Khan

That's Frank's thing.

I think that is Vincent Irizarry (Lujack) and Judi Evans (Beth) from GL, but I cannot be sure. IMO, when that promo was made, CBSD was firing on all cylinders; even CAPITOL was getting good! But the promo emphasized all the right elements: passion, excitement, danger, glamour, DRAMA. And just in case there were any men or lesbians out there watching? There's also GL's Kristi Ferrell riding a mechanical bull.

Looking at your summary of events, @beebs, I think PFS should have done one of two things: either wrap up the Trish storyline as quickly as possible, or develop another, lighter storyline to counter-balance all the heavy melodrama that was going on at that time. The Don/Marlena/Sharon storyline might have been okay, but dealing with Trish's mental breakdown on the heels of Mickey's feels like too much. Did PFS leave DAYS voluntarily the first time, or was she fired? If she was fired, then I think NBCD might have acted too hastily. Yes, the ratings were down, but there wasn't any need to panic yet, since PFS had proven she could do better. The network could've just given her time to figure out what needed tweaking and then let her tweak it. (Again, Pat, I would've wrapped up Trish's story sooner rather than later).

My hunch: Claire Labine wanted to put a period on everything related to San Cristobel with that story, but either Paul Rauch or MADD intervened, fearing what doing so would mean to the show (i.e., viewer defections, lower ratings, etc). I can't remember who said it, but someone with insider knowledge intimated once that Labine, MADD and Rauch were often at odds over the direction of the show. (I also heard that Labine often fell asleep during story conferences, but that's another post for another thread, lol). I agree that Cassie, Edmund and Tammy had reason enough to be angry with Reva for turning off Richard's life support, but to me, even their motives felt like reaches (and again, why not just let us in on it sooner if it was going to be someone who was personally affected by Richard's death?). I thought it either had to be someone we knew but with a huge twist (example: Cassie blacking out and stalking her sister, perhaps under the influence of some alter ego) or it was someone whom we didn't know and had never heard of before, which would mean that Culliton/Taggart likely went into the story with no idea how it would end.

As everyone did eventually on DYNASTY.

That might be the best daytime promo ever produced.

I agree. It's one thing if MSW no longer fit within CBS' agenda. No show runs forever. But CBS owed Angela Lansbury the opportunity to close the show on her terms after everything she had done to help the network through what you yourself called some very awful years in the late '80's and early '90's.

You might be talking about "Reflections of the Mind," which aired on 11/3/1985, during MSW's second season. Guest stars included Ann Blyth, Ben Murphy, Stacy Nelkin, Esther Rolle, Steven Keats, Martin Milner and Wings Hauser (ex-Greg, Y&R). What I loved about that episode was how Jessica did not at all think her friend (Blyth) was losing touch with reality; that, in fact, what she saw and heard were very real, and very clearly the work of someone trying to drive her mad. Now that's a friend, lol!

I think TPTB had floated all three ideas at one time or another, lol. In order for either of the latter two solutions to have worked, however, I thought that Rita needed to be there, or at least have it explained why she could not be there (i.e., she had passed away years before). Otherwise, it did not matter whether Gus was Ed's son or Alan's: the drama would be undercut by not having Rita there to explain why she had given away Gus or kept him from learning the identity of his biological father. Gus's parentage was another storyline (like Reva's stalker) where even the easiest solution (that he was Miguel and Selena's long-lost son) was not entirely agreeable, yet certainly better than the answer Ellen Weston would settle for. You might be right about Labine's ability to adapt to the P&G "house style," @dc11786. I know when I heard that she once had been offered the HW'ing gig at ATWT, I thought that would have been a slightly better fit for her than GL. For some reason, I am thinking the "Crassiebella" incident occurred while Paul Rauch was still EP, but I might have it wrong again. (It has been a long, long time since I last thought about any of this, lol). As someone who grew up watching GL everyday with his mother and grandmother, I had a tough time witnessing rabid fanbases ruin GL the way that they did. In years past, GL was one show that was above all that fanbase [!@#$%^&*] that had crippled other shows, such as DAYS. If you watched GL, it was because you cared about the characters and the families and their histories, not about whether this-or-that couple was together and happy in every scene of every episode. However, Rauch/Esensten/Brown chucked that mentality out the proverbial window with their focus on so many insufferable pairings; so that, by the time Taggart and Culliton arrived, both the Mannies and the Rassies were holding GL hostage. Neither Danny/Michelle nor Richard/Cassie ever could grow as characters or as couples, because, in both cases, their fans were ready to storm EUE/Screen Gems at even the slightest hint of romantic discord. The Santoses were gnawing on one half of GL, and the San Cristobel crew was noshing on the other half. If you were like me and not a fan of either contingent, then you were S.O.L. Therefore, I was glad when someone - Taggart, Culliton, Rauch/Conboy, the intern who refilled the coffee makers every morning, but someone - finally pulled the plug on both. Unfortunately, flushing both the Rassies and the Mannies merely created a vacuum for the GusHers to fill - and IMO, the GusHers were worse than the Mannies and Rassies combined, because their attacks on those who did not agree with them could get very nasty and very personal, very quickly. For me, Gus and Harley's aborted wedding was the moment when I saw how Kreizman and Wheeler's GL was going to be - basically, reinforcing GusHers' ridiculous notion that "Spauldings BAD, Coopers GOOD" - and I knew that the show was never going to get better. ICAM, @Vee! Don't forget his guest-shot as the amnesiac bio-terrorist on "Walker, Texas Ranger," lol!

