DeeVee

I'm pretty sure it was after Jackie died. I recall a scene where he tells Hope about it and about how he had the babies switched. It's not how long it took to do the reveal that bothered me. Possibly because he didn't create the original story, he didn't seem to care about it that much. Like I said, the idea that Elizabeth wouldn't have confronted Jackie over her manipulations was absurd. That she would give away Phillip to Justin and Jackie was absurd. That she would completely remove herself from Phillip's life with no explanation was absurd. Certainly, Alan going along with this was insanely ridiculous. (The only upside to this is it helps explain why Phillip was so completely f@cked up as an adult. His parents literally abandoned him with no explanation for why they were leaving him with those people, nice as they were). It's like he couldn't be bothered the play all the story beats because he wanted Elizabeth out, and because it would have taken attention away from his own stories and his own characters. Alan confessing to Hope about the baby switch was another unplayed beat. She should have hit ceiling finding out he did something like that. Instead, she was like, "Oh, O.K." The same happened when she finally found out Alan had lied to her for years about his involvement with Roger. Instead of dumping his ass, she virtuously stood by her criminal husband and forgave him. It was SO anticlimatic. The only time Hope gave Alan grief over anything was when it was HIS story, the affair with Rita. Soaps often took years to do the big reveals, it's only when they didn't play all the story beats that they flopped.

I think that had to do with the 80s, and also that soaps had a lot more money back then. Two things that always strike me when I go from watching a soap today to these old episodes is: 1. How many more extras and what I think they called "under fivers" (people with less than five lines of dialogue) there are in the old episodes. They often had CROWDS of people in scenes. Now, even in a restaurant scene or a party scene, the number of extras is much, much smaller. 2. How many more large parties with almost the entire cast participating in wildly fancy clothes. (Even the "poor" characters got glamed up, lol). It seems like during the mid to late 80s GL had a big do at the country club almost once a month!

Unless my memory is COMPLETELY off, what I remember is that Jackie was taking her Christmas decorations down (so around January '80) when she fell and hit her head. While she was in the hospital and out of it, Justin heard her mumbling the truth about Phillip's parentage. It's almost the very first thing Marland did when he took over. He probably did it for two reasons: to accelerate the story and to have a reason to write Pickett out for a few months. Those missing 1980 episodes had a lot of things going on. Justin finding out about Phillip and Mike and Elizabeth's affair, their divorce, Alan and Hope's wedding, Mike going all-out Javert investigating Alan's connection to Roger. Justin and Jackie must have remarried very soon after Pickett's brief return because by the time Mowery takes over the role in summer of 1980, she and Justin are married. Have to assume Elizabeth and Justin got a quickie Caribbean divorce or something. Pretty much all we have now from the first half of 1980 is the downfall of Roger. I don't think Marland just wanted to be done with it--didn't Zaslow want to leave? Anyway, he did a great job with it, he definitely deserves a lot of credit. It won the show the Emmy, it's very memorable stuff, and it's very much part of GL's classic past. Lenore was on maternity leave for much of the first half of 1980. When she came back, they had Rita reconcile with Ed while setting up the affair with Alan. (Which is something else we're missing, dammit. I believe that would have been during the February 1981 sweeps). I am convinced that Marland had a big story planned around Rita/Alan/Hope. The soap mags were promoting the heck out of it. IIRC, there was even an article in TV Guide about it. The story going around at the time was that Lenore and her husband (who is also an actor--he played the pilot of Alan and Hope's plane that crashed) wanted to go to Hollywood. Maybe she was unhappy, but all the signs were that she was going to get a very big storyline, so who knows. Marland had Rita disappear, implying she was hiding a pregnancy and setting up a return later where she would blow up Ed's and Hope's lives at some point in the future. Of course, this never happened, although a Rita return was teased much later, I think around 1987.

