vetsoapfan

Another great synopsis for us to savor. Woohoo! What a treat! Thanks.

I loved the Beulah Land trilogy of novels; very engrossing and heartfelt. The miniseries, however, was painful.🤢

There have been many theories and rumors about why ABC axed her, possibly the most prominent being because ABC was in talks with Paul Rauch to eventually take over the show. The network's weak announcement, "We had run out of storyline for the actress" was obviously spin, since she was already being woven into a new story with Michael Zaslow. At this point, we will never have a definitive answer, but the bigger mystery is why ABC allowed so many of the show's still-viable, beloved, core cast members to be fired. None of the newbie, replacement characters seemed to catch on and ignite the same level of devotion from the audience. It still boggles my mind that after she passed away, Rauch proclaimed that Courtney "was a great gal who always gave first-rate performances." She certainly was a fine, capable actress IMHO, but ahhh...how Rauch's tune had changed by then.

I remember this! Thanks, @DRW50 . ABC sure shot themselves in the foot by firing Jacquie Courtney. (And Ellen Holly. And Al Freeman, Jr. And Lillian Hayman. And (later) Michael Storm. And so on and so forth.)

Thank you for bring this video to our attention, @MissPalmer , and for tagging me, @Vee . I loved OLTL from 1968 to 1983!

I appreciate the tag, as always, @slick jones .😉

Gracias, @DRW50 . 🙂

She just seemed to zone out and go on somnambulistic cruise control.

I've always thought Jed Allen would have been great as Mike Bauer. He could play all sorts of different "colors," romance, anger, vulnerability, sweetness, strength, and was more natural and less stiff and reserved than Don Stewart. (Tht being said, I would have kept Stewart on the show as my first choice.) Well, I mean as a personal preference. TGL was horribly gutted by then, or maybe by 1986, and in my heart, I would have preferred to see the old gal go out with some semblance of dignity, rather than watching rabid crows picking at the rotting corpse. Of course, as it turned out, the show rebounded in the early 1990s under Nancy Curlee, so at that time, I was glad it had endured the dark years of the 1980s. I saw that with the right PTB, it still could have been saved. Alas, after Curlee left, the show never again had effective behind-the-scenes personnel who understood it or the audience, and it plunged back into its long, long decline. I thought PFS's brief tenure on TGL was wonderful. She instantly seemed to "get" so many of the characters and wrote lovely scenes for them. The sense of community was also there. I was aghast when she was fired, and the endless revolving door of much-less-talented writers took over. I could have have accepted Coster as Mike, although my first choices would have been Don Stewart or Jed Allen. No other actor but Hulswit would have been acceptable to me. God yes!

Scott Phillips on SFT was Simon's strongest role, IMHO. I enjoyed his work on that show. While I found the actor's storyline on ATWT to be laborious and tedious, I felt that Simon showed enough signs of life while working there to be acceptable. I always thought Jacqueline Schultz was colorless and drippy, however, and hated when she was cast as a ridiculously de-SORASed Patti on SFT. I would have hated seeing her cast as Hope Bauer.

Axing the principle Bauers in the 1980s, killing off Maureen Bauer and Ross Marler in the 1990s, foisting all the sci-fi crap onto the once-erudite soap, populating Springfield with so many irrelevant and disposible faces in its dwindling years...TPTB had been making painfully atrociously decisions at TGL for a loooong time. I was ready for/expecting it to be euthanized by 1985. God, yes! Peter Simon and Nancy St Alban were dull as dishwater; Ed and Michelle were basically useless as remnants of the core family without the likes of Mart Hulswit and Rachel Miner (or even Joie Lenz) in the roles. Rick became an unnecessary talk-to as he hovered around the backburner, and O'Leary's mugging made me yearn to see a new actor take over the part. I always regarded RVV as "Chuck Tyler pretending to be Ed Bauer." He was totally miscast on TGL. I liked Peter Simon on SFT, and felt he was good on ATWT, but he was abrasively lethargic and colorless as Ed. This was NOT the Ed Bauer I had watched for 20 years. They never should have written Hope off at all, but particularly with Bert, Hillary and Maureen dead, we needed a beloved Bauer woman aboard the sinking SS Springfield. It kinda looked like TIIC were sabotaging the show right into the grave.

I'm sorry to hear about your family members' food poison, @slick jones . Hope they feel better by now.

Leaving Peter Simon's Ed in Springfield was probably TPTB's way of turning the audience against the Bauer family for good, since PS's version of the character would bore anyone to tears.😒 I referred to PS's Ed as "the fake Ed" for 27 years, LOL, while I referred to Johnny, Lacey, Jack and Lainie as "the retcon Bauers who do not exist."☹️

Okay; thanks. I appreciate you letting me know.

Drats. The chat transcript will not open for me. I hope I did not miss any previously-unreported gossip/facts.