DeliaIrisFan

Thank you! Wisner Washam and Lorraine Broderick were at the top of the writing credits (after Agnes Nixon) for most of 1991, so the de facto co–head writers, and Megan McTavish was an associate writer at that point. Washam has since made very pointed comments about working with McTavish and implied the network pushed him out once and for all because they sided with her. Broderick left AMC for several years around this same time, and McTavish subsequently became head writer. McTavish has been unofficially credited with the Janet/Natalie story—and seemed to enjoy revisiting that history during her head-writing stints—although Broderick and Washam (and Nixon) were still credited above McTavish throughout Natalie being trapped in the well and Janet's capture. In that same interview, Washam called himself a "realist," at least in comparison to Nixon, whom I have to assume generally favored more down-to-earth storytelling than McTavish. I got the distinct impression that someone who was still officially in charge was openly making fun of the Janet story in the scripts from the summer of 1991. The best example was when Janet laughed off Natalie's claim that that homeless guy had found her and was going to come back and get her out any time now. Janet joked that if anyone was going to have some random man ride in on his white horse to save her, it would be Natalie given her history, and then Dimitri showed up in the very same episode to do just that. There were other self-referential touches in Hayley and Brian's dialogue. At the same time, there were humanizing details to how other characters began to tell Janet and Natalie apart, unlike in other evil-twin plots I've seen, including from later in McTavish's career. Not to mention, there were more realistic stories happening in parallel—in one of the climactic episodes of the Janet story, Phoebe and Opal (and Enid Nelson!) were meanwhile discussing the Environmental Protection Agency's drinking water regulations. My guess is McTavish pitched the Natalie-in-the-Well story and it either got greenlit over Washam (and Broderick's) objections, or they initially agreed to it but one or more grew to regret it as it played out/overtook the show. In any case, they were all—not to mention Agnes Nixon, to whatever extent she was involved day to day—executing the story as a team, and it certainly gelled. I can see why the show was successful, ratings-wise, and it was definitely more compelling to me than what I've seen of McTavish's official tenure(s). I said before I could see how this wouldn't be sustainable for long, but I hadn't realized how quickly it came to an end until watching the subsequent episode that ghfan89 kindly linked—within weeks of Natalie being revealed to be alive, McTavish and Richard Culliton were now credited equal to Broderick (after Nixon), and Washam's name was completely gone. I never realized Broderick and McTavish ever co–head wrote a show together, although I know Broderick joined GL's writing team within 3 months so that didn't last long either. And I hadn't realized Culliton, who was not in the credits at all previously, was hired specifically to work with McTavish. It's also interesting that Gloria and the Steven Hamill character both debuted within days of McTavish's apparent promotion.

That channel went up to 1992...I know, because I had been binging the Natalie-in-the-well story in recent weeks, for the first time. I found this period fascinating, in part because the backstage drama I've read about was so obviously spilling over onscreen. The show was clearly shifting its focus, but there were still elements of Pine Valley being a community where people had to deal with real/mundane day-to-day things amid the melodrama. It was clearly not going to be sustainable, but it made for compelling viewing while it lasted, and the Natalie story was the over-the-top, garish centerpiece of all that. In some ways, this was both the smartest and dumbest evil twin story I've ever seen on soaps. On the one hand, Janet and Natalie weren't even actually twins, but unlike other stories involving long-lost, never-explained doubles, Janet didn't even have the element of surprise. On the other hand, at times the scripts were overtly making fun of the plot holes. I couldn't help but think of Wisner Washam's very candid comments about Megan McTavish some years back—I can only assume there were factions of the writing team who hated the direction this story represented for the show, but some of those writers were still officially in charge, so I guess they managed to get their digs in via the dialogue. I also recall reading that Collins and Kiberd allegedly did not get along off camera, which also came to mind watching this because some of those scenes between Trevor and "Natalie" were frankly uncomfortable to watch. But I have to admit part of that discomfort was due to watching this almost a year into COVID, especially with that chickenpox plot device. In some ways, right now we are all Trevor and Janet, at once getting the sense that our loved ones have been replaced by hateful doppelgangers while resenting the universe for sending us a contagious disease on top of everything else. So they sort of tapped into something more emotionally real than many soap "newlyweds" have managed to reflect... Does anyone know if Nader was intended to be paired with Lucci all along, or was the show actually trying to make Dimitri and Natalie happen in order to move her and Trevor out of each others' orbits permanently? Unfortunately if that was the intent, I can't say Natalie and Dimitri and Helga at WildWind made for compelling viewing (I wished I'd skipped ahead to Janet's exposure or Will's murder). Those scenes also were like a parody of a soap opera, much like the evil twin trope, except there wasn't a character like Janet or Hayley around to provide MST3K-esque commentary. And speaking of Hayley, I dare say unlike any time I can recall in decades of watching various soaps—including when I was a teenager myself, eons ago—I actually found myself looking forward to a teen character showing up. Whatever it says about the storyline, Hayley was officially the smartest character living in that house, and she was actually fun. It's too bad most of what I saw of the way Hayley was written as an adult was so spiritless—clearly someone at ABC remembered that Ripa could do humor, so I don't know what happened there.

