DeeVee

I don't think she was a star before GL, that happened after she left. But her casting is an interesting story. Frank D. told it on The Locher Room. He and Melina knew each other growing up. Their parents were friends. When she was auditioning, she ran into him and told him, "Hey, guess what, I'm auditioning to play your wife on the show!" So possibly their on-screen chemistry came from them knowing each other when they were growing up.

From what I remember of when she first came on the show, she was a very nerdy girl, almost like a genius. (I got annoyed when they tried to recreate the early Phillip/Beth dynamic when Dylan wanted her to quit school and run away with him, and I thought, "You're going to crash your schooling for THAT guy?" I was not impressed by Dylan in the beginning, LOL). Her relationship with the Spauldings was a little weird--even Alan seemed fond of her, but not in a creepy way. I don't know--maybe because she was his ex-wife's child? Maybe they thought putting her with the Spauldings gave her more opportunities to interact with her brother. It makes sense she became close to Alan Michael because of their connections to Dylan and Harley and their drama over baby Daisy. Yeah, another case of a core family member disappearing into the ether, along with her father and her Aunt Lainie. They did that a lot, unfortunately.

I just don't get it. Alan-Michael should have been a much more important character. He was a Spaulding and a Bauer. It's almost like they cared as little about him as Alan did, favoring Phillip even though he was not always on the canvas. This is why I think they should have made him Mike's heir apparent, have him go to law school, and take Mike's place as the other resident attorney in SF. By making him Alan Lite, they pretty much scuttled the character.

WTF? All the talented Latino actors out there and they're 0 for 2!?!? I really don't get it. If they wanted to make Jacob look good, they needed to find someone who's going to elevate her. Go find some unknown who has charisma and can ACT. Every time I think the show is finding its footing, they throw out something like this. 😭

IIRC, that's exactly what they used to break Alex and Mike up. And, oh, how ironic--he was appalled at what she did to her brother. You know, the guy Mike hated more than poison! So he stayed in character to the very end, I'll give them that. I will say I think Stewart and McKInsey had an interesting vibe. They seemed to have fun when he was teaching her to fly. From reading some of his interviews, it seems as though what Stewart really wanted was to be more of an action hero than a romantic lead. Marland kind of leaned into that with him--having him and Ed chase Roger, the action scenes in Tenerife when he was after Alan, and there was that scene on a ski tram where he was fighting some guy who was out to kill Alan. Maybe it wasn't that he didn't like his screen partners, he just wanted to do more action stuff. It sounds like Long was going to give him the chance to do that, too, before Kobe fired him. It says a lot about Simon and Dolan as a pairing that their biggest threat in the beginning was her brother. I think part of the reason for the Reardons fading away was that they simply lost interest in writing for them.

I only remember Brandon having scenes with Lucille. There's a scene when Alan and Hope were on the island where he tells her his father is in a nursing home but he never sees him. Possibly they had phone call scenes? Seems to me Alan must have kicked Brandon in the teeth once more to get him to leave everything to Amanda. But I don't know for sure. This is the kind of thing that really aggravates me. WHY create a core family member with no plans to keep him or her on the show more than a year? They could have created a character to play that dopey Dreaming Death story who had no connection to anyone on the show--it was completely unnecessary that he be a Reardon. Not to mention that having a Reardon who was a doctor pop up after two years of hearing Tony bash educated people and Nola sneering at her family for having little ambition was bizarre. Not that it wasn't possible, but you'd think Bea and Nola would have bragged about him all the time. Crazy lack of thought there.

Yes, and I'm guessing that was Long's intention, but she was thwarted by higher-ups. It was a perfect opportunity to diversify the cast by creating characters who were part of one of their central core families. All these decades later and only now do we finally have a soap about wealthy Black characters, so it's not hard to imagine there was pushback at the time. The same thing happened when she wanted to introduce a Jewish family. I believe she ultimately quit GL over that when they didn't let her see it through. I give Long credit for trying, even though I thought that Barbados story was kind of terrible. Maybe it would have played better with what she originally planned out.

