P.J.

I think Flannery did some great work, but I always found Stephanie's underlying hypocrisy off-putting. And while I don't think KKL's the world's best actress (I completely understood why she's received so little attention from the academy for her work), I do think that her appeal as Brooke was responsible for a lot of B&B's success.

ICAM on the writers not really allowing Reva to develop and grow. There was no longer a reason for her to be greedy, but she's still the teen chasing after Josh with the irrational need to lie to "protect" him. I guess the writers were scared of losing what made Reva tick. Which I don't see how they could have, since Kim wouldn't have allowed that. I skip more Reva-centric stuff too. I've had to watch her scenes with Billy, but I'm solidly on his side. I missed Eileen Fulton's heyday as Lisa, maybe they would've come close. Sally (God bless Darlene Conley) is more of a caricature, but certainly fills the "outrageous/outlandish" vibe. I find Stephanie more mean and vindictive than anything. I agree, Lucinda in her prime probably comes closest.

I know Curlee/Demorest tried to give Roger a conscience in regard to raping Holly, and Zas is magnificent in those scenes with Alex. But he kinda ends up blaming Adam and the fact he (well, really the writers) ignores raping Rita and being responsible for her and Ed's child's death make it less than convincing. I do think during 89-93 they were careful to not whitewash his past with Holly, but his occasional bouts of conscience always seemed to be overridden by his obsession/lust for her. The only purely good thing I can ever recall him doing is helping Maureen during the blackout, and even then, had she lived, he would've found a way to call that favor in. I've kinda resisted saying it, but it's kind of clear to me Long was determined to have her own version of Erica Kane, and God help us all, it ended up as Reva Shayne. Although at least Kim could act. (Sorry LaLucci fans) Honestly, I'm not even sure CBS soaps ever a character as larger than life as Reva.

As much as I love Zaslow, did Roger ever really have a conscience? I know the Dinah/Hart plot grew distasteful, but Roger had run rampant in Springfield since his return. I was ok with him finally getting a taste of his own medicine, so to speak.

So happy she is still with us. It's crazy how much my appreciation of her and the classic Guiding Light era she represents has grown! I never read it, but I think the producer she trashed the most was Ellen Wheeler. And I don't think she liked FMB.

It's Maeve's birthday!

Well, natch....but I mean, they never got a love scene onscreen? I'm just surprised. Although I guess it took Beth and Lujack longer than I expected too.

So, on rewatch....did Rick and Mindy never have sex?

There's an exhaustion factor with Reva (and characters who "eat" shows like Y&R's Cricket, ATWT's Lily or B&B's Brooke or Taylor...depending on which way you lean) that colors my perception of her now. It's hard to remember exactly what I thought of her then, but soaps were different before---you could like multiple characters/couples and the writing didn't feel as slanted as it's become. (I will say, fans be fans. I was amazed to see Quint/Nola fans still having smoke for Vanessa when reading comments nearly thirty years after the fact.) And hindsight is 20/20. I know how the story ends. There's no denying Kim could sell igloos to Eskimos, but I do kinda resent that somehow Guiding Light is remembered as "that show with Reva".

True enough. But it just feels too ordinary for Reva to temporarily be blind. ykwim?

Not one shred of that sounds familiar. Sudden blindness is one of those soap tropes that was overused to the nth degree. I've just sped through '08, where Bill starts out the year blind, and ends it with amnesia.

Wait---not that I care---but Reva was blind? *sigh*

You would think that, wouldn't you? I'd almost think they needed the money to get Robert Newman back, but they also had to know Larkin wasn't going to stick around and play second banana either. I don't get what the writers thought they were doing with Calla. Long liked using actors from Texas, but other than Alex/Bev McKinsey, the characters she wrote for them seemed blah.

Like a lot of soaps, once relatives left, they kinda dropped off the face of the earth and out of conversations. I don't know why writers do that. If they just don't want to confuse viewers, or don't think it matters, or want the liberty kind of revise history to make their stories work. After Josh left in '84, he's barely mentioned. Even when Billy's railing against Kyle and refusing to accept him, it'd be the most natural thing in the world to say "Kyle's NOT by brother, JOSH is!" and I don't think he ever really says that. The only writer I can recall who didn't do that is Doug Marland on ATWT.

