DeeVee

Yes, I think that is correct. After the strike ended and Long asked who Blake was talking to on the phone, no one could answer. So she wrote the reveal that Blake was spying for Alan at Spaulding, and they had the flashback (barf) where she seduced him when he was exiled in Mexico after Phillip took over Spaulding. This was around October 1988, so I'm not sure if they had already decided she would be Christina. Based on when Zaslow started appearing on screen, it had to be sometime during the autumn of 1988 when they asked him to return as Alan and he countered by offering to come back as Roger. Then Long had retcon some stuff. It's obvious Blake didn't know her father was still alive, so the motive became that she wanted his place at Spaulding, while at first it seemed the motive was simply that she was ambitious. Or, they HAD decided it, but held back the reveal a little, just making Blake seem like Alan's little minion. As usual, it's difficult to completely piece it together because of missing episodes. ***** CORRECTION I just remembered something: after the reveal that Alan and Blake were in cahoots, Alex confronted Blake and told her she knew about her past and who her father was. I don't think they had mentioned Roger's name yet, but that indicates that they HAD made the decision to make her Christina already.

I so agree. When you have characters so beautifully drawn over so many years, so you feel like you know them, the stories should really write themselves. I don't mind a plot-heavy story (because the definition of plot is simply "things that happen in the story"). It's how the characters REACT to what happens in the story that's the reason you watch. This is why I get mad when the reveals are not handled well, or just never really happen at all, or they just amount to nothing. I haven't watched Eastenders in years (no access to a way to stream it) but that show could really do the reveals. They were like bombs going off in the lives of the characters, and then more bombs would go off, one after the other, often changing people's lives forever. Long did that up to a point with the Phillip reveal, but was hampered by the fact that two of the major players were not there anymore and one was on her way out the door. The Amanda being Brandon's child could have been that kind of reveal--IF they had set it up properly, as we were discussing earlier. Several of us came up with ways this could have been done that would have made sense. It could have been a very memorable story with a memorable fall-out. Instead it's regarded as one of the dumbest things the show ever did.

I like it, too. People forget that not that long before this soaps had organ music, both for their themes and as background music. It makes me HOWL every time I watch a really old soap episode. It's the kind of thing Carol Burnett made fun of in her "As the Stomach Turns" sketches. I'll take the soothing violin music any day of the week (and definitely over the disco disaster that followed it). I also like the different take on how it portrays the "guiding light." The lighthouses are nice but a little on the nose.

I'm going to disagree with that a little bit. One thing I liked about Amanda's early incarnation was that she had this fragile, socially awkward outward appearance, when she was actually very manipulative and clever. Which I think were her Spaulding traits, whether they came from Alan or Brandon. Even Marland picked up on it at first, but then he tossed them later and turned her into a neurotic woman who was easily fooled by men. (Let's face it, he did that to a lot of the female characters). One of the problems with Amanda, both early and late version, is the rather silly backstory Marland created--Alan engaged to the one sister, the drowning (what was the point of that, even), seducing the underage sister. I think it would have made much more sense if they had dropped Janice, and had Alan engaged to "Jane Marie" (although I would change that name, dear Lord, Marland could be so bad at naming characters sometimes) with Brandon feeling that the Staffords weren't good enough for his family. He could have had Brandon insisting Alan marry an heiress like Elizabeth. THEN he'd have a REALLY good reason to hide Amanda from him. I'm not buying the "not wanting Alan tainted by scandal" explanations because the Staffords would have been MUCH more interested in keeping it quiet. Rich boy making a girl pregnant would be chalked up to "boys will be boys" while Jennifer would be marked as damaged goods. Also (this could have been more easily retconned later), Brandon could have raped Jennifer as a way to make her feel unworthy of Alan. Maybe that could have been the reason Alan became bitter towards women because she was his first real love and he never knew why she suddenly left him. The Staffords could have gone to Brandon, assuming Amanda was Alan's child, but he would have known the truth and forced Jennifer to keep quiet about it. Then, hiding Amanda with Lucille would have made a tad more sense. (But then why would Lucille live in SF--it's almost as ridiculous as hiding Luke Skywalker on his father's home planet with his stepbrother and sister-in-law, but whatever). Instead of making Jennifer a sackcloth and ashes wonder, she could be someone who is MAD at the Spauldings. Maybe with conflicting feelings about Amanda, if she was a product of rape. Maybe since Brandon is dead, she feels the need to take it out on Alan (while still having residual feelings for him). Maybe really hating Lucille as Brandon's henchwoman, which would have made the eventual murder trial a lot more interesting. Anything would have been more interesting, honestly. You're welcome! I was so happy to find it--you rarely see anything with Mart post-GL.

