. There were frequent HW changes. Long returning to the show in 1987 improved it, but she inherited some weird stuff (i.e. the Sonni storyline) and this is when Reva started eating up a lot of the show. Then Zaslow and Garrett returned. It was a shot in the arm for the show. 1989 was not a great year (the wild contortions they did to write Roger back in and write Alan out were the major problem). Then there was a regime change and Zimmer left. That period is considered one of their best, at least creatively. By the mid 90s, I had dropped off as a regular viewer (this was for all the soaps I had been watching; this was the start of the genre's major decline). If they had done a decent Alan recast and had not let the returned Zimmer take over the show, I might have stuck with it. I moved in with my mom during the late 90s when she was ill. She still watched the show. So I got treated to the clone and San Christohell stories and other delights of their declining era, LOL.

Honestly, I can't see Lujack dressed up as Prince Charming. Or Beth even wanting a wedding like that. It was definitely a Mindy thing. Which possibly means it would not have been inflicted upon us if VI hadn't left the show. Seriously, I can't think of any other soap wedding that even comes close to being this over-the-top. Not even any of Erica Kane's weddings. Cliff and Nina's--MAYBE. But no one was dressed up like a Disney prince.

No. He was probably the least popular Ed. His recast coincided with the storyline where Ed made Claire pregnant with Michelle. I think that p!ssed a lot of viewers off. Clearly, they were trying to make Ed more conventionally attractive and less dour. Also, I think maybe some felt he was playing Ed as though he was Chuck Tyler. As @Spoon pointed out, there were SO many major recasts around that time. There was nothing at all wrong with Bolger; as pointed out, he was handsome and sexy. But the storylines combined with the strangeness of the new actors worked against them, IMO. Oh, goodie, I get to complain again about how they never took advantage of MKA and Chris Bernau's chemistry! Even though the storyline was utter crap, I really enjoy watching their scenes together. It's like India's major character feature was trying to trick men into marrying her. SO many things were done poorly during that period. Here's a thought: bring back Hope to pair with Ross. If AM was off the canvas, there wouldn't be a strangeness about age.

OF COURSE! I was in high school at the time. There was a lot of lunch room talk about Falconetti! One of the best villains of the 1970s.

This was one of the major problems with GL during the mid-80s. They cut most of the characters from the Dobsons/Marland eras (some left voluntarily, like Robert Newman and Chris Bernau). They introduced a bunch of new characters, most (except for the Lewis clan/Reva and Alexandra) who flopped and were out of there very fast. And, of course, Charita Bauer passed away, which was a major blow to the show. Even some that succeeded (i.e. Lujack) lasted a short time because of problems backstage. Not a good period for the show. And, no, I don't think Calla and Jessie were ever mentioned again.

Oh, gosh. Kurt and Mindy's wedding. I'm guessing it was a way for them to try and compete with nighttime TV shows like Dynasty. (The Lewises--and the Buchanans on OLTL and the show Texas--probably would never have existed on daytime without the popularity of Dallas). The whole Kurt and Mindy marriage was a terrible mistake, IMO. Kurt had zero ties to anyone else on the show. They repeated the "marriage vs career" flop storyline that sunk Kelly and Morgan. So of course they ended up killing Kurt off, with zero impact on future stories. I'm sure at the time people loved the wedding (I thought it was total cringe, but people like that stuff). It's just really annoying that other than Alan Michael and Harley and Reva and Josh (the first wedding), few if any couples got a really special wedding after that.

I really meant more of a critical flop. I'll admit it, I watched it. It blew but it had its soapy moments.

The MASSIVE problem with Beggerman, Thief was that it followed a character that they totally excised from the original RMPM series: Rudy and Tom's sister Gretchen. She was the main focus of the adaptation of Beggerman, Thief. (Played, I believe, by the incomparable Jean Simmons, who still couldn't save it). I also recall that Lynn Redgrave was cast as Tom's widow--she couldn't have been more different from Kay Lenz, who played the part in the original. (Plus, she was quite a bit older than Lenz, I think). These kind of event series don't happen anymore because of streaming. I remember SO clearly the reaction to RMPM--EVERYONE talked about it, it was water cooler talk, it was high school lunch room talk, it was college dorm room talk, it was a BIG freakin' deal. So you had an extremely large audience who experienced a different story from what was in the original book. Sure, RMPM II was a flop, (poor writing and the absence of Nick Nolte being major factors, IMO) but at least it had a connection to the original with many of the original actors. So it didn't matter if it was a faithful or even good adaptation of the book sequel--the only way Beggarman, Thief could have worked would have been if they had remade the original WITH Gretchen as a major character. Of course, they weren't going to do that. Whoever at the network made the decision to greenlight Beggarman, Thief just really didn't think the whole thing through. It was a disaster.

