DeeVee

It's almost the same thing that happened when they wrote out Maureen. They gave Dolan the best storyline of her tenure in order to write her out, when if they had NOT written her out, it would have given her character a new life and direction. While the Hope exit storyline was very rushed and poorly motivated in order to get her out (by the end of her contract, I would assume) if it had been properly set up and executed, it could have been really good. In fact, I would argue that the final story they gave her was probably much closer to what the Dobsons originally planned for Alan and Hope. Watching the final two months they wrote GL again many years later, I get the impression that they were setting up Hope for a fall, that Alan was going to do to her the same as he did to every woman before her. Of course, this it total speculation, but I think what kind of backs up this opinion is what the Dobsons did with the Barbara/James and Margo/James storylines when they moved over to ATWT. There are some obvious parallels with the Alan and Hope story. Barbara and James even fall in love on a tropical island. Both women become disillusioned by James and end up much stronger because of it. Barbara changes from sweet ingenue to a formidable woman, and Margo becomes a cop. I think that was their original plan for Hope (not have her become a cop, LOL, just a stronger person). Back then (please remember I was only 19 years old) I wanted very much for Alan and Hope to be together and be a real romantic couple. I think I was far from the only audience member who felt that way. Marland said he would read viewer mail and he must have picked up on that audience wish, so he decided to treat them as a romantic story. Both were valid story choices, in my opinion, and I give Marland credit for keeping Alan as Alan (keeping secrets from Hope, cheating on her, etc.) while still writing a love story for them. But he ended up writing them into a corner, so it's not at all surprising subsequent writers decided to break them up. You can see the groundwork for that starting soon after Marland left, even before Kobe and Long took over. The big mistake was writing Hope out permanently, of course. There was another mention of her in one of the 1986 episodes. It really does seem like they were considering bringing her back, but I guess they eventually decided to bring only Alan Michael back instead.

I remember watching soaps with my mom as far back as the mid-60s. She was a big ATWT fan, but she watched many other shows: DOOL, Love of Life, Another World, and she ADORED Edge of Night. (She ALWAYS figured out the murderer and would spoil it for me--I would be SO mad!) We watched the premiere epsisode of Y&R together. I remember watching General Hospital when it was little more than a nurse's station set. It had elevator doors that would open and people would occasionally come out. That was it, that was the set. I was a little kid and thought that was hilarious. Of course it was black & white back then. Dark Shadows was the only show we didn't watch together--that was MY show. And of course GL. She got me into it during the mid-70s because she had a crush on Michael Zaslow.

GH: The Ice Princess Ryan's Hope: Merit Kara One Life to Live: The City of Eterna! OMG, you've reminded me of the reliquary story on Y&R. Every time a soap starts an art theft story, I think, "Oh, God, we're in for 6 months of torture." The 1986 GL episodes being uploaded now are the beginning of their art theft story. 😩

That story was SUCH a stinker. Really surprising considering how good a casting director they had and then they gave us Pinter and Cook. Cook apparently was a calculated move to make Morgan a more conventional beauty (Geraldine Court complained about it). But I don't get the choice to cast Pinter. If you're going to have a story about not only two women fighting over a man, he's also a grifter with a long history of fooling women, he better have some freakin' charisma. He didn't have to be drop-dead gorgeous, but he had to have SOMETHING that made you believe these women were so drawn to him, and I'm sorry, Pinter didn't have that. The story made both women look like idiots. (It could have been worse. I've heard that the original plan was for both Amanda and Jennifer to become pregnant). This, I believe, is a case where casting could have made all the difference. If they had the right actor playing Mark, it might have worked. We have to give Long credit for taking Josh and Vanessa off that track and making them much better drawn characters. I have never understood why they spent so much time portraying Alan and Jennifer's past as some kind of transformative experience and then...did nothing with it. At all. They acted like distant relations. They did so little with Hope outside of her relationship with Alan. That's why it was so easy to yeet her out of show.

I hear you, and don't totally disagree with you. We can only speculate, but it seems to me it would have been extremely difficult to continue much further with the Carrie story, even with a reintegrated personality. I mean, she killed two people (yes, it was her other personalities, but STILL), and Marland originally planned for her to kill a third (Jackie). Maybe he had some brilliant twist that would have kept her a viable character. It's possible. We'll never know now.

