GL95

I do think in a weird way that Nadine was a victim of the show going hammier. She had a place as the social climbing narcissistic schemer when the show was quieter as she provided a different energy and more subtle comic relief at times. When so many others went “bigger” and Buzz became prominent, she either had yo get even bigger and become a caricature or fade into the woodwork (and they attempted both!) Also I think them having Nadine take Lucy under her wing immediately was a mistake. There being some constant conflict with Harley/Nadine kept the dynamic interesting, and Nadine just being in the diner doling out love advice to Lucy is not particularly interesting.

There’s also Nadine handing over the secret client bid to AM/Blake when AM blackmails her about tipping off the reporter. No one suspects Nadine since they can’t imagine her using the computer. (There’s several 1991/92 plots involving laptop technology that are amusing to watch now.) I don’t think they ever tracked that bid getting out to Nadine but it was of course pretty low on her lie totem pole at that point. She was pretty susceptible to blackmail for a couple years there.

@alwaysAMC Where I started about a week before Rick Hearst’s debut in June 1990, there’s also several good Roger/Holly scenes when they’re in Mexico together after AM gets kidnapped on Blake/AM’s honeymoon. I partly started there because I’d just seen the RH/Sonia Satra Locher Room and Rick had talked about the experience of shooting with Zas on his first day and was curious.

I am up to where Buzz/Rex leaks the HB prison record to Roger and Mallet is getting closer to figuring out who Buzz is. It's pretty crazy seeing the difference-especially as I have seen Lucy's introduction clips from only about 4 months later. Buzz is already a totally different character by then. I just watched Roger blackmail Gilly to get her to ask the HB incarceration question at the governor's award ceremony. It was a lot of drama over someone writing a bad check 45 or so years earlier-it's not like oil is exactly a business full of choirboys. I get Hamp not being happy and they'd had some problems already with her working too much/David, but it seemed like something a bit crazy to break up a marriage over. However, this was a hole I was interested in having filled because I've seen the Bess Lowell story clips and didn't know what exactly made Gilly so determined to bring Roger down. Before I went full rabbit hole I had on a whim revisited Lucy/Alan Michael on Youtube and found the Jezzfanatic channel that has a lot of AM/Lucy clips which was my gateway drug that led me here. The web of lies Nadine is living with may rival just about any web of lies anyone has had at this point. For someone as flaky as she is, it's fairly amazing what she is capable of pulling off. There's Peter not being hers/Billy's, knowing Buzz snagged the info about HB going to prison and gave it to Roger, and Buzz not being her cousin and actually being Frank/Harley's father with all the little lies told along the way. Nick just broke up with Eve with it taking about 30 minutes for it to sink in, but Eve has definitely fully gone round the bend at this point.

The dream would’ve been to bring back Phillip and not Alan in 1994. AM going to Arizona to spend time with Phillip/Beth rather than roving the beach as a hobo, and Alan’s sons come to Springfield to battle Nick/Alex before their alliance naturally implodes. (Phillip claiming he doesn’t want the presidency but the board votes him in anyway haha)

@alwaysAMC I was bothered by missing some eps and in 1991 there are some really important eps missing when Roger/Mindy’s affair comes to a head, but I feel like I’d have missed on a lot of gaps I wanted filled starting in spring 1992. I feel like you’d miss seeing the “real” Alex because she’s ready pretty fixated on Nick by then and Bev leaves not that long after that. You also get no Phillip at all doing that plus basically no Sherry Stringfield’s Blake. I think you’d really enjoy Roger’s maneuverings to build his golden parachute and run into the sunset with Mindy. It turns into a pretty big umbrella story by the end as they’re trying to catch Roger in the act-AM/Harley figure out there’s embezzlement (Harley is a computer genius for about five minutes because she can create passwords) while Alex separately figures it out and brings in Mallet (and Frank? I don’t remember now haha) to investigate. Ross gets into the action to trap Roger. There’s a fun period I was talking about earlier where Roger thinks this embezzlement scheme is going to be easy because he assumes AM is going to not really try but AM thwarts him by being ambitious/competent then Blake keeps helping AM because Roger is keeping her in the dark. 1991 I personally liked better than 1992 missing episodes and all. If anything I regret not going back to 1989-I’ve caught some eps YouTube pushed here and there. I honestly don’t remember now as I feel like my intense viewing is a fever dream, but I think the Find Your Light channel had some 1990/91 eps missing from the vault but I definitely could be wrong on that. It definitely didn’t fill all the holes.

