P.J.

Milltown is a suburb of Oakdale. When Ben and the Kasnoffs first appeared, it was described as "the other side of the tracks" from Oakdale. By the time the show ended, it had gone upscale. Luther's Corners is a small farming community outside of Oakdale. I heard the "hate mail got Brown fired" excuse. (or that the Carjackers did....) She wasn't interested in a long term contract. She got a job in NY while her baby daddy was doing something on Broadway.

Yes, that's Sara Ramirez. What I loved about Jack's amnesia was how Carly was completely and totally a heroine in it. In any other story, Carly's the one who plots or screws up and has to work her way back to Jack. And yet in some ways, she still gets the shaft---no one's supporting her after Jack rises from the dead. People suggest "there's a reason" Jack doesn't remember Carly---and even Emma and Holden don't seem to care if Jack regains his memory. Which is really, really odd considering Holden's own amnesia story. Don't get me wrong, Michael Park is his usual excellent self, but as a Carly fan it was such a relief to be able to not be waiting for that "other shoe to drop" for her. What I hated---SarahF'inBrown. But to each his own.

That Carly/Barb/Craig scene is from 2001, sometime between the BabsCraig marriage in May, and when she was caught in the bomb blast in June. My guess puts it closer to June and right before the explosion. Broderick's work was up and down. She introduced Julia Lindsey, which is enough to put her name at the top of list to burn in hell. But she also wrote some of the most romantic Carjack stuff, which probably makes her schizophrenic.

I think I heard something more at one time, but whatever that might have been, I can't recall. I was just relating the situation to real life.

Yeah, I sometimes wonder if the breakup of Brown's marriage and relationship with Bryggman didn't somehow play into Marland's writing. I know I've read several blurbs from the actors about how he seemed to channel their personal lives in the writing somehow. And given what I've heard---that Marland fine-tuned every script before it went on air, I wouldn't doubt he was consumed by his career and might have ignored some warning signs. I know after my father's heart attack, we could see signs we'd missed.

I sometimes get annoyed with bad quality vids. I shouldn't, but I do. But to be honest, I also get distracted by some of the big hair and loud clothing of the '80's too. LOL. If you wander in to some of the "Silas kidnaps Nola" stuff---spoiler alert, Ben Hendrickson's the bad guy. *mind blown*

Yeah, I FLOVED Kirk and Iva. It did have that old-Hollywood-ish movie feel to their relationship. I don't know why Marland broke them up. It was a damn shame. I remember replaying their first kiss endlessly on my VCR.

The Morgan/Kelly/Nola triangle was really the first triangle I really got into as a teen. (and I still have a crush on John Wesley Shipp!) I'd recommend starting with Nola getting caught in her lies with Kelly: (there's also a part 2 and 3) then some early Nola/Quint stuff https://youtu.be/cQG84bLvzvI There is plenty of Nola/Quint stuff on youtube. Amazing since it was '81 and VCRs were just coming on. But the quality sketchy.

ETA: yes, Brown was very well received on GL. I believe Quint and Nola's wedding was the highest rated GL episode of history. Well, I think part of the reason Iva was so depressed was the fact she was stuck playing Lily's apologetic mother. The entire tragic backstory, continually having to place LilyLilyLily first in her life (and the same can be said of Lucinda---the oxygen Lily sucked out of storyline was ridiculous). And she had to the sane foil to Lucinda's overbearing machinations. Iva was Stella Dallas---only this time Stella got to know her daughter---and be completely steamrolled by her. I do think Marland went out of his way to create a character as far removed from Nola as he could get. What he didn't realize at the time though was that he was never going to end up giving Ava any joy at all. Marrying that turd lawyer wasn't on him---but I do occasionally damn him to hell for busting up Kirk and Iva. I FLOVED them. And the doofus they married her to wasn't the worst insult. It was her "winning" that stupid contest that sent her off to Italy where she met him. I still recall this horrid fake photo op they did, with Iva dressed in this fugly purple paisley monstrosity (that I think was actually something of Brown's....).

ATWT failed creating teen/young adults for the last fifteen years. Nikki, Dani, Chris, Katie, Allison, Lucy, Bryant, Jen, et al....and those are legacy children. There were horrific ones like Celia the orange crate girl, that stupid nephew of Katie's that popped Jen's cherry, and others I've mercifully forgotten. Allison and Aaron, FCOL, sprung from the loins of two of ATWT's hot messes were drippy, dull and BORING. And even those that had some kind of edge (like Will or Gwen) quickly lost it and got stuck in endless, adult type stories. *shakes head*

Because you'd probably invested 15 years (off and on) watching him turn his life around, and some jackass douche wiped it all away with a used Kleenex? Not to mention, TIIC handed him off to another jackass douche who's one major credit had come from the early years of KL? And then they had the gall to act as if he was some kind of Second Coming of Christ? I give SB a lot of credit---he took the same crapCraig writing and managed to make Craig sympathetic. Block couldn't manufacture humanity if he dressed as Mother Teresa and farted butterflies 24/7.