The story is already creepy enough as it is... This is another case where context is missing because not all the episodes are available. Alan was engaged to Janice, so you have to assume he had feelings for her. But the impression I got from the flashbacks and my own memories is that they were headed for a break-up. Jennifer simply was not interesting enough to have "seduced" a father and son the same summer. (Of course, it was rape regardless because she was underage). Yes, I can believe Brandon raped her; I can't believe she was clever enough to keep it quiet. At least not Marland's version of Amanda's mother. If they had brought Jennifer back and found a way to explain it (suppressed memory could have worked) then yeah. TBH, even the Dobsons original set-up made little sense. WHY give Amanda to a psychotic freak like Lucille? Even if she wasn't back then it still doesn't ring true. I think they had something big planned when Amanda's mother was revealed, some interesting twist. Maybe that twist was Brandon being her father. The whole thing was just really strangely put together from the beginning.

This picture popped up in my Pinterest feed. Does anyone have any idea when and/or where this was taken? It has to be after Mart and Lenore left GL and before Michael became visibly ill.

That's definitely a retcon. Amanda came back for a brief visit Christmas 1987. She gave adult Phillip her proxy (this was part of the set-up for Phillip taking over Spaulding the following year) and talked with him as if they had been in touch in the intervening years. She and AM were closer, true, but that was mainly because she and Hope had maintained their friendship after both left SF. This was referred to during Amanda's 1987 visit, when she told AM she had a message from his mother.

That would definitely have livened those two ladies up!😂 Clara was played by Anna Maria Horsford, who is best known for the sitcom Amen and has been in copious movie and TV roles, including several other soap roles. I wonder if they meant to bring her back. Another thing possibly scuttled by the Dobsons being switched over to ATWT. I agree with that. I thought Morgan and Cooke strongly improved when they had her stop genuflecting to Kelly and start standing up to her mother. I liked the relationship between her and Josh. He tried so hard to get her and once he did he was like, "Whoa, this moving WAY too fast!" Between the crack-up of her marriage and Josh being another guy who failed her, she seemed to be finally growing up. But the target was already on her back. I would have liked it if Morgan had been brought back (of course with a better actress). She had a lot of ties to people on the show and a troubled backstory that was already familiar to the audience. I think she could have been developed into an interesting character.

While the Dobsons were still there, they were talking about it, with just about everyone trying to talk Hope out of it. So it could have gone either way. But I believe they would have taken the darker turn. It was Marland who decided to gratify the fans who wanted them to get married. He said as much in interviews. Jennifer was so poorly conceived. It's one thing that she got involved with Alan when she was 16; it's another that she married a clod later on and then was easily fooled by Mark. I honestly can't understand why you would hire an actress like Court to play such a spineless, weak character. It totally went against the expectations the Dobsons set up by having her mysteriously arrive at Brandon's funeral in the black veils. Marland was totally aware of that, because he did a flashback where Jennifer's husband was giving her grief for going to the funeral in the veiled hat. It seems like Morgan was soley created to do his teen fantasy story about a teen girl marrying an older guy. Once that happened, the character was kind of adrift. Let's face it, he didn't write women well in general, unless they were a special pet of his, like Nola and Carrie. Did they? I was under the impression that they were reunited but not married. And yet for some reason they kept Eve around for another year. I still say it was because they were planning to bring Rita back. That must have been scuttled because Marland quit or because Lenore wouldn't come back/they couldn't find a satisfactory recast. Possibly a combination of all three.

I don't remember this! Hope and Amanda were such good friends, and it wasn't the first time Amanda was in charge of Spaulding. Alan was grooming her to take over pretty much from the moment he decided not to contest Brandon's will. Later Alan takes Spaulding away from her and Hope is standing loyally by his side, but this is news to me. Some of the scenes of Hope visiting Alan in jail are available, and I also remember a scene where Hope and Amanda are reconciling over some difference or other--maybe it's this one. But I don't remember this happening during this era. Do you know if the German channel has some of these episodes?

