Mitch

Yes.who else but McTrash would do that. I do have to say I did like Alex and Amanda bitching at each other..."PLEASE, get that WOMAN out of my house, there is not a drain in the mansion that hasn't been clogged by that hair!" Those were fun lines, although I remember Liz Keifer saying that she didn't like saying them. I wonder sometimes if Toby Poser was hurt by them as wasn't she biracial? I'm not sure. I thought she was great as Amanda, although I liked Kathleen too, when I went back and watched her run. By and large Amanda had so much wasted potential. I always thought she was bi-racial and would make a great Barbardos Spaulding ...(I thought the boring Vickie Rauch and E & B brought on was a boring as hell and did nothing..but no one really did anything at that time but Josh and Reva and Phillip and Harley and Cassie and Prancing Prince..) However, I am not sure if she is or not. The main problem is that sexually repressed (or frigid as they contantly said) and staid character became this over the top sex vixen with a smart mouth..so she would have worked better as another character then Amanda. ( I cant get the image of Cullen with that damn doll out of my head!)

Yes.who else but McTrash would do that. I do have to say I did like Alex and Amanda bitching at each other..."PLEASE, get that WOMAN out of my house, there is not a drain in the mansion that hasn't been clogged by that hair!"

The Amanda story was a victim of interim writers. It started with Conforti and Miller and Roger asking Vanessa why Alex always has the upper hand with Alan, and even if he is right he backs down from her. So it was a story about Alex having something over Alan's head...(though in the past Alex won as she was slicker and more on the side of "right," then Alan, and they also went back and forth on winning...) Then it came down to as Marj would say in interviews "That G**D*** bust" of Brandons with something hidden in it and then it was the birth certificate where they wrote Amanda's mother's name wrong. Amanda as Bradon's father could have been good, as that was the original intro of Amanda that she MIGHT be Brandon's daughter, but it was screwed up from the start and if it was true, Alex needed to be there to play the story out. I love Toby's Amanda as I hated the original drippy Amanda. I know it didn't make any sense as Amanda was suddenly younger with a new personality. I wish that Poser was another character, with her exotic-y looks she could have been Victoria's younger sister or something.

I HATED Holmes as Tom. Who in their right mind would go from smoking hot Marx...who was the perfect Tom...(all American, nice, sexy a solid Hughes but not uptight, ) to Holmes, who at his best was sharp and humorless and at his worst, seemed downright priggish and unpleasant. Dolan was a terrible Margo and agree, I like HBS the best...Colin was my first Margo but she was so brash and in your face sometimes it was annoying...(and no one, not even Lisa ever commented on it..) Though Colin and Deas had great chemistry.

I happened to see Margaret Colin's Facebook page as I was goofing around at lunch and she looks great but also looks like a nice Irish mom (that is a compliment.) I thought then it would have been great, if they could do it, during the last five years or so to bring Deas over from GL and bring Colin back as Margo. If PG wanted to show to survive long term it would have been a good move as Bob and Kim were not getting any younger and the show needed another tent pole Hughes couple. Dolan and whatshisface never gave out any warmth at all so they never could have done it...(HATED that guy as Tom.)

What year was this? Had to be 83 right? The Dobs are gone as it seems the whole canvas was being used at least more then when they were there and the John/Bob feud was reignited. God..that Craig/Betsy/Steve thing went on forever didn't it? I know we were supposed to think Richard was James but who was he really? Maggie stared having the boring baby obsession soaps love so much, Frank was hot and the best Andropolous?I hated Jeff and lo and behold, Lyla gets h hot boyfriend and gets to call Betsy a tramp!!!! This is the most interesting that drip ever was.

