DeeVee

Holly should have known. Roger got the vasectomy because the woman he married before Holly, Peggy, insisted on it. It's possible no one on the writing and production team at this point of the show's history knew of or remembered this detail. You would think that Zaslow would remember this--he was playing Roger back then (a different actress played Holly at that time)--but I've noticed when actors are interviewed they frequently forget storyline details. WE remember storyline details for decades, but they don't, necessarily. 😄

I was not watching the show much during this period. There's something that has always puzzled me about this, maybe someone can clear it up: Back in the day, Roger had a vasectomy. This is one of the reasons he became so obsessed with Christna (Blake), because she was his only biological child. Did they just memory hole that? Or did Roger doubt Hart was his kid at first? I know soap opera vasectomies pretty much ALWAYS fail--i.e. Fletcher's, during this same era. I'm just wondering if this was ever mentioned on screen.

Lisa Brown was still on ATWT--as that was both a P&G and CBS soap, they might have been able to made a deal to bring her back for one or two days. Possibly Lee Lawson? That would have been way better than literally no one on screen from Mo's family. Of course it's possible they tried and were turned down. Though after the storm of protest, they probably would have said they had tried.

I'm curious to have that clarified, too. It's not impossible that she was a member of WGA and able to take a writing credit. The Bells have been both executive producers/writers on their shows. But I would think in this case that would have been notable and talked about at the time.

I thought about that, too. He was living a very loose and unsupervised life before Alex found him. There would have been nothing odd about it. One of his gang girlfriends looking to get a boost up in life through her kid being a Spaulding? Story would have practically written itself. This is SO interesting. Thanks for sharing.

Ugh, didn't he also swap out Olivia's birth control pills but instead she ended up pregnant by Mr. Fertility, Philip? (Trashy AND hugely problematic). I don't have an issue with him having more kids (pretty common with super rich guys like him) but every time I see the scene between Alan and Beth before Alan's first exit where she helps him reconcile with Philip, I can't stop thinking, "Yuck, they end up married and having a baby." I would have preferred the family expanded though his kids and nephews (and niece, I forgot about Vicky).

Speaking of kids that should have been, what's always been wacky to me is how every Spaulding descendant is through Philip, who isn't biologically a Spaulding. (Except Gus's kid, but I don't really think of him as a Spaulding). It's wild that Alan Michael--who was thinking about having a kid with Harley when he was only 18--ended up childless. (This also cut off Mike's line, and the possibility of more Bauers). Lukack got croaked before he could have kids and Nick ends up with a woman who at the time probably couldn't have children because of her HIV status. Amanda, who once upon a time longed to have children, underwent a total character reversal so she never had any, either. Meanwhile, Philip almost single-handedly fathered that generation of kids, and there would have been more if Mindy's and Meredith's kids had lived. They used to make jokes about Hal Munson on ATWT fathering every kid on that show--Philip was GL's Hal Munson! .

I believe you're talking about Simon? Simon insinuated himself into Alex's life and claimed Brandon Spaulding was his father. She believed it. I still don't know how he fooled her for as long as he did. He was not a Spaulding. However, it was later revealed that he was Lujack's half brother, so they had a connection that way. Also, Jim and Alan have a very contentious backstory because of the way Alan wanted to exploit his research. So he likely would not be inclined to associate with a Spaulding. But those damn hormones... Me, neither. They should have had a long-term love story like Philip and Beth. Perhaps getting involved with others but always realizing they were meant for each other. Very missed opportunity.

That's the problem with bringing a core family member in for a short-term storyline. What do you do with them afterwards? They should have had a plan. Being the kind of doctor he was limited what he could do on the canvas. This reminds me of a funny story Joel Carruthers told at a soap event back when he was on EON. He had previously been on Somerset (paired with Tina Sloane, btw). Anyway, his character was a pianist. The show decided that was too limiting for his character. So they injured his hands or something. They had a scene where someone asks him what he would do with the rest of his life. "Luckily, I have a journalism degree!" He cries as he reaches into the piano bench to pull out his diploma. 😂 By the way, I always thought Jim and Amanda could have been a good pairing. Though I don't know about the freezing time thing. (I remember the clone and the time travel painting, but not that).