Oh, really? Well, in MY head canon, Sean Reardon and Buzz were high school buds who went to Vietnam around the same time. Of course, the Reardons hung out at the diner growing up--it's only a few blocks over from the boarding house. Plus, Nadine, Mo, and NotLana all went to school together, Mo and NotLana hating Nadine's snooty behind. (I don't think Nadine was supposed to be Greek Orthodox. I see the three of them all being taught by nuns and Nadine getting away with smoking in the bathroom while the nuns punish the Reardon girls). It's crazy to me that no one thought of creating a backstory connecting these families.

Ah, character introductions, yeah they can be super awful or totally fantastic. I didn't mind how they introduced Alex. What I minded was her spouting off cliches like, "Ah, Alan, what a tangled web we weave when we practice to deceive" or silly things like that while she cruised the ballroom. Alan's reveal at the other masked ball was dumb because a) it had been done, and b) we had already seen him for weeks in Andora with India and her father. The best intros either kick off a storyline or land in the middle of one to shake it up. I don't think Alan Michael parachuting into the Bauer bbq was that effective. Phillip's first return as an adult, OTOH, was perfect. He comes home (I can't remember if it was Justin's or Alan's house, it doesn't matter much which one) and it's empty. He throws his backpack down and flops in a chair, with the attitude, "Of course, no one is here"--showing immediately how the adults in his life are always failing him. You didn't need some big scene--that was saved for much later when he confronts Alan and Justin about his paternity. Harley's introduction, IMO, is one of the best intros of a teen character the show did ever. A young girl getting in an accident while she's giving birth, quickly followed by her blythely giving her baby up for adoption. I wanted to know what the deal was with this girl and why she was like that. And what happened there impacted her character in many ways for years to come. Same with Reva's intro--she was landing in the middle of an ongoing storyline and you knew right away she was going to shake things up. No reason for her to bust in immediately into Billy and Vanessa's life--this scene set her up so you cared when that eventually happened. I actually liked Buzz's introduction. I thought it was pretty neat when he found Nadine, looked through her window and watched as she took her phony pregnant belly off. The look on his face was priceless. KInd of made you forget for a minute he was a deadbeat dad and you knew he was going to give Nadine some much-needed grief. (There's a big lack of love for Buzz/Deas here, but they REALLY watered down his character. He had a way different vibe when he was introduced).

It's funny, the sitcom Soap, which was a parody of soap operas, had an ending like that, too. The heroine Jessica was facing a firing squad and you heard shots fired, the end. And that was a comedy. They weren't given much notice they were being canceled so they just said screw it and ended it on the season cliff hanger they were planning. (Everyone adored Jessica, though, so no one was celebrating, LOL). As someone who has watched telenovelas for eons, I don't mind giving stories an ending. My problem is having characters who lived through years of toxicity being the symbol of hope and happily ever after. I felt the same about Sex and the City, I felt the same about Friends. I totally LOATHED those endings. It was enough that Carrie broke up with the Russian and went back to her true loves, her friends. It was enough that Monica and Chandler finally got their kids and the group as a whole was moving on to the next stage of adulthood. I feel the same about the Four Musketeers reunion and the implication they would all get together with their erstwhile partners. 25 years (more in soap years) and you couldn't get it together before this? Come on. This might upset a few people here, but I feel the same about Vanessa and Billy getting married, too. You didn't need weddings. You didn't need to pair up everyone. Good grief, they even paired up Blake and Frank. WHY? WHO CARES? Alan's death could have brought everyone together to talk about the past and remember the highlights of the show's history. While leaving most things open-ended. It would have been enough. Better than that sappy drive past the lighthouse. Because you knew Josh and Reva would get divorced again. Just like I'm certain somewhere in sitcomland Ross and Rachel are divorced.

Yes, Reva was always looking for what she could get from a guy. What he could do for her. Vanessa used to chide Alan about it all the time. She had Reva's number. I don't think it was always about money for her (though it DID help). Stability is a good way of putting it, though in the end she never seemed to find it. That's the kind of pandering shows frequently do at the end. Doesn't matter how toxic the relationship, they're convinced (and they're not entirely wrong) that the audience craves a happily ever after.

I'm a little fuzzy on this, but I THINK Bradley found out while in prison that Alan had lied about Beth being dead. Then Alan told Phillip because he was trying to make up to him for, you know, shooting him at his own wedding. IIRC correctly, it's why everyone was skeptical, because Alan and Bradley were both congenital liars. Yes, he was trying to convince Lillian and later Beth that he had changed. For a long time Rehborn was one of Hollywood's best character actors, so yeah, it's another case of a soap wanting to keep a really good actor who was playing an irredeemable character.

It's kind of hilarious when you think about it because his stint on AMC involved fathering Erica's baby, then fathering another with his ex-wife, then ANOTHER so they could have a donor to save the first one from cancer. Let's face it, there are a lot of baby storylines on soaps.😂

I can understand him feeling that way, but they HAD to do that storyline because Zimmer was pregnant.

I'm familiar with Walker--yeah, I think he could have worked. I don't recall Lockerman that much, but looking at photos of him from when he was young--I TOTALLY can see him as Kyle. (As long as I ignore the awful 1980s moussed-up mullet hair style in some of his pictures, LOL).