Thank you. Oh yeah, I can see why the network gave PFS more latitude than Munsteri. If anything, I'm just more surprised that they (temporarily) abandoned the idea of turning RH into a more generic show at all after the brief Kirkland era, as opposed to scapegoating Munisteri for the poor showing and immediately replacing her with a more established head writer from one of the more popular shows of the era. In fact, seeing those early '80s ratings—thank you for sharing those—and how GL was the highest rated non-ABC soap that one month when RH rode GH's coattails to the top four made me wonder... What might have been if ABC had hired Doug Marland as RH's head writer around that time? He was after all the one who first youthified GH and took it to the top of the ratings, and despite the fact that he apparently parted on not the best terms, he did come back into the ABC orbit not long afterward (to create Loving, because of course everything in the soap biz is connected). And his rate at that time must have been comparable to what PFS commanded. I feel less guilty suggesting this because Labine herself said later in life that she wished she'd taken a year or two off in the early '80s because she was burnt out: Marland is about the only writer from that period I can think of who could have maybe successfully integrated some of the elements ABC was looking for at the time, while juggling the Ryans and Coleridges as well. And perhaps he would have left behind fodder that Labine and/or Mayer might have enjoyed exploring when they inevitably returned. I know, it would be almost as unbelievable to watch Ryan aged to be older than Little John. Especially remembering that he was (indirectly) the cause of the two biggest fights that led to the breakup of Jack and Mary's first marriage while she was pregnant with Ryan. But maybe they could have at least cast someone who seemed less mature for his age, whereas Adams came across as a grown man, no way around it. Also, Ilene's return was intentionally timed with Jonno, Lizzie, and Owen's introduction, which just drew attention to the ridiculousness of him being her son at that point. Unlike so many soap relatives in recent years who rarely remember they're family because of lazy writing, I dare say that Delia and Little John barely crossing paths with each other once he grew up actually could have been justifiable, with the added benefit of helping downplay the age issues. Delia was never a good mother, and her son had plenty of reasons not to be that attached to her (or Frank, for that matter). That said, I do think what the Labines did with Delia and Jonno's relationship after they (re-)took the head writing reins—and inherited a canvas that included both characters very much involved in each others' lives—was interesting, and also represented an alternative direction in which their relationship could have belieavably gone. (In other words, Delia putting her manipulative tendencies to work to help her son, while conveniently going after someone she also had reason to dislike, i.e., Maggie and Jill's brother.)

I think she's not so much contradicting herself as admitting she wasn't an objective source. She was ordered to create a new, paint-by-numbers family, but admittedly had no inspiration to do so and maybe that was partly why it didn't work. The early Buchanans (and the Lewises, for that matter) seem like shameless Dallas rip-offs in some ways, but someone at least was excited to be writing for them and seemed to genuinely have a vision for how they could shake things up...I suspect that's partly why those families evolved and carved out niche roles for themselves in their respective canvases, and ultimately outlasted the primetime soap fad by several decades. Whereas the Kirklands were at least derivative, but there was nobody creatively invested in them. The quote also kind of dovetails with something Labine said in another interview decades later, about how she wished by the early '80s she'd admitted she was burnt out and taken time off. It seems like she acknowledged something had to give, and maybe new blood with a less jarring transition would have been more successful. Based on this great find from safe, I'm modifying my previous theory—my best guess now is that there were elements of the Kirklands that Labine and Mayer enjoyed writing (Leigh chief among them, which makes me all the more curious about whether Munisteri or whoever arbitrarily changed the name of the Kirkland daughter who was first introduced, or if the plan was always for Leigh to arrive last), but by and large their hearts weren't in it and when they returned it seemed easy enough to send most of the family packing and start fresh. I am curious how much the ratings actually dropped in 1982. It seems likely the show would have reached "an all-time low" by the end of the year barring a miracle, because the entire ABC lineup had enjoyed GH's lead-in audience during the Luke and Laura heyday (it's a cruel irony that the highest ratings of the show's history were probably during that putrid strike material in the summer of 1981) even though the long-term trajectory of soap viewership by that point was downward. It's hard to believe RH plummeted as drastically that year as it did in 1984, after the show had been completely gutted and lost its timeslot to boot. But of course ABC stayed the course for at least a year after that, with the even more radical changes they had implemented after Labine and Mayer left again. It seems like if ever there would have been the time to do a complete about-face, that would have been it—not in 1982 with the Kirklands or 1983 with the McCurtains. I suspect Labine being in the room in 1986-87 couldn't have hurt, plus the fact that she was welcome back in the room was probably itself an indicator that there was general interest in making the show better and reviving the core. Whether or not aging Little John so drastically and making Delia a grandmother (even with Yasmine Bleeth/Ryan, her surviving parent was muuuch older) was the best way to do that, at least they were trying. The treatment of Delia/Ilene Kristen was shameful (although I'll take Labine's word for it that it wasn't what she and Mayer wanted to do), and Pat and Faith did nothing for me, but aside from that I would say that brief 1983 period was a high point for the show, and not like any other '80s ABC soap I've seen. The dialogue was never better, and the characters had energy and life again. Even Pat and Faith were a visual cue that the show was looking like itself again, and Faith was at least being written as a functioning member of the Ryan-Coleridge circle. And I think Charlotte's mystery was genuinely exciting and she was the kind of new blood that could have actually helped the show, especially if she'd stayed at least long enough to overlap with Maggie, which I have to assume was the original plan.