It was that Carrie story. I think he was too much invested in it. He had stalled Alan and Hope as a happily married couple living in a sweet little cottage. The Mark Evans storyline was a bust. So definitely not his best work. I think the most popular thing during that era was Nola and Quint and that wasn't to everyone's taste. And yes, it seemed obvious he was setting up a Rita return. Didn't someone here say that Marland's soap bibles are in a library somewhere? I wonder if his planned stories that would have been after his departure are in those. The EP definitely makes a difference. Yes, he might have had a big problem with Kobe. His EP at ATWT in that era when the ratings went up was Robert Calhoun. Many people credit him with turning GL around after a disappointing period that lasted almost a decade.

I had my issues with Marland, but it's impossible not to think about the might have been if he had not stomped off in a huff in 1982. Change was likely inevitable, regardless--Allen Potter, the EP at the time, retired because he had cancer. But I have to wonder what would have happened it Kobe "f!ck you all, I can fire who I want" had come on with Marland still head writing. Maybe he would have left anyway. OR, maybe he would have fought back against some of the changes she wanted to make, or at least handled those changes better. Look at what was happening over at ATWT by 1986 -- the ratings actually going up, while also in a creative upturn -- compared to GL. A huge turnover of characters, including the shrinking of the Bauers, some epically bad storylines, a definite downturn in the quality of much of the production. You see some really poorly made decisions and desperate attempts to correct them. Simon is the perfect example of this. They killed off Lujack and tried to fill the gap with Simon and recapture the popularity of Lujack/Beth with Simon and Jessie. I didn't mind the actor so much, but the million different ways they tried to make this character happen are just SO obvious. (The last episode I watched he was off to fight some guerillas, LOL). When I found the German channel with 1986 episodes, I was like, "Aw, man, I wish I could see these in English!" Now, I think I enjoyed them more in German. YES! Perfect way of putting it. OMG, Cain's villain laugh is right out of a cartoon!

The amount of HW changes over the year is insane. I counted five. There was also an EP change. Clearly, there was a lot of upheaval going on BTS and it probably affected everything. It is absolutely bizarre that by the end of the year many of the 1986 front burner people would be out or on the way out, and then we get a whole bunch of NEW people. Then the returns of Bernau, Newman, GA...while that was mostly a good thing, having to give them all major air time while introducing several new characters had to have caused issues all around. In the midst of some of this terribleness I did come across a really good scene between (surprise, surprise) Alan and Reva. She confronted him over her contract with him. They were SO much more interesting as adversaries. (She got in some exquisite digs at him for being like Brandon, who that week was back to being a monster again). It would have worked so much better if Alan and Reva had had the adversarial relationship and Alan and India had had a more romantic relationship. But, of course, every man in sight had to be in love with Reva...

I am certain saw an article once where he talked about his relationship with Cross. I was digging around earlier to see if I could find it, but no. However, I did come across some articles from the EON era, where he made a point of saying he had a girlfriend, but not naming her because he wanted to keep his personal life private. There were others where he said he wanted to eventually marry and have kids. Which are things MANY known gay actors have said in interviews, because they were obligated to stay closeted. (Also non-gay actors, because they said it and meant it. So it's hard to know for sure). Hey, soaps run on conflict. This would have been a great one. The Bauers, who barely tolerated Lillian, suddenly having her at the head of the family. Mike and Lillian being strong together and, after many confrontations and much sorrow, eventually winning them over. I would have watched the crap out of that.

Well, SHE didn't have to raise them, LOL. No, no, I get it. Working with kids, especially babies, can be a nightmare. Twins? Super yikes! I'm convinced the reason Cricket on Y & R never had kids is because Lauralee Bell didn't want to be upstaged by them. She made comments in interviews about what a pain it was to have them on set. I remember seeing an outake once of Steve Burton working with a baby on GH, trying to say his lines while the kid fussed. When they said cut, he started yelling that he was going to go out and get a vasectomy! (Didn't he end up having a bunch of kids? Anyway, it was really funny).

There's your stable central couple that the show lacked after Mo was killed off. Maybe have Lillian give birth to a late-in-life baby, to add to the Bauer line. (She probably was a tad too old at the time, but they had Ruth on AMC have a baby at an insane age, so why not GL, too?) Or, since Mike was off the canvas for a long time, have a secret kid show up. Why not? Better than having yet another Secret Reva Baby show up.