Thanks for the clarification, @dc11786! I have no idea why I thought it was the other way around. I admit I was not following GL too closely at that point. I would watch maybe 1-2 episodes per week - maybe more, if some plot twist sounded intriguing enough - and keep up the rest of the time on GLBuzz, so that might explain my mix-up. I apologize, though, if I misled anyone. Jonathan/Sandy/Sock Puppet Master as the culprit might have been good if we had been introduced (or re-introduced, as it were) to the character some time before the stalking storyline - like, say, right on the tail end of Reva pulling the plug on Richard? - and if it had been an "open mystery," where we knew all along (or at least early on) who it was, but no one on the show did (because, again, outside of him, there were no viable suspects on the canvas...even Holly would not have had a strong enough reason for doing it...which makes the entire storyline an Idiot Plot, when you think about it). IIRC, however, Jonathan had not been seen or heard from for a long time; and as far as anyone in Springfield or in the general audience knew, he still was in San Cristobel with Marissa and her husband. As I said upthread, that was a really shitty way to introduce a new (or SORAS'ed) character. (And no, hearing only Scott Bailey's voice for months before his first, on-screen appearance does not count, lol).

To be honest, @Vee, I had mixed feelings about Labine joining GL. For one thing, I knew from the start that she and Paul Rauch would be a bad combination. (Unfortunately, I was proven right). For another, Labine's writing style, IMO, was better suited to ABCD's earthier, more urbane shows than it was to a conservative, P&G-produced show like GL. Even if MADD was intent on ABC-ifying the P&G shows, there still was a traditional, middle-American vibe to ATWT and GL that was hard to eradicate.

I knew we were done for as GL fans when John Conboy brought back Bradley Cole as Jeffrey because some of Cole's cult followers had sent Conboy some damn flowers. Clearly, those shut-ins had watched Y&R/CAPITOL and knew the best way to influence Conboy. I was not as high on Conboy/Culliton/Taggart, because I thought it still paled in comparison to the GL I had watched growing up. On the other hand, it was a damn sight better than everything that had occurred during Paul Rauch's reign, so I was willing to give Culliton, Taggart and especially Conboy a chance, despite my misgivings. (IMO, Conboy was someone who needed a strong HW in order to be effective as a producer. Otherwise, the man was just a glorified lighting designer). Then - like you said, @Dan - it all turned to [!@#$%^&*], beginning with how Ellen Weston effed up the climax of the Reva stalker story. Not that I thought the story was great to begin with, lol. Reva as a talk-show hostess made no sense to me; and for all the suspense that Culliton and Taggart had generated around the identity of Reva's stalker, it still amounted to a "black glove story," one where it was clear they had no idea who to pin the crimes on, as there were no viable suspects on the canvas. (Over the years, I have heard that Alexandra was the intended culprit, with the motive of framing Holly. I still do not know whether to believe that, lol). But even if no resolution to the mystery would have been 100-percent effective, anything would have been better than the resolution Weston gave us. (I will not spoil it for those who do not know and want to find out, but I tell you, of all the shitty ways to introduce a new character to a soap, that had to have been one of the shittiest).

Either way, what they were doing amounted to character assassination.

Although I am sure SCOTUS will reverse CO and ME's rulings and put him back on the ballots, I am glad to see some states take a real stand against insurrectionists like him.

I barely remembered that show, so I looked up an episode on YT. Clearly, KA did it for two reasons: 1) the money, and 2) Shelley Curtis, who worked on that show as well as on DAYS (and later, GH). Otherwise, LS is the kind of slick, low-budget, New Age-ish program for single (white) people that could have existed only in the late '80's and early '90's.

I agree.

I think the only daytime soap Brian Gaskill has not appeared on was VALIANT LADY. And he probably had a recurring role on that one, too. So, it is all. Your. Fault.

"Look, Raven, I really don't want get into an argument with you right now, I have to pick up some milk at the supermarket!"

Deacon and Sheila's storyline better not involve a pregnancy.

It takes a special kind of evil to make that happen.

And if you are Brian Gaskill, you try and you try and you try and you try and....

Well, if at first you don't succeed....

No, it was not with GL, @Mitch64. It was with AMC. I still am not sure whether she was fired or she quit, but as we all know, she did not take too kindly to having one of her stories altered in the wake of the Murrah Building bombing in OKC. (In her original plan, Janet Green was going to stop Trevor and Laurel's wedding with a bomb hidden inside a package. However, after the real-life bombing, I think it was changed to a gun). So, I suspect she took the HW'ing gig at GL at least partially out of spite, because God knows she did not have the right temperament for that show.

I agree. There is a lot that Jesse did, both during the years he was presumed dead, and after he had returned to Pine Valley, that I still have trouble believing.

I might have some details wrong here, but... Angie, now reunited with not-dead Jesse, gave birth to a daughter, Ellie. (Angie's pregnancy had been particularly difficult, because she also was battling a disease that had left her blind). Jesse, who had delivered his and Angie's baby himself, noticed that the newborn was not breathing. (Angie was unconscious during the delivery, IIRC). Despite attempts to revive the baby, Ellie was stillborn. That was when Jesse buried Ellie in a shallow grave at a nearby park. Believing that Angie would be devastated by the loss of their baby, Jesse, with help from Brot, switched Ellie with another newborn that Maya, a unwed, teenage mother, had abandoned around the same time as Ellie's birth. Together, Jesse and an unsuspecting Angie named the baby Lucy. And then it goes on from there. Needless to say, I was not a fan of the story, or of much of Jesse's story once he was resurrected...but that is another post for another day. I think it was either David Kreizman and Donna Swajeski or Lorraine Broderick.