MLH

Thank you so much! It's so nice to see a young Michael in 1976. I wonder what the storyline during this time was for Roger. Seemed to be a popular character then too. @DRW50 I don't know about the guy that took over for Roger at the end. If he felt ill at ease, he should have said something. @Contessa Donatella LOL Well, I liked Frank (he got way too much storyline though) If I had my way, the only Coopers around would be Harley and Nadine. Oh, I am bitter. I started reading Michael's book and had to put it down. He was so unhappy even before the illness that it made me wish so badly that fans knew. He felt like a failure, and he deserved the best. To me, GL was not able to provide that, and it was meant to be that he ended up where he was appreciated and had Robin Strasser and the OLTL team show what true kindness is.

Thank you for providing a time capsule of the past. I don't know if it is the same for you guys, but it seems like it's harder than ever to find things on Google.

Oh My Gosh! I just saw a YouTube video of Michael Zaslow and his wife Susan as part of a gameshow called Tattle Tales in 1976! Could someone post it here? Did any other person from Guiding Light went on that show? It would have been so cool to have other characters on the show too.

OMG, that T-shirt for Reva would be hilarious! @Mitch64 I don't get why they didn't do that for Roger either. The last scene with Roger with Michael Zaslow was him visiting Vanessa and seeing who left messages and deciding not to return Amanda's dozen of calls. To be frank, I don't think they would have done a good story for Roger having ALS. The writing was so bad. Roger wasn't Roger any more. OLTL did it right. Maybe, it was meant to be that way.

I don't blame the show recasting. I blame them for how they did it. Michael was already very unhappy. Why they couldn't sit down with him and ask how they could help was beyond me. He was humiliated when he was fired, but couldn't say anything. Then how the show had Roger just up and leave made no sense either. Too bad Roger didn't have Vanessa's storyline with Holly or Amanda finding him. But, I guess they did that for the actress playing her and TPTB didn't want to do it for Michael

How did Roger make a living if he didn't have WSPR? Did he sell it to Dinah? I hate to even rewatch 96. I would FF anything Dinah/Hart. I know the last Hart and Wendy ended up marrying, etc. But, I don't like when the real life couple is on screen as well (like Mindy/Nick and Harley/AC Mallet) type situations. Seems like the writers try and write storylines to accommodate their real life relationship to me. @Mitch64 Too true about they would have loved the HGTV craze! LOL

It seemed like after Dinah took over, they barely showed the day to day operations of WSPR. When did Gilly leave? ETA I just looked it up and Gilly left in 96. Dumb, dumb, dumb! I just don't get why Dinah would suddenly be ok with working or Vanessa would want to run WSPR later on. Roger only did as a means to help Holly and then to be around her and actually like running it. I guess it was due to wanting Dinah to be a victim of Roger? Are there any interviews with the writers about why they wrote Dinah that way? I don't get how their marriage wasn't annulled? The marriage licence was even fake.

Did India become broke again? I saw some clip from late 90s, I think. She looked like an ordinary suburban housewife and not the rich fashion plate in 1990. I also saw an old ad that had a character named Diego (Y&R) and Roger saying he is going to have to kill her. I guess this is the whole stupid Dinah/Hart storyline.

I started from 1989 and went up to 1998 and stopped. I thought just about everyone had a solid storyline in 1990. I didn't really even half way follow GL and didn't know the backstory for Michael Z, etc. Seeing what happened to him broke my heart. I still liked Toby Poser as Amanda, so I kept following her and the Lame Roger (I could NEVER imagine him as the Roger who raped Holly, tried to kidnap Chrissy, etc.). It was hard to do, because she was barley shown. The Lame Roger seemed like a stuck up wanna be Spaulding. Roger liked the underdog as he was one himself. I don't think Roger would have put up with the back and forth Amanda was doing with the fake engagement, but would have been fine with the her bringing back Alan as he always was fine with people supporting family. I am now rewatching, because of the German dubbed YouTube channel (Springfield Stories) to fill in some missing episodes. There were a lot missing from 1990 & it helped me makes sense of a lot of things. I liked how Alan used the whole Beth's fake corpse thing against Roger this time. Unfortunately, there are only 80 something vids for 1992 and it stops there.

Totally agree. I should have clarified that I meant when Raines became Alan Spaulding. I wish Bernau was still with GL by the time Zaslow came back, but then I don't think Roger/Holly/Chrissy would have been in the storyline, if he hadn't passed away. Makes me so nostalgic for what could have been. @Mitch64 That makes sense that it was a last minute rewrite for some reason. BTW, I always never got why the show never did a War of the Roses type divorce for Roger. Would have been a great storyline to me.