Yes, Marland's original idea was to bring Chuckie back...but when he discussed it with Fulton she said, "Oh, Nancy Hughes buried him and whomever Nancy buries stays dead!" I don't know if that was true as Fulton is a good storyteller. I don't think it would have been too farfetched...with James back from the dead every six months, etc. That would have been great if they brought him back with a returned Michael Shea (complete with plastic surgery of course) the original James Stenbeck. Much better he as an angry teen (Shea filled his head with stories about his slut of a mom) then boring Scott or John again finds he has a child and its boring Duke. Shea could have come back and worked at the Earl Mitchell goofy center and stated wooing Lisa...( he would be the total opposite of her usual, she would think he was a Doctor donating all his time to the poor so she would be giving him money to help that but of course he would be pocketing it...) The problem with Scott is that he was GL/Will on downers and Tom was being played by the bland and unpleasant whatshisface so there were no fireworks and Fulton had to work overtime to put any energy into those two.

No she was sleeping with both. Knowing TPTB they would have made it a Spaulding (just like having Beths kid turned out to be Alan..EWWWWW) but it works better as a Bauer. Having a bad Bauer would have been fun and ultimate revenge....Roger would steal Holly from Ed (as she would become more like him and I love MG when she is being the power bitch not the poor heroine) AND steal his kid too...all from beyond the grave! Then the Rick/Bad Bauer story would have wheels as they take on the Ed/Rog roles.

Correct. Natalie's return in 1981 was horrid. As Mitch states, she had zero interaction with Tom. I remember watching and thinking, "What's the point?" The same was true when the Dobsons brought in Gary Hudson as a recast of Rick Ryan. It was a nice idea, but never really went anywhere - plus, Hudson was also miscast as Rick (in my opinion). Hudson was hot though! But yea he couldn't act and did he even have scenes with Bob or Kim? I remember a stilted scene with Barbara....(who you would think would have been thrilled to find her long lost brother...) and she mentions have you talked to "Bob Hughes," yet (I always think is so weird that charcters tack on last names, as if he wouldnt know which "Bob," she was talking to.) Hudsons acting talent wasnt as big as his chest though. ATWT was just so weird back then, no one was connected so bringing back old characters was useless as the Dobs had three character groups (Ariel, John,Dee, James, Babs, Gunner) and(Steve and Betsy/Craig) and (Tom/Margo) and no one else got written for as those character rarely interacted with their own families. Zarish to give her her due, knew how to trade bitchy remarks and keep up with Fulton so she would have worked as someone other then Natalie.

I always say this when the MZ story comes up..it WAS terrible how MADD mismanaged the whole thing. However, I do agree that it would have been both hard for the viewers to see Zaz/Roger fail as it would have been to write and produce it...( patients have good days and bad days the disease progresses differently on people, how do you write for something months in advance..etc. ) Also working with a populaiton that is older, I know it is hard for people to let go even when they are physically unable to do so. The respectfull thing to do was to write Roger out for a bit (at first they did not know what was wrong with Zaz) until they found out what he was looking at. It could have been a cryptic goodbye from Roger to Holly. I would have brought him back as maybe having Holly and Blake be his leg men as he proceeds to wreck his final revenge on the Spauldings by doing a complete takeover and kicking them out. So he could have a scene with both Holly and Blake talking about the illness, this would cause problems for both Holly and Ed (during that time I would put them togther) and Blake and Ross. The twist would be that Holly would LOVE the power and Blake wouldn't ...she finds her happiness with her family which she loosed (for a time) . Holly would own part of Spaulding and constantly battle Alan and Alex...(she had good chem with Ron Raines) and after Zaz and Roger died I would proceed with the Sebastian story only this time it would have been a kid that Roger secretly adopted and schooled to be as ruthless as him.and that kid would have been Ed and Rita's kid...the ultimate revenge on Ed..a son that becomes Roger and HATES every everything Ed stands for.

I never like Barr that much, she was just too "ABC'ish," to me...but they did indeed consider her for a recast Annie Stewart right before that other ABC actress took over. The Natalie return the Dobson's did was so stupid. She was married to some greek tycoon film producer and she came to town to shoot a movie in Oakdale. She was tied to the Andropolous' as Steve stole her husband's necklace or something (I am remembering a "Green Fire," thing but have no idea if that was it...) and that is how she found out that Jay had kicked the bucket. The part was miscast...(no offense to Zarich but she was not a soap vixen..) and she didn't interact with any of her old family besides bitchy barbs with Lisa, and that was that.

