P.J.

I will ask this in a safe space. I'm watching BTG. Has Jordi V's face always been that huge? I can't explain it, it just looks strangely to me.

Maybe validation is a better descriptor. Josh (for better or not) was the only one who ever seemed to have the ability to convince her she wasn't that poor little housekeeper's daughter who would always be on the outside looking in. I know shows that are ending (if they know they are) want to tie things up in neat little bows. (I was ecstatic when Harvey and Donna ended up together on Suits, and goodness knows I wouldn't have given crap one about who ended up together on GL aside from Billy and Van.) But the last few years of Reva and Bud were so off-putting to me, it just really felt false. *crushed* But I totally understand about say Frank/Blake, Dinah/Mallet, or Shayne/Marina. Wheeler probably would've preferred to marry off Olivia/Natalia. Or maybe saved Bill/Lizzie for the end.

I didn't think Reva's hookups were casual. A lot of times she jumped from man to man for stability. Then she'd convince herself she was in love. If there was ever a moment for a John Conboy-esque FU to TIIC, it should've been Wheeler refusing to let Josh and Reva riding off into the sunset. Just as Josh and Reve were ready to climb into that absurdly old truck, ol Jeff should've popped out from behind some bushes and said "honey, I'm home." What did I care? lol...I got my happy ending. But of course, choosing chaos was never in Wheeler's wheelhouse.

IIRC, the Langes disappeared when Hensley left in '88ish? When Hensley returned, Marland brought them back. If I were honest, I don't think I cared enough about **** to hate him back in the day. I rolled my eyes through that "romance". I was just waiting for Van to shed him like last year's stilettos. I probably should be more gracious, since like you say Billy and Van ended up together, and there were other factors in play. But I'm petty like that. :) That Vanessa deserved better than ****'s loser ass is the hill I'll die on. And honestly, cabana boy is much more Blake's style than Rick.

There was something like a con going on. I'm not sure on the deets, but the guy running the con might have been in prison at the same time as Alan? He dragged his girlfriend into it, getting her to impersonate Beth, having her paint in Beth's style and paint canvases that would definitely trigger Phillip. Phillip even wants to pay a "ransom" for Beth, but Blake pulls the plug on it, even persuading Van and Henry that Phillip is having a breakdown even though she knew Alan had lied and set up the "proof" that Beth had died. Anyhoo, for some reason, Bradley is in the hospital at the same time as Mindy (who Will had nearly killed by forcing her to take an overdose). Beth is for some reason wandering the hospital, and reacts to seeing both Mindy and Bradley. Mindy briefly wakes and sees her, but because she's recovering, no one quite trusts that she saw Beth. I think Alan telling Phillip was more about trying to keep him from marrying Blake, because he distrusted Roger's influence on her. I do think P&G loved James Rebhorn, because, as @DRW50 mentioned, it's kind of close to the reveal on ATWT. But, it was a good use of history, especially as Daniel Pilon, bless him, wasn't a hit as Alan. (Although, I'm fuzzy on when the reveal on ATWT was. This brief return on GL was the fall of '89, and the ATWT stint started in '88, and the reveal might not have been until '91) RIGHT? :) Like Larkin didn't know his character was going to revolve around Reva's various moods and hairstyles? Van and Lillian would randomly interact. Not long after Mo died, Bill was in a car accident with Mindy (thanks to Eve) and of course it's Lillian there at the hospital--mostly because she's the only nurse Springfield had for quite a while. And while I'd expect Van to be polite, there's not one hint of resentment or irony given that Van's in the hospital awaiting news of her son's injuries (it's even a head injury, but it's in no way serious). Even though we think of Springfield as a community, it had serious story bubbles back into the '80's. C'mon...don't you want to come over to the dark side and hate ****? Just a little? I don't know if Rauch was trolling ****ressa fans or throwing a dig at Maeve, if those rumors are true. But yeah, #### clearly wasn't all that immune to Beth. Not only would OGBilly have kicked ****'s ass, but he would've melted Van's panties with a silky "Darlin'.." and that would've been the end of that blasted saccharine pairing.

Well, a) I don't think GL needed to write in Zimmer's pregnancy. It was the easier option, and the show certainly milked it for nearly two years with the paternity switch weaved into the Sonni/Solita saga. But on the other hand, it also moved Reva past the troublemaker phase, which arguably, they could've also leaned into longer. b) the haste with which Malloy jumped to AMC (wiki has his AMC debut in Feb) suggests he might've already been feeling out an exit strategy. Although I do understand he might've been fed up with his stories spinning around babies. Even shortly after his arrival in Springfield, he was helping Reva deal with losing HB's child.