Several years after Mary was killed off, Kate Mulgrew returned for a few episodes, in which Jack and Maeve imagined conversations with Mary that helped them make peace with her death. The impetus for everyone having Mary on the brain was supposed to be Jack's budding relationship with Leigh—whom they all discussed by name, and at length, in those Mulgrew scenes. Several news articles reported that those scenes were pre-taped almost a year in advance, before the show had even cast Leigh, apparently to accommodate Mulgrew's schedule. However, before those scenes could air, the show's creator(s) were pushed out, Leigh's family—which was also referenced in one or more of Mulgrew's scenes—debuted, and then said creators returned and promptly introduced Leigh at the same time they wrote out the rest of her family. And, in spite of all that, I dare say Mulgrew's scenes made sense, both in terms of character development and story continuity. I'm fairly certain the executive producer was replaced in the interim as well, but the editing looked consistent from a visual perspective as well.

These are great finds, especially that '82 cast photo. (Side note: How recently did lower-rated soaps still get swanky all-cast parties for off-year anniversaries?) Interesting that Claire Labine is standing with Haskell and Nancy Addison, though. It reminds me that the early recaps involving Hollis had him interacting with Jill. I wonder if Claire had more of that planned. Jill representing Hollis in his efforts to take Delia's restaurant—while Rae seethed at the idea of her secret first love spending time with Jill—would have made for lots of interesting scenes, at least. Or would Hollis have even had a past with Rae—and Kim, whom Labine and Mayer had just written out—or something else? I do remember, now that you mention it, Labine being credited in the 1982 St. Patrick's Day episode without Paul Mayer, but at the time I assumed she herself left not long after and the Kirklands must have arrived not much later in 1982, given that they were gone a year later. Knowing more about the timeline, though, I wonder if Labine would have been perfectly content to have Hollis and at least one daughter mixing it up with the original cast members. Perhaps jettisoning the Kirklands altogether was a consensus decision when both creators returned together—since Mayer had no hand in creating them and I'm sure neither of them were thrilled with their having completely taken over the show by the time they came back anyway. Labine seemed a bit more comfortable integrating the newer characters into her vision when she returned in 1987 as well. As far as the 1988 strike, this sort of confirms that Behr took over for Hardy midway through that. I've always been fascinated that Hardy lasted so long at RH, through multiple transitions, culminating in Claire Labine's final return, at which point he seemed to be on good terms with her—only to go onto his last job (I think?) at GH, which by most accounts was more in the vein of the material he produced at RH during Labine's absence. And that timeline means Behr only executive-produced the show for a few months when Labine was in the building, but they apparently had a very strong working relationship, though of course Behr was promoted from within the show so they presumably knew each other before that.

To be fair, Catherine Hicks took over the role just after Faith had a psychotic break and underwent intensive, in-patient psychiatric treatment (off-screen). There were many references to Faith having confronted and overcome her neuroses in that process. Labine and especially Mayer (who found a new career as a therapist) were big believers in psychoanalysis. Whether or not I 100% shared their perspective that the best therapist in the world could have ever turned Faith Catlin's interpretation of Faith into Hicks', I think Faith had an arc and it made sense internally, and I was willing to swallow disbelief because it suited the recast's strengths. Wasn't the rumor that Faith was supposed to be paired with Clem Moultrie, but the network balked at any interracial couple? I suspect, if Frank had also died in the first episodes as originally planned, Faith/Pat/Delia would have happened much sooner and Clem might have played a role similar to Seneca's with Jill. I guess I could see FC's Faith going for Seneca but I...wouldn't have wanted to see that, if you know what I mean. Her Faith was soooooo immature that the age difference would have been in some ways even creepier than Kim and Seneca's pairing. Anyway, I honestly never saw CH's Faith as smug. And I say this as someone who pretty much rooted for Delia no matter what she did to whom, and could always find a reason why whoever was calling her out was being a hypocrite. But my recollection is that Faith at that time was a decent human being and had every right to hate Delia, but didn't actually take much satisfaction in that.