She was…her marriage to Steve was the second highest rated wedding only behind Luke and Laura. Yeah but many of you longterm ATWT are debunking that on this thread. I thought the whole Stewart family was beloved as they were second to the Hughes but again this thread and recent posts say otherwise. There's no doubting that Meg Ryan was very popular as Betsy. Not immediately (she said that at a fan event the guy who played Steve asked everyone to raise their hands if she was their favorite Betsy, and pretty much no one did, as Suzanne Davidson's Betsy had been very popular with fans), but in time. Even now I've seen people talking about how they loved her. I wasn't watching at the time so my experience is mostly just clips and episodes. As for the Stewarts, I think they were important to viewers, but were marred by poor writing, lack of depth, and many, many recasts. The only Stewart kids who seemed to have something of a following were the Dans (mainly John Reilly), Ryan's Betsy (I preferred Lindsay Frost but I get the feeling many viewers always preferred Ryan) and Jacqueline Schultz's Dee (who was, IMO, very poorly written - Schultz eventually quit for that reason). And then I guess Emily, to a point. I thought John Colenback (the first adult Dan Stewart) had a pretty strong following, especially during the late 1960's/early 1970's when the Dan/Liz/Paul/Susan saga was in play. I still think it was a mistake to kill off Dan in 1979. Didn't they kill him off b/c they said they had nowhere else to go with the character? They got all they could out of him? But what do you think they should've/could've done with the character had he stayed? Good question, and it ties in to what Paul stated above. Paul is right - Colenback's Dan didn't really have the same chemistry with Hayes that Reilly did. With that said, I would have started a Bob/Kim/Dan triangle immediately after Betsy found out that Dan was her dad instead of her uncle. Bob could have been her doctor during that deafness Betsy had (I think it was deafness), and Betsy could have bonded with Bob in a fatherly way (since she would have trust issues with Dan). Bob and Kim are drawn to each other again, creating conflict between Bob and Dan. Heck, I would have brought back Susan and Emily to make things even worse for Dan's situation. If they needed to get rid of Dan, they could always have Dan leave town healthy, and perhaps bring him back later if necessary. They always kept Kim and Bob apart during this time, and I hated Dana and Nick. But, the SORAS-ing of Dan was always an issue back when Irna first did it in 1966. Its shifted the structure of the canvas quite a bit. Dan was supposed to be more of a peer to Tom Hughes, but instead was now a peer to Bob (instead of David being Bob's peer), Ellen was now a peer to Nancy, etc. Good point, the death of Dan really could have fixed that...as at that time Ellen and David had age appropriate daughters (sort of). At least they let Ellen out of her bun when David came back to town with amnesia but by that time Nancy was gone and Chris was sidelined, and they should have played heavily in that as parent figures to David and Ellen.

She was…her marriage to Steve was the second highest rated wedding only behind Luke and Laura. Yeah but many of you longterm ATWT are debunking that on this thread. I thought the whole Stewart family was beloved as they were second to the Hughes but again this thread and recent posts say otherwise. There's no doubting that Meg Ryan was very popular as Betsy. Not immediately (she said that at a fan event the guy who played Steve asked everyone to raise their hands if she was their favorite Betsy, and pretty much no one did, as Suzanne Davidson's Betsy had been very popular with fans), but in time. Even now I've seen people talking about how they loved her. I wasn't watching at the time so my experience is mostly just clips and episodes. As for the Stewarts, I think they were important to viewers, but were marred by poor writing, lack of depth, and many, many recasts. The only Stewart kids who seemed to have something of a following were the Dans (mainly John Reilly), Ryan's Betsy (I preferred Lindsay Frost but I get the feeling many viewers always preferred Ryan) and Jacqueline Schultz's Dee (who was, IMO, very poorly written - Schultz eventually quit for that reason). And then I guess Emily, to a point. I thought John Colenback (the first adult Dan Stewart) had a pretty strong following, especially during the late 1960's/early 1970's when the Dan/Liz/Paul/Susan saga was in play. I still think it was a mistake to kill off Dan in 1979. Didn't they kill him off b/c they said they had nowhere else to go with the character? They got all they could out of him? But what do you think they should've/could've done with the character had he stayed? I think they killed him off as that was the start of the Fred Bartholeme (producer) get rid of the "old" people thing. I do agree though, what to do with Kim and Dan next? Luckily back in those days they didnt keep breaking super couples up and putting them together like Carjack, Lily and Holden, Josh and Reva...etc.

