P.J.

Well, he does lean into being a jerk, even when he's right. But I love him. Battling Alan, Blake and Roger in '88-'90 is prime Phillip. I just watched him have this strange, drunken nightmare in '87 which solidifies him plotting Alan's downfall. In it, Ross, Vanessa and Alan-Michael are bearing these chains and only Alan has the key. Phillip has seen them be manipulated by Alan, and he's the only one who can free them. It's strange.

'88 is officially worse than '85. I personally don't mind Phillip being a dick to Johnny, just on general principle. Johnny is so blah, I can see why Phillip just can't stand him. The more I've seen of '88, the weirder it is. The scabs really did try to hook up Mindy and Frank, and Johnny has some interest in Blake. Ross was trying on Jenny the cop, Rose is the blandest addict I've seen, and they don't have a clue about what to do with Dinah. That's not even getting into Alan/Reva/Josh/Sonni/Will.

Yeah, Jackson disappeared sometime in '88. I don't think they ever really had a purpose for the character. One minute he's an okay guy, the next he's stirring up drama. In '86, for some unknown reason, he sabotages an attempt by Mindy to send Billy and Vanessa off on a romantic getaway to talk. I'm hoping some of the '89 episodes going up with fill in some blanks. Or at least help me rebuild a playlist.

I believe Coco was an old girlfriend of Jackson's. After Warren Andrews confessed to murdering Paul Valere, Jackson took over the Blue Orchid. (or maybe he was already involved in it, I'm not sure.) Anyway, Jackson wanted to make William (Renaud White) his assistant manager, but Coco blew into town saying that Jackson had promised her the job. She wouldn't take the hint and let William have the job, so Jackson made her his entertainment coordinator or some such. OMG...Ross slept with Meredith. Or almost did. It's hard to tell German subtext sometimes. Anyway, Vanessa came over to Ross', Meredith walks in on their talk wrapped in a sheet, and Van runs out, telling Ross she's going to be Alan's wife. Oh, and Frank preceeded Harley. He has a couple of weeks of scenes with George Stewart (Cam's father) talking about running a chop shop.

I'll be happy to tonight after work!

I'm pretty sure Mindy was supposed to have seen Roger at the train station, but that made no sense as he was at the Towers all night. I'm not sure they ever directly addressed it on screen, though, other than saying that Roger had helped her get out of town. Mindy wasn't only in NY, she hid out with old friends around the country. The last friend she stayed with was in NYC, and that's where Dylan found her. I'd have been fine with Nick and Eve---provided they left town.

Thanks! I remember having started watching the 1990 before I learned how to get the translation. And not a lot of that is up in English, unfortunately.

I think Roger's doing it to provoke Alex, Vanessa accepted to provoke Billy (See, Billy/Josh and Alex/Roger were vying for a Saudi Arabian business deal. Van was temp President of Spaulding at the time, and got mad that Billy was trying to ace Spaulding out of the deal. He'd stood her up on NYE to fly to Saudi Arabia. I think Roger wound her up by implying that Billy was walking all over her, and she flew there intending to distract Billy. Josh flew home because Reva was having labor pains, and Billy had a deadline to submit a final offer. Vanessa dressed up like an Arabian dancer and pretended like some sheik had "sent" Billy a woman. She comes on to him, and got Billy all flustered. He finally realized it was her and they had a fight. Either she threw his alarm clock, or it got knocked over in their fight and while they made love, Billy missed the deadline. Billy asked her to marry him. But Vanessa got tripped up by a handkerchief embroidered with her initials, and he realized that Van had gone there to help ace Lewis out of the deal. He either calls her a whore, or implies it pretty heavily. They broke up and it really kicks off his involvement with Nadine. Saudi Arabia (the Al-Radi deal) really haunts Billy and Van for quite a while. This was also when Roger was trying to hook Alex, and I think he was using Van to make Alex jealous. Roger is getting all his ducks in a row to marry Alex and become President of Spaulding. He's also swindling Henry in poker games to get his Spaulding stock. Phillip was pissed that Blake had kept Beth's being alive from him and had him institutionalized to stop him from searching for her. Now, back to 1988....Reva is shocked by a dirty movie. Not exactly the take I'd expect from the Slut of Springfield.

OMG...I have to see that! I caught the next episode where Billy gets PO'd, grabs Vanessa and she tells him to get her paws off her.

Today is Jordan Clarke's birthday! I always thought the East Coast soaps were better at casting for ability rather than "traditional" beauty. (*coughB&Bcough*) But attractiveness was only part of my various crushes or what I connected to---it's Ross' eyes and how he'd take care of people, Billy's sense of humor how he was always unapologetically himself, Alan-Michael's perpetual chip on his his shoulder, okay, Phillip and his tortured soul and his speedos. I mean, thank God some casting director talked GL out of casting some blue-eyed yuppy type as Roger.

