P.J.

ALL this. Zas could make you hate Roger, but then turn around and sympathize with him. Roger knew somewhere in his craven heart that he was the architect of his own disaster. Cole couldn't convince me the sky was blue.

Was that one of those weirder ITL episodes? 'Yeah...ick. And YEAH, I love that Vanessa scene. I never particularly cared for Mel, but no one came at Vanessa's kids and should've expected her to walk away.

It's something about how Reva always initially has to lie to keep Josh's love. When she comes to town to break up Billy and Van---it's not any attack of conscience that prompts her to give Billy, who she never loved, a divorce, it's Josh withholding his feelings that does it. It's about how she'd rather be in a loveless marriage with HB than just move on with her life after they broke up. Or allow Josh to believe she'd been raped than admit she'd had sex with and gotten pregnant by Billy. And much much later, it's how she's prepared to leave town still allowing them to believe she's dead because they've moved on. Or when she's got cancer, she'd rather break up with him than simply tell him her diagnosis. They rarely bring out the best in each other. Together or apart, at least in my opinion.

As much as I would've loved them to at least have a real chance, I do adore them as friends. And in '08, there was the Max saga, only he died. The way the show struggled against the WASPy Vanessa not just bluntly saying "that baby is black!" is more restrained than I would usually give them credit for being.

I do tend to forget about Roger/Sonni, so Holly/Roger/Sonni could've definitely been a plan before Forbes left. I'm less sure that Nadine was ever in a planned quad with Ross. From the little I've seen of her in the first half of '89, Nadine seems a little more savvy and blatantly a golddigger than she was with Billy. They seem to softly have rebooted her. She's gone when Vanessa arrives back town in July. She's probably gone a month, which seems a little strange since she'd only been in town six months.

Jenna was a jewel thief. During the blackout, she made friends with Michelle, who she was trapped in an elevator with. Yadda yadda---Jenna needs to avoid deportation and knows her father has some connection to Spaulding. She enlists Henry's help. Henry realizes that her father had invented something that Spaulding made huge profits from, but he thinks Brandon Spaulding stole it, and left her father broke and imprisoned. And that Spaulding would owe her TONS of money. Henry lies to Jenna and tells her that he's her father (poor Vanessa bugs out on that news...). hoping he can give her the life she deserved without losing the company. It all backfires due to Roger (who's seeing Jenna) (long, long story), and he talks Jenna into suing Spaulding to get what she's owed. They end up winning, and Henry, Vanessa, A-M and Nick lose almost everything. Nick and A-M end up running the Springfield Journal and Vanessa goes to Lewis and starts poaching Spaulding clients. Henry and Jenna bond all through this in spite of being on opposite sides. Jenna and Roger eventually lost Spaulding, but Henry treated Jenna like another daughter. I'm not exactly sure how Vanessa and Jenna bonded, but they did, and Vanessa was the only person in town who knew Jenna was pregnant with Buzz's child when she left town. Later, Jenna and Vanessa are pregnant around the same time. I never quite bought their friendship, but *shrug*, that's probably because I generally didn't like Jenna.

More of the end of '86 and early '87 have come up, and I can already see the writers (Anderson and well, whoever) don't understand Ross or Vanessa, separately or together. Both act like they haven't spent the last three years being parent figures to Phillip and Mindy, respectively. They had better writing in '89-'90, but the show had already been building toward Ross/Holly/Roger, so what little tease we got never seemed serious. I vote Josh/Reva were toxic, and for the most part, always were. ALWAYS.

I don't know if the fact so many actors came back in those months means she had their respect, or if they had a loyalty to the show. I can't recall any ATWT actors throwing Goutman under the bus. Other than perhaps Martha Byrne.

Which EP threw up after sitting through a dinner with Kim and Pam Long? Joe Willmore? It doesn't sound like Kim was easy to deal with, period.

LOL...you know I love it when Vanessa locks in on someone, activates her regal bitch mode and coolly lets whoever know they have crossed a line and it won't be tolerated by her. I just watched her snap on Holly (after Holly torpedoed Ross' campaign with the pic of Ross and Blake). What on most shows would've been some catfight with raised voices is much more cutting between two equal women (who'd just formed a bond during Vanessa's rape trial) who aren't screaming the house down or chewing scenery. Another funny description of Vanessa--back in 1983, Beth is describing how nervous she was her first night of serving at the Country Club (where she waited on Mindy and Vanessa and spilled Vanessa's water). When Rick realizes it was Vanessa he says ..."she'd make the Queen of England nervous."

Or if she would be characterized as "weak" if she weren't a woman. She was playing the cards she was dealt. There's a lot of criticism of Goutman, who was dealing with the same issues. But I can't recall any suggestion (whether rumors in the press or by the actors) that he was somehow "less than" for working within mandates sent down from corporate. And I'd lay odds if Wheeler had barked back at Kim, then she'd have been cast as the bitch.

I'm not sure I'd go as far as calling Josh a prick, but definitely never the sharpest of the Lewis clan. And your point is more spot on than mine---Wheeler rarely carried through on her ideas. Re: Jon---you wouldn't get an argument from me. I disavow anything connected to that horrid mess.

I know I sound like a crank---but even I enjoyed Peter Simon's return. And I have to concede, they didn't have as much time as ATWT did to wrap things up. But too much of those last few weeks were wasted with unnecessary D plot stories. I didn't even feel killing Alan was necessary. Or even revamping an existing show (Loving/The City) If there was one decision that distills how wrong-headed she was, it's "rebooting" Josh as a reverend. I mean, Kim thinks she's got complaints? I'd have loved to be a fly on the wall when Robert Newman got that script.