I think the thing about AM that Rick Hearst does a pretty good job of is showing AM at his worst clearly hates himself and doesn't seem to believe the lies he tells himself fully. Alan (at least RR's Alan) is relentingly remorseless for the most part (it's something RH mentions in his Locher Room interview when asked about RR. He's very diplomatic about it, but says he would've chosen to play Alan differently but respected that RR was committed to Alan not showing vulnerability.)

One of my favorite scenes is when Billy is running all over town furious about AM stealing the Lewis Oil client and Alex tells AM she approves of being underhanded so long as there's no paper trail without actually saying it. It's clear AM gets the message-but Alex gets to keep. her hands clean and let AM build the bad reputation. I think during almost all this arc it's interesting how two things can be true: AM is largely acting like an entitled, petulant brat but he is also completely right about how he is being treated in comparison to everyone else in his family. Alex truly treated Phillip as a second son but AM is close family to her only when it's convenient/there's no one else. Poor AM has so many scenes with both Bev/Marj where Alex talks about being alone with no family and he's like, "Seriously, am I invisible?" It's funny because I generally sympathize with AM even when he's being terrible and acting out because it's clear he basically just needs a hug haha. (On the Locher Room RH spoke pretty diplomatically about how his acting choices differed from RR's, and how he would've played Alan as having some vulnerability under it but that he respected how RR played it. You can see the difference onscreen-I never felt like AM fully believes the lies he tells himself. ) It would be terrible drama but I'd have enjoyed AM actually having backed off and let himself get taken under Henry's wing to be mentored by someone not actively trying to screw him over. (There was that one time Henry tried and AM blew him off, but Henry basically said of course I am on Vanessa's side but you're clearly in line at some point so it benefits me if you're actually good at this.) They float the idea of AM going to Lewis Oil a couple of times (HB even tells Alex once that he'd snap him up in a heartbeat) and while they were rivals Billy/AM working together could've been interesting for awhile as I'm not sure AM would know how to deal with someone who just is clear about how they feel.

I think the stuff with AM was partly the fact that if Alex holds the Roger situation against him, it shines a lot on her because she set Roger up to be AM's mentor against Phillip's protestations and AM had the whole ridiculous Scooby Doo story of those crazy kids of AM/Harley thwarting his plans for a long time with the password shenanigans. (That plot did amuse me that it got to the point where Roger's Not Leo fixer had to drug Harley to get the password out of her, and AM was smart enough to not even give it to Roger.) Roger also gets thwarted when he assumes he can slowly steal but AM (with Blake's help lol) shoots for the moon with the Daniel St Jean robotics thing and almost pulls off all the Foundation money getting tied up, again getting beat by those silly kids. It was a fun scene with Roger both being slightly proud of Blake but seething at the same time. It was amusing watching Roger squirm when Blake is beaming with pride in all the great work she is doing for AM who Roger is "mentoring." I always got the impression that Alex in true Spaulding fashion the best way to learn is through dog eat dog competition (especially because she consistently acts like she thinks AM coloring outside the lines is bad when she's talking to Vanessa/Maureen but to AM privately expresses pride and gives reminders the key is not getting caught) and that she has no intention of making AM president yet but wants to both appease him and also keep the carrot dangling. She's not grooming him just to be President, but to be a true Spaulding. The AM situation is sort of funny because he's arguably the most qualified Spaulding heir apparent in comparison to past Spauldings they slid in there so you sort of see his point in feeling affronted, but also once they place Van in the picture it really makes no sense that there even is a competition at that point. There is the point where AM does actually come accept it and is going to focus on Eleni while he shows patience but then Nick is revealed to be Alex's son and Alex is ready to anoint Nick so he has to go crazy again. Obviously, even if you groom AM to take over at say 25 or something, in a sane company you would give Vanessa a two-year contract and tell AM he should learn everything he possibly can from Henry/Vanessa with increased responsibilities, but that's not fun soap viewing haha

Drunk Phillip actually presents a potentially interesting dynamic with AM/Rick who are both the children of alcoholics. They would conceivably be drawn together to help Phillip, but also have the shared experience of knowing you can only do so much. I always enjoy the family dynamics on soaps, and I feel like AM/Rick/Phillip is something not really explored that had interesting potential. AM/Rick and AM/Phillip are actually related, but Rick/Phillip are much closer. One element of AM that I find interesting is how the show will at times mention him being half-Bauer to point out he's not all bad at heart, but most indications are that being raised by a Bauer was actually pretty sad for him in a way that really only Rick would understand.

