P.J.

No, HB didn't find out that Reva was working for Alan until after Billy and Vanessa got married. After B&V got married, Reva and Josh went to Cross Creek and he proposed. They made that announcement and HB confronted her privately and gave her 2 weeks to tell Josh. That was like midMarch.

While we're talking about it, does anyone know what the deal was with Billy and Reva's divorce? Reva comes to town claiming it's not legal, and that's not her signature. Billy looks at it and knows it's not her signature. Was there ever an explanation about it? Did Alan just forge some documents and Reva went along with it? Re the porn tape...I think Alex knew about it because I think she took it with her to Venezuela after Sonni shot Alan. But I'd have to rewatch the eppy again.

I think both Alan and Alex knew about it before Josh. Bonita Solita.

LOL...sometimes the voices in my head take control of my fingers. It's funny...'97 is when my full-blown obsession with ATWT's Jack and Carly starts. No wonder, if GL was written by these douches. And I remember Melissa Salmons (who spent years on GL) writing some of the best scripts for them. They have a lot of the same sparkage that Van and Billy do.

Ugh...like Reva was ever ever EVER a loyal wife to HB. She bounced around braless "helping" poor Josh by practically smushing the funbags in his face every chance she got. She flippin' slept with his son hours after he left town. She then either lied or just plain "forgot" that Kyle brained a defenseless Billy from behind with a 2x4, and patted herself on the back for not just leaving him in some podunk hospital in Idaho. UGH. the Sonni promo isn't much better. It's weird...I remember loving the ATWT promos around the same time. Maybe if they hadn't tried to shoehorn Reva into everything, it would've felt more natural.

No doubt they could've hired someone with real talent if they hadn't had to pay Kim and Justin Deas' salaries. *Oh, to dream...*

Right? Reva always should've been the outsider, no matter who she married or what respectability she tried to earn.

While I'm impressed GL got an ad---what a bad Harlequin romance novel cover. Who put that look on Kimmy's kisser? Reva never would've looked as nauseously forlorn as that EVER. That should've been reversed. Or simply focused on Alan and the mayhem he'd cause.

So E&B are who I should be blaming for the awful pairing of Vanessa and the himbo? Where she ends up having the exact same fights she had with Billy and Ross about working (or working at Spaulding...) Where the moron who's never raised a child (and ghosted his own family) lectures her on family values? And these are the morons who gave her some brain-eating incurable disease and had her fake her death approximately six months after Henry died? (Because apparently, simply divorcing ****'s ass after finding out he'd been a speedo wearing himbo and lied about it wasn't dramatic enough.) I know I'm drifting...but I really needed to get a mini**** rant out. And are these the people who brought that loudmouth Laura Wright to this show? Another thing I could thank them for. NOT. Oh, and re: Phillip and Beth and that secret assignation---Phillip's flippin' leg was also broke. I know that would really put me in the mood to bang my bordering on psycho ex. Sorry, not sorry---I LOVED Phillip/Harley.

Yes, Alan is in jail when Vanessa returns to town in July. Daniel Pilon makes occasional appearances until at least November but it's connected to the Beth being alive plot. I mean, I guess I get not wanting to dredge up a brief engagement, especially as it was with Chris Bernau's Alan. But it's not like the audience hadn't been reminded that Vanessa left town to help Billy several times.

Curiously, Long really seemed to skip over the engagement to Alan plot point when Maeve returned. Vanessa goes right back to zeroing in on Ross, and Ross at one point asserts that she left him to go to Venezuela and take care of Billy.

I kept seeing Sharon Leal (Dahlia) in things too. I totally get Bomer wanting to move on. I loved him in White Collar. I just don't think he made the role unrecastable. Although with Nancy St Alban and Mandy Bruno as evidence, maybe they had a point.