Jeez, I forgot that part. The wedding scenes are available online, btw. If you want to subject yourself to it. 😄

Oh, now you've done it. You have triggered a RANT. The way they wrote out Alan in 1989 was STOOOOOOOOOPID. This whole deal where he finds out that Roger is alive, so he gets a gun and decides he's going to shoot him at PHILLIP'S WEDDING was BEYOND RIDICULOUS. (Yes, I'm aware I'm shouting. I can't help it). First of all, I don't think Alan ever TOUCHED a gun before this. He would not go after someone (IN PUBLIC) to gun them down personally. If he were ever to be driven to want someone dead, he would HIRE SOMEONE to do it for him. He would never dirty his hands like that. Remember what I was saying before about how self-preservation was the main thing that drove Alan? But I think it's completely out of character for him to even go that far. Alan had a million chances to get rid of Roger by having him killed. He never did it. So it's a pretty good indicator that 10 years later, he STILL wouldn't do it. Then there's something else that apparently everyone forgot or chose to forget: Alan had nothing to fear from Roger at this point. Everyone knew everything that Roger had been holding over him in the past. He even briefly went to prison because of it. Would he have been happy about a Roger return? No. Would he have been suspicous and assume Roger had an agenda against him? Sure. But personally go after him with a gun and try to kill him? NO. We're not done with the stupid part. Because Alan accidentally shot Phillip instead of Roger (as one does WHEN YOU'VE NEVER TOUCHED A GUN BEFORE) and then everyone turns against him and seems to be supportive of Roger, he refuses to use an attorney. Right. Richest guy in town decides NOT to avail himself of the best attorneys in the country, so he ends up getting 5 years in jail. Someone with a public defender would have gotten a better deal. Meanwhile, Roger gets his record expunged because he was a spook for the government. (Don't even get me started on THAT). Apparently, Alan didn't avail himself of any attorneys WHILE he was in jail, so he serves the ENTIRE 5 YEARS. Look, I get that they needed a way to write him out of the story and didn't know how long they were going to keep him off the canvas, but there had to be a much better, much more believable way to do it than this mess. Alan disappearing into the jungles of San Rios with federalistas chasing him was more believable exit. SIGH. Rant over.

Sadly, he passed away from AIDs in 1989. On the SAME DAY as Bernau. Wow.

He was on Y&R during a period I didn't watch it much. (I never really watched B&B). When he was on Dark Shadows he played a mute ghost for months. His performance was so intense that without saying a word he scared the crap out of the audience. When he played a human character later, he was a schemer and someone who easily manipulated women, and the audience just loved him. Perfect for Alan, IMO. The only one more popular with the DS female audience at the time was David Selby. He also would have been a fantastic Alan, but he was eating it up on prime time from the 80s on. Since all of this moot and time has long past, if I could pick ANYONE, even someone who would never do a soap, my ideal actor to play Alan during the 90s would have Chris Sarandon. He can play funny and charming, but also play villainous and dark. He's handsome without being pretty handsome, and believably play a powerful person. Those are the qualities that I believe an actor playing Alan needed to work. I love fantasy casting. This is so much fun. Coster and Reilly would both have been good--they were not that much older than Bernau. I would lean a little bit in favor of Coster. He was really good at playing complex characters. I believe Reilly left GH around the time Raines was cast. Maybe he even auditioned for the part, who knows. During Bernau's first run, he was replaced briefly twice (he was ill or maybe he was holding out for more money during contract negotiations). First David Bailey, who played Russ Matthews on AW, replaced him for a few episodes, and then later on Wayne Tippit who played Ted on SFT. At least one of the episodes with Tippit is available on the German channel. I have to say it was EXTREMELY weird to see him play opposite Elvera. He just did not work for me as Alan. But I could see David as a permanent replacement for him. DHK I think was a bit too young for the part of Ed. Larkin Malloy--again, too young, and he played rich snots almost his whole career, I think for a reason. Even though Kyle was brought up by a madam, I don't see him having the middle-class vibe Ed would need. Age aside, Ed is not so easy to come up with a good recast. Yeah, he's the good guy, but he also has demons. Ron Hale--yeah, I could see it. If I just think of him as Roger on RH, I would think he suited Alan better, but he could play other kinds characters. He was only a little bit younger than Simon, so age-wise he would have worked.

True. There used to be short-term expendable villains who did the really heinous stuff. Then you had the Machiavellian style villains who were on the edge like Alan but who never did anything so bad they had to be killed off or permanently written out. I believe a lot of people were put off by soaps when that changed. Hallick's a great choice! He would have been a very good Mike. This is so funny. When we were talking a while back about Holly's ex-husband Deitrich Lindsay and how great it would have been if they had brought him on the show, Arrants was the first actor I thought of. But I could see him as Ed, too. Another great pick. I think he also would have been a good Alan. He played a lot of on the edge characters, he had the charisma and charm to play him, though he might have come across as a little too young. My personal top pick for an Alan recast would be Jim Storm. He ticks a lot of the boxes.