To be clear, Nick 100% has the hubris to think he can run Spaulding completely on his own but in no way does he have the chops. It's sort of funny in that period where AM is going full Spaulding that he's basically never wrong about anything, but he isn't particularly good at playing the long game so everything blows up in his face. He's just Cassandra running around going, "You see this is crazy putting a reporter on the board, right?" It's legitimately insane how Alex thinks Nick can just step in and do anything he wants, and even the fairly powerful/savvy characters like Henry/Vanessa realize they can only go so far in disagreeing with her about Nick.

It would certainly invoke the specter of Phillip as well, which even without Phillip it would give Lillian something to do. Though this does really fit into the thoughts of a Spaulding Next Generation with no Alex/Alan on the scene at all and Phillip/AM being the central figures.

The Nick "I'm on the board as a reporter!" thing could've come into play if Vanessa either made a mistake or did something that Nick decided was sketchy. Even better, have Roger or AM plant bait for Nick to run with and have Nick blow things up without doing enough research because his arrogance wins out. Vanessa quits in disgust since Nick's journalism career is in flames and he has a sudden interest in pursuing being the heir apparent. With the AM element, not only was Van in charge which AM for a hot minute was at peace with learning/waiting when he thought Nick wasn't Alex's son, but they laid the groundwork that Alex's plan was basically to have AM work alongside Nick for awhile to groom his eventual replacement as the heir apparent (which is a bit funny again with the timelines of the ages because Nick should be what, at least 15 years older than AM?).

Not quite the same but similar, I couldn't believe how long they dragged out Nick being "revealed" as Alex's son. It is a pretty consistent theme-I remember Dinah thinking Hart was a private investigator for a really, really long time. And of course the Reva Amish storyline that still somehow dragged out for months even after Reva comes to Springfield where she is "revealed" at a ball. It's actually kind of amazing that they didn't have Lucy just hang out with AM for months before she linked up with Buzz. They even had Buzz fully admit she was his daughter immediately when she showed up at the diner without dragging it out, though I suppose she was both there for AM and to try to soften Buzz so him lying about her would not achieve the second purpose.

I can see that-I feel like they were setting up her being distracted/blinded by Nick to lead to something bad happening. She was both distant from the company and also she was creating a ticking time bomb with AM as I think she was simultaneously underestimating what he might do while overestimating how far she could push him.

When I first started watching 1990 eps it was striking how much more integrated the Spauldings were to the community as a whole. Maureen was the heart for sure, but Bev’s Alex was the ultimate insider who ran the town in many ways. The Spaulding mansion stopped being the center of “high society” after she left and it really impacted how the town felt like a community too. Coming in not long before Reva drove off the bridge, one thing that was striking to me was how Phillip is a bit underestimated as a connecting character. Phillip/AM being close at the time really made their extended family units extend out pretty far with the Marlers/Bauers.

I will warn you as a fellow AM/Rick Hearst fan, Elena & AM look great together and have some moments here and there but there’s long stretches where he’s toying with his Spaulding side that are very unpleasant to watch. In some ways I’d argue Eleni is AM’s addiction story.

Ugh I did not love the pretty quick turnaround from grating on another to boss/student to lovers trajectory for Harley/Mallet. I’m sure I’m clouded by my later years Harley feelings but I actually found Harley to be fairly annoyingly combative through a lot of my viewing and the bickering with all her love interests was exhausting when watched in quick succession like this. Total non sequitor but do Reva and Roger ever really cross paths? Just curious mainly because they both seem to have a being disrespected early chip on their shoulders they never really get past, plus just being arguably the most well known characters/actors from GL.

