P.J.

It's probably unfair to assess Bill based on not seeing him, but his biography reads differently. He had affairs on Bert (to my understanding), he allowed his family to believe he had died, he lived an entirely other life and fathered Hillary. And then even after he told family number one he was alive, he checked out on them again.

I certainly wouldn't have minded Mindy going in a completely different direction. But I can't think of what that might've been. I hear what you're saying, but I think it would've played better if Bridget had been the one to put it together, and just blast Ed and Lillian. Bridget was so close to Mo, and she'd held Ed in such high regard, I could see her just be devasted. Nola, bless her, hadn't had scenes with any Mo in at least 10 years. While I never really saw Bill Bauer, now I think that Ed really followed in Bill's footsteps. Bill (at the very least) seems like an emotionally distant man. I really don't think very many people knew about the affair. Vanessa and Eve. Probably Holly. I'm not even sure the Spaulding takeover happens if Bev stays. I can't believe they'd write Alex losing everything.

Honestly, the entire Eve arc sucks. I don't think Kimberly Simms could've made it work either. There's no chem between Irizarry and Edson, the story itself falls flat, making it hard (or next to impossible) to like or even empathize with Eve. They simply should've shipped her off after she tried to kill Mindy, and let Nick/Mindy deal with their issues (or not, I was not fond of them) and moved on.

It think it was supposed to be about Ed needing to feel needed. Lillian needed him. Maureen was off working (GASP!) and not there to bolster his ego morning, noon and night. But Ed just comes off as a monumental jerk, who really would simply banish Lillian to Timbuktu if he'd had his way, and grow morose keeping his secret. On rewatch, I think Hamilton was easing into the role when they switched her out with Crampton. Crampton is completely wrong for the role, and sort of made Mindy screen poison.

Right? ICAM. And I know the arguments, but I'm still not sure that I would've killed Hart off. He was Roger Thorpe's son, FCOL. There always should've been a place for him in Springfield.

We do...and we're not telling! LOL.

Well, it's also redundant writing (the poor stupid man with a manipulative deceptive woman), but there's also the fact that Ross was always drawn to women with a wild side. Sure, he wants to want the simple, naive types like Evie Stapleton and fragile, broken Amanda (early '80's version) or even Trish Lewis....but he keeps going back to bed with the Vanessa's, Calla's and Blake's of the world. (God knows what he got going to bed with Carrie...eeeek)

God, watching the '80's is like night and day. Reva never really regained her fabulous wardrobe after the affair with Kyle. As soon as Josh returned, her entire wardrobe took a dump. OMG---that outfit she wore to Ross' wedding is HILARIOUS. She looks like she stepped out of a Paris showroom into this simple little wedding wearing this headpiece from a Audrey Hepburn movie. Wardrobe really started drifting away from hats in the eighties, but Maeve always looked so elegant in them.

Oh, I believe that. Even if Sherry had stayed another year, I think Blake and Ross would've quickly turned toxic and not made it to the alter. In @alwaysAMC recaps, I find myself disgusted by Blake in her affair with Ben. That really should've been the absolute end of them.

Uhm, Vanessa had been engaged (very briefly) to Alan, and A-M had dated Dinah. Vanessa was on the canvas when A-M was born. Not to mention, they'd been bitter rivals for the Presidency of Spaulding in '91-'92. So that wouldn't have worked for me. They obviously threw **** into plots to figure out what to do with him. It's kinda telling that none of that worked, and Vanessa got stuck with her short term fling. When she was freed of ****, and interacting with the core she'd interacted with for years, yes, she was more Vanessa to me. (I know I make it sound like she's written like an alien at times...lol) And I totally got the guilt she felt over Dinah. That added to how Henry had continually given her the patience and understanding that she needed, was why she never gave up on Dinah. But **** never really got that. ICAM that ***essa was physical, which got rewritten like Pygmalion, with poetry reading nights explaining what they "really" had in common. RME. Puh-leaze. I can almost picture ****'s lips moving as he tries reading Longfellow or Whitman. It's funny to me that by the end, they had to do a soft reboot on **** and turned him into Dinah's sounding board to keep him relevant.

I know I sound (at times...well, maybe always) overly judgmental of ****. But my Vanessa was never sweet. To me, that's akin to calling Reva wholesome. That's what TIIC after Curlee have reduced her to by writing her as some damsel-in-distress character which they did from the jump of her relationship with **** when he "rescued" her from some idiot locals and the stupid Castaway on an Island fantasy, these mystery illnesses and near death experiences. (Other than Bill's birth and a brief stay after an accidental overdose, that woman had never spent a sick day in the hospital in the previous fourteen years she'd been on the show.) It doesn't help that I've seen those type of scenes (arguing over her wanting to work, or what the man in her life thinks her duties are when it comes to raising her child) with both Ross and Billy. I'm sure McKinney is a great guy. But he's utterly interchangeable with the rest of the himbos of his era. Most of the Harts, Reva's legion of guys she's willing to slum with while pining for Josh (Island dude, DrWannabeStudly, Richard and his clone Jeffy), Cassie's ex and whatever Dinah dug out of the trash. While I'm glad Maeve kept getting story, (at this point, she was the longest tenured actress on the show), I wished she'd had a writing team more interested in being true to her character than their nonsensical plot-heavy and himbo laden vision of Springfield. LOL...I accept sanctimonious guy when they're long-suffering. **** wasn't "long suffering". In fact, he should've been grateful to be kept, shut his mouth and played Mr. Mom if baby Maureen needed more parental involvement. **** couldn't earn enough from his "career" to keep Van in her Manolo Blahniks. (in case it's not been apparent to you in the Reva-as-soccer mom costuming years, Vanessa is a clotheshorse. She didn't do denim. Ball gowns and furs were her weapons, and for a while, no outfit was complete without her hat and gloves.) LOL...what's delightful to me during this time is Vanessa's utter dismay at being told she had a half-sister and the gleeful relief when told it wasn't true.