I was reminded of Ron Hale's quote when watching that one late 1982 episode on YouTube, because to my surprised Roger was prominently featured in the Kirkland intrigue that day. I tend to think it came from a place of Hale being genuine concerned about the show's identity starting to erode, as opposed to pettiness and ego about being backburnered for a few months. Again, it was also such a blink of an eye period in the show's history that it seems impossible to know who would or wouldn't have had airtime if Munisteri's long-term vision had materialized. That said, I also get the sense, partly based on what I've read about Munisteri's later head-writing stints but also that one RH episode that's surfaced, that vision just wasn't her strong suit as a writer. Even in that one YouTube episode, I found myself scratching my head that a serial killer on Ryan's Hope was not treated as more of a BFD. It was seemingly nothing more than a plot device in the Siobhan/Joe/mob story, and the only people who cared were Siobhan's dueling protectors. I believe that was around the time DOOL (Pat Falken Smith's DOOL, because everything in the soap world is within six degrees of separation) got so much praise for featuring the first gritty—well, gritty for an '80s soap—serial killer storyline in daytime, and of course this was just five years or so after the Son of Sam murders actually happened in RH's real-life setting. It seems like blasphemy to speculate, but I am curious—morbidly perhaps—what would have happened if Munisteri had been paired with a more dynamic co–head writer from outside of the show...dare I say, maybe even PFS? I still would have wanted to see the shows' creators return eventually and go back to basics, but it might have been a more interesting detour. I suppose some iteration of Hollis must have been a Labine/Mayer concept, or at least a Labine concept (adding to the chaos of 1982, didn't Paul Mayer supposedly leave of his own volition a month or two before Claire Labine was forced out?), although I have my doubts about Amanda given the character was recast and then abruptly written out within a handful of months in 1983. I am forever fascinated by the bit of trivia that those scenes from Kate Mulgrew's return, in which she and Michael Levin spoke of Leigh Kirkland and her family by name, were supposedly filmed a year earlier, before the writing shakeup. Even though Leigh ended up being the last Kirkland to arrive, I wonder if she was actually supposed to be the main Kirkland all along and Munisteri changed the daughter's name to Amanda just because, ultimately giving Labine/Mayer the opportunity to revert to their original plan when they came back and finally get to use those pre-taped scenes. Oh, right, I forgot Jack's long-lost father turned out to be tied to the mob. I'm surprised that Labine said that, because what I've read of that story sounds like exactly the kind of far-fetched, stereotypical soap material she always fought so hard to avoid. And it wasn't just something that happened with random character(s) she inherited from another writer and could maybe have some fun dabbling in the melodrama of it all—the story seemingly cheapened/watered down Jack's nuanced and fairly original backstory, which dated back to the show's original bible. Not having seen any of this material play out on screen, I just assumed some scab writer said, "Oh, Jack always was so attached to that nun—what was her name again?—and we don't know anything about his birth parents. Wouldn't it be interesting if it turns out she was really his birth mother?" In any event, even if this was something Claire Labine might have come up with herself, I feel like half of the experience of seeing her tell the story would have been the dialogue, and if the 1981 episodes that aired on SoapNet are any indication the scripts in that period may have gotten very rough.

That I would have watched! Better yet, Maeve's partner from that 1982 dance hall story could have been a secretly rich Hollis Kirkland/Max Dubujak type—and all of his evil, uber-rich deeds were just part of his master plan to make Maeve his Queen of the Night. And if he'd had a history with Rae, to top it off... In all seriousness, though, I just rewatched that first Max episode and now that you mention it, he was pretty much laser-focused on Jill's slide. Despite the fact that they ended up crossing paths about as much as Stefano and Julie did; and, in that very same episode, Rae commented on the fact that Jill already had her hands full with drama. However, RH hadn't completely overhauled its writing team, not yet anyway (Judith Pinsker and Nancy Ford were still credited, among others), so Max's henchman at least made a show of talking up Jill's time on the Yale Law Review and her recent run for Congress. The implication being she might prove to be a thought partner or whatever, and Jill's photo (probably Nancy Addison's headshot IRL) conceivably came from whatever source prominent individuals willingly provided with such images pre-Google. Whereas it sounds like Stefano was just ogling photos of women taken without their consent based solely on their looks...ick.

Wow.