Totally agree. Roger should have been mentioning Tangie vaguely or by name before she showed up. IMO, GL didn't know how to have two villains at once. They made Alan and Roger way too similar. I also think they didn't know how to do the Spaulding family dynamic right like GH did with the Quartermain family, because of the constant recasting. I like the Alan Michael that Harley & Blake married. I like Rick Hearst, but Alan Michael became another person once Eleni showed up. I think I stopped watching Soaps when I started working full time. I didn't have a way to tape anything and basically followed storylines by reading Soap Opera Digest or whatever magazine at the grocery store. Looking back, I was basically a GH gal (80s to 90s) that turned into a DAYS gal in 89/90 (I was really into Jack D., Eve and Izzy B).

I have some questions. Did Vanessa hate the Spaulding family and that is why she told Roger about the 'file' that would bring them down? What happened to Roger's former agency boss, Vaughn? He was like a father figure to Roger, and i thought they worked well together. Did they drop WSPR altogether? What did Holly do for a living after Roger and Fletcher left? Did Holly even try and find Meg? @P.J. Gary Swanson went to prison. I recall reading an article with the actor saying that his character was really popular and he was open to returning, but I guess when Sherry left, they went for more toned down (to me boring) Blake. Sherry's version was way more film noir. IMO, when it came to Reva and Josh, they were the ultimate 'love the one you're with' characters. IMO, the outdoor scenes done when Billy Lewis returning in 1989 were 1000% better than anything they did by the late 90s into 2000s. Unpopular opinion, I thought the Brent/Marian storyline was just OK. I wish they went the Giallo route instead. I thought the Coopers were way overdone and uninteresting.

@P.J. Ben Warren. I stopped watching when they had Blake acting stupid again over him and all that actor did to me was whisper his lines and acted like that meant he was mysterious or whatever. It was hard enough with how they did the Roger/Amanda storyline after Michael Z. left. @alwaysAMC I pretty much agree about the ball. It was good overall, but the whole thing with the whole lake/yacht thing didn't fit. The dancing was good. Speaking of disappearing characters, what happened to Roger's old CIA boss, Vaughn?

@Mitch64 Brent killing Fletcher would have made way more sense than Detective Cutter and Nadine! I guess they sort of ruined Nadine's character with her fake pregnancy thing and didn't have a clue what to do with her. IMO, I think Matt and Dinah had way more chemistry. They should have went ahead and did the fake marriage thing and it blow up in their faces & found out the marriage had to be a year. LOL Again, I think Hart ended up being a waste of a character. They only used him to bash Roger. Like there wasn't every freaking character against him by that time. Dinah could have been owing a debt to Roger for his help. I didn't mind Amanda being a madam, because that was all in the news at the time of a woman running an escort service. Heck, Blake did worse things than Amanda ever did. I just think Matt being part of it made NO sense. Like you said, he was a dull character. @GL Oldtimer Glad to be here! I only vaguely remember watching anything GL until this year when I found something on YouTube and went down a rabbit hole. I have been trying to find anything w/ Michael Zaslow in it. There are no clips of King's Crossing, nor his stints on Law & Order. I watched an episode he was in with Spenser For Hire and Falcon Crest on Amazon Prime Video and Love Boat where he played a jewel thief on YouTube! I even found a radio theatre show he did in the 1970s. More Unpopular Opinions: Gary was a better villain than Ben ever was. I would have had Roger bring him back once Blake started working for Ross running for the Senate seat.

For me it would have made more sense for a 'Who Killed Dinah' story than the 'Who Shot Roger' one. LOL She was horrid and of course, she ended up being the victim of Roger since they dropped the triangle with Dinah/Matt/Vanessa (her mom). I also only liked the first Hart, but then he up and left his horse farm. Made no sense to me. After him, the second was way too angry & then he just gets killed off after Roger leaves. Holly treated Roger better and she was the one he violently raped. That would have been a great story idea with Amanda. I was so over him not having an equal partner who wanted revenge on the Spauling family that kept him on his toes. Only problem with that to me was that Alan had been in jail so long, he didn't do anything to Roger. IMO, it was Alexandra that he should want revenge/dead. @P.J. I wish I could help. What year was that from?

They didn't?! That's another slap in the face that leaves me cold. I just don't get it. They should have gotten rid of Dinah's friend and focused more on Hamp trying to move on and building a better relationship with Kat after the whole David thing. BTW, how Dinah was introduced was good, but they whole Dinah/Roger thing should have ended as a one night stand. Roger gave her and Vanessa good advice and both ignored it (Dinah being Vanessa's right hand woman at work & told Vanessa not to fire her after the whole kidnapping fiasco). Plus, all Dinah had to do was go to Henry for money. That's where they dropped the ball to me.

