P.J.

I think Brian may have been another case of Marland writing a polar opposite character for an actor. Pinter's Mark Evans on GL was a [!@#$%^&*] while Brian was stand up and boring (and possibly his blandest role on any of his soaps). Yeah, KJU was undervalued, and in some respect, ATWT doesn't have another vixen like her until Carly in 95. (Julie, bless her, was just plain slutty...IMO)

I actually liked the McColl kids. Diana was a great troublemaker, and I loved Kim Johnston Ulrich. Kirk was kinda forgettably bland, and Brian stuck around for years. Mark Pinter is actually the first guy I remember in a towel (from his run on GL.)

Nancy remembered Dan as well. (The special Valentines episode for instance). Scott Holmes' Tom bringing up Dan makes sense, as SH never worked with Don McLaughlin. The show referred to her for years after Dan's death as Nancy Hughes McCloskey. I don't see her saying she talked to Chris all the time as a slight. After fifty years, its a hard habit to break.

Bob Hughes would be a clear number one. He was on from episode one, a leading man from 1960 to 1980, and never written off even temporarily like Nancy or Lisa in the 80's (or Lisa's year on Our Private World), or between recasts like between Marxx and Holmes as Tom. Even I didn't quite realize how many women Bob went through until I was reading the ATWT book. It seemed like every page he was dating a new woman. Today, poor Bob would be a manwhore. Or Danny Santos or Gus [!@#$%^&*] Aitoro, for that matter.

I would guess... Don Hastings Eileen Fulton Helen Wagner Kathy Hays Larry Bryggman Colleen Zenk Don McClaughlin Marie Masters Patricia Bruder (David Stewart) Rosemary Prinz Conrad Fawkes Martha Byrne Jon Hensley Scott Holmes Ellen Dolan Anthony Herrera Liz Hubbard Kathleen Widdoes Kelley M Hensley Ben Hendrickson Scott Bryce Maura West Michael Park If we were going simply by characters, Bob, Nancy and Tom would probably be on top of the heap, since they were Hugheses.

I'm not sure asking a 90 yr old actress to film a "final" scene while in failing health would have been the most tactful thing for ATWT to do. It probably wouldn't have taken much effort to find a scene of Nancy saying "good night" to Bob and Kim and edited it into the finale. Honestly, that's just not true. Yes, Katie's stories were more comedy-based. But it's not as if she got a minute or two while Carly and Jack got ten. As someone who made her own edits, the CarJack segments were usually between 6 and 7 minutes. I never bothered with editing Katie scenes, but any perusal of youtube would find Katie clips with her various screen partners running approximately the same amount of time. I'm not going to apologize for Carly and Jack's airtime, statistically "being the face" of ATWT over the last thirteen years, although Lily would be right with Carly if you added in MB's Rose appearances and NB's appearances the last two years. They drove tremendous amounts of story. And believe me, there were plenty of posters who didn't like that either. Katie was irritating. Her stories were often nonsense filler (like the summer she spent on an island with Simon and Henry , or her "butt busting" video/gym days) that's why she got the nickname "Fluffy". It was the way she was written. Like hounding Simon to chase him out of town after she cheated on Mike with him, like using Henry to make Mike jealous, and the horrible way she "befriended" Jennifer to bust her and Mike up. And the fact that other than her humiliation at the Endicott awards, she never got a comeuppance, and the entire town seemingly embraced "America's sweetheart" and acted like butter wouldn't have melted in her mouth.

Well....in MY defense, I never blamed the entirety of ATWT's problems on Conn or Katie. Sheffer was a one trick pony, Howarth and Block were horrible recasts that shifted the already long established personalities of their characters, Goutman seemed determined to employ every fired ABC actor he could get his hands on, and on and on. I'm sure at one time, I bitched about them all. If I bitched longer (and probably louder) about Conn/Katie than Block, Howarth, SJB or Pinson, its because like a cockroach....she endured. Hal's mother had died. All he had left was his father and his sister Claire. I think Claire did again appear briefly, but I don't think his father ever did.

Hal was from Alva, Kentucky. The story was about him reconciling with his father. His mother had encouraged him to go to college after his brother Billy died in a mining accident. Hal hadn't been back since. I think Half and Barbara got remarried there while she was pregnant with Will. In fact Will is named after his uncle. They did occasionally mention it for a while, especially when Hal's niece Tess came to town. She was played by Parker Posey. If memory serves, Fairwinds was still being used at the end. Paul and Emily were living there. Fairwinds started out as the Mediterranean style home Damian and Lily lived in. It then underwent a mysterious remodel into a more traditional mansion with plenty of dark wood. Carly owned it briefly (the only time she had money). It was where Babs lived while burned, then Craig and Ro, and then Paul bought it. Maybe at some point they stopped referring to it as Fairwinds, and by the end the set was chopped down like all the others. I think the thing about Ruxton Hills was it was Steve's development, and one the fire happened, he went bankrupt. But that's a very long time ago, and details are fuzzy. Um...no. Every once in a while some pops up on my timeline about either Peck or Conn, and I snicker. The more pious it sounds, the more I RME. But... I'm petty like that.