I have to root through the 1985 episodes on YT now because I must see this for myself. I'm pretty sure she was blind on their wedding day. No, Bill was sacrificed to the Fishing Trip Mystery. Hillary was sacrificed to the Barbados Mystery. Yeah, unbelievable. I wasn't that wild about the Hillary/Jim pairing, but by blowing her up they left him without anything to do (except fall for his sister-in-law, ew). So both the Bauers and Reardons were diminished. It's something that happened a LOT during this time period: pairings that were built up and then died. If it's not working, sure, they have to cut their losses. But there were so many. Rick and Mindy, Rick and Meredith, Mindy and Kurt and Frank and Rusty and Will, Philip and Chelsea, Johnny and Roxie, Johnny and Chelsea, Philip and Blake, Alan Michael and Dinah, Alan Michael and Harley, Dinah and Cameron, Trish and Ross, Claire and Kelly, Claire and Fletcher, Maeve and Fletcher...it goes on and on. Other than Reva and Josh, they had almost no pairings with staying power. (They would have with Philip and Beth if Evans hadn't left or they had done a decent recast right away).

Thanks! I thought he was a talent manager like Jackson or maybe a record company executive. This is SOOOO much worse. 😂

Seems like Kobe tended to cut her nose off to spite her face. Yes, we invested all this time in this character, but now you've ticked me off, so I'll kill the character off! So you think playing a Bauer makes you safe. HA! I'll show you! You are out of here! Didn't Alex have in her backstory a romance with a guy like Jackson? He had a strange name--Locke Walls, I think? He may have even made appearances on the show. Anyone remember this? Anyway, I wish they had done more about Alex's Bohemian past because it's one of the most intriguing things about her.

One of the greatest soap rivalries. Aside being played by two iconic actors, it was so beautifully constructed by the Dobsons and built on by Marland. Yes, I give him tons of credit for that, he was the only writer besides the Dobsons who really got both characters. Long could write classic Alan stuff (mainly about controlling people in his personal life) but then she'd have him do goofy things like trying to build a bioweapon. I remember watching the scenes where Kyle humiliates Roxie and wanting to hurl. This is something I have NEVER been able to figure out--why after being treated like this by Kyle did Roxie act thrilled about Reva marrying him? I don't care how much time had passed. It's something that happened a lot on soaps during that time period, where abusive men were turned into romantic heroes, but it was still awful. It would have been great to see the two of them go at it. Like Reva, Rita came from a humble background and the way she pursued men was at least somewhat mercenary, so Vanessa would have had that as a weapon against her. Rita was no fool and would have been on to Vanessa's machinations. I can't remember if Rita and Hope ever got a major confrontation scene. They should have given Kasdorf a short-term deal to give the story a proper wrap-up. Lots of potentially great moments lost. Yeah, that was wild. Why build up this character, attach him to a core family, get at least part of the audience on board with his romantic pairing...and then permanently kill him off? Made total sense that VI wanted to try his luck in Hollywood. They should have anticipated this. They could have had him lost at sea. Or not! They brought back Roger after he fell off a cliff, Reva after she drove off a pier, and Brandon, who was at death's door already when Lucille croaked him.

You are correct, he did leave late April or early May of 1984. TOTALLY agree about how great he and Beverlee were together. One of my favorite scenes of any era of GL was when Alan and Alex remembered protecting each other from their father's abuse. The two of them crushed that scene. I believe that was after Long returned to writing the show. I wish they had delved into that more, but Bernau left a few months later and Pilon never had any rapport with Beverlee. Never understood why they brought in a nobody connected to nobody else on the show to marry Mindy in that over-the-top wedding, then sticking them in a boring "marriage vs career" story. (The same exact thing that scuttled Kelly and Morgan). Of course they had to kill him off.