I forget---Roger was shot before he and Holly had sex, right? ICAM about shootings. And honestly, if Jordan Clarke had still been in the role, Billy wouldn't have even gone to jail. No doubt Roger would've faked the entire thing and framed Billy to try and get access to Peter.

I can't recall anyone being that consistently threatened on GL. IIRC, in Frank's years as a cop, he wasn't even shot. Roger, in this same period, was beat up by Billy and then shot by him. He's in some other minor jeopardy from dayplayer thugs when he goes to rescue A-M, but that's about it. Mallet was savagely beaten by his ex-lover's mob father thugs and blown up, resulting in temporary paralysis and loss of hearing. Now, if you want to talk other soaps, ATWT's Jack was shot/attacked at least once a year for his entire thirteen year run. But he was a cop.

@alwaysAMC Vanessa is obviously in the wrong here, but me, I loved it! Vanessa is no stranger to trouble, in spite of the way the show whitewashed her past and made her into a pillar of Springfield society. Of course she was going to protect her daughter, and **** calling the cops and expecting Vanessa to turn her daughter over to them was just a step too far. AFAIC, **** is a pipsqueak who ought to just shut his mouth and stop lecturing a grown woman about her "duty" to her marriage and baby. Vanessa's right---he's barely a parent. And at every turn, he's tried dictating how Vanessa should act. He initially wanted her to have an abortion. He then floated the idea of forcing her to deliver early. Then, after risking her life, she wasn't paying enough attention to her baby. He then went and shared the problems in his marriage with another woman. He's still turning to Beth at this point. Screw him. Back in the day, I would've been #FreeVanessa all over my social media. LOL. Vanessa deserved better. That's the hill I'll die on. The writing for **** is so sanctimonious it makes my blood boil. I take that kind of crap from Josh because he's endured years of Reva's crap. **** has barely known Vanessa long enough to get her coffee order correct.

Yeah, I see Ross sitting behind Justin. Tom O'Rourke looks a little strange without his mustache. I'm confused why either Marler would be there.

That was Wally Kurth. He wasn't a cowboy, per se, but he played the guitar and was an (amateur) ventriloquist. The dummy's name was Cowboy Jack. His character's name was Sam. He ended up nearly raping Carly, and Parker shot him. Parker was accused of murder, but they found out Sam's girlfriend fired the kill shot. Two the of bigger names I haven't seen mentioned in the B&B talk are Sydney Penny and Linda Gray's characters.

Ugh...I remember the bun. It was an odd look for Holly. Thankfully, it was gone soon.

lol...well, that just makes it a really sad commentary on the lack of continuity and thought by TPTB.

I can accept that the shows grew reluctant to nail down specifics, and that some poor prop guy just really didn't think about dates and used Toby's birth year, and that they really didn't think someone would freeze frame and read the birth certificate. But honestly, someone on some level should've really thought about the timeline. If you want to recast a 40ish character with a 28 year old, fine, I guess. At the time, I don't think I realized they had deSOARSed Amanda to that extent. Maybe I should rewatch Jennifer's trial and see if they bring up when Amanda was born.

I think it also has something to do with Blake trying to, if not avenge exactly, reclaim Roger's reputation. As if the town of Springfield had reduced and vilified the double rapist unfairly or something. But then she fell for Phillip. And it became some Romeo/Juliet twist.

GL---Lisby Larson as Calla Matthews. Calla was Lillian's social climbing sister, retconned as Ross' first serious girlfriend (which apparently had never come up between Ross and Lillian as a topic before) with a sweet, if idiotic, virginal daughter, Jessie, destined to take Beth's place as the town sweetheart. She schemed her way into Alex's good graces, irritated Vanessa and Jessie was teased as the daughter Vanessa was looking for. But she was so abrasive and so annoying she was gone in just over a year. Her and Jessie and the hair model Simon Luvonacek.

Am I the only one wishing the Duprees would ease up when it comes to Bill? It just feels unnecessary for them to always be ready to slap him down, when he's making some kind of nice gesture. It feels like BTG is wasting the Kat/Eva rivalry on petty bs. I'm fine with Nicole finally getting her groove back---even with boring ol' Carlton---but I adored the scenes between Nicole and Anita this week. It feels natural that Anita confides in Nicole, while Vernon confides in Dani.

I don't know if they addressed it after Holly came back, but I thought part of the explanation was that Blake wanted the same position at Spaulding that Roger had--Executive Vice President.

That's Blake's go defense when Holly calls her out on her [!@#$%^&*], "you're not supporting me." Aside from the way Holly tore into her over Ross (which, again, I don't care if Ross is "publicly" dating her---Holly knew they weren't a couple. After the Jack Kiley trial ended, Vanessa tries returning the support Holly gave her and wishes her well with Ross....and Holly basically says that they're not together.), which really got ugly, Holly was just endlessly talking to a brick wall when it came to Blake. At least it makes sense at the time. Later writers tried recreating the dynamic in the Vanessa/Dinah story, and it boiled down to (mostly) Dinah walking all over Vanessa.

I think along the same lines. That because of the rape, Holly didn't want Blake to think of herself as Roger's daughter, which created some kind of fascination with him in Blake's mind. Holly and Blake also had issues during her relationship with Phillip. Phillip wanted to give Blake WSPR as a wedding present, and she in turn wanted to work there with Roger. Holly ended up buying it out from under Phillip, due to a clause in the charter that allowed any employee of the station (Holly was already managing it) to have first dibs (sort of) to buy it. Blake would turn to Roger when her ass was in trouble, but he was a fixer, not really a supportive parent.