DeeVee

That's earlier than I thought. Does anyone know when Grant's first appearances aired? Was it after Marland left? I always assumed so, but now I'm not sure. I know O'Leary didn't come in until early 1983. There was another actor playing Rick at first.

Yep, 1982 was Marland's weakest of his GL run. The awful Mark Evans story, the Carrie storyline never really clicking, characters like Vanessa, Trish, Josh, Tony, Hillary floating around without much purpose, Alan basically benched. Except for the cringy wrap-up of the Mark and Mona storylines, the show almost immediately improved after he left, even before Long showed up. They SORASED Phillip and Rick, they put Alan back in charge of Spaulding, they got rid of Carrie, they finally let Alan and Hope's marriage hit the skids, they introduced Claire, who was actually a pretty good character at first. Then Long came in and the women characters stopped being a bunch of jellyfish, she expanded the Lewis family, creating two of the best characters the show ever had, and gave most of the characters floating around without much direction real storylines and love interests. I would say most of the year was very good...up until the Dreaming Death story, which I doubt was even Long's idea. Probably a directive from the network to do a story like GH's The Ice Princess. And, yes, I think Reva's introduction was good. It's kind of miraculous how Long used Josh and Reva's backstory to turn Josh from a creepy loser to a romantic lead.

I think if it had been solely up to Long, both Amanda and Hope would have survived the bloodbath. Both characters became more interesting after she took over. Didn't she have the idea to do a "War of the Roses" type story for Alan and Hope? IMO, that would have been great. She also seemed to be interested in making Ross and Amanda a romantic couple. LOL, not going to argue with that!

I'm pretty sure the end of the Mark storyline was written by scab writers. Early in the Mark story, there was a flashback of Mark with Mona. He gave her a necklace that he later gave to Jennifer. The actress who played Mona in the flashback was way older Mark. The implication was that Mark married older women and killed them for their money. I guess the scab writers decided to sweep out both the Mark and Rebecca stories by melding them together. The result was really bizarre.

That was a consistent problem with Marland. Everything was SO convoluted. He didn't know how to use the past effectively. I had my problems with Long, but she got to the heart of things that happened in the past and used them well for stories in the present. Phillip finding out about his origins is a perfect example. She even effectively used the fact that Jackie was dead.

All of the Phillip reveal happened after Marland came on the show. He deliberately accelerated it. I think he just didn't care for the story. TOTALLY agree that Elizabeth giving up Phillip was completely out of character. Even MORE ridiculous was Alan agreeing to giving Justin and Jackie custody. The guy indirectly caused a murder in order to get custody of Phillip. Not only was it a power thing to Alan, he genuinely loved Phillip. Phillip was probably the only person he really loved. That was consistently shown through the rest of the life of the show. Marland did this to get rid of Elizabeth/Dalton. Even though he took almost a year to write her out, he didn't seem to care if the reason she left made sense. He should have just killed her off. Jackie and Justin then could have revealed they were Phillip's parents and fought for custody. But, again, Marland didn't care for the story. That would have made it front burner. The thing that never made sense was Mark marrying Jennifer in the first place. Amanda was thirsting for him so much she probably would have handed over Spaulding to Mark if he had married her.

It's crazy she stuck around into 1983. My theory is they kept her around because they planned to bring Rita back. Once that was totally scuttled, they finally wrote her out.

Yes, he saw Jennifer and immediately had a heart attack. He ended up in Cedars as Justin's patient. So he was incapacitated and couldn't reveal Jennifer's real identity. A side story here was Ross trying to use Alan's history with the Staffords against him, and ending up regretting it. I think this was when he was starting to go with Evie, who I don't think he was really romantic about, but she had an influence on him that made him question some of things he was doing. Maybe another reason why Evie got pulled into the Chet sh!t storm. Agree, agree, agree! YES, in real life, a brief encounter like that would not likely end up becoming the love of your life. But in soap terms, this was a totally wasted opportunity. The one thing Alan was missing in his backstory was a lost love, a real one (because, apparently, Janice drowning was kind of a relief to him). I'm sure if the Dobsons had remained on the show, Amanda's mother would have been that lost love. That would have impacted his marriage to Hope and his affair with Rita. I'm thinking that would have been SUPER-juicy. Instead of that, we had cold politeness between Alan and Jennifer, even though they tried to make the case that he never forgot his encounter with Jane Marie and that it was very important to him. (Hey, I don't believe it either, I didn't write it, LOL). Which is a little bit weird when you consider that in the beginning they were setting up a Mike/Jennifer romance. Jennifer and Alan still being nostalgic for the past could of been used to cause conflict in a Mike/Jennifer relationship. But for some reason they sunk all that after the Amanda paternity reveal.

