Khan

I think I read somewhere that he passed away.

That man is trash.

Good for her. I hope it cuts through the others and succeeds.

For Marj, I would have created the character of Miss Martha's sister, and Billy, Josh and Trish's aunt. I might have even named her "Mary," since Martha seems like such a biblical name to me.

I hope the authorities 1) get security detail for Stelter and Lemon and 2) track down "Don" and monitor his activities very, very closely.

I don't THINK so, but I was watching so infrequently by that point, I might have missed it.

Well, it's tough to deal with the ramifications of something you can't explain the rationale for in the first place. Why did Phillip become so unhinged before he was "murdered"? There's never been a satisfactory answer (aside, of course, from GA's contract coming up, and David Kreizman's "Spauldings BAD, Coopers GOOD" line of thinking that characterizes his time as HW). Phillip's return was decent, but as with much that was good about GL at the end, the credit belongs to Jill Lorie Hurst, who was finally promoted to HW or Co-HW, and who seemed to have a more nuanced view of the show than Kreizman.

I will never understand why Tori keeps having babies with that loser, let alone stays married to him. Is her self-worth that anemic?

I really did reach a point where I began praying for this show to end. I couldn't even feel sad anymore about the possibility of GL never returning. To me, cancellation at that point would have been more like a mercy killing, plain and simple.

That's not what the show thought! Paul Korver's ultimate dismissal from ATWT is a good example of what happens a series hires a "hair model." If you hire someone on looks alone, don't be upset if that's all they can bring to the table.

So, "Star Trek Retirement Village" is a go.

Basically, he was let go, because he generated no heat with anyone they paired him with romantically.

I do not know whether this has been posted already, but in case you were wondering whatever happened to Nick Benedict (Phil Brent #2)... By the way, he has so many facts wrong about his career, it's not even funny. Drugs are bad, kids, stay in school.

Their humanitarian efforts were laudable, yes, but I don't think they warranted stopping the day's action early for glorified "human interest" news segments. OTOH, the writing at that point was so abysmal, it was almost a relief to turn our attention elsewhere, lol. But that's the difference between a show WITH a budget and a show without one. If GL had been able to switch production styles with the kind of money they had even during the Paul Rauch era, it might've been more successful. Instead, the whole affair was being shot and edited on some college kid's MacBook Pro that his parents had purchased for him with his student discount.

Agree. "GL in Peapack" was like watching the soap opera equivalent to "Rollergator." Am I wrong, or did they actually try to explain away the exposed drywall by having Gus tell someone he and Harley were renovating? Both. Also, because Stamford isn't that far from NYC, or where most of GL's cast were living at that point, you didn't have to worry over whether everyone would be willing and able to make the move. Personally, I always had it in mind that Andy Norris should have returned to Springfield as a minister.

Paul Rauch really took a sledgehammer to GL's aesthetics, taking a venerable soap that used to have good actors and tasteful production values, and turning it into another JER era-DAYS/PASSIONS knockoff; and although I think John Conboy managed to improve the production somewhat, his GL still had the same problem that all his shows that weren't Y&R had: shitty writing. Yeah, I remember their testing the waters, so to speak, either determining whether the new style WOULD work, or getting viewers accustomed to it, so it wouldn't be a TOTAL shock for them. Frankly, I found the all-purpose Beacon Hotel suite -- meaning, the same set they would re-dress for each new scene/character * -- more inviting. * Sound familiar, DAYS fans?

Ironically, as much as Ellen Wheeler had touted that the new production style would help to make Springfield feel and look more like a real city ("I want to see which plants Cassie is planting in her garden!"), I think the move did the very opposite: it made Springfield feel and look LESS like an actual city than ever before. Springfield might have been a mythical city located somewhere in the midwest (but most likely IL); however, even a REAL midwestern city has an altogether different vibe or atmosphere than an East Coast town like Peapack, NJ (and vice-versa). Factor in the shoddy camerawork and editing, and you have just an unbelievable (and unwatchable) mess. Frankly, if cancellation still wasn't an option at that point, then I wonder whether P&G/CBS would have been better off relocating GL's production to Stamford, CT, or even to L.A., like ABC would do with AMC.

Yes, Lisa did run a book store (with a hospital annex). IIRC, Neil Wade opened the store sometime back in the '60's; then, after his death, Penny took it over. At some point, the bookstore came under Lisa's control, although I know little-to-nothing about the specifics of how that transpired.

At the end of the show? Damn. I guess I hung in longer than I thought.

IIRC, there was a "Next Time on GL..." at the end of the last entirely studio-bound episode that gave viewers their first glimpse of the "new" GL, as well as a combination musical montage / soft re-introduction at the start of the first Peapack show. But...yeah, pretty much. (I think I stayed tuned until the first commercial break. That was all I needed to know the change was a disaster.) ETA: I forget which soap journalist said this, but one of 'em said the biggest mistake that Ellen Wheeler and David Kreizman had made in the Peapack transition was not kicking it off in a bigger way, either w/ something momentous occurring in the final moments of the last pre-Peapack episode, or at the end of the first Peapack one, to get viewers to stick with the new production style beyond their initial curiosity. And yeah, I'd have to agree. GL really needed to exploit the "Peapack experiment" by devising the kind of story that could show off the new prod style and prove why that kind of change was needed. Instead, nothing of any real significance happened in the first Peapack episode, which made the whole thing look exactly like what it was: a last-ditch effort, by a dying soap, to cut costs and stay on the air. I think it was the day of Maeve's death. Again, IIRC, when she returned from the strike, they were so behind, and they were so busy salvaging everything that the scabs had ruined, there wasn't even any time to write a proper funeral for the character. (Plus, the day of Maeve's death was also the very last day on Leslie Denniston's contract, so forget about giving her even deathbed scenes to play.) For some reason, I'm recalling an interview Long did (maybe w/ Brandon's Buzz?) where she talked about working w/ Rauch at SB. Early on, she said, there had been a clash of sorts between the two over...something. However, when she confronted him, he backed down. Apparently, Rauch was caught off-guard by the fact that Long was not the type to be steamrolled, which he had been used to doing with other writers. (I might have confused Long and Rauch with another regime at another soap, but it definitely fits with Harding Lemay's description of Rauch as a producer who was okay to work with, "but you had to bully him.")

Yep, it's John Callahan. JC, in an anti-sexual harassment training film. As a friend of mine would say, there's an irony in there somewhere.

I wouldn't be surprised to learn he's completely bald these days.

Honestly, there were so many companies floating through Oakdale at one point: BRO, Simply Barbara, Walsh AND Worldwide, M&A (for Montgomery & Associates?), Kingsley Malta, Cabot Motors, and wasn't Carolyn Crawford a "cereal heiress" or something? And that's all off the top of my head. As much as I loved Marland's work, I feel like he went a little crazy on the business stuff.

I seem to recall Barbara Ryan Originals, or BRO. Am I wrong?

And the Trumpists will start their boycott/smear campaign of Lebron in five, four, three, two....