GL95

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.

If it had been 15 years later there would have been a Reva alien abduction or something equally crazy to explain it haha

Yeah, I hate how the show lets the more sanctimonious characters off the hook when they treat people poorly or do murky things but tend to pound the “bad” ones for doing similar things. It makes the dynamics pretty stagnant.

@DRW50 What you’re saying about Matt/Beth is why I hate how they wrote the aftermath of the Ross/Amanda stuff because Ross absolutely with no guilt intended to cheat and knew full well Amanda had been pursuing him for months while telling Blake she was in the wrong for daring to question him. Then Matt intervenes (ironically) which is the only reason Ross stopped-he was in no way hesitating before that. Then they have Blake sleep with Rick and it basically lets Ross completely off the hook for his actions with Amanda. Then Blake lying for months made Ross into the victim and he could remain in his “good guy” role in the relationship. (Obviously Blake made a complete mess of things but I really hated how he lied to Blake and acted like she was insane while her insecurities grew, and Blake was right all along.)

Holly also went out of her way to offer support to Van during her attempted rape trial even though they weren’t close, but they weren’t great at pulling from history at this stage.

I’ll admit my Michelle/Jesse recollections aren’t super strong. I watched all four CBS soaps off and on and changed which was my primary-admittedly Michelle often was fast forward fodder to me by the time Jesse rolled around if I was in a hurry and needed to get through 3.5 hours of recorded soaps fast back then haha.

I feel like letting Roger actually build his empire following the Alex divorce would’ve worked-feel like there were a lot of ways to do this.

I personally never really loved Rebecca Budig as Michelle, but bingeing I might have liked her better because I really hated Jay and she was just an annoying boy crazy teen to me until they brought Abby in which softened her up some. And I really, really hated the Zachary plot. I was a bit irked at the SORAS decision to begin with as the show lost some additional heart with Bill/Ben/Michelle no longer being together all the time, especially Bill/Michelle. I personally liked Joy better in the role and thought she had the right mix of both warmth and tenacity.

I have hit a bit of a wall in my binge as I’ve gotten to mid 1993, so I’ve been checking out random old episodes YouTube pushed. I watched a Founder’s Day episode from 1984 today that was interesting (warning there’s a few technical issues on the video) There’s a lot in the episode. First it’s one of those giant events with a bunch of extras. Reva is married to HB but Billy is suspicious of her and Josh while he’s married to Van and she is very pregnant. The guy Billy has spy on Reva/Josh (he’s in the wheelchair which I sort of vaguely have read about) gets caught by Van and she’s pissed and she gives an epic speech. You can see some of the Reva/Josh chemistry here. Phillip is reeling over LuJack and Beth (and I think a little over sharing attention in the family) and is an absolute raging, unrepentant jerk. Ross lectures him and he never really feels bad about anything-it sort of reminded me of Holly trying to explain basic human decency to Blake at times. GA doesn’t seem all that youthful in the young Phillip years but then barely ages-it’s like he was a 35-40 year old man for 25 years. Random thing I noticed with LuJack and Beth in the closeups is their teeth are clearly imperfect, and it’s something I like about GL even into the 90s that it’s filled with attractive but still human looking people. (So nice compared to anything today where everyone is supposed to look the same!) Anyhow, here’s the link for anyone interested. (There’s also a Fletcher subplot involving him romancing some random woman I don’t understand haha). https://youtu.be/Z6Esmijjakg?si=RHj7Qpl6K7rOsk7b

It’s sort of funny that the boarding house was used this way pretty heavily once Bridget took over as far as disparate characters passing through (it was fun to see things like Dinah trying to be a compassionate human when she finds Lucy crying after the rape, etc as you get interactions you wouldn’t expect.) But then they largely dropped this when Nola arrived as it became more about the Reardon clan plus David there, which you’d think Nola could’ve slid into a quirky matriarch role more with different characters passing through. What was weird about the boarding house in that Bridget era is that big plots would happen there with basically no crossover. For instance, Brent was on the run when Dinah was “kidnapped” and there wasn’t even a thought that this crazy sexual predator might have been involved. (Dinah working with Victor to pin her “abduction” on Brent would’ve actually been an interesting twist to keep plots from being on these islands.)

It’s funny how memory is-my recollection was that the Danny/Michelle relationship became a real marriage munch faster than it actually happened. But I was largely just reading synopses at this point since I was in college and didn’t have my own VCR at this point, and my roommate who owned the TV/VCR was a Days fan haha So, appreciating the thorough recaps! I was studying abroad most of summer of 99 so I definitely wasn’t watching. I feel like I mostly stopped watching regularly around this time until I’d heard things were getting better again in 2001.