Yes, in fact, that was when he was "Nice" Alan, the year after he got out of prison. He didn't revert to "A--hat" Alan until after Marland exited the show. It just struck me as funny because he was always polite but a little bit imperious around hospital staff before that. I suppose they were trying to show how he had "grown" as a human in prison, or whatever.

LOL, I must have blocked that out. I thought it was kind of stupid. It implied Chet would have been the "funny uncle" if Amanda had grown up around the Staffords. Just a really weird obsession. 😬 Right? It's like the backstory wasn't icky enough--let's UP the ick factor! If you're going to do that, at least bring back Jennifer for some kind of an explanation. If Court wasn't available, recast the role briefly. Or make this some kind of BS Roger cooked up to f!ck with the Spauldings. Maybe even with Jennifer's compliance. She really hated Amanda's guts after the Mark thing, and who can blame her? The woman did not have one man treat her right her entire life, I could believe she'd be THAT resentful, even long after it happened. It's one of those cases where the writers went "HEY, what if...?" and didn't think through everything that would lead to. The ONE thing about this that makes the backstory make more sense is Brandon giving Amanda to Lucille. I wouldn't give Lucille a guppy to raise, but if he was in love with her and she wanted his child, then, O.K., maybe that makes sense.

When Alan was in college he was engaged to a girl named Janice Stafford. She had a younger sister named Jane Marie. Alan would spend weekends at the Staffords' lake house. One time he had an argument with Janice. He turned to Jane Marie, who had a crush on him, for sympathy. They ended up having sex. While Alan and Janice were alone on a boat, she told him she knew he had seduced her sister. She dove off the boat to get away from him. She hit her head on something and drowned. The family blamed Alan for Janice's death, but he was never charged for anything. When Jane Marie turned out to be pregnant, Brandon hustled the family off to Canada. When Amanda was born, he gave her to Lucille, who was his lover at the time. Jane Marie changed her name to Jennifer and married some loser named Walter, who was Morgan's father. When they came to SF for her to take the job with Lucille, Mike accidentally ran his car into their car. Walter was killed. Ross started digging around Alan's past with the Staffords. He tracked down Jennifer's father and brother Chet. Chet turned out to be a psycho, but oddly he terrorized Evie, not Alan, even though he had a monomaniacal obsession with Alan's role in the downfall of his family. He thought Evie was a threat to Amanda's marriage. He ended up in the booby hatch or jail, I don't remember which. That is sad, sad story of the Stafford family.

At Brandon's funeral, which the Dobsons wrote, a woman in a big black hat and heavy veil showed up. Everyone wondered who she was. The obvious assumption is she was Amanda’s mother. Later, Marland wrote a flashback scene showing Jennifer in the black hat arguing with her husband about going to the funeral. But the thing is, they were financially not doing great, and it seems unlikely that she would even have had the money to do that. (Honestly, I still don't get why she went to work for Lucille in the first place. Sure, she would want to be close to Amanda, but she wanted to keep her identity a secret. I don't know how she thought she could avoid Alan forever. Suspension of disbelief was very much needed here.) So it's likely Amanda’s mother was going to be someone else, that Jane Marie and her backstory were invented entirely by Marland. Possibly Alan mentioned an old girlfriend during the Dobson period, but I don't recall it. It wasn't until Marland came on that he started talking about Jane Marie.

Totally agree with all of this. Marland did not write women well. They were all neurotic and on the verge of becoming hysterics, even the characters he favored, like Nola and Carrie. Almost every female character was Sarah's patient at one time or another. (The men never sought therapy, though some of them needed it, LOL). Yes, I commented recently that the 1982 episode that was posted here had several scenes of characters doing nothing but expostion dumps just in the cold opening. A lot of soap writers were like that back in the day, but the Dobsons and their writing team were much better at using exposition in a way that didn't feel so clunky. This reminds of a scene that totally made me LOL: After Alan got out of jail the first time, for some reason he steps off the elevator at Cedars, walks up to Hillary, gives her a BIG hello and asks her how she is...and I'm thinking to myself, does he even really know her? I think that's true about characters being in their own orbits under the Dobsons, but still things that happened in one would reverberate in others. This was definitely true about the Roger story. I would have preferred that. If Roger had at least gone to jail, then the partial redemption they did for his character later would have gone down a little better for me. It totally grinds my gears that Roger NEVER went to jail for anything he did, while two of his victims, Holly and Alan, served time because of him. I think Amanda was slated to become more of a villainess under the Dobsons. They were showing her as very manipulative (gee, I wonder who she inherited that from) in getting Ben. After Marland came on, she was putting on sackcloth and begging forgiveness for her machinations. Marland turned her into more of a victim.