The good thing about those ATWT openings is that they rotated the characters. The flaw in the Hold on to Love opening is that it was so stagnant, and rarely if ever changed. That ATWT version had at least three different versions, and sometimes you got the opening, sometimes you got the clean up spot, and sometimes you got the short dot-dot-dot spots. Ugh..the hands opening was about 2007 and was the actors putting their hands in a circle (I was waiting for them to yell "go team!") as a poem was recited. It looks like fifth grade media students came up with it. See---no one wants you to forget Vanessa's a Chamberlain. It was so embedded in the character, it never quite sounded right to leave out her maiden name. And if she wasn't reminding people she was a Chamberlain and not to be trifled with, other characters would throw it out there. Once (and I think it's during the Slut of Springfield debacle) Alex says something like "poor Vanessa--she's still a Chamberlain at heart after all". Although I can't recall her ever being credited as Vanessa Chamberlain Lewis. And thank God we never had to contemplate "Vanessa Reade". I swear half the time that marriage fell through was that someone shivered at the thought at having ten characters a day say "Vanessa Reade". I'd have to check on if they used C. Blake Thorpe a lot. I Anyone would've been better than Calla.

I said it before---Guiding Light is probably the soap that most clung to family names. I mean, the only reason to even think about naming that child Bert B(whatever) is that you've been writing all night, you start shooting in two minutes, and someone inserted it as a joke and the wrong rewrite got sent out to the actors. As much as I criticize Infinity, the fallout from the shooting is what sweeps is all about. The moment when Rick and Phillip know Mindy could spend that money--OMG. Billy's ready to lock himself away, Sally tears Reva a new piehole, Ed's performing life-saving surgery and Lujack bein' all Lujack. I actually like that cop--I think his name is Saunders? He was a rarity, a cop who wasn't dumb. Listening to that Locher room with Krista and Mark Lewis, I think Kurt would've lasted longer, had Mark not had an out in his contract to do a play. As Mark explained, a new EP came on, didn't want him to do the play and kinda warned him that he might not have a job to come back to. Mark did it anyway (he had friends backing the play) and sure enough, they killed Kurt off. In the long run, I don't think they had a lot of story to do with Kurt and Mindy, who hadn't gone through much before getting that extravaganza. But it did seem to be short sighted to kill him off that soon. Ross wasn't driving story in '85, that's for sure. He had defended Lujack in the Andy Ferris murder, and he rides herd on Phillip as India tries sinking her claws into him. He did send Trish off to Europe, and he defends Billy and Mindy. But yeah--sometimes they just "forgot" about Ross until someone needed a lawyer. While there was always a fight around Spaulding, it was hitting a dry spell in terms of people connected to it to interact with.

I have had a semi-obsession with end credits. Back in the early '90's, I would copy ATWT's cast list. That was fascinating (at the time) because they were listed by length of time on the show. And in the '00's I would keep track of the scriptwriters/directors. Now I catch GL's and realize how many names stayed with P&G for years in different capacities. And I obsess over Maeve's credits, whether it's Vanessa Chamberlain or Lewis. I just caught an episode during the Infinity story where she's back to Chamberlain. I swear, someone in the production office (or whoever handled updating the credits) loved the sound of the name Chamberlain and were determined not to let it die.

I'm not sure they ever had a clear vision on Hart. Other than being the only real instrument that could make Roger pay for his actions.

There's something about the attachment you feel when you hear the theme music. I know some people love the Leaves opening (which is called something like Ritonelle...it's mainly strings) that ran during the Dobson era. The disco opening just feels foreign to me--like they tried to replicate nighttime drama openings (to my mind, Hawaii 5-0) and didn't understand that Mike holding a gun on someone or Nola screaming wasn't representative of what the show was about. The first ATWT character one has a white background that's harsh looking. They changed the backing colors a couple of times, but they used that damn shot of Carly for like three years. Later, like '05-06 maybe, there was a silly one that made it look like the characters were emerging from fields of something, that made my eyes roll right out of my head. It never got as bad as GL's "hands" opening, which is better forgotten. The BTG one convinces me there are different people in the roles, but I still have to think---"who is that now?"