If you put down on paper all the things Jackie did, she absolutely comes off as a horrible, selfish bitch: Lied to Justin she had an abortion. (Yes, Justin was a rotten bastard, having sex with another woman, I think in Jackie's bed, IIRC. But still). Secretely had Phillip overseas and gave him to the Spauldings. Knew Alan was swapping his and Elizabeth's dead baby with hers. Since she knew exactly where her son was, she wormed her way into the Spaulding's lives, befriending Elizabeth so she could be near Phillip. Befriending the woman, mind you, who she knew had been lied to about Phillip's origins. When Alan and Elizabeth's marriage ended, she went after Alan, because she was certain he would gain custody of Phillip--over her "dear" friend Elizabeth, who was desperately trying to keep her child. She married Alan without loving him. (Yeah, Alan deserved that, too, but still). When Alan lost custody of Phillip, she would have left him if she hadn't been pregnant. When Alan smeared Mike to Phillip so much that Elizabeth's relationship with him exacerbated a genetic heart problem Phillip had--to the point where Phillip almost DIED--she still did not tell anyone the truth about Phillip. Including her father and Justin--his doctors. When Alan and Hope were rescued from the island, she gave him a lot of sh!t about him and Hope, even though she couldn't haved cared less about him or staying married to him. (Although, yes, she was genuinely concerned for Hope). Yes, yes, Alan was a COMPLETE ASS while he was married to Jackie. The worst incident that I saw was when she told him their child could have a severe heart problem if it was a boy, and he snottily told her he couldn't father a defective child. (UGH. One of the many reasons I'm convinced the Dobsons had a darker trajectory planned for Alan and Hope. The "redeemed by love" thing was totally Marland). The one admirable thing about her during their marriage was how she shut him down every time he tried to control her the way he controlled Elizabeth. But the fact remains that she used him AND Elizabeth, lied to Justin, lied to Phillip, lied to her friend Mike who was madly in love with Elizabeth. Through all of this, Jackie somehow did not come out as awful as she sounds on paper. That was all Pickett. Somehow, some way, she made you feel that she was doing what she was doing for understandable reasons. Pickett left soon after Marland came in. I think it's pretty well-known that he didn't like Lezlie Dalton (Elizabeth) and wanted to eventually get rid of her. That's why I think he never let this story get as messy as it should have become. Elizabeth should have been FURIOUS at Jackie for the years of lies. Instead, she decides to give Phillip to Justin and Jackie. I mean, COME ON. (Even more ridiculous: Alan eventually agreed to it! The guy who got indirectly involved in a murder trying to gain custody of Phillip!) Jackie, who was once an intriguing, complex character, changed profoundly. It wasn't Mowery's fault. Like most other female characters in Marland's world, she became deeply neurotic, almost an hysteric, both during the Diane Ballard murder story and the Carrie multiple personality story. It's just INSANE that he killed her off before the truth about Phillip came out. For all the bashing we've been doing about the Kobe regime, one of the things they did absolutely correctly was the way they handled the Phillip reveal, including how angry he was over no one telling him before Jackie died.

She left to resume her musical career. She's a very talented pianist. (In fact, I believe I read somewhere that she was the one who actually played the piano whenever Amanda was shown playing the piano). I don't know if it was out of frustration because she wasn't getting much air time or if she just wanted to go back to her other career, but the story given was it was her choice. I'm sure Marland would have kept her around as the therapist for his many, many neurotic female characters. She left just before the Kobe regime came in. If she had stayed, she probably would have been swept out by them. So she got out at a good time.

Right, I forgot they had a backstory! Yeah, Justin was a womanizer and kind of a jerk at first. When they brought on Ross, Justin became the more mature and wiser brother. I remember Joe having the heart attack (played by Anthony Call--loved him on OLTL). Then she marries Alan's corrupt lawyer, who bribes and then kills a witness in Alan and Elizabeth's divorce case--which is what Roger uses to blackmail Alan later on.

