DeeVee

I forgot about the comment that he wasn't completely unprovoked! Ugh. Sigh. Unfortunately, these kinds of mealy-mouthed excuses by TPTB were pretty common when dealing with rape stories on soaps. I remember Genie Francis saying Laura's rape was an "acquaintance rape" in interviews (like she was reading off of a script) as if that made it a less bad thing.

Maybe "forgave" is not quite the right word. There was the scene where Holly and Alex meant to set Roger up by Holly seducing him. (An insanely ridiculous plan, but anyway...) She couldn't go through with it because (no kidding) she was still traumatized by the rape. This leads to Roger "explaining" why he raped her. Upshot, he loved her SO much (which was never true; this is what I mean by whitewashing his past). In the end, she basically said she didn't hate him anymore. I know lots of fans loved the post-1989 Roger/Holly dynamic, but this totally upturned their backstory. It was always Holly who was in love with him. Roger did not just rape Holly. He was a serial abuser who hurt many women, including Rita and Hillary. He caused the death of Rita's baby, could have killed HER because he left her tied up in a burning building. He indirectly caused the death of his girlfriend Renee. This was done a lot on soaps at the time. This wasn't the worst example by any standard. Roger was never turned into a hero like certain other characters on other soaps. He still was mostly a bad guy. So I give them credit for that. But they had to skim over this part of his past so he could be a viable long-term character.

I don't think so. In the book, Rosemary watches Guy on Another World while she's decorating the apartment. In the movie, she watches him in a Yamaha commercial.

EXACTLY what I was thinking Ed would say! In fact, I remember Jackie once saying to Alan that his problem was he fell in love ALL THE TIME, then he got bored and moved on to the next woman. That's why the Vanessa/marriage of convenience thing never made sense to me (as well as the maid who is obviously not the maid, but a sex worker who lives in for his convenience). O.K., I'm back to blaming Pam Long for some of it. 😁

So I'm watching some April and May 1988 episodes, and they are SO WEIRD. The dialogue is bizarre. There's a scene between Alex and Sonni where she's supposedly consoling her over her miscarriage, and her speech is so meanering and strange. Then there's a scene where Ed is taking care of Reva after her coma and commenting how he never witnessed Alan acting so caring towards a woman, and I'm screaming at my phone's screen, ENOUGH WITH THE HOPE ERASURE! Ed, you hated Alan but you know he really loved Hope! Then the credits roll and it says "Story by Pam Long" with no other writers listed. Light bulb clicks on. These episodes were written by scabs during the 1988 strike. All these years I blamed Pam Long for the whole "Alan never loved a woman before Reva" retcon tripe, and Phillip turning icky by using sex and gaslighting to manipulate Chelsea. This also seems to be where the Sonni and Will story started to derail. Some individual scenes are so bad. There's an obvious chem test scene between Mindy and Frank where he comes off as darn creepy. It wasn't her or the regular breakdown and dialogue writers! It was the scabs! I feel like I owe them an apology. They definitely whitewashed some of his past when he returned in 1989. One reason I wanted Rita to return was that, unlike Holly, she would never have forgiven him for what he did to her. Would have made for some interesting scenes, for sure.

Roger and Rita were once romantically involved. They knew each other in Texas and were lovers while Rita was working for a rich family as a private nurse. The patient died and left her money. The family tried to get her convicted of murder. Later on, they became enemies because Roger was incensed that she became engaged to Ed. He blamed Ed for a lot of the bad things happening in his life. He raped her the night of her engagement party. She didn't tell anyone until late in his trial for raping Holly. That brief flash that they showed in the compilation was likely part of a flashback sequence for when they knew each other in Texas. Not absolutely sure about that, though, but I'm pretty sure she was done with him romantically by the time he came back to Springfield.

That is correct. It was insulting and stupid because the entire Barbados story was about hiding a letter that would have given Victoria a Spaulding inheritance. People were willing to kill to stop it from being revealed. SO anticlimatic. And why shouldn't Victoria take her share? White guys come to her island and get rich off of it, why not take some of it back? (Chelsea mentions during the anniversary shows in 1987 that the Spauldings accumulated wealth through Barbados interests as far back as Brandon's father). I rolled my eyes so often during that story, starting with Brandon being miraculously alive when I had watched Lucille Wexler kill him on screen. That story I think played out most of Autumn of 1984, with the big reveal happening as part of the November sweeps for 1984. I believe it went into December as well. I mean, if anyone wants to watch it. I still don't understand why the Reardons were front and center of that story when it had absolutely nothing to do with them.