Hang on. I believe they MIGHT have. In fact, it's possible that it was Mike who helped Brandon with his will, where he left his Spaulding stock to Amanda. There was an episode from late August 1979 recently uploaded which had scenes that implied Ross knew Amanda was the Spaulding heir before Brandon died. He was really sneaky back then, and possibly found out by snooping around Mike's office. I can't say this is correct with absolute certainty, as this is over 45 years ago and I wasn't watching the show regularly at the time (had to fight my sister for the TV because she watched GH). Also, not much survives today of scenes with Brandon before he "died" the first time. But if Mike was his lawyer when he wrote that will, then him being involved in the Barbados story would have made sense.

I think that was potentially a good story. Especially since once Alan came back, it would have put Mike and Alan back in the same orbit. How odd that they paired Alex with two of Alan's most dire enemies and he wasn't around for either storyline. I don't know how much of the murmurings are true, but seems like Stewart groused a lot about who he was paired with. It was probably only a matter of time before someone was going to get annoyed enough to let him go, so this story does not surprise me. Definitely. Billy and Roger were fond of each other while Roger and Peggy were married. So there was history already built into their relationship that some viewers would have remembered. It's too bad they never took advantage of that.

This was a TERRIBLE misstep. I adore Carl, but let's face it, if he had never been on the show we wouldn't miss him. They could have SORASed Alan Michael only a few years or parked him in a boarding school while Hope returned. They did that with Rick and Phillip and it was fine, their parents didn't seem overly young. Basically, they made it impossible to bring Hope back without aging the character like 20 years. Which would have made her around Ed's age. It has been suggested that instead of bringing in Ed's sudden godson Kelly, they should have brought in Peggy's son Billy Fletcher. Well, they could have done that at this point, too, with Peggy sending Billy to her good friend Ed, and he could have taken AM's place in that teen story. (Although they would have had to do something about his name--they couldn't call him Bill or Billy or even Fletch, LOL). Or they could have brought in Dylan sooner. They could have still had a young AM involved in stories with the Spauldings--feeling like the afterthought compared to Phillip, Alan still trying to find a way to mess around with his trust fund...he didn't have to be 18 years old. Yeah, that would lose the Harley romance, but maybe they could have involved her with Phillip sooner. I didn't know he was fired, I thought he left because he wanted to. There had to be some good will left because did come back briefly. TBH, I was never a big fan of Stewart--it was so obvious he was reading a lot of his lines off the cue cards. I think it would have been much easier to recast him than Alan or even Ed. Yes, bring him back married--sure, with a stepson, there's someone else who could have taken AM's place in the teen story. And have a biological child with the new wife, to beef up the Bauer presence. Oh, I had the most WILD idea the other day--we all were talking about the possibilities if Holly's ex-husband Dietrich Lindsay had been brought on the show as a regular character. How about if Hope returned--with the news that she was engaged to Dietrich! Of course she would be attracted to another rich, powerful man. She could have met him while visiting Holly in Switzerland. Maybe...she could have even been one of the reasons Holly and Dietrich split? They could have recast Alan sooner and had him fuming in jail about it. 😂

So I found this photo of Alan and Beth's (gag) wedding. Now I need someone to explain something to me: How did RICK end up being ALAN's best man?

I think Long deserves at least some of that credit. It's obvious the Lewis/Shayne families were a labor of love for her. (One reason why people point out they act more like they're from Alabama than Oklahoma, most likely). She created the Four Muskateers, she created Alex--and to this day, I'm impressed by how seamlessly she brought this never-before-mentioned Spaulding into the story. She had to deal with the fallout of two writers strikes, and IMO she set the ship right pretty quickly. She had to deal with the fallout of Bernau's exit and quickly reset when they decided to bring Roger back from the dead. She quickly realized Maureen Garrett would be an asset to the show, so she grew a short stint into a long-term story. Obviously, I did not like every story she wrote or every choice that she made (coughRevaandAlancough) but I UNDERSTAND the reasoning behind a lot of those decisions. Kobe, OTOH, made decisions I don't get at all, starting with decimating the Bauers, getting rid of most of the characters from the Dobsons/Marland era, killing off characters out of petulance because the actors wanted to give Hollywood a go. I'm sure she made good decisions, too, but the bad ones kind of stick out.