Virtually none, to my knowledge: Pat Falken Smith was credited as head writer in Max's first episode. His first scene, to @Neil Johnson's point, was very Stefano DiMera–esque (didn't PFS create him as well?) and indeed jarring—the same week Faith was written out and right before New Year's, driving home the point that it was a new era. Max was in some far-flung locale viewing photos of the Ryans, et al, on a slide projector while a henchman briefed him on their backstories. I think the Labines did bring Max back for a cameo as part of the story that introduced Barbara Blackburn's Siobhan, but that was around the time of the writers' strike—so who knows?—and anyway it was a means to an end: a way to kill off Joe for good in a way that brought closure to their story and freed Siobhan up for new relationships (just before the show got canceled, alas). I can see how Max would have seemed like the most expedient choice of villain. The one thing I will say is that if Joe had died saving Siobhan and/or other Ryans from a member of his own family, it would have hearkened back to Mary's murder, which in my mind was much more interesting history than what I've seen of the Max/Siobhan interlude. I believe at some point Joe had a cousin or something on Uncle Tiso's side, but I skipped most of the mid-'80s episodes that have been posted on YouTube, so I have no idea how he was written out or if it would have been at all plausible to bring him back. @j swift, the Dubujaks are definitely a good example of the future turnover I was thinking of that almost made the Kirklands seem down-to-earth by comparison. Again, I wonder if the fact that the Kirklands never ran their course may have indirectly led to the even more drastic changes that came later in the decade. ABC may have justified it because Labine/Mayer's return and their back-to-basics approach didn't improve the ratings, and it wasn't completely off-base to conclude that the Kirklands hadn't actually been around long enough to prove that the show couldn't be successfully reinvented for the Dynasty era (not that Labine/Mayer were given much time or likely full creative control either). You're right, the Dubujaks were way more omnipresent and omnipotent—and, presumably, even richer—than the Kirklands, by all accounts, and the acting was much worse. Although a part of me is surprised ABC didn't bring back Kimberly yet again in 1984 and try and center the show once more around her and her various long-lost relatives—either the Kirklands and/or Arley as the new teen ingenue, assuming she had aged at the same rate Kim's pregnancy had progressed. @amybrickwallace, I suspect the actors who returned for the finale did so mainly as a favor to the writers/remaining cast members, and I don't imagine there was much love lost on the Kirkland portrayers' part after they were let go, even if there was any interest on the part of anyone still working at the show. Jack and Leigh did mention Hollis Kirkland by name on-screen several days/weeks before the last episode, and I will say their absence from their wedding didn't seem glaring given the history.

For sure, I get that—but I could see how Zenk might have been annoyed, having played the initial story with Margo and James, if Barbara was treated as just a pariah when she tried to get Tom back. At minimum, I think Barbara could have helped justify it to herself because of that history, even if it was ancient history by that point. I guess part of my question was whether Margo's evolution had made sense and that history could have been presented as a major component of the triangle with Barbara and Tom, or if getting into that too much to justify Barbara's actions would have opened Pandora's box because Margo was essentially a different character who had never really been redeemed from her earlier behavior. That's kind of what I suspected, and it sounds like I was not entirely wrong.

Was there a layer to Barbara's initial transformation (in the triangle with Tom and Margo) where she justified her actions—and/or any other characters at least sort of sided with her—specifically because Margo had been Barbara's husband's mistress? I admittedly do not understand how Margo went from that to the HBS/ED scrappy heroine version, and I've seen very little of Barbara in vixen mode before she was sort of redeemed once James came back from the dead and put her through (more) hell. In fact, most of Barbara's mid-'80s villainy that I have seen involved Brian and Shannon, whom I don't believe had done anything to Barbara; Shannon just seemed to be replacing Barbara as the ingenue in off-beat far-flung caper stories, with Barbara now as the heavy. I could see how Zenk might have resented that. On the other hand, if part of Barbara's reasoning for going after Tom had been that Margo deserved what she got because she had been in league with James, who went on to ruin Barbara's life, it would be hard to fault her. The comparison between Zenk and Hubbard is kind of ironic, because by the time Sheffer arrived Barbara was presumably close to the age Lucinda would have been during the Marland era. Perhaps by that time, Zenk was content to be playing a lesser-written version of Marland's Lucinda, given what was happening to many of her contemporaries at that time. On the other hand, I wonder if some of Hubbard's aversion to Lucinda as the perpetual villain of Lily's stories was because sometimes Lucinda was being punished for actually doing something atrocious, but other times not so much. Lily's reaction to finding out about her biological parents, aka the first time she ran away, was so over-the-top—and her anger didn't seem to be focused on the things Lucinda had actually done wrong, like the shadiness of the adoption, given that she treated Iva equally abysmally. I can see how the aspect of Lucinda's role that involved walking on eggshells around Lily all the time might have seemed tedious, when there were other ways to create conflict between Lily and Lucinda.

Fascinating. Well, in those scenes when Holly moved in the house was...not that. Ross made a joke about Holly being alone in the middle of the woods like in a horror movie... Was it ever stated on-air that Holly's was supposed to be the same house where Reva lived, or is it possible they just reused the set?

