P.J.

Well, both Calhoun and Stuart had long, long ties to P&G. I wasn't overly attached to Meta, but I remember Search for Tomorrow. If not actual stories, just it's presence on CBS.

lol...Grandma Moses... :)

Did Danny Cosgrove have any scenes with Bethany Joie Lenz, or was it all Nancy St Alban? I can't help but think they would've been fire. Instead, there's ol' dishrag Nancy, about as exciting as a piece of chewed gum on a sidewalk. I think JFP fell into a rut of bad casting decisions/departures that forces her hand in some respects. She refuses to let Kimberly Simms ink a one year deal that would've kept the Nick/Mindy story going (not my cup of tea, but whatev), Bev leaves, Jordan has his situation. There's the miscast Mindys, Geoffrey Scott isn't well received as Billy (if he ever even really would've stayed), Tangie, losing Beth Ehlers and Mark Derwin. Yes, it's her job to navigate those waters, and all shows lost performers every year, but GL really did feel snake bit for a while there. Re; '84 and '85, yeah, Reva isn't the problem (even if you found her annoying), it's the heavy plot point stories and influx of new, bland characters. Of course, a literal flotilla of them were attached to Reva via Kyle, but it didn't feel like Reva swallowed the show---yet.

YEP. Complete with random bloody noses that looked disgusting. SMH.

Y'know, yes. Or at least I tried. GL was an unholy mess by then. Wasn't 2004 also the year of the horrible Maryanne Carruthers story? That blasphemy lives in infamy. But the Sebastian plot was just sick. I never bought that he was really Roger's son.

It was June '84, when GL either won the time slot, or beat GH's demos or something. They were not the overall number one (or whatever the rumors are. Sadly this also applies to ATWT which tries to claim 30 million viewers watched Steve and Betsy's wedding, and there's an entire thread debunking that, which breaks my heart) That two weeks in June also is the fallout of Reva's marrying HB, and Josh's resulting accident. Which is inexplicably NOT up in English to watch. Not trying to bask in Beth and Lujack's glow, because I remember watching that all LIVE and it all was can't miss TV. GL was the definition of FIRE. And they played that damn song for WEEKS.

God, how I hated critical darling Santa Barbara. Never watched a moment of it, but it sucked up attention like a Kardashian.

@alwaysAMC I don't think Billy ever mentioned Hamp again either (when Jordan returned) which is sad. But I guess I'd rather have not have him just randomly killed off-screen either. Yep, and I definitely remember all the crap over Rock Hudson/Linda Evans/Dynasty around the same time. I certainly wouldn't have wanted either Kim or Maeve to deal with anything even remotely approaching that. P&G certainly wasn't any more evolved just a few years later when they dumped Joe Breen from ATWT when his status was revealed.

Now, y'know I pretty much ignore anything **** related. And most of what Jenna says period. Her taste in men was awful. LOL. I don't think Guiding Light acknowledged Zas's death. They treated him shamefully. But, I also can't recall them acknowledging any other former performer's death. They acknowledged Chris Bernau's, and while he hadn't been on the show for about a year, his character was still on screen. I also thought they kept his condition quiet and didn't discourage speculation that he might return in the press. They did on screen acknowledgements of both William Roerick and Larry Gates, but I don't think they did for Vince Williams, who played Hamp Speakes, and died in '97.

I don't recall Alan liking Mindy. But I do think he clearly feared the effect Beth had on Phillip. Mindy was someone marginally more socially acceptable for his son than a poor nurse's daughter, who he probably thought he could control. By the time Chelsea rolled into Phillip's life, Alan could at least appreciate that she tried to get him to reconcile with his father (which I presume, I don't revisit a lot of Chelsea related story). The Reardons may have had humbler roots, but he knows them (after all Tom was connected to Brandon, et al through the Fishing Picture mystery), and they are connected (in a roundabout way) through Ed's marriage to Maureen and Henry's being Nola's father in law. I don't recall Alan's reaction to Phillip and Harley's marriage either, but by the end, he hated all the Coopers. It would've been interesting if they had brought Zach back at the end, because he kind of forgot he had a Cooper grandchild. (Which I'm just now realizing meant that Zach's half-sister was dating his half-brother at the end of the series.)_

YEP! I cried when Van asked her to give Henry a kiss, and she replied she already had. I never bought into the Van/Jen "friendship", but if there was anything that could soften Van, it was that Henry loved Jenna.

Well, Alex despised Harley because she was a schemer who married Alan Michael so they could access his trust fund. She lightened up on Harley when she realized she really did love AM. Of course by then, he was having an affair with Blake, but I digress.

It's fairly soon after, and I think you would've mentioned it if you'd seen it. :) Oh, got it. But it's still awful that she basically ignores him at Christmas. It's no wonder Alan-Michael always feels like the red-headed stepchild, when Alan and Alex always worshipped the ground Phillip walked on, or to whatever their latest obsession was (with Alan, it's his women, with Alex it was Nick.) And Rick Hearst always sold it beautifully.

ALEX KICKED A-M out on CHRISTMAS? Sigh---I love Bev's Alex, but there are times you just want to shake the woman.

