DeeVee

LOL, actors are always lying about their age. I saw different source that said Raines was born in 1952. I've also seen some that said Bernau was born in 1938. At any rate, Lester and Raines were significantly younger than he was. That's not an unusually occurance with soap recasts.

I was going to say, "No way, he was too young to play Alan." And he was, but then I looked it up and he was actually older than Ron Raines. So probably no matter who they cast, they would have de-aged Alan. I have a much harder time imagining him as Buzz. Other than not having any physical similarity to CB, Lester did have a lot of the qualities Alan needed. We know he can play the ruthless but charming manipulator with the patrician air because he did that on Y&R. But playing a blue collar guy like Buzz who was crazy for motorcycles? Hmmm...I can't see it. Maybe they would have written Buzz a little differently to suit Terry better.

Let me make super clear that I don't disagree with this. Absolutely, the lack of children isn't what makes a character, especially a woman, less interesting. Hope had a kid and she was a pretty blah character, at least when Marland wrote her. If anything, it was that child that kept her off the canvas permanently. But children on soaps are important for two reasons: as plot devices and as a way to keep core families alive over the many decades that soaps exist. Giving Maureen fertility issues was a plot device so that when Ed got another woman pregnant, it would be even more of a big deal. In the beginning, they left it open that it was possible for Maureen to still have kids, but that it would be difficult. Then over the following years, there was a revolving door of head writers, and it became murky what the original intent was. It should have been the central conflict between Ed and Maureen. FFS, Maureen was raising his child with another woman! He also, IIRC, never allowed Maureen to adopt Michelle. I believe this was brought up the one time they separated. (Because, heaven's to Betsy, he saw Maureen KISS Fletcher). He came up with a million excuses for why he didn't want more kids. All the time knowing that was the one thing Mo wanted the most. (PS's Ed was hard to take, and it wasn't just PS's fault. Ed was written as a total jerk most of the time). Frankly, I love both ideas: Maureen having a surprise miracle baby AND leaving Ed to work for his dire enemy, Roger. Maybe Roger would help her hide her pregnancy, or even let Ed believe he was the father. He could also help her out in any custody dispute over Michelle. Sweet revenge indeed. This way we have a new Bauer/Reardon baby to bolster both core families, and Mo gets the chance to grow as a character, instead doing things just to please Ed. She could still be the matriarch, but a stronger and less sappy one.

Doesn't the story go that they did a focus group that declared Mo boring? And that's why they decided to kill her off? Which is the dumbest thing, ever. I'd bet good money that almost no one in the focus group watched soaps. I was put in a focus group once. I was standing outside a shoe store, just looking in the window. Someone approached me asked me if I wanted to make $40 by being in a focus group. I said sure! Not surprisingly, it was about shoes. I hate shoes. I hate shopping for shoes. I have fallen arches. I'm a klutz who automatically falls down in heels. I didn't tell them this. It was $40 for less than an hour of my time. My opinion on anything they asked me was basically useless. Showing people soap opera scenes out of context is also basically useless. You can't properly assess Maureen's importance to the show that way. Really a low point for GL.

That was the big mistake. Her death amounted to pretty much nothing except causing this big gap on the show that was felt for years. Part of the problem was the lack of other Reardons on the canvas at the time. But even if they couldn't have found a way to bring them in even briefly, many possibilities were left on the table: Ed and Lillian being ostsracized, their good reputations left in the dust, Ed drinking again, the impact on Ed and Lillian's professional relationship, Michelle finding out why the accident happened--that would have impacted her relationship with her father for years! Rick, too, because he loved Maureen (was he on the show at the time? I can't recall). Yeah, sure, Vanessa and Mo were wine buddies and she eventually named her kid after her, but it was still wild that it was mostly about her and not Maureen's family. A better way to utilize the relationship would have been to have Van enact some delicious revenge against Lillian and Ed. She would have fixed both their wagons. Pretty much the only one who really cared was Bridget, who was hiding in an attic because Nadine was hiding her pregnancy. Oh, yeah, and ROGER, of all people. I don't mind when they kill off main characters. I mind when their deaths don't have a major impact on the other characters and future storylines.

It's not like it was the first time. They did the same with Lujack. That was also a major blunder. Lujack wasn't just a legacy character, he was connected to a major core family. It was almost inevitable that they were going to resort to the "lost twin" gambit. In Ben's case, anyone who didn't watch in 1985/86 wasn't going to remember his parents. His stepdad, Fletcher, was an odd duck; a long-running character with no ties to a core family. I agree killing him off was lazy, With young actors who catch on fast, soaps should always have an exit plan if they decide not to sign again when their first contract ends. In Bomer's case he wasn't ever coming back. But so what if the character left town and never came back? He had one major link in the show, that's all. So having him leave town should have been the way to go. There were many long-time viewers for whom watching him die on screen was very disturbing. (I literally yelled at the screen, "I remember when he was a baby!" while he died). They compounded the error by making the whole thing so distasteful. At least Lujack got to exit a hero.