When I think about everything I've read about the Kirklands, I have to remind myself how short-lived they really were. Especially Christine Jones, who, as you mentioned, came and went in three months. That's the kind of turnover we didn't start to see on soaps in the '90s and '00s. I loved most everything about Labine/Mayer's 1983 return (except Delia's material or lack thereof, likely because of ABC's influence) and on principle I'm opposed to the idea of any show's creators being forced out and a new core family being forced down everyone's throats. But especially in light of the turmoil that was still to come, a part of me wonders what would have happened if the Kirklands had just run their course for at least a full year. Presumably ABC would have introduced more of the types of younger characters that came in 1984 at the same time. Assuming it wouldn't have worked, maybe Labine and Mayer wouldn't have been driven away yet again after they ultimately returned. I too would love to see an episode from that dance hall story.

I'm making my way through those February 1991 episodes. I'm not sure how much of this was posted before, but I think I skipped whatever bandstandmike had posted from earlier that year and started with the summer—although I always meant to go back and see how Curlee/Demorest, et al laid the groundwork for what came later. I'm curious how far out in the middle of nowhere was Holly's (previously Reva's, I know) house supposed to be? The way her first visitors were carrying on was surprising to me because, in later years, it seemed to be as centrally located as anywhere else in Springfield, like when Roger managed to drag himself there with a gunshot wound and hide out in her basement. And Holly made a reference to setting up a fax machine and modem so that she could keep in touch with WSPR...was she supposed to be telecommuting or what? I guess she was 30 years ahead of us (and technology). In any event, I so hope there are more episodes coming and we get to see that party Nadine talked Holly into throwing there to introduce her to Springfield as the new Mrs. Billy Lewis.

Wow...I believe that Christmastime episode is the first one from the Kirkland era ever to be posted on YouTube (except for the early 1983 ones that came next in this batch and have also been posted previously, in which the newly returned Labine and Mayer ushered most of their family off the show and brought Frank back all in the same handful of gorgeously written scenes). I can't believe I wasn't aware this was on YouTube sooner. It's fascinating to see the original Ryan's Bar set with Maeve and Johnny on hand, even as the emphasis shifted to those infamous new characters. A part of me wishes someone had been able to make this show work without Claire Labine involved, even if it inevitably would have lost some of its uniqueness and the focus shifted, or at least expanded. This wasn't it, from what I can see, but it's probably the closest the show ever came to getting it right without either creator involved. They played around with shorter scenes and introduced more plot-driven/sensational elements (a serial killer targeting presumably never-seen-on-air sex workers...how early '80s), but still made at least a superficial effort to keep the core intact. The rest of me knows full well that even if new blood had somehow bought the show more time without completely gutting it, I would not have wanted to see what the network would have likely done to it in the late '90s, let alone later. I do recall seeing a video of those scenes of Faith grieving over Mitch before, and I've seen photos of him, but in my mind I must have confused him with the Jim Speed policeman character from a year or two earlier. What an odd choice of love interest for the show's then-longest-running 20-something romantic ingenue, at a time when new management was emphasizing youth and glamour. I wonder if they actually had some kind of offbeat chemistry that worked or...what. He seemed like a solid character actor FWIW, but then of course Christine Jones and Pater Haskell were certainly capable as well. A far cry from some of the atrocious acting I've seen when attempting to watch mid-'80s scenes. It almost seemed like they were just trying something slightly different in 1982, instead of actually ushering in a new generation.

I remember when Tolan's first episode was broadcast in the SoapNet run, she seemed to have more energy/personality than Mary had shown since Kate Mulgrew left. In hindsight, I believe the first Mary recast, Mary Carney, turned out to be the best of Mulgrew's replacements. But during MC's entire run she essentially seemed like a placeholder, and to be fair she never got much material to showcase her abilities and/or build a rapport with co-stars. I do recall Tolan flubbing her lines, and once Mary and Siobhan really started going head to head, Tolan's Mary had to go to places I'm not sure any performer could have made work, but in any case her take could be hard to watch. I can't believe Helen Gallagher would have recommended someone with no talent just because they were a friend, so it's a shame that KT wasn't able to sustain that initial promise—as they discussed on the reunion, not everyone was able to adapt to the medium, talent aside, and this was a particularly challenging role to try and make her own. (If she was in fact dealing with performance anxiety, I'm sure the mail and calls to the studio from viewers wanting Mulgrew back and/or rooting for Siobhan didn't help.) Speaking of the reunion, it was indeed great. The guests were a bit of an eclectic mix, i.e., Geoff Pierson had not overlapped with several of the other guests at all, and we didn't even get to see the comic relief of his reaction to how quickly his on-screen son grew up to be Ash Adams—it seemed they all knew each other already, presumably through Cali Timmons' remaining on the show for years after. But I do think GP was the best Frank, from what I've seen of his run over the years on YouTube, and he's often forgotten in the mix so it was nice to hear from him. I'm probably the only one who cares, but I wish he had been asked to speak about what, if anything, he knew/remembered of the original plans for the aftermath of the Charlotte Greer/McCurtain story that first introduced his rendition of Frank. The climax of that was what landed Frank in the hospital in the scenes GP and CT alluded to, which did indeed coincide with Maggie's introduction—because Charlotte disappeared and Maggie immediately replaced her as the main threat to Frank/Jill. After Delia, who had most often been the thorn in the Ryans' side, had been sidelined earlier in the year, I might add. It's been reported the network insisted on backburnering Dee, and it's hard to believe Labine and Mayer put all that time and energy into Charlotte's story and then decided on their own just to drop it overnight...had they stayed and been left alone, could the Ryans and Coleridges have headed into 1984 being forced to contend with Charlotte, Maggie, and Delia all at once?

