P.J.

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.

Well, the brunette Cindy Pickett. The blonde...not so much.

!!! That AMC opening is what I grew up on and what I still think today is the best soap opera opening of all time 😜 Yep, that's Nadine. Long story short, Billy fell off the wagon when Reva "died". Billy had ended things with Nadine, and gotten engaged to Van, but Nadine would sleep with him, knowing he was drinking. When Josh left (to look for Reva, who might've been alive), HB and Josh put Vanessa in charge of Lewis Oil. (Billy had made poor business decisions and nearly bankrupted the company.) This pissed Billy off, and he took Nadine to Vegas to gamble. He won some money and married her while he was drunk. It took him two years to shake that bloodsucking tramp loose. re: the character pics over the long ending credits, I can't think of another show that did them. But I only watched the CBS soaps. Y*R had the sketches opening for a long while, but ATWT never had characters in the opening until nearly 2000, IIRC.

Jordan is a big, physical guy. I'm going to guess he loved it, and was up for anything.

Ross does seem to like needy, wounded women. Some of the later 90's stuff is just unimaginative writing choices.

OMG---THANKS!! I've never seen the actual fight (I think part of the episode may have been preempted that day). that landed Reva that black eye. Josh's face is hilarious.

Oh...the reason I loathe Nadine with a passion... Onto other things-- Josh had just left at the end of January. Arguably, Josh's scenes saying goodbye to Billy are the best of Robert Newman's career. As a viewer, it now surprises me that there aren't A and B versions of the outro. Did soaps just not have them at that time? Or not do them as often? Guiding Light had two version when they went to the "My Guiding Light" theme, there was the Vanessa/Nola opening, and there was the Billy/Mindy opening. Especially when the opening has a lot of missing major players. Characters included: Blake, Billy, Ed&Maureen (lousy fake small picture) Alex, Roger, Hamp, Mindy, Mallet, Vanessa, Dylan, Harley. No Ross, Holly, Samantha, Alan-Michael, Nadine (not that I mind...) Maybe that's why they did all the actors over the long closing credits. That was easily edited (I guess). This episode also features the long crawl, and Robert Newman is already out, while Grant and Beth Chamberlain are still in.