Our disagreement about ATWT aside, ---a fair number of her returns I didn't give a flying fig about---DAM, Pelphrey, St Alban, PAS. I won't argue against the cameos, but I thought they could've been handled better. I actually would've tried harder to watch the entire episode if Parker had been on. I really can't get through five minutes of it before my eyes threaten to roll out of my head.

Do we trust Kim or not? She was surprised GL won best show and best writing Emmys in 2007, because she didn’t understand the kudos for their show. When 2008 came, Ellen had the idea of renaming the show “The New Guiding Light” and start the first episode as “Episode 1”, which Kim thought was distasteful and erasing their legacy. Apparently some of the GL execs hated when people mentioned how old GL was, and thankfully P&G said absolutely not to Ellen’s idea and the idea was nixed. But, Ellen still got her idea of a new opening approved and Kim refers to it as “…the one with a bunch of hairy-ass arms reaching and grabbing at other hairy-ass arms! With a series of voice-overs uttering the famous line ‘There is a destiny…’”. Can you imagine being an ABC exec and having Debbi bleepin' Morgan in your cast, and somehow having to throw your weight around to either a) keep pushing for an emmy bait story for Lucci or b) pulling whatever strings there were to keep Lucci getting nom'd for twenty straight years? I'm sorry---even if Lucci were Meryl Streep (or fill in with your favorite actress) no one gets nominated every year. Not even Slezak.

I'm glad Parker declined. I really kinda hope she told them to go [!@#$%^&*] themselves, but I'm sure she's too professional for that. The thing I find curious? That the EP who was floating the idea of renaming the damn show because someone hates that it's constantly referred to as the oldest show....then decides to highlight it's radio roots in a special episode.

The only one that comes close for me is Benjamin Hendrickson. He just doesn't look well the last year of his life.

I love Marj Dusay, but the Alex/Alan dynamic left the building with Beverlee.

I'll check it out, but I'm biased, as Liz is one of those actresses that never hit a false note. *sigh* Poor Emma, forced to use a commercially grown turkey.

You'd think in the past 20 years (since they did it on ATWT and GL) they'd have gotten better at it. I can still remember those awkward talks about Margo and her roots. RME.

I was shocked rewatching. In the scenes where he's found Vanessa in Switzerland, it is painfully obvious he's having trouble with his words.

Agree re: Lucci--god knows how many good actresses were robbed of nominations for her. (again, I apologize to AMC fans). I'm not sure Spencer wouldn't have been a sentimental favorite, having been around for so long. But Hubbard was a contender every bleepin' year. It's a crime she never won for playing Lucinda. Or blaming it on Wheeler's age. Wheeler's only about six years younger than Kim. Sometimes these out of the box choices work---aka Pam Long, beauty queen/actress/writer who arguably reinvigorated GL and invented characters and relationships that lasted until the end of the show. I think if you're a teen, the teen/young adult crowd will hook you, but it's always the older crowd that reels you in. It always seemed I was interested most in the characters in their 30's-'40's. They've lived a little, made their mistakes and are still trying to figure it out. And the actors portraying them know what they're doing. Nothing is worse than painfully green actors wondering around vacantly trying to make it work.

Personally, I've got a lot of doubt about how committed P&G is to BTG. If anything, daytime is a lot less profitable than it was in the late '00's. If it lasts even five years, I'd be shocked. I'm not sure what Kim thought they could write for Reva that would've improved things. They gave her another adult child. She was still getting love interests. (Even if I hated Bradley Cole) They gave her a cancer story. The only thing in the last years that I thought was completely out of character was her agreeing to help Jon fake his and Sarah's deaths and keeping it from Lizzie. I mean, she wasn't getting the Maureen Garrett treatment, being reduced to playing crazy or being her child's talk to. And about her not wanting to be a matriarch of the show---YEP. In fact I blanched when she played sweet Charita Bauer in the 70th anniversary episode. Admittedly, the entire show annoyed me anyway, but it just felt like they'd decided the "star" of the show was the only logical choice for that role.

Well, there were a lot. And even going back to the late '90's and the recasting of Josh and Reva's kids I don't think went well. And let's not even get into Nancy St. Alban.

In terms of sets, it's around '04-'06. I can't recall on GL, but on ATWT all of the sudden sets that actors had to run from one side to the other to answer the door bell, got shorter and shorter. Then stairs got cut down from two landings to one. Then they would disappear all together and in their place was an awkwardly placed doorway that now "lead upstairs". They started using cheap looking "mall type" sets. GL had a cheap motel that was barely big enough to put a cheap looking bed. Creatively, for me, it's probably '00 when we descended into San Cristobel. (or San CristoHELL.) The last truly highpoint for me is '93, but I understand (and agree) that it was still watchable in a lot of ways. Looking back, there's a definite shift in storytelling, where they suddenly seem more worried about angering viewers than telling good drama. (Make'm laugh, make'm cry, make'm wait seems to have gone out the door) The cast (at least to me) doesn't seem significantly smaller, but the vets are on significantly less (I swear, Blake went into comas to explain more than one absence) and the quality of the acting declines dramatically, due either to the talent recruited or the lack of rehearsal and writing or some combination of all three. Not to pick on her, but Michelle Ray Smith as Ava Peralta is the type of character that really could've shaken up the town if cast correctly. IMO, it wasn't, and we had to suffer for two years as the show tied her to Jeff and Olivia and tried desperately to make her relevant.