How did I forget this one??? I must have blocked it from my memory. Not only terrible, incredibly irresponsible. Still can't believe the network and P&G signed off on it. You're welcome. Lots of drama and upheaval behind the scenes. It's hard to keep track of it!

Wow, great list! You missed a few who were out in 1983: Hope Evie Mrs. Renfield (I THINK she left in 83, but it might have been 82.)

I have no inside information, but I strongly suspect that the Dreaming Death story was not entirely her fault. I can practically hear a network executive saying, "We need to compete with General Hospital, write an Ice Princess story!" Even though I loathed that story, I'm inclined to give her a break. Bringing back Brandon from the dead for the Barbados story--ugh. Maybe if they had taken advantage of the new Spaulding family members it created it wouldn't have felt like a waste of time. The storyline overall was not terrible, they needed a spoiler for Reva and Josh, but I hated her making Alan one of Reva's needy puppy dogs. The return of Roger--again, likely not her idea. It's not bad that they brought him back, but the execution of his return was awful. The silly mask, the silly accent, making him an ex-CIA spook like that redeemed him. Then there was Alan--who at this point in the story had literally NO reason to kill him (that slate had been wiped clean years before) chasing him with a gun. Had Alan ever touched a gun before this? I don't think so. I get they had decided to remove Alan from the canvas, but the whole thing was totally absurd.

No, that happened earlier. In late 1979, the Dobsons were writing GL and were asked to switch with Marland, who was doing a stint at ATWT. He went back to ATWT a year or two after he quit GL over Jane Elliot being fired. When Marland quit GL, he was briefly replace by Pat Falken Smith, then there were a bunch of other writers that came and went after her, and then Pam Long took over. Rebecca Hollen (Trish) said in The Locher Room that she and Jerry were very keen on being paired, but for some reason it never really took off. It is odd that outside of that one blip where she was used to break up Alan and Hope and then was the excuse for Alan to go after Ross, she never got a major story. Even then, I think she was only put in there because she was the one female character not involved in a major story who could credibly be inserted into the Spaulding office. It was weird that Alan was ready to toss his marriage for her. She was SO much like Hope, she was even an alcoholic like Hope. Obviously, it was story tossed together very quickly to get Hope off the canvas. Anyway, it's a shame they never gave Hollen a strong story, especially considering how Long made the Lewises so prominent. I don't know about eunuch, but I was thinking today while watching one of the Dreaming Death episodes that Warren always acted like he had a huge sign around his neck that said "Loser." A very ineffective villain.

The time period here was 1981. Alan and Hope were very front burner for almost that entire year. After Hope gives birth, the story is about the Diane/Joe Bradley murders. Because of evidence Diane had about Alan's association with Roger, Alan takes Hope and the baby out of the country. Mike gets to do the truth, justice, and the American way thing and tracks Alan down. Alan could have left Mike to die, but he didn't, and then he turned himself in. So Marland did a redemption arc for him. He paid for his crimes with Roger and went to jail. When he came out, he quit Spaulding. He and Hope (who forgave everything, yes, Marland never gave her anything significant to do outside of Alan) went to live in a smaller house and were on the back burner for a while. Alan and Mike were even friendly for a time. Then Marland abruptly left the show. I doubt he would have left Alan and Hope on the back burner. I'm pretty sure the plan was to bring back Rita. Originally, she was going to come back to cause trouble for Ed and Vanessa, but they realized that pairing wasn't working, so they brought in Maureen for Ed. They strongly hinted Rita was pregnant when she left town, and the thinking is she would have sashayed back to Springfield with a kid to blow up Ed and Maureen and Alan and Hope. When new writers came in, they probably didn't want to bring back a character that was off the canvas before they started. Also, executive producer Allen Potter left soon after Marland. If he had still been there he might have pushed the new writers to bring back Rita. The writers before Pam Long took over started showing fissures in Alan and Hope's marriage and put Alan back in charge of Spaulding, so they obviously didn't want to keep them as happy and boring. When Gail Kobe took over as EP she wanted to get rid of a bunch of characters, including Hope, so they had Alan completely revert back to the way he was before he married Hope. Bernau's first exit wasn't until 1983. I don't know if that was because of his illness. It was probably the end of his second 3 year contract so he might have just wanted to take a break.