Exactly. Unless you're writing a book. then I expect a little fact checking. well, there are shorts in '83 that don't leave a lot to the imagination---but yeah.

After the Andy Norris story, she's basically a day player. Sometimes they address her absence, sometimes not. She's not at Hillary's funeral, for instance.

Denise must be mistaken. Ironically, she's in a 1977 episode where she's talking to a returning Peggy Thorpe. Maybe they went on contract at the same time, but Katie precedes Ross. For some reason I remember some snippet of Elvera saying she and Jerry started the same day. Which I also find hard to believe.

OMG...Denise Pence auditioned for Jackie? aborbs!

The optics on the Kelly/Morgan romance were probably always a little skeevy, but 40 years later, calling them problematic is a major understatement. I don't think that romance would've been nearly as memorable if not for the addition of Nola as the bad girl keeping them apart. (Good Lord, the endless crooning of "You Needed Me" alone ....) But as a teen? Sorry, I was hooked by it. Or actually, not sorry. Melissa Hayden is a wonderful actress who should've been the lynchpin of the next generation. Bridget/David/Kat should have been the next "Four Musketeers", but Bridget never got that "grand romance", for reasons I suspect begin and end with not being "soap opera pretty" enough. The same might have happened with Beth Ehlers, (oy, Ian Ziering and Paige Turco were greener than grass) except for her chemistry with CTE. The revolving door of Harts aside, other than David there was not a strong younger male actor to pair her with either. I can appreciate Morgan Englund, but he certainly wasn't either Carl T Evans or Rick Hearst. I vote AM/Eleni were the better couple, and had supercouple potential. I actually didn't like Mindy/Nick. I just don't like VI at all, either as Lujack or Nick.

Honestly, Ross is so reprehensible in that episode...it's a minor miracle he wasn't just written as Mike's antithesis and then written off. Re the GL critique---Marlena's right, there's a unique alchemy about GL (and I'd say from mid-'89 to mid '93) of that time. It is as near perfect as a soap can get. A lot of shows would've stumbled badly losing heavy hitters like Reva, Josh and Phillip within six months. Later losing Bev McKinsey alone seemed to hobble the show.

Aww...we were just talking about her in the GL thread. God Bless her---Lisa wasn't always my cup of tea, but there's no denying the impact she had on soaps.

Yes, Leonard Stab was injured in a hangliding accident. I didn't mind his Hart---Roger was someone who deserved children who gave him hell. The Guiding Light Sentinel: Weekly Alumni Feature...Leonard Stabb

I think the scabs also leaned in to Alan-Michael/Harley, but that might've been just out of desperation, as Dinah/Cam are so, so bad. At least the set up to Alan's downfall had been in motion for months before the strike. I can't imagine what the scabs might've come up with on their own.

No, you were right, rumor had it that Fulton had a grandmother clause. Ed Zwick co-created thirtysomething.

I don't know when Eileen got that special billing, but I see it as acknowledgement of how impactful her presence was for the show. She's ATWT's equivalent of Lucci, Zimmer, Hall or Slezak. Everyone knew who Lisa Miller Hughes Eldridge Shea Colman Mitchell Grimaldi Chedwyn was. lol...well, by this time she had won two emmys. And it's not like she wasn't alphabetically most likely to be last anyway. Unless they hired someone named Zwick or Zzzuzz.

What's strange to me is that for a large portion of time you've got a consistency in the scriptwriters. And it's still in the era of a continuity person. There's always been some revisions of history---but when a new character comes on, why can't they just look at what hasn't been established and go from there? Calla could've been the woman Ross dated after Vanessa dumped him to marry her first husband, or at least in the period that Vanessa was off in Maine hiding her pregnancy. It's minor, I know. At least some of them. Funny though, and I know that there's huge gaps in the Dinah reveal---but other than Ross and Billy, the only person in town that I saw being shocked about finding out Ross and Vanessa had a child---Maureen.

I knew it was contractual. I just didn't know the formal term. The "Eileen Fulton billing" is much snappier, imo. lol.

And they took the cue from Dallas. HB and Billy (at the beginning) use "Miss Vanessa" a fair amount. Reva usually calls her that when she's irritated with her, or trying to paint her as a snob. I don't recall anyone ever calling Reva "Miss Reva" though....go figure. lol Watching 1988, it seems Kim started getting the "Eileen Fulton" credit. As in being credited last as in (separated by a space from the preceeding cast member or dayplayer) and the "and ... Reva Shayne....Kim Zimmer". The other thing about '88....Meredith seemed like she was toadying up to Phillip from early on. She seems to be the only one who understood Phillip's takeover and thought it was hunky-dory.

She's credited as Florence on the Oct 10th episode! And Ybarra is spelled with a Y. (which you probably knew.