He did some kind of janitorial or handyman work at Cedars. I don't about pairing him with Nadine, but it would have been nice if he wasn't the loser in every romance they put him in. Especially after he became a popular singer/songwriter. Making him the eternal loser didn't make sense at that point. We were talking about how they should have brought back Stacy--having to deal with her bio dad after years abroad with her stepfather would have enhanced any story they wrote for her.

Who was left from that era? Were Alan, Phillip and Ross the only Dobson-created survivors? (At this point Alan was gone, who knew if he was coming back?) That was terrible what they did to Floyd. Absolutely nothing in his past would suggest that he would become a murderer.

Hey, @P.J. I finally got a chance to watch the scene where Billy named Peter--I love when I revisit something and it's even better than I remember. It was so lovely and poignant. (And infuriating, because, you know, Nadine). Jordan was terrific in that scene, and doing it while holding a baby, that's not easy. I also loved the scene right after when Harley talks to Bridget about giving up Daisy. Beth and Melissa played it so beautifully, and it was another really well-written scene. In both scenes there was so much going on in the subtext. Thanks again for pointing to the right place so I could see this again.

It's funny, I was thinking about this recently. Did they EVER say anything specific about Beth's biological father? I had assumed Lillian was widowed. I always thought it was odd that Beth kept the name "Raines." I wouldn't keep the name of the creep who raped me. Now the implication is Lillian was an unwed mother. Does anyone remember anything about that? Someone decided they should try to create a storyline similar to the Beth/Phillip/India triangle. They made India once again look totally pathetic because the only way she could get a man was to blackmail him. I'm surprised MKA stayed on the show as long as she did. I couldn't stand Calla and used to blame Lisby Larson, until I watched some Texas episodes, and thought, dang, she's actually a pretty good actress. The character was poorly written. No way would I believe that Ross preferred Calla over Vanessa.

For all the amnesia stories on soaps, few had a realistic amnesia case. It's permanent brain damage. It's extremely rare to get any of your memory back. IIRC, Jason on GL is the only one on a soap who ever had this kind of realistic amnesia. If either Reva or Roger had come back with a permanent case of amnesia--think of the possibilities! In Reva's case, perhaps she would have fallen for Josh again, but without all the baggage of the past. And could Josh live with that? Or maybe she would have no use for Josh. Could he live with THAT? In Roger's case, everyone would remember all these atrocious things he did, but he wouldn't. Would he still be a bad guy? Would he be a bad guy using the memory wipe to convince everyone he's a good guy? Or would he truly change if a big chunk of his past was gone? I can't believe that only one soap saw the possibilities of this kind of story.

It's kind of a shame--Judi could have grown into a mature heroine on the show. Most of her career was working on soaps, so she didn't leave because she was ambitious for a night time or movie career. I think she left because she was unhappy on GL. Long put a lot into the female characters she created--I wonder if like Reva, Beth and Mindy had aspects of her personality/life woven into the characters. There was a lot of care in creating them, which rarely happened with young soap characters. And of course, the casting was on point. The only time she really flopped doing this was with Jessie and Calla, who were clearly based on her (and possibly her mother) because of the beauty pagent stuff. One of the problems with the revolving door of writers that year is they started stuff that got dropped. I really think they were building towards an Alan/India pairing. They even had CB and MKA do a Soap Opera Digest cover and spread. Then they dropped it. Which to me is a shame because I thought they had fantastic chemistry. There was obviously going to be a major story involving the backstory of Alan's time in San Rios. Big build up and then--dropped. (Actually, I'm glad that was dropped, the "Encantadora" stuff was flashing "CRINGE! CRINGE! CRINGE!" all over the place). Both Rita and Hope were brought up. Seemed pretty obvious they were planning to bring them back, then--nothing. Sometimes we forget that RN left not that long after the Reva/Josh pairing was first established. IMO, we think of her being suffocated by him because after he came back it was always Reva/Josh, no matter who either one got involved with. They were always going to be the endgame, period. The fact that they were able to create a popular pairing for her with Kyle before RN came back shows that they did not have to be tethered to each other forever. But I guess TPTB believed the audience always wanted them together.