Alex was fond of Beth from the moment they met, at the masquerade party that (re)introduced Alex to Springfield. Phillip and Beth announced their first engagement that night, and if for no other reason than Alex knew Alan disliked the girl, (or felt some kind of kinship due to the fact she'd been denied her happiness due to Brandon) Alex supported Phillip and Beth. Phillip and Beth broke up soon after (because Mindy was pregnant), and she started dating Lujack, and helped Alex and Lujack connect as mother and son. Alex and Beth grew closer, and remained close after Lujack's death until Beth's presumed death. Re: Jenna---I heartily disliked the woman, but remember crying when she died. And there's a moment later that is just ....*chef's kiss*. (I don't want to spoil it.)

Specifically, in 1990, most of January and September are missing in the vault. As I recall, they were not up on youtube either.

I remember the broad strokes of history, but that era is not one I really care to revisit. I actually liked Lucy, but for me, GL is floundering at this point with unrecognizable recasts like Poser and Raines, poor casting decisions like Marcy Walker and later Hunt Block, and some poor plotting (one only needs look at the disillusionment of Nola's return to feel alienation from GL's glory years.) What I mainly remember of the Brent saga (ironically) is that they killed Cutter, who I liked. I don't know if I had actually seen Psycho at that point (TCM had just started up) to connect to the obvious references to it, but I'm not overly fond of slasher stories.

I don't remember a lot of AM/Lucy, but there was a point early on when she said she was going to marry him, and of course, she ended up marrying him. That was cute.

Y&R's relationships could be somewhat static--Jill was always in ways the irritant outsider who never gets along with people, whether that's Kay, Ashley or Jack. And in that way Guiding Light let the character's relationships evolve. Ross and Vanessa went from being toxic to truly friends who stood by each other. Ed and Alan never really got along, they just generally stayed out of each other's orbit in the later years. But having that built-in, long standing rival gives the writers a framework to keep incorporating history. ATWT's Kim and Susan were long standing rivals who didn't need to be bitchy to each other all the time. But when 30 years later, Kim can complain about "those Stewart women" continually sleeping with Hughes men, long term viewers know what she's talking about.

I guess I should've clarified, yes, there was always a weekly GL promo. But you were lucky to catch it once or twice a week, as opposed to Y&R, which would air multiple times a day.

1989, Nick helps Phillip find Beth (I think Beth was about to marry Neal at Reva Bend with Blake in attendance) and helps HB find Josh, who is at the bridge that Reva jumped off of years before after Reva told him that Billy is Dylan's father and it wasn't rape. (Which involves a speech that completely whitewashes Josh's history of ducking out when things got tough, and forever puts some golden halo above his head, but I digress...) So he can go home and completely forgive Reva for being an idiot and lying to him yet again. Not to mention putting Billy through an emotional meat grinder...but HEY, she's our HEROINE. RME.

Obviously, bringing Roger back was the right move. And at that point, save a very few, Roger hadn't actually interacted with anyone still in town. I just wish they had found a way to handle the Roger/Holly interaction differently, not as "star crossed love" but as a clearly toxic relationship that Holly got to put behind her. @DRW50 I'm not sure Alan and Alex ever really changed how they felt about Brandon, but there were times that their relationship would change on a dime.

Part of the problem re: rivalries is the cast turnover. The other is that characters change so radically that it's hard to work their past into the current day. Why Long/Curlee didn't really play on the Roger/Ed animosity is beyond me. Other than they really needed Roger's return to work. And it would've been awkward trying to sell Roger's "reformation" if they'd kept bringing up Holly and Rita and Roger raping two women Ed cared about very deeply. I watched part of a '79ish episode, where Mart Hulswit's Ed tells Mike he could've killed Roger, and means it. There's just no way for Peter Simon to sell that kind of conviction as Ed. (at least IMO). Yes, GL promos would've aired during Y&R or ATWT. But my recollection is that GL rarely got promos, and it had to be a really hot story for it to have aired during Y&R. (At least from the late '90's onward. The promo at 11:18-20am during Y&R was usually ATWT or B&B)

That's one...unique promo. Alan looks like John Houseman.

I loathe that woman, but she had better writing than ****, and at least had some semblance of a life outside of Billy. I guess I'm really a sucker for the ex's that can't stay out of each other's lives, because ATWT's Jack and Carly are cut from the same cloth. I don't think anyone outside of the Coopers really acknowledged Nadine's death. They find her body at the beginning of '96, right? Billy doesn't return until the end of '96. They really should've kept Vanessa and Nadine in each other's orbits after the fallout, but Guiding Light really didn't do longstanding rivalries. And I think they were trying to rehab Nadine after the divorce, and wanted the audience to forgive her a bit. ATWT had some version of the globe for YEARS. Then I think they went to the "Seasons" opening after Marland's death. Which is a beautiful opening, don't get me wrong. They never abandoned the globe, per se. It was just incorporated differently. Yes, that's Reva, and the kid Billy's fighting with is their son Dylan (this is before they knew him.) It's some of Morgan Englund's first scenes on the show. Late June of '89.