Thanks for posting this! From what I recall, there were a couple of soap columnists who were big Marland admirers. One for certain was Michael Logan. The article that was posted recently with his comments on the GL 50th Anniversary tribute leaving out the Nola fantasies and making it sound like that was one of soap opera's finest achievements is a perfect example of his admiration for Marland. Now, my thoughts on this article. I know I've been shredding Marland quite a bit, but I think some of the criticism here is off. First of all, Alan and Hope had been married for a year, of course they were going to have major conflict. It's either that or have them back-burnered. Why would any fan want that? Was I, as a fan of the pairing, thrilled about the affair with Rita at the time? No, but you weren't supposed to be. It made perfect sense because it had been foreshadowed for AGES. Even going back to the Dobsons, I think even before they put Alan and Hope together. They had these scenes where they weren't exactly flirting, but they were very "simpatico." Alan and Rita were like two sides of the same coin: a bit narcissistic, sensual, both adoring living the "good life." Something stalwart members of the middle class like Ed or Hope never understood. Of course they were going to get together at some point. In fact, if Kasdorf had not left the show, I am absolutely convinced that this would have been more than a passing affair story. It seems to me the plan was to have a long-term love triangle, kind of like Alice/Steve/Rachel on Another World. Alan truly loving sweet, faithful Hope while still being sexually drawn to Rita, and Rita wanting an upgrade in lifestyle through Alan. They seemed to be building it up in the soap mags (lots of pictures of the three characters together). That got cut off abruptly because of Kasdorf's exit so Alan and Hope were reunited fairly quickly, IMO. The storyline to do with them that should have gotten raked over the coals was the absurd decision by Elizabeth to give custody of Philip to Jackie and Justin without telling Philip he was their son. Since Hope was on Elizabeth's side, it was the issue that caused a rift between Alan and Hope and gave him the excuse the step out on her. But it made no logical sense. (Neither did Diane blackmailing Ross to convince Alan to keep Philip out of his will because he wasn't his biological son. Alan could have left his money to a charity for homeless cats if he wanted to). I don't disagree with her complaining about a lack of a Roger-type villain, but Andy was Roger Lite--abusive to women, a guy who gathered information for blackmail, etc., without the backstory and character connections Roger had. The obvious succesor to Roger was Diane. Definitely a mistake to kill her off. As for the teen stories--we have all complained about them. But from those stories evolved some major characters, like Josh and Nola.

O.K., I'm going to say it. I did not have a way to articulate it back then, but I do now: Carrie was Marland's Manic Pixie Dream Girl. She was there to teach Ross to embrace life and not care so much about the things that mattered to him before: becoming rich and successful. She got him to jog and eat healthy and toss his lawyer suits in favor of turtleneck sweaters and safari jackets. That's how you knew he was "loosening up." She had an almost insanely positive attitude. Ross would order her an orange juice and she would act like it was the greatest thing anyone had ever done for her. I have loved Jane Elliot in practically every other role she has played, but found her cringy in this one. As someone pointed out earlier, this was a personality she developed to protect herself from all the terrible things that happened to the original Carrie when her husband killed himself. But why Ross didn't run screaming in the other direction, I'll never know.

Wasn't HTSAM sacrificed so they would have room in the lineup to expand Another World? If so, how ironic. WHAAAAT? I'm so glad I was tapped out of GL during this period. When Marland was putting together his young adult crew there was lots of chem testing going on. They tested out Tony and Josh with almost anyone who wore a skirt who wasn't related to them. Josh and Nola briefly flirted while Nola was pregnant.