He played a New Yorker on AMC with a father who had an American accent. (I suppose they explained he was brought up in Europe with his mother? I don't recall). Nothing will ever be funnier than the character on OLTL who was Dutch or Scandinavian with a strong accent. One day it magically disappeared (still the same actor, too). I keep thinking Kyle has to have that Black Irish look like Malloy. For instance, Malcolm Groome, who played Patrick on RH. (He said in interviews he was disappointed they changed Pat from a bounder to a super nice guy. Here would have been the chance to play against that).

I have always said that the GL canvas could have easily accomodated two mutl-millionaire business guys--Y&R has had that going on for literally decades. And, in fact, could have made the business stories more interesing. (Lewis Oil was never really a contender against Spaulding). So who would have been a good replacement for Malloy? Ooooh, I have to think about this.

Hmm, Lillian. Yeah, she was NOT a good person when she first came on the show. She utterly failed Beth, looking the other way while her husband Bradley physically abused her. She refused to face the fact that Bradley raped her. In the beginning. Later, she supported Beth. Beth, at the time practically a saint, forgave her mother. She forgave everybody, except for Bradley. Even Alan, who treated her like dirt. Then when Alan came back to SF, he treated her like dirt again. I know this is hard to believe because 1990s-2000s Beth is SO different. Anyway, BACK to Lillian: there was a brief time where they were playing around with a love triangle involving Lillian/Mike Bauer/Alexandra. There are a lot of theories around why this happened, but for whatever reason, they decided to fire Don Stewart, the actor who played Mike. So it never went anywhere. After that, Lilian was pretty much the devoted mother and dedicated nurse. Dinah came to live with her. When Beth went missing, she and Dinah were very close. She was devastated, of course, when Beth declared dead (falsely, by Alan, because he wanted Phillip to "get over it" and stop looking for the missing Beth). Beth was eventually found, and they were happily reunited. (For some WILD reason, they brought Bradley back into the story. He was in jail while Alan was in jail. I never figured out the point of that). Then a few years later she was diagnosed with breast cancer. During this time she and Ed, who were always friends, because closer and had an affair. Lillian (who was never the brightest bulb in the chandelier) wrote Ed a love letter. Mo found it. That's when she confronted both of them. While trying to get away from Ed, she crashed her car and died. Of course, Lillian was really, really, REALLY sorry about her part in this, as was Ed. And then...pretty much everyone forgot about it. It was never really brought back into the story, when it should have been. Bridget and Nola adored Mo, there should have been scenes of them tearing Ed and Lillian new ones. Just goes to show how that storyline was used simply to get rid of a character rather than growing into more story over the years. And, yeah, then after that, she was pretty much just the nice nurse lady. It's a shame they didn't use more of her complicated past, with her daughter, with Dinah, with Ed, with the people who loved Mo.

I hate when soaps have that kind of amnesia. No way would Van ever be friends with Lillian. She may not have been directly responsible for the death of the only real female friend Van ever had, but she hurt her deeply. Van would not forgive that. Not only were Dinah and Lillian close, she almost became like a surrogate daughter to her. Lillian was heartbroken when Dinah found out she was Ross and Vanessa's kid and left to go live with Ross. Again, amnesia.

Fletch was ALWAYS romancing some random woman. 😂 That was Susan Piper. This epsisode was The Founding Day celebration, which kicked off the rather dreadful Barbados storyline. She was the villainess in that story.

Bridget and Nola were the wrong characters to take that role in the boarding house. Bridget was too young, and Nola HATED the boarding house when she was young. All she wanted was to get away. Making her the wise matriarch, quirky or otherwise, would have been a waste of her character. She needed to be doing things, not talking to others about what they were doing. Same with Bridget. You can understand why some actresses would have pushed back against playing that role (i.e. Zimmer). Back in the day, Charita Bauer was probably happy to still be a vital character on the show, even though she was no longer embroiled in central storylines. But by the 90s, actresses, especially those who had been really popular, didn't want to slide into that role. And I can't totally blame them. But it caused some serious holes in soaps once the actresses who filled that fuction started dying off.

Yeah, he obviously had some issues. I think Terrell Anthony, who played Rusty, said Malloy was threatened by him and made comments about how he was the male star and don't get in his way, or something like that. I will be forever p!ssed at him because if he hadn't left GL, Alan never would have been pulled into Reva's orbit. I wonder, since they had mentioned both Rita and Hope during that era, if they would have brought one or both of them back into the story if Reva hadn't needed someone to worship her during the Sonni story. Also, Ina, on OLTL. Who ran a boarding house, like Bea Reardon did. They really made a mistake, IMO, when they got rid of Bea. The boarding house was the perfect place to have disparate characters flow through it every now and then and where they could use Bea as a sounding board and dispenser of wisdom. As it was used during the 1980s. It's where Beth and Lujack fell in love, for instance.

Thank God for small mercies. 😂