I know some did, but I didn't as much object to the "reset" of most of the characters Sheffer brought back---it was the lack of foundation he gave for these changes. Craig turned dark again because he felt overlooked as Montega's "First Sir"? I don't think we ever got an explanation for Dusty, and Paul vaporized overnight with a recast and a broken heart over Rose. RME. (Frankly I loved McClain, and that reset wasn't even Sheffer's doing.) The fact Block couldn't find a human emotion if he bit into it, or Howarth was Toddian are separate issues for me. Sheffer couldn't write a complete story. Maybe functionally, it's Goutman's fault for not finding a strong, complimentary writer to address those flaws. Stories never really "springboarded" into a logical progression for the characters.

Looks like, and judging her post-Sheffer work, I'd say she was HW in name only. I don't think Goutman "didn't care", but in implementing his "vision" (or trying to reinvent the wheel) he forgot the first commandment of writing---tell the story. AMS---it's not Pissy's fault Sheffer was a sh!tass writer. Given her track record, she's just as sh!tty as him---if not more so. Maybe it's more fair to say it's her fault she's a weak, sh!tty writer who when combined with Sheffer, made some kind of unholy trifecta of suck instead of even a cursory attempt at storytelling.

I didn't think Barbara was backburnered before Marland arrived...maybe in a rut because she'd been through every Perils of Pauline story variation other than literally being tied to the railroad tracks. But I'm sure she was grateful to have Babs' segue into a bitch. I'm sure it's boring playing a perpetual doormat. Yes, Culliton was coHW for Sheffer's first year. Replacing her with Pissypants was arguably one of the worst behind-the-scenes moves ever. All the accolades went to Sheffer's head, character motivation slowly eroded away, and he ended up simply cannibalizing his own stories for the next four years.

Because I think long-time viewers LOVE to get these nods to history, the same way movie or comic book fans love the easter eggs. Soaps sometimes have an infuriating amnesia syndrome that drives fans crazy. How many times has one mother of a missing/kidnapped/sick child heard "I can't imagine how you feel" from someone who we know underwent the exact same situation? Maybe it didn't need to be a long "conversation" about something, but just some kind of an acknowledgement of history. Kim and John might have discussed Andy and Hope, or Barbara might have said she'd talked to Hal's sister for the first time in forever. Specifically re: Kim/Susan, I'll have to rewatch the Divas on a Bus eppy, but I don't remember them bringing up Dan. I don't remember them bring him up during the Bob/Susan fling. And long time viewers always felt it simmering just under the surface whenever they got bitchy with each other. You don't know how much I would have paid for Kim just once to have shaken her head at Emily's latest debacle and chime in with something along the lines of "this would break Dan's heart to see Emily....(fill in blank)" and then have Susan explode on her. I agree there wouldn't be a reason to bring up Tom's parade of ex-wives, or the Stewart quads, for example.

Craig and Dusty hadn't been the "same" characters for the last ten years of the run. (And you can add Paul to that list. Once Howarth took over in '03, he became a schizophrenic crybaby.) It still pisses me off that they tried to sell a "return to his roots" crap when Block waded in like Godzilla and ate the damn show. I forget when it started, but bit by bit the sets shrank. Originally, the Carjack house had a nice entryway, stairs and a large living room with a nook towards the back for a set of table and chairs. One day, the landing on the stairs went away. Then the entryway lost a foot of space. Then the turn at the top of the stairs left. Then the stairs got shortened. Anyway, I swear to God, by the end, there were no stairs, just a door that supposedly led to the stairs. It was sad. Nope....hated it.

Oh, the way Wheeler tried to sell those cheap assed sets as "reality". Oy vey...and the six weeks she spent shooting Peapack through weeds and sold that as "artistic vision". No, you're not imagining the lighting issues. I guess the budget no longer covered even the barest essentials, and I remember someone saying that as the makeup lights burnt out, they weren't replaced either. Some of those scenes---good grief, there were times Maura looked more like Baby Jane than herself. I think sometimes we forget how extraordinary it was to have so much of ATWT's vets intact and involved at the end. Less than ten years into Y&R's run, they'd ditched 99% of their original families/cast. GL clung to the Bauers, but I couldn't tell you another family they started out with either. Even Holly's Norris connection didn't enter until the late '60's/early 70's. While we're on the subject, I'd rather have seen Mart Hulswit return as Ed than sour ol' Peter Simon. HA!