I can't imagine Jerry saying anything blatantly negative about any of the actors he worked with, but he certainly seemed to have a problem with the storyline. In The Locher Room he made quasi-joking comments about how Ross was the stupid husband during that story. Now I have to read the book! Sounds like there's lots of tea in it. I don't recall that about Kelly but you're not wrong that soaps changed. There was talk during the mid-late 1970s that soaps were going to become more explicit, that they might even feature nudity eventually. I wish I could remember what magazine it was that had an article not only saying this, but giving examples from existing soaps how scenes would be changed to become more explicit. This was before cable existed in most homes. The show that was supposed to be the vanguard was called How to Survive a Marriage, which tackled a lot of social issues and was more open about sexual matters. It was a flop, so that might be one reason soaps pulled back on these issues by the 1980s. I think the difference is pretty obvious when you look at the 1979 episodes of GL. Not only in the incredibly realistic and mature way they handled the Roger/Holly rape storyline. There was a whole storyline about how Rita wasn't able to have an orgasm during sex with Ed. (Not because he was a dud in the bedroom, but because of all the stress in their marriage). They never used the "O" word (much like the Seinfeld "Master of Your Domain" episode never used the "M" word) but you knew exactly what they were talking about. I can't even begin to imagine a story like that happening during the 80s, and not just during Marland's tenure. There are probably multiple reasons for this change. The country becoming more conservative, yes, possibly the AIDS the crisis. Also perhaps how everyone was chasing GH's ratings. Even a show that started out very focused on personal and sexual matters like Ryan's Hope was ditching that for mob stories and the like by the 80s.

This is fascinating! My assumption back then was that Zimmer was Long's muse the same way Elliot and Brown were Marland's muses. I've been watching Reva's intro episodes. After they get past the "trashy ex-wife blows into town to cause trouble" bit and it becomes about Reva and Josh, I have to say it's very compelling. The scenes between KZ and RN seem real and sincere. Long was very good at writing stories about the past impacting the present. If there was ever any of that during his tenure, it was down to the actors. Jerry and Maeve were great in their scenes and it's a shame that he didn't give Ross and Vanessa a long-term love story. Instead, he paired her with Ed (sad trombone noise) or had her bouncing around from one affair to the next. It took Long to give her a real love story. Ross was paired with Carrie, and I don't see how that was ever going to be anything but a fairly short-term story. Too bad the Alan/Rita affair scenes aren't anywhere on YT that I know of, they had great chemistry. One of the things that I thought was a missed opportunity was how Marland built up Alan and Jennifer's youthful affair as this big deal and when they see each other again...nothing. They were always very cool towards each other. This is so true. The only female characters that seemed to interest him were Carrie and Nola. The Dobsons wrote beautifully nuanced women. If you wrote down on a piece of paper all the things Jackie, Rita, Holly, and Amanda did, you might think, "Wow, what a bunch of selfish bitches." But somehow they managed to get you to feel empathy for them. Then when Long came in, all the women became far stronger. It's too bad she had to write out Hope, who was doomed to stay entirely in Alan's sphere under Marland. Even though her exit story was rushed and poorly motivated (Alan went from loving Hope one day to acting like she broke into his house the next) it was nice to see her evolve into a stronger person. Even though I was a fan of them as a couple, her last scenes where she tore Alan a new one for the way he treated her were very gratifying.

I think you can add Hillary to that list. Outside of the Roger story, she didn't do much except work at Cedars. They never made it feel like she was a part of the Bauers, even taking into account how she became a Bauer. That goes for all the writers, she always seemed apart from them. Which is too bad, because they could have used her to bulk up the Bauer family as other core families took over more. OMG, wasn't John the guy who took advantage of Kim having amnesia and that's how Andy was conceived? Yikes.