OMG, you are probably right! Ew! I LOVE the idea of Rita trying to pass off Ed's son as Alan's. I believe as far back as the Dobsons, Rita was slated to go after Alan as more than just a bed partner. She wanted to be Mrs. Alan Spaulding and everything that went with it. This would have touched a lot of characters, which is what the best soap storylines do. (The one problem is that they were writing Alan off the canvas at this point because of Chris Bernau's death. But maybe if someone had suggested this, they would have put an effort into finding a good permanent recast). A couple of times. I think the last time we talked about Judith Chapman. She was definitely sexy enough but in kind of a cool, remote way. Rita had more of a sultry vibe. I've said a couple of times I like the idea of Sharon Gabet playing Rita. I thought she was terribly wasted on OLTL as Melinda Cramer. She was such an insipid character. They tried to take advantage of Gabet's sexiness by having Melinda and her boyfriend act out their sexual fantasies by role playing. It just ended up being very cringy. The most difficult part of recasting Rita is Lenore somehow made a fairly unlikeable character sympathetic. Not a lot of people could do that. She never played her as overtly calculating. There was always a softness to her.

This is the thing that's so frustrating about how everything had to revolve around Reva. She never should have had another kid after Shayne. But, no, we had to have Jonathan and then have her miracle post-menopausal baby. Just ridiculous. I strongly feel that Morgan should have been brought back at some point. I definitely have no objection to her bringing a Josh prog with her. It would have been anchored in the history of the show. Morgan had connections to several characters still on the show. It just made so much sense to bring her back. But if she'd come back and had Josh's baby, that would have taken the focus off of Reva....we couldn't have THAT. Did I really sit through all those available 1986 episodes? Yes, I did. 😂 When Beth exposed the fact that Jackson sold some photos of Mindy (in--GASP!--her underwear) to a men's magazine, no one wanted anything to do with him. So Alan zoomed in and hired him because Jackson had no other possibility for employment. He had him do some diving in the lake when people were looking for the chest of Andora gold. (Like why would Alan need that? He told India he was doing it for her but of course he wanted it for himself. It made as much sense as Alan selling stolen art, that whole year was a total joke). Anyway, the chest got lost because some guy kidnapped Beth and took the chest. During the getaway the boat sank. That's why everyone thought Beth was dead. So Jackson did some diving and he's so dumb his diving mask, which had prescription lenses, got dropped or something. The cops found it and matched the lenses to him, so he was briefly implicated in Beth's disappearance. He didn't work for Alan long. For SOME REASON, the Lewises FORGAVE Jackson for what he did to Mindy. (Like Billy wouldn't have killed him!) They hired him at Lewis Oil. He ran around in a hard hat for a while doing whatever it is that they do there. So he was able to get under Alan's thumb. 1986 was SO bad.

I seem to recall that Alan had Jackson doing a lot of diving in the lake where Beth disappeared. Maybe he had him do it? Though during the funeral scenes Jackson made a big show of grief and telling everyone he loved her, blah, blah...now I don't know if that was for show or it was just Loving Beth Raines Syndrome.

Since she recovered just fine the other times she lost Phillip when he married two other women (Mindy and India) to the point where she was able to fall deeply in love with Lujack, that doesn't make a whole lot of sense, either. She wasn't some jellyfish totally dependent on a man. It was so frustrating to watch. I like Beth Chamberlain. I feel like they could have made Beth an interesting mature woman with her in the role. They turned her into a cartoon instead. I watched some of this with my mom and we would look at each other and ask why they hated this character so much.

Oh, they did a LOT to change Beth from here going forward. As @P.J. mentioned, Beth was an shy teen who had been abused by her stepfather. She was never a schemer, not even in a mild way. She was THE heroine on GL during her first turn on the show. She was practically the Queen of Sincerity. Judi Evans' Beth was SO different from Beth Chamberlain's, mostly because of the writing. Beth was practically like a goddess to Phillip. She was so friggin' perfect, it could be off-putting. Almost every man she knew fell in love with her. Alan hated her for no reason other than Phillip was so crazy for her it was a threat to him because that undermined his control of Phillip. What's happening now during your GL watch is MILD compared to what's coming up for Beth. They always had the excuse of the trauma she went through when she was younger, even though she seemed to weather that fairly well at the time--of course, you never get over something like that, but she did seem to be able to cope. But there's also when she lost her memory (when she was supposed to be dead). She was so traumatized she couldn't talk, and she was with this creepy guy Neil, and who knows what their relationship was really like. (They went back and forth so much with Neil's character that the actor complained about it in interviews). Anyhoo, she and Phillip eventually got their happy ending, Grant and Beth left the show for a time. When they came back, even though it was still Beth Chamberlain, the character was different. She became SO neurotic. Would it be believable that she got involved with an abusive man? I mean, maybe, because a lot of abusive men hide that part of themselves at first. But Beth was stronger in the past, and much smarter when it came to men. She didn't put up with being manipulated--she literally brought Jackson down when she realized he was trying to manipulate her. This version of Beth became a lot weaker and a lot more susceptible to manipulative men like Carl and Alan. Don't get me wrong--I didn't love the original Beth, but I wish they had kept more of the strength and intelligence Beth had instead of making her this weak dishrag. It's just one of the oddest character changes I can remember from a soap. She went from being the ideal heroine to almost a villain at times. Very bizarre.