Personal opinions vary! Betsy and Steve swallowed the show whole, even Marland said that...but I think a lot of people remember the second Betsy, Meg Ryan's version was brain dead but people must have loved them.

I found ALL the Stewarts except for SexBombEmily to be dull. Now that you mention it David is very moody, but I thought that made him a bit more interesting and also set him apart from always cheerful always stalwart Bob. David was the Ed Bauer kind of patriarch...they should have let him be a drunk or something fun..though I did like that he was bagging whatsherface from AW but he had to have amnesia to even do that. It was weird that the Dobsons thought they could do away with Nancy and Chris and replace them with David and Ellen..David was morose and Ellen was weak and dull as dishwater. God, I forgot how much I was annoyed by Ryan's Betsy, morosely wandering around Spain....I love how she never had to attend college and no one seemed concerned about her having a career..she was like a heroine from the 60s..it was all about her man and her baby.

From what little i've seen of Gunner i'm not impressed. I Did like the interaction between Barbara, Gunner, Lisa, Whit, Kim, Bob and Miranda. It's so strange to me seeing Bob married to someone besides Kim. I did like the Betsy/Steve/Craig/Diana quad. I loved seeing the passion that MC and JD brought to Tom and Margo. It's really sad that soaps today don't have the money for a location shoot or to use music. Hated Gunnar and his weird mouth...never understood his popularity. The Babs/Gunnar group together was good in that it got everyone together, which ATWT did not do well at this point. I just kept watching that and imaging what Marland would do for it, as it is comparable to everyone coming to Bob and Kim's house when something happened.... the Dobsons make it look like they just were trying to burn off gaurantees (and one of the reasons Fulton left) and it is ackward. Marland would have had Lisa stopping by to discuss Tom with Bob, and Miranda would have her stay for dinner, and Lisa would say it was a good time to get Bob and Whit to sit down at a table, and KIm would be mentioning Betsy and Craigs problems,etc. The writers here focus on one storyline issue a scene. Princi could have been interesting as a character with an edge..maybe a Lucy like business woman. Instead any conflict is ignored by having her being a high society housewife. Bilan was so boring, the Dobs created these boring young characters like Nick's stepdaughter who disappeared quickly. A good storyline would be that Miranda and Whit were exlovers or lovers currently behind Bob and Lisa's back...(Bilan a Whit daughter would freak Diana out) Of course, they would have to have a recast Whit, this guy is gross. The Tom and Margo scenes are as fresh as when they are first aired and I HATED Deas on GL. The two of them are so intimate in this...its like a real couple discussing a really stupid misunderstanding. Sets are ugly...(weird to see Kim in that house set which would be iconic with she and Bob..) and yes, Kim and Lisa's hair..what the freak did Fulton think..it made her look 20 years older.

I think it was stupid that Fulton decided to leave when she did. I didn't like the Dobbies but I think they wrote for her..she wasn't the end all and be all of Oakdale but they created a whole family to surround her..it was her choice to start having Lisa act like an airhead and dying her hair to get attention,etc. Sometimes I wonder if these people have anyone who tells them..."Are you crazy leaving???"