Well, it was the style. :D

Exactly. And the fact that Holly did that allowed Maureen to see her in a different light, and made the closeness of Michelle and Holly after Mo's death more palatable.

What about two Capitol alums...Nicholas Walker or Bradley Lockerman?

Yeah. There's a fine line, and you don't need characters to hold on to every incident in their shared experience, but Van would've never done more than be civilly polite to Lillian. At some point, Van should've been so frustrated by Beth that she took pot shots at Lillian, and dredged that up. But pairing her up with **** really took some of the bite out of her. I wouldn't go as far as Van disliked other women, but she rarely trusted them, and always seemed to gravitate toward male friendships. But it's also a reason it should've been Van involved in talking Holly through her nuts period. They had that personal connection, where Reva had none with Holly. Like zero.

Founder's Day was after the infamous "Slut of Springfield" scene, where Josh and Billy had plotted to humiliate Reva, but Reva's meltdown left Josh feeling guilty. Van had been on edge as Billy's obsession over ridding the Lewises of Reva grew, and her finding out that Billy was still more focused on Reva than her and their marriage was a breaking point for them. Van leaves him, (allowing for Maeve's maternity leave) and Billy really goes over the edge, literally throwing Reva out when he finds her and Josh together. The mystery woman Fletch is "romancing" is Susan Piper. She's a part of the Barbados plot, involving Tony/Annabelle/Jim and the Spauldings.

Just from what I remember, Van and Lillian never interacted that much. An interesting tidbit---when Dinah first popped into town (before she knew Van and Ross were her parents) Dinah and Lillian were close. I believe Lillian had taken her in (Dinah believed herself an orphan, I think, and her guardians were with a carnival) around the time Beth went missing and was believed dead. Lillian's sister Calla was dating Ross, realized that Dinah was Ross and Van's daughter, and tried to keep them from finding out who their daughter was. I'm not sure that was ever brought up when Moniz assumed the role. Van and Lillian were also tangentially connected through Mindy (Van's stepdaughter) and Beth being besties for years. The sticking point is Maureen. When Vanessa came back to town in '89, she and Maureen became close. Their kids (Bill and Michelle) are friends, Van kind of leans on Maureen in trying to deal with Billy's drinking, and they wind up working together at Spaulding. Mo is also there for her when she presses attempted rape charges against a client. Mo even manages to be both a supporter of Van/Fletch, while holding out some kind of truth about the chem still existing with Van and Billy. (There's a hilarious scene between them where they get sloshed and smack talk Nadine like real buds would do. ) When Mo died, Van is one of the few who knew about the Ed/Lillian affair. Lillian skips the church service, but shows up at Ed's afterwards, but is reluctant to go in. Van finds her outside and rips her a new piehole, telling her to get her ass inside and play the devoted friend of Mo's that everyone believed her to be. It's not about Van trying to humiliate Lillian, but about her wanting to keep the day focused on Maureen, not letting gossip start wondering why Lil was MIA. After that, I don't think they really interacted outside of Lillian's duties as nurse. So it just seems weird to me that Van would take Lillian into her confidence on any level.

@alwaysAMC I had rewatched parts of Dinah's exit, but I can't believe how heavily the Lillian/Van connection is played. On one hand, I get it---other than Reva, there's really no one in town that Van's contemporary (Alex doesn't really count, with Dusay in the role) and at this point Holly's nuts. But it's just frustrating that everything is just kosher between these two. At least to me. All I can say about ****/Van is that it's just unserious, even by a bad rom-com standard. It's hard for me to understand how the same writers that could write a spot-on scene between Van and Billy, write such contrived tripe for "hero" ****. Then again, tripe would be the only thing that made **** look good. zing And I'm sure it was meant to be sincere, but picturing Cassie flinging Hart's ashes in manure---kind of a choice.

Oh, honey, you'd have to hang on another five-six years to see that.