The way they introduced them was terrible. Rick literally picked Mel up in a bar. Their "romance" was SO blah. You would think there would be something sexy about meeting like that, but they had the most insipid conversation. Like what kind of movies they liked. So boring. I don't recall the parents being used signficantly in storylines. (Though I DO remember the mother ending up in one of Reva's past lives during the time travel story, ugh). It was the same losing strategy they used with the faux Bauers: stick these people in and hope they click with the audience. The fact that they had to make Rick suddenly dying of a heart condition no one knew about before--to the point he needed a transplant (and don't even get me started on THAT) shows that they had to make it entirely plot driven because there was little to nothing to draw on from the characters. The reason the Lewises quickly became a permanent part of GL is because they immediately wove the characters into storylines: Billy and Alan's rivalry, which was both about Spaulding and Vanessa, Mindy dropped into a quadrangle with Phillip, Beth, and Rick, Josh feeling like the odd Lewis out, and then Reva rolling into town and throwing a grenade on the whole thing. A lot of this came from character. I want to give them credit for introducing a Black family to the show, but just doing that wasn't enough.

Oh, cool! Thank you!

Heck yeah, that messes up the timeline, since Alan, Elizabeth, and 10 year old Phillip arrived in Springfield--on screen--in 1978.

Well, not totally. We can assume the Lewises had an evangelical background. They didn't talk about it much, but it did surface once or twice (i.e. when Billy named Peter, which was a Biblical reference--I SO wish I could find that scene). It was FAR less of a surprise to me when Josh became a pastor than when he once mentioned in passing that he protested the Vietnam War. THAT came out of left field--like, literally. 😂

All his villains were like that. Andy, Mark Evans, Silas, gosh, even Diane. Diane was VERY different when the Dobsons wrote her. She wasn't a schemer, exactly, more a woman in love with a man she's never going to have but still trying to protect him. It's not hard to believe that that would eventually make her bitter and turn her against him, but she just became a pretty rote villain in the end. I didn't even understand half the vindictive things she was doing. (If anyone can explain how she benefited from having Alan take Phillip out of his will, PLEASE do). In Diane's case it was not being great at writing a nuanced villain and also that she was a woman, because unless the actress was especially esteemed by him, like Lisa or Jane, he didn't write them very well. And I just realized--all the nuanced villains he inherited: Ross, Alan, Roger, Lucille, Diane--were either put on the road to redemption or killed off. (I know MZ, Sofia, and Rita Lloyd were on the way out anyway, but I wonder what would have happened to their characters if they had wanted to stay). Even one he created--Nola--was eventually redeemed. Anyway, we were talking about RN. I always say that actors can surprise you when they get the right material. That definitely happened with him. It's true that this started happening before Long came on. They made Josh less sleazy--he was a good friend to Amanda, he had a complicated relationship with Morgan, he was trying to succeed in business in an honest way. His character was already evolving. I don't think they did a "redemption" thing for Josh--it was more memory holed and since few cared about sleazy Josh, they got away with it. It would have been a little difficult for him to be holier-than-thou with Reva if people were bringing up his past with Leslie Ann, etc.

Maybe a better way of putting it is romantic lead? As opposed to resident creep. Let's face it, pretty much EVERY guy who got involved with Reva was Reva's ***tch. Billy, HB, Alan, Kyle, Buzz, Richard, Jeffrey (did I miss any?) - when they were involved with her, that was their status. I wonder if any of the actors resented being paired with her for this reason.

I don't remember him ever talking about Josh/RN in interviews. I only recall he was miffed that they changed Kelly Louise's name to Stacy. I believe he said that was something that always connected him to Nola and was an issue for Morgan, again implying he wasn't done with Kelly/Nola. The post-wedding storyline for Kelly and Morgan was so flaccid, it was obvious to me he wasn't really invested in them. That may have had something to do with Jennifer Cook replacing Vigard. Tired old "marriage vs. career" story. Then Kelly wanting to have a baby when he was constantly haraunging Morgan about money because they didn't have any. Gag, I couldn't stand Kelly. He was such a jerk. Nola was too good for him. I have to say it's pretty impressive that Long came in and saw RN's potential to become a leading man, and then she made it happen. Of course, that had a lot to do with the chemistry between him and KZ. But also the family dynamic with Billy and HB, and you started to understand why he would be different around them.

Perhaps he thought Kelly and Morgan would suffer the same fate as Scotty and Laura. Married too young, then they would split off into more mature storylines. Maybe he thought Josh would be his Luke? (Yeah, right, LOL). From what Kristen Vigard has said, the whole Kelly/Morgan thing was engraved in stone because they shot the wedding on location way, way before it aired. Which is why they had to keep her until it aired. If they hadn't been stuck with that trajectory the story might have played out differently as Marland was clearly more inspired by Nola than Morgan.