The writing for Nick on the Spaulding front is just always pretty hilariously all over the map, but almost always designed to mess with AM basically. He’s either disinterested and telling AM how silly he is to care about power/money/legacy then the second AM is halfway lured into believing him Nick changes his mind and is all about that Spaulding life. I do think it’s funny that Jenna is pretty meh about running things-being put in charge of Spaulding is basically the easiest thing for those who don’t want it but very hard for those who do haha

It’s my hill I’m dying on that Roger’s recruitment of AM wasn’t initially intended as a red herring (Bloss not being a fling likely messed with this as well)-I could see the plan having been to give Nick the keys to the kingdom too soon and AM/Roger leading the takeover as Van goes to Lewis Oil. If the same Nick/Mindy stuff happened there would be a natural Lewis Oil rivalry initially when Nick takes over. The stage I’m at now is a bit funny with Nick having zero desire to be involved with the business side of the Journal knowing he does a full 180 on running Spaulding down the road.

I’m probably blaming the acting for Hart on the writing currently being a bit stagnant currently as right now he’s just kind of existing as a Lewis hanger on human Chekhov’s gun where Peter is concerned. I started this viewing sometime shortly after the Towers deal as people were still referencing it a lot where Roger’s’ business dealing were concerned. I just randomly picked just before Rick Hearst’s debut in June 1990 when AM emerges from his kidnapping as literally a new man. It was a wild weak to start since Reva drove off the bridge not long after that and Phillip was beginning to plot his “death” so things were humming.

I picked back up my late March/April 1993 viewing fully into Buzz's return. Having seen some of Lucy's first appearances I find it amusing that they each arrived with terrible, yet completely different, accents. This reveal of Buzz as Harley/Frank's dad and not Nadine's cousin is dragging on far too long. I am also amused by how Harley has already had about a dozen disobeying authority plots as a cop in the year or so she has officially been a cop. Of course Frank goes rogue too almost immediately when he joins the force so it's a family trait. Finally up to Crazy Eve beginning which is infinitely more interesting than Sane Girlfriend Eve. I am also pretty surprised at how long Nadine was able to keep up this farce of being Peter's mom. She is balancing quite the web of lies between "Randy" (Buzz) and pretending Bridget is just the nanny. I don't even know what I want, but this Roger/Jenna Spaulding takeover is weirdly just a bunch of client poaching between Lewis and Spaulding and not a lot of fun. It coming in the immediate aftermath of Maureen's death with no Alex on the scene just makes it so there's really no true adversary for Roger to lord this over at this point. AM and I guess Henry are about as close as it gets, but AM is such a sad sack between the divorce and having only Nick as Spaulding family that there's not much fun in Roger lording anything over someone who never had power in the first place. Vanessa just moving back to Lewis Oil and Henry hanging out with her just makes this thing feel so low stakes right now, though I actually like the scrappy upstart Journal stuff as I think Rick Hearst/VI are both talented enough actors that they play the push/pull of AM/Nick well and have a good chemistry. Ann Hamilton as Mindy is slowly getting better as someone said would happen, but the Hart whose name I refuse to learn is such a nonentity. Then pitting him against Dylan is like some sort of no-charisma experiment. I like Dylan as nice guy sounding board but whenever he is trying to be angry about something he always comes off like an eighth grader.

I get it-they did this with Gossip Girl where they tried to spend over a season showing why both Chuck/Blair and Dan/Serena were toxic only to turn it around suddenly to go into the final season to make sure you know well into future they’re married. I wasn’t so much saying there’s something wrong with an ending so much as having to have resolution on all potential romantic pairings-it just goes counter to what has come before.

I feel like doing a prime time drama type family on a soap is a mistake as daytime is created to have this sort of infinite story feeling for better or worse. We complain about these story loops, but really for many that’s life. We fall into patterns and even if we move past them we backslide. There really should be a life continues on sort of feel to a soap finale rather than a resolution, as some of the joy of watching soaps is watching for years and there being no easy resolution because the story didn’t end after 100 episodes.

It’s been said before but I wish instead of Matt busting up Ross/Amanda that he comforts Blake and they hook up instead of Blake/Rick. Kill Bloss and Mattessa with one stone.