I agree with DeeVee---I'm not sure Reva and Kyle would've been as accepted if Reva and Josh would've had more time together. The audience would've been holding their breath, waiting for Josh to come back to town. Reva and Josh barely have a year together before Robert Newman left in Nov. '84. Even though I find Kyle overbearing, there were times he was her Daddy Warbucks, lifting her out of the gutter emotionally and showered her with the good life she'd always wanted. (There's also times he's an overbearing [!@#$%^&*], dumping her unceremoniously.) My 'Nessa is not that kind of 'ho. Although recaps suggest she did make a pass at him, and there is part of an episode I've seen where she's in Ross' apartment, in his pj top, flirting with Justin. No. Alan-Michael briefly thought he was the father of Eleni's baby. But he knew before Marina was born that he wasn't. But it was gross that he'd married both of her aunts and then hooked up with her (or wanted to, I'm not sure on later era A-M's plot lines)

Oh, Reva and Kyle were actually a big couple---and probably her most successful pairing other than Josh. I'm still convinced that if Josh had still been in Springfield, he would've been illegitimate, the product of an affair that Martha had. The original story under Marland was that Martha had died soon after Josh's birth, and that's why Trish thought HB kept him at a distance. I'm blanking on Beth screwing her way through a family (although I guess Alan, Phillip and Lujack count), but the big one you're missing is Blake. Blake slept with Alan, Phillip and Alan-Michael, not to mention Phillip's biological uncles Ross and Ben.

I think B&B owes a lot of it's success to bringing Sheila over from Y&R. I drifted in and out of B&B for years, but I think I gave up on it seriously sometime during the Amber years. She was an obnoxious guttersnipe.

Well, naturally. But because Reva was the center of the universe, of course her kids pretty much just thought she was great. I think that's part of the reason they just disappeared, TIIC were afraid to write that natural conflict, not realizing it really could've generated powerful moments. Honestly, in retrospect...WTF did CBS think Bell Sr was going to do with either an extra half hour of B&B or another half hour show? May he rest in peace, but by then, B&B was already well into recycling their storylines and stuck the triangle from Hell (Brooke/Ridge/Taylor) in an endless Groundhog Day. This I know, because I was the sucker who thought that Ridge would honestly just [!@#$%^&*] choose Brooke, instead of saying all the right things to her and trudging back to Taylor's sour-faced bed. Not to mention Reva was with Billy's half-brother, who she "fell in love with" while married to HB and thinking Kyle was also HB's son. RME. I can't speak for other P&G shows, but ATWT was the king of the endless maze of family dating the same people. Poor Rick...he was probably really close to getting a sibling/cousin when Mike married his mother Leslie. Dylan at least started out with more Billy and Reva similarities. He was stubborn and argumentative, prone to act without thinking, etc. But Englund (imo) didn't have the type of charisma to keep pulling that attitude off.

It's not apparent, but I remember liking Lucy and A-M. I just haven't rewatched that era to chat it up.

Let me nominate Jordan Clarke. He had charm for days. Josh was the pretty boy, but Billy was the Lewis m-a-n.

They even touched at Reva's disconnect from Shayne specifically at the very end of the show after Jon comes back to Springfield. That was part of the problem with characters who'd been in town forever. Rick at least had a long history of having the feels for Beth, going back to high school. But it definitely got weird when Bill Lewis hooked up with two mom/daughter combos, briefly adopted Phillip's daughter Emma, and later married Lizzie. Or how Dinah hooked up with two of Reva's sons, but it never sparked a discussion (at least that I saw) between Reva and Vanessa. Josh and Cassie hooking up was more about plot contrivance than anything else. But gross---definitely, and yet, BORING.

**** is clearly the most boring Reardon...but geez, Lucy's more interesting than Frank at least. Coop...arguably a push, and it depends on which Marina we're talking about. Dollar? Nope, but Bruno? Yep. I just can't with Poser. Cullen at least had some kind of Spaulding connection to work with. She'd worked with GA, and if not so much with either A-M, at least she could remind us she was friends with Hope, and that gave her an additional incentive to consider A-M's side. Not that Reva didn't love her kids, or to suggest Kim didn't vibe with the actors playing them, but I always had a sense that Reva couldn't really connect with Marah or Shayne after her return. They were Josh's kids by more than just biology. Even with Reva as a mother, they'd had too normal a life. She didn't have a lot of time with Dylan, and he became too centered before she returned. Even though she didn't raise Jon, she connected to the rage he felt. And God knows Kim understood scenery chewing actors.

I volunteer ****. A next gen Spaulding sibling fight, where everyone was equal (not just someone being an [!@#$%^&*], but legit concern for the business) would've worked. But I'd have wanted Kathleen Cullen for that. No offense to Poser, but MadamMandy just Say No.

I'd have to check the recaps, but there's a strange subplot about TJ's girlfriend (or a girl he knew) committing suicide because she was pregnant. I don't know if it was at the end of the Dobson's run, or the beginning of Marland's. Either way, it looked like someone had something planned, but it just kind of fizzled.

The 8/15/89 episode, the minister is definitely referred to as TJ. I'm too lazy to wade through the May wedding, to see if there's an explanation about a Phillip/TJ connection. But it looks like the same actor.