Santo Domingo--where Roger held Holly captive back in 1980? Who's the sick so-and-so who came up with that "brilliant" idea?

I wanted to love that show SO much. It was created by the Dobsons! How could it be bad? Every time I tried it I was like, no, just NO. I totally did not get it. It was too wacky for me.

They got away with what happened with Bernau because back then AIDs was a death sentence. In Breen's case, he was HIV+, it happened when there were a lot more hopeful treatments coming out. Indeed, as far as I know, Breen is still alive.

That's exactly right. They kept up the fiction that he was coming back for a VERY long time. I've said it before--the stigma around AIDs was SO strong at the time. Partly maybe they wanted to respect his privacy (though after how they treated Zaslow, I kind of doubt it). I SORT of understand why KZ was keeping up the ruse even as late as 2012 in her memoir, because actresses who played intimate scenes with actors who had AIDs got a lot of crap because of it, like they were diseased, too. But mostly, I think the show just didn't want the negative publicity. Now knowing some of the BTS stories, where they had to have been planning a permanent replacement for him as early as Fall of 1988 (when they would have approached Zaslow about replacing him, and he suggested returning as Roger instead) it's obvious they knew perfectly well he was not coming back.

The thing that never made sense was Alan despising Beth. Anyone could tell she was a lovely girl and not a gold digger. If they had been consistent--with Alan hating ALL of Phillip's women--then it would have made sense. He would have seen them as threats to his relationship with Phillip. He liked Mindy, he just didn't want Phillip to marry her solely because she was pregnant. He liked Chelsea, who was from even a humbler background than Beth. He liked India, too, but they weren't married by then. Of course he hated Blake, but he had good reason to hate her. He liked Harley when she was with AM, but that was because he thought he could get his hands on AM's trust fund. And, let's face it, AM was basically a non-entity to him compared to Phillip. I don't remember if he liked Harley marrying Phillip, I kind of blank Raines out for the most part.

Oh, they were more than together for a bit. There were THE couple on GL for almost two years. They built up the character of Lujack like you would not believe, spending crazy amounts of money making a music video featuring him doing a Bruce Springsteen cover. Then, because Vincent Irizarry, the actor playing Lujack, wanted to leave--COMPLETELY understandable, pretty much every young actor does so after their first taste of soap success (as Grant Aleksander did)--they killed off the character onscreen because they were so annoyed at him. INCREDIBLY stupid move, both because of how popular the character was, and how they built up the whole story about Alex searching for her son the minute she hit Springfield. Then they tried to replace Lujack with a character named Simon and replicate Lujack's romance with Beth by introducing a girl named Jessie (Beth's cousin). One of many reasons 1986 was an awful year for GL. Alex ADORED Beth, both when she was with Phillip and with her son. She was like the anti-Alan, loving Beth regardless of her humble background. (Yet she despised Harley, go figure). She didn't even seem to mind when Beth pivoted rather quickly back to Phillip after Lujack died. She was that determined to have her as an in-law, LOL.

Utopia - a British series from 2014 on Amazon Prime. People were talking about it recently on X. Very strange and kind of prescient, considering the events of the last 6 years. I like it.

Yes, that is correct. Ironically, I believe it was written by scab writers during a writers strike and yet it's one of my favorite GL scenes. I wish other writers had built on that backstory more. Instead of wacky stuff like Brandon being Amanda's father. It's also sad that it was close to when Bernau finally left because of his illness. He and Beverlee were amazing together. In any other case, I would have been annoyed by the "sudden sibling" showing up. But they killed every scene together. I don't think they took as much advantage of that as they should have. Agree with both points. Bringing back Roger helped revitalize the show. He and MG basically pumped new life into it. Even though he didn't replace Bernau as Alan, he basically took Alan's place on the canvas as the attractive and somewhat malevolant plot-stirrer. Which was very much needed. And I totally agree that it should have always been a toxic relationship. I know there were new viewers who loved the two of them together, but for veteran viewers who remember their previous relationship, it was hard to watch.

WOW, that's INTERESTING. Again, I don't remember the name of the actress that Long favored, so yeah, it's absolutely possible Flockhart is the one being referred to in the TV Guide article. And you know what? Flockhart would have been more believable as a Marler!