No-before she was born he thought he was the bio dad then it turned out she was Frank’s. And he was married to her aunt for most of her childhood, and married to her other aunt before she was born. I was just making an analogy to how much you’d have yo change up AM/Marina to get close to Ridge/Bridget and still not get there haha

I actually think the repetitiveness is part of its success-you can easily come in and out. The Ridge/Bridget thing is amazingly worse than that alone-Ridge believed Eric was his bio dad still for years after this. IIRC Bridget was SORASed awhile before that retcon came, so he went from father to brother to love interest. (I mean even if he knew he was adopted most of his life Bridget would’ve always thought he was family. And this isn’t even factoring in the Ridge/Brooke of it all outside the paternity issue.) It’s legitimately the grossest incest plot I’ve seen on a soap. It’s somehow even worse than if AM thought he was Marina’s father for years while being married to Lucy, the paternity came out with a SORASed Marina and they hook up while he’s still with her Aunt Lucy.

I watched B&B really early on (in hindsight when I crazy young-8 or 9?) and Ridge first picked Caroline over Brooke multiple times then they just slotted in Taylor once Joanna Johnson left initially and they killed Caroline off. I still remember that they repeatedly did dramatic who will Ridge choose buildups, and each time it would be him dumping Brooke first then pledging his love to Caroline/Taylor. I quit whenever they had Ridge and Bridget hook up and never looked back (talk about incest!) my mom still watches and I was legitimately stunned to go 15 years without watching to see literally nothing changed.

It’s fairly remarkable how rapid the drop off is given that there’s a pretty great canvas still around to work with.

Summer 1994 through Feb 1995 or so is almost unwatchable. The back half of 1994 is a period where basically no plot works. IMO it starts to get better in 1995 once they mostly drop the 5th Street fire plot/they let the static Spaulding power dynamic shift with AM as Pres, Annie/ Josh start, Dinah arrives (they let her stay stagnant far too long but I think she shakes some things up at first with Bloss and Marissa especially), etc.

I’m just always a sucker for the trope of someone pining over someone then the roles reverse and the one pining is suddenly the one being pursued. When AM starts being the one yearning for her (shortly before the rape and he’s still in denial since he’s determined to be all business) is roughly when I came in. There’s a really well shot scene on the yacht where they have dinner that’s full of subtext and long pauses with moments allowed to breathe that I don’t think you’d see on the show by 1997. (This isn’t just a LAM thing-just miss stillness existing in shows in general.)

Admittedly I got into the slow when I was in high school largely because of AM/Lucy-I had zero history or context and came in basically right when AM became president of Spaulding. SS and Rick Hearst had great chemistry IMO. (He generally had good chemistry with almost everyone though.) Having seen Lucy’s intro I think it’s very obvious SS was a novice actress and I feel like a lot of her higher pitched voice early was the terrible accent/trying too hard to seem 20 when SS was 25. I think she seemed much more comfortable once they let her act more mature/she became a competent professional. (Basically anyone having the job they have requires suspension of disbelief.) I personally like her well enough even beyond nostalgia because she’s the least sanctimonious of the Coopers I feel like. They clearly had no clue what to do with her when she wasn’t with AM though-it’s kind of weird they had her work with Alex/Nick after AM left Spaulding but they didn’t really play any of that natural tension up even as a D plot. If you were going for something more dramatic though where AM is concerned if she strayed, I feel like Rick is the obvious choice especially if Ed is around. It would really push AM even more away from his Bauer side, and even more gallingly to AM, Phillip would of course basically be more family to Rick than to him.

I think the sibling fight would be a good refresh because there was tension between AM/Phillip but not not any bad blood so bad that you’d think they were insane to try to still maintain a bond-it’s a much more believable push/pull than either son vs Alan. One of the problems with Alan is there’s basically no reason for the viewer to even want peace/reconciliation between Alan and any family member. But with Phillip/AM them acting like brothers is rootable for a viewer even if their Spaulding instincts kick in to sabotage things.

Pairing a younger version of Amanda with Roger was really tired out by that point-we’d already had very similar Roger plots with Jenna and Dinah. I do wonder if bringing a de-aged Amanda on was part of a plan to actually do the Spauldings next generation and push Alan out too, but Rick Hearst leaving plus Michael Dietz being a giant flop made them stick with Alan to constantly be in battle with Phillip. It’s actually too bad that GA came back on after VI left, as Phillip and Nick as foils had interesting potential. Both claim to want nothing to do with the Spaulding trappings with one having been raised in it but turned out not to be a Spaulding by blood with the other being the opposite.