Well, they did try to rebuild Van and Ross, but it just didn't work. Whether it was too soon to move Van on from Billy (who were trying to reunite practically until Billy left) or just the changes in Ross and Vanessa that no longer meshed, I don't know. I do buy Alan's first proposal, which was more about screwing over Billy and keeping the Chamberlains under the Spaulding wing and influence. Van's transformation was still fresh, so it wasn't as hard to believe she might be swayed by the power of being a Spaulding. I don't get the second one as much, other than Alan is happy to score one on Ross, and Van is perhaps seeking refuge from her recent disappointments in love. And tbf, Van was sacrificed for the Reva and Alan story. She even becomes the lynchpin (in a way) of Phillip's takeover of Spaulding, as Phillip and Alex are using the engagement (or breaking thereof) to prod Henry and HB into siding with them and throwing Alan out. I get the criticism of Van's transformation, but I don't find her as watered down as some. Granted, she has an impressive two-plus years perfecting every intonation of "oh Billy" and managing the domestic end of the Lewises. Had Long allowed the natural rivalry between Van and Reva to develop (which would've echoed the Van/Nola relationship) instead of insisting that Reva was some kind of "authentic" heartstone only the foolish or pure bitch would dare cross, it would've been aces. Every time Vanessa has to kind of grit her teeth and let Reva's actions pass just chaps my hide. The 1:30 where she gets to throw Reva's treatment of Billy in her face after Billy finds out Dylan's his son make me stand up and cheer. Of course, it immediately dissolves into more "poor Reva, we can't upset her" schtick that makes my eyes roll back into my head.

Ben had always gotten the least amount of attention. But he'd have been an important component in the future, until TIIC decided to make him a serial killer. Morons. I was okay with Ashley Peldon. But I'm not sure I could've stood years of her being the cutesy Reva mini-me they looked like they wanted to make her into. I agree---you have to age characters together. It's still nonsense that Daisy/Susan was born before nearly EVERYONE, yet Marina, Lizzie, Coop and Shayne became a decade older than her by the end. Or that Jason and Kevin simply disappeared off the canvas.

No wonder McTavish pushed them hard, any bad idea, she glommed on to. Ugh.

I don't often agree that Marland didn't have a plan for his characters, but other working her back to Ross, I'm not seeing any true options for her in '82.

I'm not as sure that it's sexism. Budig arrived sometime before Peter Simon left, and making Michelle slightly older sort of lets Ed off the hook of being a horrible father just leaving a teen with her older brother. Meanwhile, had Maeve not decided to take time off, they might have very well recast Bryan around the same time. It would've been very jarring to see Van come home to a new face or watch Matt and Dinah "raise" a kid who looked old enough to be out on his own.

Bill, Michelle and Ben really should've been the building block for the next generation of Springfield, and instead they ruined it by shipping off Ben and recasting Michelle. I know Budig has her fans, but I don't like her.

@alwaysAMCwait---so Van didn't even get to spy on Peter before Bridget left? bastards. One of the few positives about the entire stupid story was that Bryan Buffinton was still there as Bill. Bill was the kid we saw Vanessa raise. Dinah, even when she wasn't psycho, was never as close to Vanessa as Bill was.

Now that's interesting. I can only imagine the sparks between Barbara and Vanessa if that had gone anywhere. Barbara was certainly no shrinking violet.

admittedly, I don't think I listened to much of his and Alan's conversations, or even much of Alan's '86 return. As much as I love Chris Bernau.

Speaking of Henry and fathers, does anyone remember if Henry truly met Viola Stapleton? that factoid is in some wiki, but I can't see it referenced in any recap, and just from what I've gathered, Viola didn't live in Springfield, other than when she was sick.

Yes, the Baron appeared. When they showed Alan hiding in Andorra, he was hiding with the Baron. I think India goes to visit him, but I don't think he ever comes to Springfield. I wouldn't be surprised if they flirted with the idea of one or more of Eleni's brothers moving to town, but they never got around to it.

Yes. In fact, that's why Quint returns, with the news that Henry died while visiting him.

It may even be buried somewhere in the quint/nola clips, but I haven't watched them all. I'm not sure we ever got the answer as to why he came to town and then invested heavily in a company he knew his father was involved in, when he didn't want Henry to know he was in town. It's probably just that he didn't want people to know he was Sean Ryan, while he was facing charges in Renfield's death.