Khan

I'm with you on Michael and maybe Mack. But Olivia? Lilimae? Val? Here's what I would have done: 1) Keep Laura, Lilimae and Val, but let go of Anne, Ben, Cathy, Jill, Paige and other supporting characters. (Especially with Abby and Olivia still around, Anne and Paige are redundant.) 2) Reunite Gary and Val, while simultaneously splitting up Karen and Mack. (Michele Lee was right: KNOTS needed at least one stable married couple on the front burner. And Gary and Val, IMO, had come to a place where reconciliation seemed like the best option, not continued (and forced) separation thanks to psychos like Danny and Jill.) Give the two some time to be support for other characters, and let them (and their fans) enjoy some marital bliss before plunging them again into drama. 3) Have Laura divorce Greg, as well, leading to an acrimonious custody fight for Meg. Mack agrees to represent Laura, thus setting the stage for a possible Mack/Laura relationship, which seriously tests her friendship with Karen and places Val and Gary in the middle. (At the same time, Abby seizes an opportunity to hook up with Greg, which will impact her and Olivia's relationship as well.) If Kevin Dobson and Constance McCashin exude genuine chemistry together, pursue the relationship all the way to marriage. If not, then write out Mack at the appropriate moment. 4) Karen cannot take the pressure of her pending divorce and Mack and Laura's affair and ends up becoming dependent on prescription drugs again. Eventually, Eric, now working at Lotus Point, agrees with Abby that she needs to step away from the business, sending Karen even further on a downward spiral. By this point, either Mack/Laura are working out or not. Either way, Karen's relapse provides a catalyst for her, Mack and Laura to resolve their differences (with Mack leaving town soon thereafter, depending on the success of his and Laura's affair). 5) By the following season, Karen is back on the road to recovery: she's out of rehab and even back in school, pursuing a college degree. (There's also a potential, and potentially messy, new relationship on the horizon with her professor.) And though she's no longer working at Lotus Point, Eric is there to represent her interests; and thanks to Abby's systematically forcing her own nephew out, she and Karen are guaranteed to keep locking horns for some time to come.

The network always had such ridiculous expectations for LOVING. They wanted it to be the next AMC or OLTL, but they never realized that it took time for AMC and OLTL to become the monster hits that they were.

"Like Brandon"? More like "Like Brandon's chest".

Colonel Winston Mayer, as played by Daniel Hugh Kelly, was probably one of AS THE WORLD TURNS' biggest "wasted opportunities" in its final years. Here we had a quintessential, conservative military officer, who could not and would not accept his son's homosexuality - and who, in my mind, was so outraged by it, b/c it touched off similar struggles with his own sexuality beneath the surface - and instead of dealing with all that and maybe telling a real envelope-pushing story (yes, America, there are families where a father and son are both gay), they took their usual cheap and easy way out and turned him into the latest Psycho of the Month.

Honestly...? I think KNOTS wrote out Laura, not because they were overbudget (I mean, they probably were overbudget, but it wasn't as if she was the only one who could've been cut loose), but because the Lechowicks could not write for Constance McCashin the way they could for others. Like you said, Laura was definitely more complex than Karen, Val, even Abby. She was neither a total bitch, like Abby, nor a total heroine, like Karen and "poor Val"; and the Lechowicks, as writers and producers, were simply too incapable to know how to handle that. I've always said that as influential as KNOTS was on me as a writer, the show really lost something when they let go of McCashin and Julie Harris (Lilimae). Up to that point, they were often the go-to examples of how KNOTS' cast was a proverbial cut above the other primetime soaps.

Yeah, I'd love to see Lucinda try and land some defense drafting and engineering contracts via the appropriate departments at WorldWide. Lucinda would argue how it would bring much-needed jobs and money to Oakdale, but Luke would spearhead a campaign to stop it (and maybe fall in love with an employee @ WorldWide in the process).

And that was a bad thing? ;-)

Perhaps this has been asked and answered already, but does anyone here know what happened to Diana Walker, who portrayed Mary? There are a lot of actors from WTHI and LIAMST I've always been curious about, and van der Vlis and Walker are always at the top of the lists.

And when it tried to be sexier, particularly during the John Conboy/Ellen Weston era, it was either laughable or offensive and laughable.

Maggie DePriest did Anna Stuart's character on ANOTHER WORLD, Donna Love, no favors either.

Is that Stephen Burleigh (ex-Dr. Gary Walton, SEARCH FOR TOMORROW) playing Mike Powers? He isn't bad. He certainly isn't unattractive, lol. (Then again, I'm biased when it comes to pre-1990's soap actors. I feel even the weakest ones are miles above what passes for "good" in this business today. Plus, I'm more likely to "swoon" over a Stephen Burleigh than I would over, say, a Roger Howarth? But that's just personal taste.) More importantly, he has a nice chemistry with Hillary Bailey Smith, who's playing Kit McCormick. (Their sparring sorta reminds me of ATWT's Tom and Margo, of all things, lol.) I mean, the dialogue or even situation (stuck together in an abandoned/isolated cabin in the middle of a snowdrift) isn't terribly original - perhaps, if the writers had worked a little harder at it, it might've been less cliched. But at least Burleigh and Smith are behaving like adults, and their characters' relationship comes across as a nice sort of counterpoint to Matt and Maggie's.