Here's the thing about Y&R: Bell took a big chance swapping out his main core families (the Fosters and the Brookses with the Newmans and the Abbots). They took a hit in the ratings for a while, but the change caught on because the Newmans and Abbots were better suited to the era (glamorous rich people in the 80s). But from then on, yes, the show was very consistent--especially how they totally refrained from trying to copy the things that made General Hospital a success. I'm convinced that's why they climbed to #1 and stayed there for so long. After years of watching pretty much every soap on the air at one time or another, Y&R was my last soap opera (until Beyond the Gates premiered). It's not that I liked Y&R better than other shows, necessarily, but I knew they weren't going to do crazy stuff like clone and time travel stories. I think that had a lot to do with their long-term success.

There are some good scenes in that episode! Alan and Elizabeth are staying at Jackie's soon after they arrived in town. Mike shows up. (It's hilarious watching Mike and Alan act friendly with each other knowing later they become dire enemies). Mike blatantly flirts with Elizabeth while Alan is reading his paper and he doesn't seem to give a sh!t, LOL. Later, Alan goes to Cedars for a check-up and ends up with Sarah as his doctor. He's condescending to Sarah, clearly not crazy about being seen by a woman doctor, while at the same time flirting with her. Millette Alexander is so great in that scene--she looks like she wants to tell him to pound sand, but she behaves very professionally and graciously. I suspect they were chem testing them. I must have fast-forwarded through the turkey cooking scene. 😂 But I think it's interesting that Sarah and Justin were a thing for a while.

Why did she always have to be paired with someone?

It had to be Claire. They had spent time putting Hillary and Fletch together....( she was the reason he came to SF..) and they gave them a comedic oddball relationship. During the cabin mystery they put Fletch with Claire for no reason and made her try comedy, which was not what the character was involved in before. I think it wasn't so much that they had to give Claire Hillary's plot, (as this was post DD, and after Clarke's time off) but more that Kobe MAY have been pissed and may have thought Clarke was leaving, so why give her a storyline? I think Long had Ed and Claire ONS planned but not the way it ended up (in Beruit, which was really stupid but..) I thought maybe it was Claire, but I was thrown by how it ended up with Ed and Claire sleeping together. Claire and Fletcher is another example of a romantic pairing that burned out too quickly. No matter the reason why they put Claire and Fletcher together, they had potential. The soap mags liked them. Pratt and Hammer both talked on The Locher Room about how much they loved their pairing and bemoaned how it was cut short. Of course every romantic pairing needs conflicts and separations. There was nothing inherently wrong with the baby drama. The problem was turning Claire into practically a psycho, then blaming it on a brain tumor, then shuffling her out of town. I wouldn't have minded a romance for Bert, but HB? The guy who married the ex of both his sons? Then romanced the daughter of an old friend who he had to have known since she was a child? 😬 I don't know about that.

One of the things that was most noticeable during my recent 1985-1986 rewatch was how quickly romantic pairings burned out. After a short courtship, Mindy marries Kurt (a character connected to nobody) in an insanely elaborate wedding. Kurt is killed off like a year later. She's then bounced around several aborted romances: Rusty, Frank, Will. When Newman left, they quickly paired Reva with Kyle. The minute Newman returned--LITERALLY--she was back with Josh. Larkin Malloy wanted to leave, to be fair, so they couldn't do a love triangle, but the way she switched from one to the other within a day basically invalidated almost 2 years of story. The same when they killed off Lujack. In a very short space of time, Beth was back with Phillip. They had put SO much effort in the Beth/Lujack pairing and it was almost like they were saying, "Ha, just kidding!" These are only the major examples. With the exception of Josh and Reva, the show did not seem interested in investing in long-term love stories. IMO, that hurt the show a lot.