Yeah, the freeze picture kind of nails it for me.....you've got Bob, Kim, Margo and Susan (?) vs Olivia. *drops mike* truce. It was what it was.

I hadn't cringed so much since the episode where Reva (trying to seduce Josh for the billionth time) made some "smooth" crack about him "laying pipe" as he pondered some plumbing problem at her house. It's not that I didn't like Rick or Frank (I could have done without the useless Matt, but that's me). The fact FD stuck around like a cockroach for nearly 20 years without a real story alone has to be admired on some level. What I minded was the fact that someone on the writing staff thought it was funny, and EP Wheeler didn't care that the venerable 70+ soap had disintegrated to the point that they were making hotdog and wiener jokes in the midst of their "groundbreaking" lesbian story. I forget---did James ever stand in that last appearance? I'm not sure were he was living, but he died in Argentina.

Or a Blaxploitation film from the '70's. Sheffer's campy efforts drove me nuts. I thought he ruined the Carly/Em/Rose kidnapping story with the blue woo-woo drinks and aging crap. It was like he mentally took a vacation in the middle of stories, and instead of just focusing on something else for a while, he literally threw a dart on some weird dartboard filled with inane ideas, and wherever they landed, he just went with it. I do think Babs/Henry tip-toed along the ick-factor when they made Henry James' bio-son. There's one cameo I wish could have happened for the end----Anthony Herrera popping up somewhere to let us know James was still alive.

Yeah, but...Babs had already been through the ringer with James. I loved that Marland gave her a backbone. Margo wasn't an innocent victim, and she'd earned Barbara's enmity. I sure as hell enjoyed Babs a lot more than HBS' self-righteous version of Margo. I understand why some saw Henry as latently gay---I just saw it as comedic. And I used to love Trent's delivery and use of language. I think they're 1 and 1A. Laiman could have become as bad as Stern and Black, given the opportunity. Thank God they torpedoed her in six months.

I love you---but you're insane. "Disappointed" is about three levels of Hell higher than the crap Wheeler churned out as her "tribute" to GL. She didn't just get people for the finale---she had people back for months (like Krista Tesearu) and still wasted episodes with Frank, Matt and Rick wandering around a damn "mini-mart" seeing how many "wiener" jokes they could stuff into an hour while ogling newly lesbian Olivia. I wouldn't have called ATWT's last weeks "superb"----but it was damn well better than putting lipstick on a skunk and pretending that the stuff on screen was more interesting that what was alluded to off-screen. 'Cause that's where 99.99% of Billy and Vanessa's reunion happened, in spite of being the "centerpiece" of the finale.

That's what Soapsuds said back a page. It's the first I've heard about it. My guess would be it was a) horribly written (as a lot of their romance was in that weird 1700's costume crap) or b ) just such a brief time in Babs' history for CZ. I know peeps didn't buy the romance with Henry, but I see why it appealed to CZ. After everything that had been thrown at her, and as a "mature" woman to get a romance at the end instead of warehoused. Now, I know there was tension between CZ and Ben Hendrickson through much of the Hal/Barb story---which breaks my heart, because I loved them so much at the time. (Finding out GL's Aleksander and Ehlers didn't get along either completely changed my perception of Philip/Harley too.) Another reason to cling to my Carjack love---'cause Mikey and Mojo adore each other.

RE: Babs/Gunnar...maybe CZ was talking about story more than Napier. As I recall, defined FUBAR..

Harvey Snyder's death was sacrosanct. VETO. I would have loved more appearances, but I'm not sure what that entails, especially on a cash-strapped show. I'm not even sure who could have returned who would have made an impact. GL ran some people through, but they didn't amount to much. But I am still surprised at the lack of initiative that Goutman showed---apparently he didn't ask anyone back. Larry came back because Liz asked him, and Julianne contacted them. What really, really surprises me is that Scott DeFrietas didn't make a return at some point. Between Chris' illness, Julianne's return and Nancy's death...and the fact his wife still worked there...you'd think someone might have at least thought to ask him. If there was one really crummy fact at the top of the heap of crummy facts---it's that Kim had one biological grandchild, and she was never really part of the show. After (what?) 40 years on the show and having a huge hand in raising Betsy and Frannie (and putting in a lot of hours struggling with all of Barbara's crap), she didn't have much of an impact on Oakdale's gene pool. I guess as a nod to history, I would have been okay with Byrne returning to the role. But honestly, I wish they hadn't bothered to recast it in the first place. Nothing against Beck---she was a breath of fresh air. But Holden and Lily went on about 10 years too long.