Woe to anyone who became ill, and it didn't necessarily have to be HIV or AIDS. I'm sure there were other sudden departures by actors that were never explained that had to do with TPTB not wanting to deal with actors who were ill. Did Breen ever sue them? I would think he would have had a case, though that probably would have totally decimated his career. I believe he went on to have a theater career after that happened. I had NO idea Gentry ever returned as Ed. Do you remember what the time period was? Didn't Mart claim that one of the reasons he was let go was because he was very active and vocal in the actors union? If that's the case, that probably soured him from coming back to CBS. He appeared on AMC for a short time. Not sure if he did any others post-GL. I was also surprised to hear this recently. Back in the day, he was supposedly in a relationship with actress Marcia Cross when she was on OLTL. He used to wear a Claddagh ring. (It's an Irish symbol with a heart held by hands and topped with a crown. The way you wear it indicates where you are in a relationship). He claimed he and Cross had exchanged rings and he always wore his on screen no matter what character he was playing. They never got married. She married eventually, but he never did. Of course, he could have been bi, OR, Cross could have been his beard. Again, it was considered career suicide for a male actor to be openly gay if he was a romantic lead on a soap.

I swear to God, these two are going to give me an aneurysm. Every time I think they're winding them down, they ramp up their storyline again. I literally pity the actors. Shakespearean actors couldn't pull this off. I just don't understand how this is so bad when there's so much that's good on the show.

I lived through the 80s and remember how strong the stigma was around both actors being gay and having AIDS, especially for soap stars. The show pretended he had some mild health issue. They claimed for a long time after he left that he was coming back. And here's Zimmer carrying on the same BS TWENTY FIVE years later? To be fair to her, I suppose there's the possibility that she felt uncomfortable talking about working so closely with an actor who had AIDS. There was a lot of hysteria when Rock Hudson appeared on Dynasty and had kissing scenes with Linda Evans. But if that was the case why talk about him being ill at all? Back then I subscribed to a newsletter by a soap magazine writer (for the LIFE of me, I can't remember his name--I'm only sure it wasn't one of the big names, like Michael Logan). He also said in the newsletter for months that Bernau would come back. After Bernau passed away, he wrote an editorial berating his readers for speculating that he had died of AIDS. It had a really angry tone, blatantly shaming people for besmirching his memory. It definitely had a whiff of "doth protest too much." If the network/P&G had just said he left because he was done with soaps, or said he was burned out (totally believable since he had been front burner for two years) without mentioning illness, there would have been a lot less speculation. Just shows what dumb decisions get made when they try to cover things up. I remember being so angry back then at how badly they had treated him and the viewers. (It must have also put Daniel Pilon in an awkward spot). Which was a preview of the atrocious way they would treat Michael Zaslow's and Joseph Breen's (Will) illnesses a few years later.

I had no idea any of this was dramatized. Was an actress ever shown as the character? (I'm not saying the name again, LOL). Or was it one of those things where you see her feet or only from the back or a shadow or something like that? I'm guessing dropping that story was one of the better decisions TPTB made. I think someone with some backstage info said they would not have brought back Roussel if Hope had returned. I liked her, but I don't think that would have been a very difficult recast. Kasdorf, OTOH, would have been a challenge to replace.

Even as late as 2012, people were lying about the real reason Bernau died. And the show was OFF THE AIR by then! Wow.

SO, I just watched an episode from August 1986 that I had inadvertently skipped because it was mixed in with May episodes, and found it very, very interesting: Johnny Bauer is telling the camp kids a "San Rios legend" (ugh, the camp story is such a yawn). About some mythical woman called The Encantadora (the enchantress). It's SUPER obvious this is meant to be the story of what happened to Alan in San Rios--that he was found almost dead in the jungle by a beautiful woman who cured him. There's an episode that I've seen elsewhere where Alan is commiserating with Phillip over Beth's "death" and it's clear he's referring to this woman, too. Then I skip over to episodes from October 1986 and... there's ANOTHER HW change. They dropped whatever was being set up here. Those two years he was missing were left mostly a mystery. I seem to remember some local someone named Tito who was out to get him for a while, but that was it. I wonder--was this story possibly repurposed as the Sonni story for Josh? Beautiful, exotic, mysterious woman who wreaks havoc with his life? We'll never know where this was going, but interesting to speculate.

Well, that's not Mart's fault. 😂 I would call Ed from that era "oblivious." Never caught on fast enough, whether it was Holly cheating, Rita pursuing him, Holly realizing she loved him, not satisfying Rita, Rita cheating with both the non-entity doctor and later Alan, Vanessa lying her ass off to him, etc., etc., etc. I have to say, at the time, I wasn't Mart's biggest fan. But in retrospect, he gave Ed a likability that definitely was missing in later years.