I will say it wasn't ALL their fault. Chris Bernau left, Robert Newman left, Grant Alexander left. They wanted Lisa Brown to stay but she got frustrated waiting for the promised storyline so she jumped to ATWT. That exacerbated the problem because of all the major characters who had already been cut. I don't think Peter Simon was terribly popular as Ed, but bringing in Richard Van Vleet to try to sex up the character a bit was a big flop. There were positives, of course. There's no denying that Kim Zimmer was very popular. And Beverlee McKinsey coming on was a big plus. But there had been such a huge turnover of characters and actors. After Long left as HW the first time there was a literal merry-go-round of writer changes. I think we had counted SIX HW changes during 1986. 1985 and 1986 were really bad years. Bernau, Newman, and Alexander came back. Long came back and she did improve things somewhat, but then that long writers strike hit and Bernau had to leave in the middle of a big storyline due to illness. It wasn't until Kobe left that the show started to recover, at least creatively. Michael Zaslow returning as Roger gave the show a shot in the arm. But their ratings for some reason didn't improve as much as you would think, considering the positive changes that were made.

The idea of the story was excellent. If they hadn't been rushing everything to hustle her out of there, it would have played so much better. This is a great point. I'm certain there was pressure on Kobe and Long to do as much as they could to compete with General Hospital. So they did short-term stories like the Fishing Trip Mystery (which I actually really liked), the Dreaming Death, and the Barbados Mystery that didn't do much for the show long-term.

Now I'm intrigued. Do you know which character that was? I'm trying to guess but I can't figure it out. What you're saying makes a lot of sense, but killing her off wasn't the only option. If they couldn't afford the character anymore, they could have written her out.

I've heard that story, too, but I find it hard to believe. For four years she was playing the sweet, adoring wife. Who WOULDN'T want the chance to break out of that and play some meaty stuff? (Say whatever you will about KZ, she would play anything they gave her. I don't recall her ever complaining about even the dumb stuff they gave her). Some actors object to playing certain things because it's against their religion, but if that's the case, they are usually very vocal about it. And like you said, it was making Hope a stronger character, and opening up new possibilities for her character. I'll say it again...if they had a problem with the actor, they should have recast the character! It's insane to kill off the character out of spite.

The story goes that Clark wanted to take time off to do pilot season, which necessitated pre-taping her scenes for the Dreaming Death storyline. Supposedly this ticked Kobe off so much she had her killed off. I've heard that they didn't like her, that they thought she wasn't thin enough or interesting enough (kind of like the stuff hurled at Ellen Parker). I can totally understand why they would have wanted to free Alan from this marriage to a nice woman. It held the character back and it had pretty much run its course. Ironically, Bernau left soon after anyway. But there was no reason to send the character off the canvas. They had set Hope up to be stronger apart from Alan. How great would it have been if she had moved on and then Alan came back two years later, maybe liking the "new" Hope and causing problems in her new life? It would have been a heck of a lot more interesting than that stupid art smuggling story. If they didn't like Elvera--get a different actress! Like many decisions they made during this period, it was short-sighted.

There was a Paul, but he was Bill's stepson and Hillary's half brother.

I think the reason Johnny and his family were introduced was because they had the last name Bauer. They wouldn't have been introduced if they were distant relatives who didn't have the last name Bauer. I see what you're saying. Trudy's progeny would have had a different last name. Who knew they effed up decades before when they didn't give Bill Bauer a brother? Seriously, though, I don't think anyone could have foreseen that a producer would step in and virtually annihilate the Bauer family. Otherwise, you would think the Dobsons would have made Hillary a boy. Or previous writers would have had Mike and Leslie have a son. Maybe the network and P&G saw the success Bill Bell had almost totally erasing his Y&R core families and replacing them with new ones and thought they could do it, too.

He was a major part of the art smuggling story. But in that case, also, it was more about his infatuation with Christine Valere. Maybe they thought if they gave him a family he would click more with the audience, the way Josh did once he was embroiled with his family/lost love Reva. Unfortunately, the family members flopped, and his subsequent stories (especially the cancer storyline; don't get me started on that one) were not good. I wonder also if they pushed him so hard (Frank D., too) so they had a back-up hunk for when Grant Alexander would inevitably take breaks from the show.