I am watching Bryan Buffington's interview now, and I will most certainly catch Ellen Parker, et al ASAP. I will not criticize anyone who is doing this for free, and I am grateful, but I do have a dumb question: What is the rationale for streaming these live? It is sometimes nice to hear "so and so is watching and just tweeted that they miss you"—depending on who "so and so" is—but it doesn't seem like they're taking that many questions from the audience in real time. I haven't been able to watch any of them live, and I don't feel like I'm missing out on much other than having to wait. Is there a legal reason, something to do with the video component, because all of the interviewers appear to be archiving recordings of the full interviews for posterity? I remember Brandon of Brandon's Buzz never posted (audio) interviews live on his podcast—I assume so that he could edit—and in hindsight those seemed much smoother without technical interruptions when he finally dropped those. (I do hope Brandon is okay, BTW—I've checked his site repeatedly during this time hoping he would post some soap content.) With these Zoom reunions, even if someone isn't a professional video editor it seems like they could just start recording when everyone is truly connected and take a pause in the conversation when someone is having technical issues (or cut them out of the conversation and focus on the remaining guests) and get a tight hour or however long these beloved people are willing to offer. Fans could submit questions beforehand, etc.

Rewatching the 1991-92 episodes in the past few years, the main problem I had with how Alex was written wasn't so much 99.9% of what she said or did, but how most everyone reacted to her. In a sense, Mindy was the only other character who saw the writing on the re: Nick's parentage. Meanwhile, in a town full of otherwise smart people (at the time), most everyone else assumed Alex must be delusional for suspecting that two men who looked exactly the same and were allegedly born weeks apart were identical twins. They could have at least portrayed other characters as divided on the matter—and Nick living up to his reputation as a brilliant investigative journalist by having doubts about the people he knew as his parents—prior to the switched DNA test. At which point, the sensible people of Springfield could have deferred to science and started to distance themselves from Alex after she refused to accept the test results, but they would have still had it in the back of their minds that the whole thing was a bit weird and felt badly for her because it was understandable why she had gotten her hopes up. And/or there should have been a red herring that maybe Lujack and Nick were in fact twins, but neither one was Alex's—that Brandon or Alan or even Alex herself had been the one to steal one of the twins after Alex lost her baby and passed Lujack off as hers. Alex would have continued to insist Nick and Lujack were here sons, but it would have at least been a plausible explanation to others...especially Nick, who was predisposed to suspect rich and powerful people. Not to mention, it would have raised the stakes for Alex, who would have risked losing her claim to the memory of her late son, not just some stranger who looked like him and wanted nothing to do with her. The last month or two before BM left did go off the rails and probably did not bode well for future writing, with Alex risking her son's life by sending him to that made-up country in the middle of a war and trusting Roger to delay his evacuation in order to increase the likelihood of him and Eve rekindling their old flame. I tend to attribute that to Curlee being on leave, and JFP and Reilly being more willing to strain credibility to try out some of the plot devices they would become known for later in their careers—like Mindy using her complete lack of medical training to waltz into the hospital and switch the DNA test in a sequence that looked like the computer opening sequence from Doogie Howser. Up until then, the story could have been defensible as a realistic treatment of how believable characters with otherwise real-life problems would react to an overdone soap opera trope.

I love Patrick Mulcahey and his work on GL in particular, and I liked Buzz's character back in the '90s, but... I had never seen Buzz's very first episodes until YouTube, and of course it's impossible to watch that now without it being influenced by my opinions about Jill Farren Phelps's subsequent work, but it really seemed like overkill. And especially jarring coming right after Maureen's death—talk about armchair-Freudian interpretations, the theme of the show for a while there was essentially "Mommy's dead and the the absent Daddy from hell is in charge now." Buzz also could have had the story PM described without taking over the whole show. I liked Buzz/Jenna from what I saw in later months/years, but did JD really need to be thrust into a(nother) story with one of the show's leading ladies right off the bat? I know Jenna had Daddy issues of her own, and my teen self had a complete crush on Michael Zaslow in the '90s so I'm not being ageist, but at times it was just too much watching her make herself miserable because Buzz and Roger weren't paying enough attention to her. At least she could have told them both to go to hell and hooked up with Henry, and had some happiness. I also have to question how many cast members got to call writers and complain around this time—probably not just anyone who'd joined the show less than a year ago. Could Beverlee McKinsey? Or Ellen Parker?