You would think that this incident would have made Alan and Rick life-long enemies. Weird that doesn't really happen. I believe Lenore Kasdorf said in an interview once that she was offered the chance to come back as Rita around 1987. So they could have been starting to foreshadow her return here. There was talk about Hope being brought back around this time, as well. As far back as the late Marland tenure there was a plan to bring Rita back, and I think Kasdorf was asked back yet another time later on. Kind of a shame the stars never aligned to make it happen, for both Rita's and Hope's returns, even if they had to do recasts. The weird part about this particular scene is Ed accusing Alan of wanting revenge over Rita when, if either one of them still cared about it, Ed would have been the aggrieved party, not Alan. And apparently these writers didn't know that Ed had forgiven Alan during Alan's sackcloth and ashes period after he went to prison for his dealings with Roger. They even became almost friendly.

Wasn't she kind of ordered to get rid of them by Kobe? There's that story that she axed Elvera Roussel so the rest of the cast would know none of them were safe. That atrocious "tribute" to Bert definitely negates the claim that Ryder cared about GL history.

I can't keep up with all the changes in character motivation. Under several previous writers, Brandon was portrayed as an awful father, which is why Alan took Spaulding away from him and parked him in a rest home. He stole both Alan's and Alex's children. Both talked about how he set them against each other. Now they're both talking about him with warm affection and how loved they were by him. When Long returns, he's back to being an even more blatantly abusive father. I get why Alex named her kid after him. It's common for abused children to still seek love and approval from their abusive parent. But she never pretended he was a kind and good father. He's just running around town yelling at everyone. It's so silly. Alan looking for a chest of gold? Oh, come on. Like the upcoming art theft storyline, that's beneath the character. If he's rich enough to buy up TV stations and newspapers, he doesn't need a treasure chest! The writers who really understood Alan's character knew it wasn't money or even worldly power that motivated him. His "villainy" was about controlling the people in his personal sphere, which always escalated to the point where he would be in danger of losing people he cared about, like Phillip, Hope, or his sister. The only time Long deviated from that was in stories she was told to write, like the Dreaming Death or Roger's return, or if she was cleaning up another writer's mess, like the art theft story. As much as I loathed them pairing him with Reva, at least that story was classic Alan, doing things like switching DNA tests or bringing back Sonni and teaming up with her to keep Josh and Reva apart. Don't even get me started on what they did to him when he came back in the 90s. Total Snidely Whiplash stuff.

It really writes itself, doesn't it? SO obviously the way to go. Even though I already know most of the upcoming stuff is frickin' awful, I am enjoying Bernau's return, just because he seems to be having such a good time. For some reason they have him carrying a cane, which he clearly doesn't need. He's jogging up and down stairs, dancing at the ball, all while carrying this cane which never seems to hit the floor. I get the feeling it was a choice; maybe even a wink at the audience. I howled when Reva described Alan to Kyle, and she exactly described Kyle! Bit of a self awareness problem there!

I'm now up to the 1986 Bauer BBQ episode, and everything has changed again! In episodes just a month or so before, Jackson was giving Mindy wise and friendly advice about her career and marriage. In this one, he's suddenly a scruffy villain who has trashed Mindy's reputation by sending some risqué photos to a men's magazine. WHAT? Simon has been outed as an imposter. Is he in jail? No. India is in Andorra with her father and Alan, who is plotting his return to SF. Her father is pushing her to marry Alan. Even though she is obviously attracted to him, she's completely against the idea. The woman who blackmailed Phillip and tried to blackmail Simon into marrying her because her one goal in life was to become a Spaulding is now hesitant about trying to land another one? Sure, I get she doesn't trust him, but what a missed opportunity! Bernau and Adams had a strong onscreen chemistry. Their scenes together are really enjoyable to watch. What fun it would have been if they had followed through with this and had them marry or plan to marry while both planned to stab each other in the back. And MAYBE at some point actually fall for each other. They could have been an awesome scheming power couple. Not surprisingly, the HW team had changed again. Ryder was out, and Munisteri was now paired with Ellen Barrett. The 1986 roller-coaster continues.

I would REALLY like to know why Rauch and Harding Lemay hated Jacqueline Courtney so much. The hate for her almost shimmered off of Lemay's book. He constantly ripped her acting. I never understood it. Was she the greatest actress ever? No, but she very good and had that certain something that made audiences like her. Lemay adored her replacement on AW. I forget her name--because she was extremely forgettable! There's got to be some story behind that story.

Yeah, I'm thinking that, too. It certainly would be one way to deflect from the embarrassment of being fired early in your contract.