Turns out, you are correct. I checked those episodes and only Lacey is there. I think that was why I assumed their parents were there, too. Good Lord, the actress who played Lacey was worse than I remembered. She would STARE at people in the scenes with her. It's SO weird. I realize she was very young and inexperienced, but casting for GL in general was mostly good. Someone made a big boo-boo signing off on that casting decision. The character also said something strange, that she left home when she was twelve. Who leaves home when they're twelve? Everything about her was weird. That was Teri Keane, who played Martha Marceau on Edge of Night for many years. Clearly, they meant for her to be the Bert replacement. Casting her as Meta would have been a better idea.

I have nothing against Goodwin. He turned into a pretty decent actor as he aged. But, yeah, they mostly just used him as eye candy (which is not a terrible thing; they just never did much to make him more than that). Also, in the ATWT case, the Snyders hadn't been around as long as the Bauers. Nor did ATWT do a deliberate clean-out of the characters/actors that upset the audience. So they were probably more accepting of off-shoot family members.

That story sucked so bad. It was built around Christine Valere, who was connected to nobody. The whole idea that Alan would smuggle art was SO preposterous. It was so unbelievable they wrote a scene where India asked Alan why he was doing it. He said for the excitement. Which was a total misunderstanding of his character. Alan's MO was trying NOT to live on the edge, to keep all his lies and secrets under control so he wouldn't get into trouble. If he had wanted to BUY stolen great works of art for his private collection, that would have been believable. That kind selfishness seems appropriate for Alan. But running a smuggling ring for money? PUH-LEEZ. Johnny being the center of all that was a huge yawn. The character just wasn't interesting enough. You could say the same about Josh in the beginning, but once his family and Reva arrived and they mined the conflicts that had been alluded to, his character started to become more interesting and layered. That never happened with Johnny, even though they tried giving him some big storylines after they ditched his other family members. There were a couple of times where they tried that, and it was always a dud. Like the time Johnny gave Michelle a pillow Bert had crocheted for him when he was a baby. It was so forced, Ed and Mo were practically rolling their eyes. 😂

How both families were introduced is what made them integrate so well into the show, IMO, and why they had staying power while the "new" Bauers flopped. In the Lewis case, we already had Josh and Trish on the canvas, they were talked about for a long time, they did an exceptional job of casting the new characters, and they filled needs on the canvas. There hadn't been much happening in the business storylines since the Mark Evans story wrapped, and Mindy was needed to build up the teen faction. In the case of the Coopers, they gave Harley a dramatic entrance, which immediately set up the kind of character she would be. They didn't introduce Nadine until there was a storyline reason to do so (Harley's wedding). When Buzz was introduced, it was also dramatic (catching Nadine taking off her fake pregnant belly). Not to mention, he was long thought to be dead, setting up instant conflict with his kids. Johnny was on the canvas a while, and like Josh in the beginning, he wasn't much more than the hunk of the moment. But unlike Josh, his family did not get an interesting introduction, nor were they plunged into major storylines right away. They were just THERE, you know what I mean? The casting for his parents was fine, but the girl cast as his sister was a bit of a disaster. I contend if Frank had been introduced without a well conceived, well cast family member like Harley following very soon after, the Coopers would likely have never taken hold on the GL canvas. So even though Long had no interest in the new Bauers when she took over, I think they were doomed from the start. Viewers wanted the real Bauers, and there had been little done to make people invested in the new ones.

I'm pretty certain they were introduced earlier. I seem to remember they (along with Lacey) were at the 1987 Bauer July 4 BBQ when Alan Michael came back to SF by parachuting in. It says in Wikipedia Long came back July 1987, but it doesn't specify if that was when she started writing again, or if that's when her scripts began airing.

Oh, right. Now I remember. (I probably was trying to forget it, LOL). Here's a thought: since the "new" Bauer branch belly-flopped, if the head writer hadn't changed, does anyone think Frank D. would have stayed with the show until the end of its run? Probably not! This was probably a much better outcome. The girl who played Lacey was SO green, I doubt she would have lasted even if Long hadn't returned. Ehlers was good right out of the gate. If they had really wanted to revive the Bauers, they could have brought back Mike and Hope (with a not so quickly SORASED Alan Michael).