I'm glad I found it, too! Some people here mentioned they would have liked Jed Allen as a possible Alan recast. I think someone even said he was in the running for the part at one point. I agree, he would have been a very good Mike. I see him as playing a good guy more than a bad guy. I was always a little surprised that Stewart was popular as Mike, exactly for these reasons. I believe he fit a male "type" that was popular during the 70s that didn't carry over into the 80s as much.

This is a really good point. Alan's "villainy." from the moment he was introduced was not solely about getting back at people. Definitely that was part of it--he wanted to get back at his father because of unnamed things his father did to him growing up. He wanted to get back at Elizabeth and Mike because he didn't want to lose control of Phillip and even though he didn't love Elizabeth, he was offended that SHE left HIM. But what really drove Alan most of the time was having to cover up something he did that was underhanded, or not exactly legal, although he would tell himself he did it for good reasons, (i.e. doing the baby switch when Elizabeth's baby was born dead). He was usually busy hiding something he did in the past, and that would force him to do more bad things, that he would also have to hide. For instance, he ordered his lawyer to pay someone to say he had an affair with Elizabeth so he would have a better chance to gain custody of Phillip. The witness swore on two affadavits--one claiming he had the affair with Elizabeth, one where he admits he was paid to lie about it. His lawyer, behaving kind of like the knights who murdered Thomas Becket because the king made an off-handed comment that he wanted to get rid of him, kills the guy they hired to lie. Alan didn't ASK him to do it, but he would have been implicated. Then the lawyer is killed, and Alan's like, PHEW, got out of THAT one! Only ROGER found the affadavits. So he he starts blackmailing Alan. And Alan has to do a bunch of things at Roger's command, like promoting him, letting him keep his job when he's accused of rape, etc. He keeps trying to convince Roger to take a job in Hong Kong so he can sweep him under the rug, but Roger won't do it. Then Holly shoots Roger. Roger, certain he's going to be convicted of rape, orders Alan to help him fake his death. Which he does. And he thinks, hey, I'm in the clear again! Unfortunately, this makes him partially responsible for Holly going to jail for "killing" Roger. Too bad, he's about protecting himself. Only Mike is suspicous and also upset because Hope is involved with Alan. So he has the "Roger's" body exhumed and everyone is shocked that it's not Roger. MEANWHILE, Roger is in France and calls Alan and tells him he's coming back because he wants his daughter Christina. While Roger doesn't get his hands on her, a pregnant Rita sees him, and Roger kidnaps HER. Now Alan is partially resonsible for Rita's kidnapping and for the fact that she almost burns to death in the cabin Roger left her in, eventually losing her baby. (This is the kind of thing that irks me about Marland. We NEVER got reveals where people gave Alan sh!t for the terrible things that happened to them because he was looking out for himself. Rita, Holly, and Hope should have torn him a new one multiple times. I don't think even Elizabeth told him off when she found out the truth about Phillip. That said, Marland did do a good job of keeping Alan consistent, until he had him punished and "redeemed"). Anyway, see what I'm saying? His villainy was his impulse ALWAYS for self-preservation, EVEN if he felt kind of bad about it. He tried to stop Roger from taking Christina, but only in ways that wouldn't have exposed his complicity. He wasn't a good guy (though he had some good impulses) but he was a way more interesting and complex guy than the Alan RR played. (Not blaming RR for that; he didn't write the scripts).

Oh, wow, that's interesting. I always wondered why it seemed like she came back briefly to support Roger during the rape trial, but she also was behind the nurse's desk at Cedars. Damn missing episodes. 1977 the show was half an hour and then in 1979 it's an hour and there are a bunch of new characters she has no connection to. It's not odd that she got left out of the mix.

What an interesting factoid! Michael I think did quite well in theater. Not everyone is suited to soap work. I did not know this. I know that some people did not like him, but I did. What can I say, I'm a sucker for an Irish brogue. I think perhaps the problem with him for the audience is first he was in the way of Mary and Jack getting back together, then he functioned the same way with Faith and Pat.