Yea, but we all know Lisa liked her bed time activities and most of the guys that she was with were attractive in a very staid kind of way..( I remember my aunt being all hot for Grant Coleman!!!!) The Dobsons were trying to do a Santa Barabara thing with the strong man married to the sassy lady who didn't take it and I think it would have been fun to watch if Fulton stayed and they had recast Whit with an attractive guy..(Whit was working class self made...they could have found a more rough hewn guy like that who would have rubbed all of Lisa's family and friends the wrong way.) Lisa of course meddling between Whit and his kids and his business...(I remember he didn't like Bob and was friendly with John) the set up was good. Why the hell did Fulton pick that hair color and cut, it made her looks old and uptight.

This is a pretty good episode love Kim's and Betsy's mother and daughter relationship ATWT had a lot of strong female characters during this era. Lisa's pairing with Whit comes across as so odd. If only ATWT had cast a more attractive actor, I can't see Lisa riding that decrepit toothy donkey.This Tom and Margo had a real spark to them something they lost over the years due to bad writing.Ellen seems to have been used more in the early 80's then she ever was by Marland. I liked the flashbacks of Ellen finding John's'' dead body''. I know this was a rocky era for ATWT but the writing was vastly superior to most of today's soaps. Not bad..I do like Maggie giving it back to Steve...I HATED Steve and everyone just coddled him....(because he was the STAR of the show or so he and the Bunim thought) Funny seeing Kim not being the Kim of "Toots," fame. I can't see her letting ANYONE grab a phone out of her hand. Fulton left right after this as Whit's bday party (where she hit him in the puss with a cake) was Diana's intro. Too bad, would have been interesting to see more of Diana's animosity and Lisa trying to handle a "bad girl,' like she was. But you are correct...the Whit actor is HORRIBLE and gross, I can't see Lisa being attracted to him. The show was good, the only problem was the lack of connectivity and family ala Marland, and that Nancy and Chris were shuttled out of town. So easy to incorporate them here, with Chris talking to Maggie, and Nancy giving advice to Lisa on how to handle her vixen step daughter .

Some of the characters you described were post Dobsons Lily, Lucinda, Dusty Marcy and the Kirk Jay, Fanny thing was I believe post Dobs, but they may have generated the blue print for it. The "Lisa is den mother to the town," and kidnapped came after the Dobs definatley...(they wrote the original Lisa/Diana thing to be antogonistic, which could have been good, but BVF did not have the same "bite," Fulton had and just always came off as disinterested and snobby, which Lisa never was. I like Lisa best when Fulton came back and before Marland wrote her. She was in the middle of a lot of stuff, and was motherly and loving but still had her Lisa sting going. I liked that Whit's kids all thought of her as their mother and that she would nose her way into their lives but they liked it. Marland kept up the Lisa mothering the lost children of Oakdale but it wasnt the same and it seemed more removed..almost like Lisa paled in comparison to Kim and the "family" the Hughes had. I liked that Lisa had her weird untraditional family. I HATED it when Hogan took over and by the end of the show Lisa ended up almost a pathetic lonely spinster character, which she never was. I wish Marland had kept her step family or Hogan would bring back Diana as a vixen to compete with Carly (sorry people, I think the Carjack era was so boring and repetitive and I liked original recipe Carly until she became the Reva of the show. ) Of the Dobson stuff I liked the "Stenbeck Heir," storyline (hated Gunner though) but James was kind of a dumb villain, would have been nice to have shades of grey on him, and that was really the only besides the tedious Steve/Betsy stuff. The "Who killed John," storyline was I thought really their best work on ATWT, it involved almost everyone and spoiler free time back then the audience thought John was really dead.