I was more annoyed they made Henry James' illegitimate son, tbh.

Well, even Susan's mother sided with Dan. Ouch. Natalie had an affair with Jay Stallings.

Dan died in 1979, and I believe most of the town turned out. I believe that's up on YouTube. I think Bob gave the eulogy. David died off screen in the mid 90's, I think.

Jessica Tuck's name on GH was Cassandra, not Madeline.

I can't swear to it, but just my vague impression was that they were always "more" than friends. I don't mean like they were secretly pining for each other no matter who they were with---just that they leaned on each other at moments. I do think they might've gone Kim/Bob after Dan's death, if the soap world hadn't suddenly decided to follow GH's lead and start going big adventure/spy/sci-fi stories. God knows they had a whole stable of Dan recasts to choose from.

I'm not sure if they feared backlash over the affair, or just realized that whoever they set up with Kim after Dan's death was going to be an uphill battle. Plus, while I can't exactly find reference to it, weren't Bob and Dan friends? They were certainly colleagues. And I don't think they would've wanted to tie either Bob or Kim down into their Brady Bunch like tribe in 1980. You would've had them raising Frannie, Betsy and Andy. And if John hated the idea of Dan raising Andy, that would've gone double for Bob.

I could never picture HBS' Margo as having an affair with James.

I thought she either worked at the UN, or she ended up going back to Montegaand helping with relief efforts like Frannie and Sabrina.

I also forget there were other Susans. MM is the only Susan I remember. Frannie and Sabrina were born Christmas Eve, 1972, correct?

I don't find any reference to that in the ATWT book. My synopsis says Susan got pregnant to keep her marriage together in the wake of Dan's attraction to Liz. Liz (pregnant by Dan) married Paul. Dan was so upset, he got into an argument with Susan, and she fell down a flight of stairs, miscarrying. Emily seems to be born in 1971 or so.

My bad. I just meant that in the time period I read in the book, it never says something like "Lisa pined for Bob." It was always kind of unwritten that for Lisa, Bob was always the one who got away. Especially between lovers. But Bob, Lisa and Kim at the time weren't really letting any grass grow underneath their feet. The sluts.... ;O That Lisa might have been pining for Bob was a plot point in the Doug Cummings story for a bit....something about a Christmas card that had been left for Kim matching the one's Lisa sent out that year...although I can't recall specifically why. It's hard to recall specific incidents, but they were always portrayed as friends as far back as I can remember. The Lisa/Babs friendship seems more tangible, because I can picture them sitting in their Fashions/Simply Barbara set, chatting away. Carly and Molly actually didn't cross as much as you'd think, as each was kind of a tent pole for a separate story. I do remember that before Jake, when they did cross, they'd often complain about their problems, but rarely seemed to focus on what the other one was saying. They would end up supporting the other when shtf….Carly lives in Molly's old apartment for example, and Carly really tries pulling Molly out of her grief after Jake's death. Lily---she just rarely had girlfriends.

The book doesn't go into great detail, but from what I gather, Lisa made a play for Bob shortly before he met Jennifer, by using Tom and worming herself back in with the Hughes' when Chris Sr took ill. But he sidestepped that and met Jennifer. Lisa took up with his brother Don. Lisa thought she was pregnant, only to find out it was an ovarian cyst. Jen's son Chuck tried to derail the Bob/Jen romance by claiming Bob was the father of Lisa's non-baby. So I doubt Jen and Lisa were friendly. Lisa gets engaged to Don, but then falls for a newcomer, Wally Matthews. Don leaves for CA, but Lisa dumps boring Wally, buys the Wade bookshop and meets Grant. Her attention never seems to go back to Bob. All it mentions about the start of Kim and Lisa's friendship was that it blossomed after Kim had slept with Bob, and that it concerned Jennifer.

I only remember two, looks like Dennis Miller mullet guy and old grandma Jason Hogan. Someone in casting must've hated Lisa at the time. 😱

Admittedly, its my teenage judgment. LOL. The only thing really enjoyable about Nola's return was the cattiness with Vanessa.

Agreed, and it's not even really a contest. I loved Craig, but she never really had a shot with him, and the relationship with John was just...weird. The less said about Jason Benedict, the better. Its almost debatable whether Lisa had better chem with Wiggin or Michael Tylo's Quint. Iva got written out before Kirk, IIRC. I don't recall the vulnerable thing at all. There was always something so rootable about Iva though. It seemed like Marland wrote Iva as a 180° turn from the ditzy Nola just to prove there was more to Lisa than that. But it did have the effect of making Iva's life one endless river of misery. I think Nola's bummer return to GL was more about the HW than some hangover from Iva. That was McTrash's work, wasn't it?

Hey, I loved Kirk and Iva!! I still remember their first kiss.

I love Kirk!! Tom Wiggin and Liz H had such great chemistry.