Sorry, I misunderstood. I thought you were just talking about the Reardons. We were talking about this over on the GL thread recently. Two actresses in front burner stories had to take leave soon after he came in as HW: Lenore Kasdorf, who played Rita, went on maternity leave, and Cindy Pickett, who played Jackie, left to do a movie. Also, Michael Zazlow and Maureen Garrett had decided to leave. So that gave him room to introduce these new characters. Yes, I think that's correct. An example is Lezlie Dalton, who played Elizabeth. For some reason he disliked her and the character. He took almost a year to write her out of the show.

Nola was introduced first as part of the Roger storyline. He was hiding out at the boarding house. Nola became suspicious and ended up calling the police on him. It seems as though she was initially meant to be a short-term character. I assume Lisa impressed Marland and the other PTB so much that they decided to make her a major character and build a family around her Nola and Bea came on early 1980. Tony sometime in 1981. Maureen was later in 1981, after Peter Simon took over as Ed. Jim and Chelsea came on after Marland left.

Not sure how that's a correction. He says right there he trained Marland. If you read Lemay's memoir, he did not agree with Irna Phillips about many things, but he did praise her as an excellent teacher who gave him the basics he needed to write the genre. No artist is going to simply copy their mentor. And mentor and students can and do end up rivals. I have to say I preferred Lemay to Marland as a writer, but don't agree with Lemay's harsh criticism here. IMO, if more soap writers today used Marland's rules, soaps would definitely improve.

It should be noted that Nixon and Lemay were mentored by Irna Phillips. Lemay mentored Marland. Bill Bell mentored his replacement Kay Alden. That kind of thing didn't exactly end. I'm sure other HWs that came after them nurtured up-and-comers, and the networks had writing programs. But the classic way of writing soaps was over by the mid-90s and most of the people who knew how to write that way were gone.

That's true...but. Whatever the Dobsons had planned for 1980, there were two big monkey wrenches thrown into the works: Lenore having to take maternity leave and Cindy taking time away to film a movie. Like Marland did, they would have likely used the first months of 1980 to wrap up the Roger story. Unlike Marland, they weren't going to start introducing a bunch of new characters who were being set up for big stories later on, but also filled in the holes left by Lenore and Cindy's absence. I also don't see Lainie and Floyd becoming a couple (more likely, Floyd would have been friendzoned but still care about Lainie and her ill-advised crush on Ed), but maybe they would have had to become more prominent early in 1980 for this reason. It's interesting to contemplate what might have happened if the Dobsons had stayed on the show. They seemed to love Lezlie Dalton and Elizabeth, so I doubt she would have been written out. I wonder if the ultimate plan was to have Mike and Elizabeth get married at some point. Or maybe not. Maybe Justin wouldn't have taken Elizabeth's infidelity so well. We might have gotten Dark Justin, mad that Elizabeth betrayed him and Jackie lied to him all those years. Possibly it would have been Mike and Jackie who got together in the end. (Assuming they did a better recast for Jackie). As far as Alan and Hope, they were also headed for marriage under the Dobsons, but I believe it would have deteriorated MUCH faster. Again, Lenore's absence would have delayed that somewhat, because it's clear they had an Alan/Rita affair planned for a long time. I can see Alan becoming very controling over Hope and immediately being unfaithful to her (kind of like what happened to Barbara when she married James on ATWT), and her becoming disillusioned. Maybe they would have had her become pregnant, too, and feel trapped. (I'm certain they would have also killed off Rita's baby so she would have been unencumbered for this storyline). Either they would have introduced a new man for her, or possibly involved her again with Ben. MAYBE she would have been the one to find out about his involvement with Roger. Maybe they would have let her become a more interesting character than Marland's version, the endlessly loyal girl with little identity outside of being Alan's wife. It's hard to say much beyond this. They likely had new characters and storylines planned that never came to be. But the show would have been quite different if they had stayed. OTOH, we would have missed out on some beloved characters, like the Chamberlains and the Reardons.

NO! I just loved her. 😢 RIP. It's been a while since I've seen it. From what I recall, it was very uneven. They didn't seem to know quite what to do with those characters. As wonderful as they both were, I think they worked better as supporting characters causing problems for the main characters.