There are two memories from my early years that I will always hold dear to me. One was Nola Reardon's "Casablanca" fantasy on GUIDING LIGHT. The other was Jenny and Jesse on the run in NYC. And that's something no heartless daytime executive will ever take away.

It all comes down to this: GL's ratings fell after Douglas Marland left, and either CBS or P&G (or both) blamed that on the actors and characters who'd been front-burner during that time rather than the fact that the stories were just too confusing for audiences to follow. Even after Quint and Nola's stories had begun to get a little...silly, I still loved the duo. Lisa Brown and Michael Tylo's chemistry was just that magical to me. In fact, the only couple who comes close to rivaling them for my affections are AMC's Greg and Jenny. Having said that, though, if GL had chosen to do right by the characters and kill off Quint before they had had the chance to "ruin" either him or Nola...? Well, I won't lie. I would've hated it, probably. But, then again, at least the beauty and purity of their early romance would have remained intact.

Screw the ratings and all the other excuses, too. ATWT died, because Les Moonves wanted his wife to have another show on his network. Pure, and simple.

Well, it did seem odd for the Kelly/Morgan relationship to end that quickly over something as (relatively) small as his jealousy. But I think the real issue here is that Quint & Nola began to take up a lot of the show (the same way Reva and the Lewises would down the road), and others resented that, b/c TPTB treated them like second-class citizens. Plus, with Marland's departure and Pat Falken Smith's arrival, a lot of the stories were suddenly in freefall, and very little of what any character was doing at that moment made sense either to the actor(s) or to the audience.

That's because, for the most part, those who came after him didn't have the same feel for Gothic romance that he did. (As usual, though, I think Nancy Curlee would have done right by them, had she been given the opportunity. Next to Marland, she seemed to be the one who "got" GUIDING LIGHT the best.) Once Marland left, Quint and Nola's relationship became more about wild adventure - which was cute, don't get me wrong, but it never had the same enchanting air of mystery that their earlier story did. Also, Quint, an eccentric (and possibly antisocial) archaeologist and explorer, was thrust suddenly into the corporate sphere thanks to a paternity reveal that was entirely unnecessary (Henry Chamberlain could have been like a father to him instead of his actual one - and don't get me started on Quint suddenly became "Sean Ryan"); and Nola just became an all-around kook and businesswoman. (Remember "Nolaerobics"?) These new functions just didn't suit them all that well, IMO.

Perhaps, Mallet and Marina were going for a "police lineup" theme?

A good set designer knows how to work with any budget, large or small. That set looked so awful, though, it had me wondering if Ellen Wheeler had hired some high school drama club to re-design Cedars just to save a few bucks.

Ross Marler's funeral was an ITL. 'Nuff said. :-(

It did ... until they got stuck. As "perfect" as Ben/Val and Abby/Gary were, Ben and Val almost Mack and Karen redundant; and Gary couldn't stay married to Abby, either, and continue putting up w/ her machinations w/o looking like a complete idiot. Case in point: the Wolfbridge Group. Even David Jacobs has admitted he didn't understand the story. LOL!

The hyped the crap out of that, didn't they?

Two more facts: 1) Cissy Houston supposedly named her daughter, Whitney, after Ms. Blake, who co-created ODAAT w/ her husband, and former "Good Times" writer, Allan Manings. 2) The first ODAAT pilot was actually written by Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, who went on to create "Designing Women," among other shows. I don't know whether it was her pilot that had Ann mother to only one daughter, but I know at some point, someone decided Ann needed a second. Hence, Valerie Bertinelli.

Well, in that case, I'm "weird," too, and proud of it, lol. I won't pretend the years with the Lechowicks were better than the years without, b/c, quite frankly, they weren't. Especially after the departures of Constance McCashin (Laura) and Julie Harris (Lilimae), the wheels really began to come off that wagon. One thing that was always true about KNOTS, however, no matter who was in charge, was that they told stories, and that those stories almost always delivered real payoffs. I might be able to say the same about DALLAS, and even parts of FALCON CREST, but definitely not the other primetime soaps from the Eighties. Also, maybe it's just me, but I feel like Danny Waleska's story was less about Danny, or even about keeping Gary and Val apart a little bit longer, and more about introducing his ex-wife, Amanda, to the show. Which might have worked, I reckon, if they hadn't casted such a bland actress for that part. (I mean, really, Penny Peyser was the best they could come up with?)

I believe that if she had given the show six more months, the show would have found something interesting for Marcy Walker to do (provided, of course, the writers commit to finding her a storyline). But, you know, I don't blame her for leaving, since she had been basically neglected for so long.

For one thing, Stephanie might have had more love interests (if Susan Seaforth Hayes had accepted the role). Not to knock Susan Flannery in any way, but she's never had any sort of romantic chemistry even with John McCook's Eric.