Jeanne and Christian are on for maybe 45 seconds. Chris kisses Van's hand. I'm only surprised Reva didn't push her way into the scene and dry hump him. 'Cause...well, she's Reva. Oh, GOD, it's party after party and in one Vanessa's got these gaudy epaulets on her shoulders, which just wasn't Vanessa. Luckily, they kind of ditched the wardrobe and there weren't a lot of repeats on some of these outfits. The other Locher room I watched was with the costume designers, and at one point they said that sometimes they realized when characters had gone too far astray in their wardrobe, and they'd have to return to a look the audience was more familiar with for them. One specifically mentioned Vanessa, and he said he got thanked for making Vanessa Vanessa again, which I could only interpret as happening during the Matt era, when Vanessa was gushing about the joys of discovering chili dogs. RME. I do think the fashion takes a nose-dive around the time MKA is there, but part of the issue was probably also that she was a little taller and not the typical size 0/2/4.

Not that they didn't introduce "good girl" ingenues over the years they had Jessie, Dinah#2 (who was definitely more refined than Dinah #1, Jennifer Gatti, who walked like a linebacker), Samantha, Kat, Julie and Lucy. But none of them really seemed to have staying power. GL had plenty of doctors over the years. But after Hillary died and Katie left, any nurse was short term (like Charlotte Wheaton) or just a day player. Margaret Sedwick is just that a doctor. I can't think of another contract nurse until Annie shows up in the mid-90's. This is the "My Guiding Light" theme (the first version, and IMO the best, which debuted in '83) They used it (although they later had a synthesized, faster version in the later '80's) until '91 when the Lighthouse opening debuted, which is also known as "Hold on to Love". The disco theme was just before this, and I'm not sure it even has an official name. I'm not exactly sure when ATWT included the characters in the opening. The 80's had the globe, the '90s started out with the "Seasons" opening which had nature pics embedded in the letters. On quick perusal, it seems like ATWT didn't include the characters until 2000/01 with the video globe. They really clung to the spinning globe concept. Over the years, I've been a fan of ATWT, B&B, GL and Y&R. I've watched Capitol, OLTL (after ATWT's cancellation) and GH, with no real attachment. I'm currently trying to watch BTG with mixed results. I favor ATWT and GL's openings, but remember Y&R's original sketches openings as iconic. I've always thought B&B's appropriate for context of the show, even if it never quite delivered what it seems to promise. BTG's is nice, but kind of lacks distinction, if that makes sense.

I don't think it was Jessie, unless they took a year to cast it. Kristi showed up the fall of '84, Jessie (Rebecca Staab) doesn't show up until October of '85, right before Kurt and Mindy's wedding. Funny they highlight Mary Kay Adams---I've been watching '85, and thinking they just don't know how to dress her. Everything seems frumpy or odd-fitting.

Tina Sloan held on for a lot of years (imo) just on the fact she was Beth's mom. (Beth was off canvas for two stretches, like 2-3 years and maybe five years the second time) Beth seemed to fill the traditional ingenue heroine space that had been Hope Bauer's. It's hard to even think of another pure heroine that grabbed the audience--maybe Morgan Richards between Hope and Beth---until Michelle grew up a decade later. She also seemed to be the only regular nurse the show had for most of the last 20 plus years of the show. Beth does return, eventually. The "My Guiding Light" theme lives rent free in my head. It's a lot easier to hum than ATWT's of the same era (which is da-da-dee-dum...da da daaa--ah" and a spinning globe).

nuHart is Frank Grillo. Not sure why Hilliard left. Grillo and Wendy Moniz later married, but they're divorced now. I get sentimental about the openings from both ATWT and GL. I admit to being excited when I finally found the episode with Billy kissing Vanessa (who's in a blue-edged robe) that they used in the opening credits in 1985. I could argue with myself all day about which opening is better---"My Guiding Light" or the Lighthouse opening. lol Oh...they DO. Lillian is Beth's mother. Phillip married Beth, but I think they were divorced when he returned. Lillian's known Phillip/Rick/Mindy (Beth's besties) forever. Oh, and Lillian and Alex are besties.

I watched a Locher room with Krista and Mark Lewis. The interviews are definitely better when he shuts up and the guests take over. Krista gives a good interview. Mark Lewis was kinda boring, but very complimentary about his time on GL. Locher really overblew the Kurt/Mindy story though. RME. You'd have thought they were Josh/Reva from the buildup he gave it.