"I always want to see more of the Dobsons run, yet I also don't, because what I have seen is...not good, and is quite dull and jarring to ATWT's core identity. It plays like a 40-year old who suddenly starts dressing like an 18-year old to feel hip. I can see why viewers, and Helen Wagner, headed elsewhere (although it may have been P&G, not the Dobsons)." I think this was the most accurate description of the Dobson's ATWT (and most soaps that try to be something they are not.) The Dobsons destroyed the family and community connections on the show, sidelined Chris and Nancy, obscured the Hughes family...but the show was still darkly lit, slow...and kind of depressing...(it took YEARS to resolve the Bets/Steve thing.) focused on like 5 characters. Meanwhile, some of their heroines were old hat, such as the aforementioned Betsy who had no life outside of pining for Steve or being married to Craig or having Danny as a baby. The show was still creaky. I think the main problem with the McColls is that Whit was a terrible casting choice (I think he was a crony of the Dobsons) with his bad toup and dentures, it was gross to see him with Lisa...and neither Fulton or Von Furstenberg had chemistry with him. I think Brian was an ill conceived character and really only Diana and Kurt worked on any level.

When she first came onto the show, she was reformed and was now a no nonsense nurse. It was the flashbacks that showed that Lyla was a former slut, golddigger (as John would taunt her for going after a Hughes.) Her slut genes rolled down to her kids as you could see her being strict with Cricket (the horrible Lisa Loring in an Erica Kane wanna be role, but it could have been a good character) who was a wild before she too melted into the wood work (to match her acting.) Cricket even went to the Masked Ball NOT wearing the slip under her dress that Lyla insisted on! (the scandal) Lisa on her gossip rounds in the hospital told people about it and she and Lyla had a fight about it...something that Sword's Lyla would never do. I liked the first actress who did seem like she had it rough and was a bit tough but Hastings hated her right?

I don't know, considering their history a Lyla and John reunion would have been weird. Original recipe Lyla (the first actress, who I am sorry, played her with more spunk then the wet rag that the next actress played) was a slut who was getting it on with John in a bid for a social climb and then dumped him when someone with money came along ( I would have loved to have seen what the Dobsons were attempting to do with the Governor storyline...the man who Lyla dumped John who eventually dumped poor preggers Lyla, became Gov of the state and John were taunt her about him but that was dropped.) We knew she was a slut because the flashbacks would show her in a sarong type thing with a drink in hand dancing with John (the shame...) Ann Swards Lyla came in and with her wet rag potrayal (she made Ellen look interesting) that was dropped.

If anyone watches "Once Upon a Time," (I know, I know, its a guilty pleasure...actually a soap opera about an extended family that just happens to involve Snow White and the Evil Queen) the character of Zelena could be Lilith's twin sister...tall red head with an accent, who most importantly is bat [!@#$%^&*] crazy and loves to chew the scenery while telling everyone beforehand (in the form of a gloat) exactly what supremely stupid and over convoluted evil scheme she will be up to next. Since Once owe's much to soaps Zelena is actually the Wicked Witch of the West who just happens to be, due to convoluted plot points, the Evil Queen's illegitimate sister who, tricked her boyfriend into impregnating her by magically impersonating the guy's thought to be dead wife (who actually is dead, because, you guessed it, Zelena killed her. ) The posters on the Once board HATE her but I love her similarity to Lilith and that the writers have basically embraced soap insanity and over the top storylines.. I almost swear that they are doing a homage to Lilith. I would know for sure if Zelena produced Robin's shrunken head to taunt Regina with (which, since this is Once, the Blue Fairy or someone would come up with a dumb spell to revert his to his old self.

Charmane!! I love her I just wish they had a scene with her and Von Furstenburgs snobby, snotty Lisa...( she and Fulton's Lisa would have tag team insulted Lucinda.) James was already tired by this time with his ridiculous schemes..I just wish they had fleshed him out better, but boy was he HOT! I hated Gunner and his weird mouth and what the hell did he do for a living? The Dobson's are gone and the show is more multigenerational here with Charmane butting in on the kids, Bob and Frannie, and David and Betsy..(forgot about that perm she had.) This Frannie and Hastings had great chemistry...you really beleive he is a single father raising this kid on his own and that she loves her dad. I never felt that same connection with the rest of the Frannies as i think Marland built up more of a Kim/Frannie thing. The show seemed to morphing and in a wierd transitional phase from the Dobson's Tom/Margo/Barbara/James/Dee/John overload to a more family various people getting the spotlight Marland years.