Yes, that was Lenore as Rita. Unfortunately, we are unlikely to ever get episodes from the mid-70s, unless by some miracle they are released on DVD by CBS/P&G. That's IF they even exist anymore. Like the old silent films, people at the time did not think soap episodes would have value after they were broadcast so many tapes were destroyed or taped over. Or unless someone like an actor or other creator or their estate releases some they have saved. Actors often keep things they appeared in on tape. Quite a few Edge of Night videos from this era are available because some of the actors have uploaded videos from their personal collections to YT. The first few years of Ryan's Hope are available almost intact because the show's creators saved every tape and stored them. Once they left the show, they stopped saving them, so the rest of the series is very hard to find now. Very few people had VCRs at the time, so we can't get them that way. ☹️

His wife also didn't mention CBS, only NBC and ABC. Thank you for sharing this. What an absolutely beautiful tribute. (And how about that brief flash of him in a scene with Lenore Kasdorf! Wish we could see those episodes. 😪)

On the one hand, I really appreciate that they are twisting up the archetype by not making Anita the perfect, shining matriarch. I like that she's so complex. On the other hand, she's aggravating the heck out of me because I feel so bad for Sharon and Tracy. I wish she would just step back a bit and let them shine. Hopefully, that's what will happen in the end. If it doesn't, and there's a repeat of history, then wow, that's more than a little twist to the norm for this kind of character.

Thanks for sharing this. What a great guy. Now I like him even more. Someone mentioned Brynn Thayer upthread...I believe she helped Zaslow's wife found Zas Angels. We hear a lot about the awful people in the industry; it's practically a cliche. It's always nice to know there are also good people who don't turn their backs on their coworkers when they are in trouble.

No, no, I'm not saying they fired him. (Though do we really know that for sure? Considering what CBS did to Zaslow and Joseph Breen, it's possible he was fired. If they did fire him, Bernau kept it quiet, possibly because he wanted privacy, while Zaslow and Breen were very vocal about what they did to them). Either way, what I'm talking about is how the network kept up the fiction that he was coming back when they knew full well he was gone for good. Rauch is already roasting in hell. 😁 Consider Moonves and Dwyer-Dobbin cursed.

There is a really great thread on here that does some pretty detailed 1970s plot summaries for many of the soaps: You'll have to dig around a little to find the GL summaries, but it's worth it.

Not sure I ever wanted a Kyle return, LOL, but I do agree Parlato would have been a good Alan recast. I liked him a lot when he was on OLTL, even though he played a really over-the-top villain in a very stupid storyline. It was like a repeat of the Daniel Pilon situation, IMO. Both he and Parlato seemed very uncomfortable in their respective roles, and I would imagine part of it had to do with being put in an awkward spot because of how Bernau and Zaslow were treated by the network. Honestly, the whole mess makes me so mad every time I think of it. I remember seeing an interview with Zaslow after he appeared on OLTL. I think he was almost completely non-verbal at the time. He was communicating with a computer the way Stephen Hawking did. The interviewer told him he had heard OLTL wanted him to do more appearances. He cried, he was so grateful someone was giving him work. A curse on everyone who did that to him at CBS/GL. If OLTL could figure out a way to do it, they could have, too.

I was thinking that, too--they also toyed with her taking over Bert's job as patient advocate at Cedars. But that didn't last long, probably because it got in the way of Sarah listening to Reva whine about her love life. That explains why even though MKA and Ariane Munker were around the same age, Christine and Alan seemed creepy but India and Alan did not. (Still can't believe they never took advantage of their chemistry).

It's not surprising you can't remember because they kept changing it, and sometimes only within a few episodes! Reva mentions HB bought the house for her, then she talks later about having to keep working for Alan so she can pay the mortgage. I suppose HB could have made a down-payment? But she didn't work much, so how did she get a mortgage? Yes, we definitely need suspension of disbelief, because Reva should have been struggling big-time.