He definitely shows up other Christmases--1986 (he gets Alan to help out blind and homelss people), 1987 (he helps Chelsea deal with Phillip's lingering feelings for the "dead" Beth), and 1988 (he helps Alan Michael and Harley who are fighting about getting married). I would assume 1989 because Long was still writing the show, but I don't remember that one.

When Brandon was shown in the late 1970s, he was a sick, broken man in a nursing home. The backstory was that Alan had stolen the company from his father, the implication was that he was a terrible father, but as far as I can remember, few real details were given. Alan seemed a little bit sh!tty for neglecting his sick father, in fact. Alan talked to Hope about his family when they were on the deserted island, but, again, he gave very few details. He did confess that he thought he hadn't been a very good father to Phillip up to then, but that he was still a way better father than Brandon. Brandon retaliated for Alan stealing the company by leaving all his Spaulding stock to Amanda without ever explaining that Amanda was Alan's daughter. (Yeah, I know, that was changed later, I refuse to acknowledge it). During the Dobsons and Marland eras, it was never mentioned that Alan had any siblings. Alex was mentioned the first time just before she returned to Springfield. They explained her long absence by saying she floated around Europe most of her adult life. Alex comes back with a clear vengance agenda against Alan because she thought he conspired with her father to steal her son from her. Because this was the point where Chris Bernau made his first exit from the show, they didn't spend a whole lot of time on this. Clearly, Alex wanted her father's love, she named her kid after him, but the implication again was that he was a terrible, very controlling father. Then they brought Brandon back to life--ugh, another thing I prefer to ignore. They concentrated on the mystery story more than the relationship between Alex and Brandon. They did reveal that their mother died when Alan was born (but not before she killed someone) so they grew up motherless. The one time Alex and Alan had an honest discussion about their father was during the storyline when everyone thought Reva was going to die. Alan had switched DNA results to make it look like Josh wasn't Marah's father. Alex found out and was going to tell him. Alan reminded Alex how they always looked after each other, how he had protected her from their father. Because of this, Alex agreed to keep the secret. So there was another heavy implication that Brandon was an abusive father. If not physically, then mentally and emotionally. They were clearly terrified of him when they were growing up. So, no, Brandon being an abusive father was not a late retcon--it was implied for many years.

This had to be deliberate because Long was actually VERY good at using history in her stories. As you said, it becomes awkward because then it reminds the audience that Roger was a serial rapist, not someone who raped Holly because he "loved her so much," or whatever. There was total rewrite of history, both to keep Roger a viable leading man, and to keep up their "star-crossed" lovers schtick with Roger and Holly. Also, by making the choice to write out Alan the first years of Roger's return, all the nuances of their rivalry from years before were pretty much gone once Alan was brought back. He should have been there for the time Roger was married to Alex. Back in the day, Roger was the major threat to both his personal/family life and his business. Even the way they wrote Alan out--having him chase Roger with a gun--was completely out of character and went against their history. He had the perfect opportunity to kill Roger when he "faked" his death. But Alan never went that far, and he certainly wouldn't dirty his own hands. To him, money was the way to solve problems, not violence. By the time he returned, Roger was in no way a threat to Alan. He had reason to hate his @ss, sure, but no reason to kill him. HOLLY had more reason to shoot him.

I recall there was a TV Guide article about the process of casting for soaps, and they used Sam's casting as a case study. Interestingly, Long was not for Suzy Cote. There was a blond actress in the running that she preferred. (Unfortunately, I can't remember her name). So she was overruled. I think she liked the other actress for more reasons than her physical appearance, but it is interesting that they didn't stop to think about family resemblence. When they cast Amanda's mother Jennifer and sister Morgan, the three of them looked like they could really be related--they all had the same freckles! And definitely when they cast Grant and Carl as Phillip and Alan Michael, they both looked like their biological families. Rick I think was meant to look like his mother Leslie. And the Reardons...every single one of them looked like they belonged in that family. (Except for Sean, he was an outlier, LOL. But his son and daughter looked like Reardons). Or course, appearance shouldn't be the primary reason they cast someone, but it is nice when people in the same family look related.