LOL, it was the 80s. I gotta say, GL did refrain from the crazier big hair styles of the 80s for the most part. So that's something. But they were not kind to Roussel. Her hair kept getting fluffier over time, until she was divorcing Alan. Then she finally cut her hair. And the way they dressed her...also Cullen as Amanda. They should have sued the costume people. Even for the 80s, their clothes were hideous. Anyway, I was watching that episode during my lunch hour and had a few thoughts: What a LONG cold opening. Almost every bit of it was full of exposition dumps. The conversation between Trish and Mike about Josh was VERY interesting. When those of us who watched the Marland years when they aired said the off-screen Lewises were talked about long before they hit SF, we weren't kidding. Lots of talk by Trish about how HB was disappointed in Josh. This is January 1982, and I'm pretty sure HB and Billy were first mentioned way before that, in 1981. They don't hit town until 1983. Then we get to see what a worm Josh was back then, pressuring Nola's friend Gracie to make dinner for him (and presumably have sex with him) while also asking Ben about Morgan's portrait, because he was chasing the married Morgan. All that stuff about Carrie in jail and Ross investigating her before the murder trial...snore. Marland may have loved that storyline, but it never did much for me, and in the end it made little sense. It also did not make good use of Jackie and Justin, and emphasized how weak Mowery was as Jackie. Hope visiting Alan in jail. The start of Alan's redemption tour. The character was pretty much put in mothballs for a year. It wasn't until after Marland left that someone finally said, "Why are we wasting this character?" I would have SO preferred Alan and Hope breaking up over the lies he told her for three solid years about Roger. She should have torn him a new one. It would have been a good time to bring back Rita, even if it was a recast. This "Romeo and Juliet" thing, and Alan being contrite is so freaking silly. Not to metion, boring. That's why they had to come up with some mysterious guy trying to kill Alan, so SOMETHING was happening to them. Marland's last year on GL was definitely the weakest, with the awful Mark Evans story still coming down the pike.

The OLTL time travel story was actually pretty good. (The other two--no). The reason it was good was because it dealt with the Buchanan and Lord family origins. (Also, it was a Western and I love Westerns. But that's just me). I always say the reason Dark Shadows was so good was because no matter now wild it got, it was always about character. They TRIED to make the clone story about character, about Josh and Reva's relationship. That just made it come off as extremely creepy. At least they were smart enough to pull the plug. And cry me a river about how hard KZ had to work. She must have had a GREAT agent because other soap actors who played dual roles did not get paid extra. (Or they did and they lied about it.)

They took so much trouble setting up her character they must have had some specific plans. Possibly they already knew MG and MZ were planning to leave, and that would have caused a need for another female character to get involved with Ed. I've said many times before that I strongly believe the Alan/Hope story was going on a much different, much darker trajectory than Marland wrote for them. The Alan/Rita affair was something that had been set-up and hinted at for a very long time. Possibly, after much humiliation at Rita's hands, the Dobsons planned to make Ed vulnerable to a very ill-advised affair. Such as one with a girl much too young for him. We'll never know, but it's interesting to contemplate.

She got lost in the shuffle when Marland took over from the Dobsons. The Dobsons clearly had a major storyline planned for her. She was an ambitious athlete with the goal to make the Olympics. Then she had an accident that threatened her athletic career. Floyd befriended and helped her while she was doing physical therapy. There were hints dropped that she was developing a crush on Ed, who was her doctor. Then Marland basically drops ALL of that (and, frankly, I don't mind dropping the Ed part of it, that's kind of icky, she was WAY too young for him). She ends up working for Mike in the law office. I think she was on for at least two years, and that's how they burned off her contract. Eventually, she ends up married to art gallery owner Carter Bowden and moves to Chicago. She briefly came back during the Carrie storyline. Jackie goes to stay with her when she is separated from Justin. She's pregnant at that time, though that kid and any others she might have had are never mentioned by Justin and Ross (how not surprising, LOL).

IMO, GL was limping along those last 15 years for a lot reasons. Poor writing. Questionable casting decisions. Too much dependence on certain somebodies who shall remain nameless. Trying too hard to catch younger viewers. An audience that had moved on from soaps after the OJ trial. But all soaps at the time were having similar problems. The landscape had changed, and most were having a terrible time adapting to the new one. GL was no different. Their fall seems more spectacular probably because of the failed Peapack experiment. As awful as that was, at least it was an attempt to find a new model to keep soaps alive.

They "punished" her for coming up with a terrible story idea by making her one of the writers. If I hadn't worked in the entertainment industry (not soaps) I would be skeptical of this story. But, yeah, sounds about right. 😂