I had a lovely lunch, watching an episode I had never caught before--which features Alan sexually harassing Reva! YUCK. BTW, in 1987 I was an administrative assistant. Along with being a sexual harasser, Alan is a cheapskate. $25,000/year to be the assistant to the CEO at a multinational corporation? Even taking into consideration the time (and that SF is not a major city) that seems really low. It can't be her lack of education and experience--he said that was the rate for that job.

This is one of those things that depended on who was writing the show. One regime, Henry is Alan's surrogate father and Vanessa is like his annoying oversexed little sister. In another one, they are enemies trying to shank each other. Then Alan suddenly wants to marry Vanessa (this only happened under Long, I believe). Which is hard to buy because Alan might have affairs with business associates, but he tended to marry "nice" women he perceived as weaker than he was. One regime, Henry was in on Brandon's dirty stuff and his affairs, in a different one he talks about Brandon like he had nothing to do with any of that. It was NEVER consistent. The same with Brandon's relationship with his children. They would talk about him fondly, then a few months later talk about him as a terrifyingly abusive parent they had to protect each other from. It's frustrating, because if they had stayed more consistent, there would have been a lot they could have drawn on for stories for these characters.

That was true only of the late era of GL. Back during the Dobsons/Marland era they were much more defined and a fantastic dynamic. Plus, Raines was never on the same level as Zaslow. Bernau and Zaslow were like watching two champions go at it.

Not everyone is as devoted a fan as my mom was. 😂 Recasts are bad enough. It's when they create new characters for actors who were a big deal on another soap that we get some of the worst outcomes. Usually, because they don't bother to take the time to create a character and weave them into the fabric of the show. They expect their "stardom" to carry the day. I think something TPTB never realize is it's not just the actor who appeals to the audience, it's a particular actor playing a particular character that creates the magic. It's not that actors can't successfully create more than one indelible character--Bev, for instance, created two on two different soaps. Marcy Walker was hugely successful on two soaps. But then she came on GL and tanked because Tangie was not a well-defined character. Not understanding this kind of thing is why they come up with dopey ideas like trying to cast Micheal Zaslow as Alan. Luckily, Zaslow was smart enough to immediately shut that down.

Sounds like JFP wasn't the only one who did "friends of..." casting. Didn't realize Howarth was a touchy subject. 😂 My mom was a big fan and followed him to every soap he went to. Yeah, once Jordan was gone, she didn't seem to know what to do with her. She inherited the Ross/Vanessa rekindled romance situation and canned it practically on the first day of her return.

Just like they did with Sonni, Annie, Olivia...it was always ridiculous. Vanessa should have wiped up the floor with Reva. There's so much history being rewritten here. I would much rather they had them acknowledging that they're on to each other because they know each other so well. Vanessa usually had to suppress the vampy--and yes, snaky--part of herself with other men. I had the same problem with Ben as I did with Jeffrey. It wasn't just that he was a bad guy. He was so UNPLEASANT. No nuance, no layers. Hunt Block was on ATWT around the time Roger Howarth came on the show. Always thought Howarth would have been a much better Craig. Even though Howarth was a tad young at the time, I think it could have worked.

Someone commented on YT that the episode before it was the first one after Pam Long's return. Minutes in and Reva is back in her Slut of Springfield red dress and KZ's getting 10 minute monologues for Emmy consideration. 🙄 I always thought not seeing the Ross/Vanessa/Alan story through and making Alan one of Reva's many love slaves was a mistake, but MK leaves a few months later, so it wasn't meant to be, I guess.

Wow, kinda shocked at all the Louise Shaffer disrespect. I never saw her on SFT. (People always have a problem adjusting to recasts). But she was phenomenal as Serena Faraday on Edge of Night. Shaffer herself thought Rae's shelf life had expired on RH. She was stunned when they gave her a daughter just as her time as the Frank/Jill spoiler came to an end. And it's not her fault they tried to build a new family around her. Who could blame her for wanting to keep her job?

NO, I did not know this! Thank you! I'm off to watch some episodes in German! I'm going to hazard a guess that this would not have lasted very long. I don't think he would have wanted to cater to someone else's muse. No matter what we say about KZ, she WAS popular. She had a very vocal fan base. Any writer coming in was going to have to service them. Even though I had many issues with Marland, I would have loved it if he had come back. I'm certain he would have rebuilt the Bauers and Reardons, and done a much better job at writing for the Spauldings. But I just don't see Marland wanting to focus so much on Reva.