Dan

Just dropping in to correct some timing. Holly was dropped first but it was announced mid February 2003 just as she was appearing in the Reva stalker story. I only know this cause that was the first hint that we were in for a terrible ride under Ellen Weston.

I know it's been so many years already, but I'm still heartbroken by the promise of the early months of the Conboy tenure with Taggart/Culliton. The writing was crisper, took some actual risk with more character driven scenes. The drab brightness and pastel colors were gone and Conboy had the show looking so much nicer already. If Taggart had been allowed to stay and do her thing, it may not have led to a glory period, but maybe a more longterm period of respectability was possible. Instead, Taggart was fired, Weston was hired, Holly immediately moved to recurring and the bottom fell out. I still wonder what could have been. Maybe this sounds picky, but I felt like I could have accepted more of the Peapack years and it's growing pains if only they would have never fired their music department and hired Gabrielle Solarino to basically provide elevator muzak for the show and ill-timed licensed music. Pointing to 2 examples off the top of my head. I remember really being engaged with Justin Deas' performance when Coop died. It was the first not phoned in performance I had seen from him in years and it was completely interrupted by "Downtown" coming on and pulling me out of the scene. It really called for a great somber cue, and they botched it. And last was the finale. I made it through almost the entire episode not shedding a tear. But when Josh and Reva's last music cue came on? That's what did it. Not the love can save the world crap. None of the Dawson's Creek-lite nonsense they had going on. An actual classic soap cue that pulled back the years on me and reminded me how long I had been invested in this show. (Not nearly as long as some of the posters here, but still). I really think I could have tolerated more if they had just fixed that one element.

I know there is alot to not forgive Kreizman for, but I can't believe he would dangle Holly and Alan doing a business deal with Blake and Sebastian (Meh on Seb) thinking about taking over Spaulding in one episode and just not follow up ever again. The greatest idea he ever had as a headwriter on GL and he backed away from it like it was made of plutonium.

Here is a fun scene from 1989. I think this is the first Maureen/Roger scene. I think the rest was just Maureen seeing the entire town against him and being removed from the worst part of Roger's reign of terror.

Funny you should mention Bridget cause I do remember hearing some scuttlebutt years ago that the Bridget Nadine baby stuff was some of JER's influence I do not know precisely how true that is, but it tracks.

To be honest, I don't really remember who that is. I'm surprised SOC lasted as long as it did. It was pretty much a cess pool even when I was active in the soap world way back when.

The technical term is rape by deception. Because Jon purposely deceived Tammy regarding his true identity and this information could change whether she consented or not, it can be considered as rape. To be fair to Hurst, she was never the sole headwriter of the show and wrote as a team with Gold, Dunn, and Kreizman. In fact, I'm inclined to credit her with the rare flashes of good material in the show's final year to her as compared to the material for the rest of those hacks.

So speaking for just myself, there are a couple of reasons. 1) I could never get past the rape. Jon concealed his identity and effectively raped Tammy and then we were all just supposed to forget about it. And let's not forget the cousin angle. 2) Honestly the acting and the almost zealous over praising of the coupling (that ignored point #1) . Between SG being kind of just there and TP chewing every piece of scenary he could, I could not get over it. And BTW yes Otalia was generally awful. I'm kind of glad Olivia/Holly never happened. I'm pretty certain the sexual tension and chemistry would have melted all of our TV sets.

Curious question, did GH stop crediting the writers and directors in the cold open or do the streaming feeds just cut them out? Was looking for the writing credits out of curiosity and didn't see them.

In celebration, I went ahead and found PM's first credited appearance on GL. Someone many pages back said you could tell a PM script from the get go and this one is truly no exception. Could tell from the first interaction with Nick and Eve. Hope this means good things for daytime. I'll be rooting from the sidelines.

Looks like the yahoo rec.arts.tv.soaps group is still archived for the most part but it's a bit of a pain to dig through. They do have some recap threads dating back to the early 90s.

This is probably going to be something of a hot take, considering the number of decades long GL fans here in the post. But after watching some episodes from the late 70s and early 80s and contrasting that to later in the decade and the early 90s, I have to say getting rid of cue cards might have been the best production change of the entire decade. Maybe it veered soap dialogue to less of a natural and more stylized conversation between characters, but it's more of a entertaining scene overall. And it really made the actors elevate their game and gave more creative energy to some of the great script writers that came out of the 80s. Also, I cannot get through a soap episode these days and that is part cause the dialogue in all 4 remaining shows is absolutely basic soap-speak and lacking any kind of originality.

And so many of them undeserved IMO.

I thought I remembered that being earlier in the month but you're right. In fairness, anything with Carmen and Danny/Michelle while St. Alban in the role could put anyone in a coma along with Carmen. 😂

Alot of the episodes from 2003 are missing the end credits but I did find one from April 2003 that shows Bailey credited as Sandy and another actor credited as the voice of the "Mole." As far as Billy Kay, I don't believe he was ever on contract and he also had a bunch of other projects in 2002, including Halloween Resurrection so that could have factored into the decision, but we all know he wasn't a Conboy-type actor so his days would probably have been numbered either way. I do remember Kay's last episode was probably the Christmas 2002 show.