OR, handing the family over to the next generation. This, IMO, is one of the many reasons it was a huge mistake to kill off Alex's son. With Amanda, Phillip, Alan Michael, and Lujack, there were plenty of players and natural conflicts between the siblings/cousins to keep the Spaulding family a powerful force in SF. I can believe RR was good in other roles (I think he could have been a decent recast for Mike Bauer--he's even a singer like Don Stewart, LOL). He just did not have the qualities that Alan needed. He was also not helped by the writing for the character.

We can eliminate Ed and Rita's wedding because I FINALLY found the picture. Bill Bauer was not at that wedding. Your mind wasn't playing THAT many tricks in you, LOL. To this day, I will never understand the casting of Raines as Alan. They waited FIVE FREAKING YEARS to bring Alan back. Nobody was going to bring to the role exactly what Chris Bernau did, but Raines was so wrong for the part. And then they kept him for 15 years. Yeesh. Yes, Hearst was partly cast because he had some resemblance to Bernau, and so did the first non-baby AM actor, Carl Evans.

That's another thing that got scuttled because the Dobsons were kicked over to ATWT. The woman who came to Brandon's funeral in the hat and heavy black veils was obviously being signaled as a woman of mystery, maybe truly the love of Alan's life. Or not, she could have been out for revenge against him and his family for what they did to her. In spite of the convoluted backstory Marland cooked up for "Jane Marie," it was pretty insipid and Jennifer was also insipid. I am certain Court could have played her as a MUCH more interesting character than what Marland created. If Stewart objected to being paired with her, it might have been for this reason. At least with Elizabeth (who also could have been characterized as insipid, which is kind of ironic) they were caught up in a big storyline involving many other possible connections/love interests with some real conflict driving the love story. After the trial (which Marland ripped off from that old movie "Madam X") there wasn't much else for them to play that was interesting. I believe that is very close to what the Dobsons were planning. No quick wedding, possibly no wedding. As the Dobsons exited the show, Alan was going to be juggling a lot of women: Hope, Rita, Diane, Amanda's mother...they must have had a very big, very complex story planned beyond Alan and Hope getting married.

I don't think Fran Myers (Peggy) was interested in coming back permanently (she returned briefly during the rape storyline and I think that was it for her). She transitioned to working behind the camera as a soap writer. They put Sara and Justin together for a while, where they had a backstory but that got dropped. She married Alan's corrupt lawyer and when he died she was briefly paired with Adam. And then she basically did little other than act as therapist for various characters.

Good question! It was weird that Ed had a sudden godson no one ever heard of before. I think Kelly was created to be a kind of ideal romantic hero that young viewers would respond to. (Strangely enough, I think he was more popular with older women). I was one of those young viewers at the time. I thought he was an obnoxious jerk. (And still do). They tried to create a romance between him and Claire Ramsey--I think she was created just for that purpose. It went over like a lead balloon. Like Tim, he was a preteen back in the mid-70s. By the time the new set of young people hit town, they could have easily SORASed him a little. Holly became wealthy at a young age from an inheritance. I don't think she had a career back then. Not to say she couldn't have found one. Maybe as a businesswoman, as she was when she returned. If the Dobsons had stayed as writers of the show, I venture to guess that Ed and Holly would have become more than platonic friends.

You'll really hate this one because it's AWFUL. When Alan married Jackie it was a snazzy wedding on a yacht in the Mediterranean attended by European aristocrats and Arab shieks. Jackie wore a beautiful couture gown in a couple of shades of gold with Phillip giving her away. He married Hope in her grandmother's house populated with hostile wedding guests. Hope wore a dress that looked like it was made out of a tablecloth. The cake looked like they got it from Publix and they danced their first dance to Bert singing "Let Me Call You Sweetheart." (I SWEAR I didn't make that up). Now, you might be saying, "It's a Bauer family wedding, that's nice, it's homey and sweet." But it was ALL WRONG for the story and the characters. If she was marrying Ben, that would have made sense. She was marrying one of the richest men in the country and it seemed like an afterthought. Even though Marland kept Alan and Hope in front burner storylines (because they were a popular couple with the audience--he said that in interviews, I didn't) he just did not care much about the characters he inherited. Anyway, I also want to see it again, to confirm it was as bad as I remember it and now I won't rest until I know if Bill Bauer was there, too. 😂 By the way, @vetsoapfan is it possible you are thinking of Ed and Rita's wedding? A picture of them on their wedding day with the guests (Rita's in her traveling clothes after the ceremony) pops up in my Pinterest feed every now and then. Now I'm trying to remember if Bill was in THAT picture. If I see it in my feed again (searching for it yielded only a picture of Ed with Rita in her wedding gown), I'll let you know.