Thanks for posting this. I totally forgot Cosby even had a mystery show. I read an article that Jordan also did handyman work as a side business or am I wrong?

Thank you guys for showing how to get the subtitles. There were a couple of episodes that still don't have CC, but at least there were some conversations I could make out with the weird translations. It was so funny whenever Josh's name was said it showed as Georgie! Too funny. If I had it my way, India would have stayed or came back in 1991 and be the way Roger didn't lose everything. I wouldn't have had Hart at all (another wasted character shoehorned for no reason). She wouldn't be a lover, but there would be plenty of flirting to drive Alexandra crazy. I would have had done the Roger/Jenna story differently. I would have had them meet the same way, but him digging into her background and discovering her ties to the Spaulding family using her father's idea and him approaching her from that angle. WSPR covering the wedding & him wanting to talk to Blake would be the reason he would sneak in. I would have focused on the Ed/Holly/Roger/Michelle angle more (with a jealous Blake noticing) and less on Jenna/Roger/Buzz (a character I never liked). In 95 Roger really didn't have a person who had his back like Alexandra & Alan had in each other. I would have had Tangie working at WSPR as a freelance reporter and him focusing on expanding it to become a media empire separate from Spauling but always finding ways to make their lives hell. Stories that could take them around the world or let him take more breaks when there was a lag of storyline for him. Or have him acquiring a ton of real estate & take the Towers back & it become Thorpe Towers. If Roger focused on just acquiring real estate, I would have Gilly & Holly stay and become the owners of WSPR. I would have also had Hamp & Gilly still together. I loved them as a couple, and poor Hamp had no love interest that I know of after they divorced & his relationship with Billy seemed to be on the wayside to me.

How do I get to see the translation on YouTube? Great points about Roger. He wouldn't take his own good advice he would give people. Unpopular opinion, but I actually liked Roger's storyline with Amanda. It was sort of a makeshift family that was started. I wish the whole Dinah marriage thing wasn't drug out so long and the storyline done while Michael Zaslow was in better health. It would be fun to see Roger as Alan's Brother In Law/Father In Law. I thought he had a great chemistry with the actress that played Lucy & could have been a mentor type that got her caught up in things, but then she left too. I also thought Roger and India had great chemistry, but she left by Christmas in 1990. I thought she should have shown up at the funeral for Phillip and not that unbelievable way they met. I am still learning all the history of the characters of the show and the writers. I think it was good that they had a variety of characters to watch (or skip).

Long time lurker but had to post a THANK YOU for providing links to ways to watch old episodes of Guiding Light provided by Blake Marler but recently started watching the German ones to fill in some missing episodes (only wish someone would translate/subtitle them on the screen). I never really watched Guiding Light & just recently got in a rabbit hole of watching when Holly and Roger returned in 1989. Don't know why, but I was drawn to Roger Thorpe (the 89 version) right away. IMO, I think Mindy didn't want to be the 'other woman' & didn't act adoringly. Roger dropped a major coup from Lewis Oil for her & she had already put a pause on sleeping with him at the time. IMO, his love for her & Blake was his downfall in 1991. I think Blake brought out the worst in him. I think Simms did the role great. She really showed how she loved her family and Roger. I liked how it was a slow progression with the whole Tower fiasco was for Roger & the Four Musketeers ending for Mindy. My favorite relationship was Harley & little Marah. I loved them together. I also loved Maureen (most wasted character), Gilly/Hamp and some aspects of Alexandra/Roger. I also liked the pace Holly & Roger was going, but then in 1995/1996, it just seemed to crash to basically no interaction. Holly was sort of all over the place to me (but she had great chemistry with just about everyone) & I never cared for Blake. I loved how Sherry played her, but not my favorite character. How Michael Zaslow left also left me a bit bitter, because how much it hurt him. Roger should have been killed off after Michael died & not in 2004 when the vast majority didn't know who he was. No way would Roger ignore his son being killed by Dinah (btw, I hated Dinah/Roger), Holly's daughter being kidnapped (a crime) by Fletcher or not being part of his grand children's lives. As a Roger fan, it was a slap in the face! I tried to continue, but I was not impressed with Ben being the next Roger & just decided to read what happened next and didn't really feel the need to continue. However, it's still fun to read fans of this show after Michael died. Thank you for being a great resource for this cancelled soap opera. If there is any way to help support financially for space needed to keep the uploads going, please let me know how and I will see if I can.