So I was waiting to post this until I got all the way through to the end of the Who Shot Roger? story on YouTube, but now... I was struck by a scene between Henry and Billy just before Billy and Vanessa's wedding, and not just because nearly every scene with William Roerick was a gem. Billy was insisting that he was going to stay sober, and Henry was dubious that Billy wouldn't find some way to mess up again and hurt Vanessa. They almost seemed to already be foreshadowing Billy falling off the wagon and trying to kill Roger, even though Jordan Clarke was still on the show. I had always assumed that wouldn't have happened had Clarke not left so suddenly, but it crossed my mind a few times rewatching the early '90s episodes that maybe the writers really were playing the long game to lay the groundwork for one of the show's patriarchs becoming an attempted murderer all along. For example: when Billy almost strangled Roger at Hamp's restaurant after finding out Mindy had an affair with Roger. I guess as an adolescent in the '80s and '90s, I was so numb to graphic depictions of violence on-screen that it didn't really register, but that Roger/Billy scene was fairly disturbing, particularly for a soap. And it was surprising rewatching as an adult that none of the other characters were that taken aback by how out of control Billy was, when so much else about the writing and storytelling at the time made Springfield feel like a living, breathing, interconnected community. (If memory serves, the next morning Billy was threatening to sue Vanessa for custody of Bill because she went home with some guy.) Maybe that was the point all along...that the whole town contributed to Billy's downfall by turning a blind eye to those kinds of violent outbursts for all those years? I was particularly hoping to see Roger and Ed's fight at the country club to compare how that was handled, although if memory serves, Ed didn't hurt Roger nearly as bad as Billy had. (And, at the risk of posting this outside of the politics thread, Ed presumably didn't own a gun...) Does anyone else think the show would have "gone there" with Billy if they had any other choice?

That is all so fascinating re: Debra. Admittedly, she mainly caught my attention in these YouTube episodes because I knew Nancy Addison Altman from Ryan's Hope. A Donna Love knock-off is probably not an inaccurate description of Debra's character, but I enjoyed what I saw of her...and, honestly, I got the sense that several characters, particularly in the Alden sphere, were similar to ones I'd seen before on soaps. NAA just looked so great, and I kind of relished watching her have fun playing (what I took to be) a comedic, snobbish character. She was indeed great on RH, but Jillian Coleridge was sooo long-suffering —and also snooty in her own right, even though she never got called on it. I did think the scene with Clay's corpse was genuinely hilarious—which again made it so mind-boggling to me that Debra's few appearances in the subsequent weeks were demeaning and/or cheesy filler, when she was never once questioned about why she was hiding behind the coffin. I didn't get any hint of mental illness regarding Debra, but of course Esensten and Brown didn't have a track record of treating that topic realistically or compassionately at all. I did wonder about the backstory with Stephanie while watching the scene in which she inadvertently convinced Gwyn to go after Tess at the ad agency that led to the climax of the mystery. Steffi insinuated that Gwyn knew something about her that explained why she didn't have enough self-confidence to press charges against Tess That made no sense to me at the time, given that Steffi was not pressing charges so that she could (successfully) blackmail Tess, and I don't know that it makes any more sense knowing all this. But it was a well-done scene and made me think there was substance to Steffi's character.

That is terrible news, re: YouTube! I had discovered those early '90s episodes way late and was still a year behind the uploads—actually more, because I had hit a brick wall in June 1993. I wasn't enjoying Buzz or Nick this time around, and Barbara Crampton's Mindy never worked for me. Whereas in previous 1993 episodes there were other stories hitting their stride that held my interest, the focus on Hart and the lead-up to Billy/Vanessa's wedding all seemed so anticlimactic knowing as I did that Leonard Stabb and Jordan Clarke would both be abruptly gone in a matter of months for such unfortunate reasons. I got distracted with the Zoom reunions and, so help me, the Loving murders (if you had told me circa 1999 that I would pass up the opportunity to watch full episodes of GL written by Curlee/Demorest for something written by Esensten and Brown...). And I even skipped ahead a few weeks ago around the 4th to watch episodes from a year later with the return of the Bauer BBQ, and went down a bit of a rabbithole watching some surrounding scenes of Roger/Holly, Vanessa/Jenna, etc. The 1993 dialogue and acting (for the most part) were still topnotch, though, and I knew full well there was so much exciting story I actually care about coming up in a matter of weeks: David/Kat, Roger/Holly, Holly/Blake... I should have just skipped ahead. A year or so ago, I recall BandstandMike announcing in the description videos that he was making decades' worth of episodes available on a flash drive, but there was a hard stop by a certain date–which, of course, had long passed by the time I got up to whatever episode that was. Does anyone know if he ever revisited that offer?

Oh, for sure. But I would have traded the whole subplot—if you can call it that—of Debra blackmailing her way into a modeling job and everyone making fun of her during her photo shoot for just a few scenes in which she was considered a bona fide suspect.