Mitch

I liked Rose, she was funny and she was one character who could put Lily in her place, she was actaully one of the few "good," characters who could ever diss Lily and get away with it. I like that Lily finally had another female confidant and I like that it showed the loving side of Lucinda that she took Rose in as her own. I kind of agree with Byrne, Lily is the character who should have been killed off, by someone pissed off that the whole town is forced to celebrate her birthday! What bugged me more is that they brought in Rose's dad and tried to pair him up with Nancy Hughes...what Nancy is a cougar all of a sudden. Would have made sense if Rose was raised by her grandfather but come on!!! Carl there are no words for the Ratay comment!!!

I always thought that is exactly what should have happened, that Reva is found living it up with Kyle on some island somewhere (not San Crud) where he controls his business interests from afar. I can see why they had Reva in a "country," situation, after Ghost Reva we needed to know she was alive and breathing and RealReva was such a robust character it made sense to have her filmed in the sunlight. The Amish thing was stupid. I also think it would have been great to bring in Kyle as the big bad. I think he was popular but RR's Alan just sucked from the get go. A Kyle return taking on Lewis Oil and Spaulding, making Josh and Alex form an uneasy alliance to protect their interests and their families would have been great. Plus Reva having a few more kids with Kyle after the fact. I really dont know how there could have been a Kyle/Reva romance after that though, as how could Reva forgive him for not telling her about her kids? Maybe after Reva finds out she leaves Kyle and moves to the Jessup farm to gradually get her memory back and take care of herself. Kyle comes blazing into town ready for revenge and forms an alliance with Roger to take on Josh and Alex, with Reva stuck in the crossfire. Alex never told H.B. the truth. One thing that was consistent was the Alex was both trying to protect Alan and using the truth as leverage (remember on soaps when characters had warring motivations and were not good or evil but something in between?)

No I have never seen it but yes, that was an awful thing for them to have Alex do, I can't believe that Pam Long did that, she usually kept her characters in check, or if not they had to pay. Sally was annoying as hell so I suppose the audience didnt car..I know I didnt. And actually, it wasnt as if Alex kept her heart medicine from her , she just did nothing. They actually should have brought Kyle back right after J and R were remarried before San Crud, and had it come out that in the mix up the real father of Marah WAS Kyle. Alan could be shipped to prison for forgery and Kyle could be the big bad in town.

Actually, he and his family did go down in the plane crash, though Kyle survived. At this time Reva and Josh thought that Marah was Kyles (and to help reinforce that Alan switched the paternity tests at Cedars to make it look that way though he told Reva that he had switched the tests to make it look like Josh was the father.) Reva was afraid that the loss of his son would make Kyle come after Marah..Josh was with Sonni (and Solita!!!) at this point so she sidled up to Alan so she would have some protection from Kyle. Ms. Sally found out the truth at Sonni and Josh's wedding and had a heart attack during a confrontation with Alex over it. In a weird scene we watched Alex let Ms. Sally die, without getting help..to keep Alan's secret (and Bev thought Alex was bad later on???) I loved the show at that time.

oo. Who was Janice, that blondie bouncing around in the Snyder kitchen. Its funny, you can see Marland was getting burned out on ATWT, he was just repeating Holden/Lily with Emily etc. I miss the days of Bob and Kim's exposition scenes...("Well, as I was in the express line at Aunt Mary's Shop n Go, I happened to bump into Emily, who was buying a pregnancy kit with a coupon...Gosh darnit I knew I had one, as I was worried that Lien might need it after her one night stand with John's kid. Anyway, Emily swore me not to tell Brock. By the way did you know that Brock is considering going into business with Damien. That might cause a stir as they were both involved with Emily who now may have a baby on the way. Oh forgot the napkins. By the way, Ellen told me that she might go into making decorative napkins for BRO as now Carly has left....." ) Marland wrote them so well and no wonder Bob and Kim became the center of the show, Hastings and Hays NEVER looked bored with providing support and you feel that they really are invested in not only serving ice tea, but if Lily will be singing tonight at the Falcon club!!! Judson Mills had to be blowing Marland or someone else, he always looked slightly, uh, like he took the short bus to school!

That probably was Wheeler's inspiration for her "vision," "Hey guys this is rooted in history! We will have people wandering around town, uh, except there will be an apparent reason for that, and uh, it will be anytime of the year, not on a nice fall day, and uh, we will be shooting up Reva's nostrils, and if we are lucky, maybe get more then a third of her head in the shot, and uh, here is the kicker, instead of that boring old soap music, we will have our own "House Band," uh which actually is a bunch of musicians who cant get hire anywhere else doing bad knock offs of songs over ten years old!" I hated Kyle..I think it was Larkin Malloys flaring nostrils that threatened to engulf anyone he had a scene with. And the fact that he had no other purpose then to be Reva's boyfriend du jour and be an uninteresting amoral bastard.

I think that Parker was an interesting choice as she was so different then Dolan. It took a while to get used to her but looking back on it now I see its a wise move. Maureen would never have become the "Bert Bauer," of the show with Dolan in the lead (and Long writing her.) Watching Dolan on ATWT she just lacks the warmth to be the core maternal character of the show. I think it was also an interesting choice to have Maureen decide to be a stay at home mom. Not only was it stupid that she was able to be the CEO of a hospital (after never going to school ) but it made sense that Maureen, who had to help Bea raise the kids because Bea was single mom trying to get by, would find herself financially able to stay at home, and choose to do that. It was refreshing for a soap, who always had to have women in "power positions," show a "real," looking and acting woman, make a "real," choice. I just wish that Long in her desire not to have more Bauers, would have allowed Mo to be fertile, or they reversed that and let Mo and Ed have more kids, to fill the Bauer void (always thought that it would have been more interesting to keep Mo alive, have her leave Ed, return to the Boardinghouse, run it, and she would be the one to adopt Peter. Eventually she would reunite with Ed and imagine him finding out his son is Roger's kid, much more interesting then Faux Billy.

If only Peapack looked like that!!! And only could RealReva (as opposed to post resurrection Reva) be dumped on her wedding day to wonder around dressed up like Scarlett, to be run over by a car, only to wake up in the arms on hottie Josh...(only to dramatically faint again!!!) Love the over the top Babs song playing in the background as if we needed that!

I think he just finished it up. It was started by other writers. I think he was only there until Dec of 78 or 79 and then the Dobsons took over in Jan? Someone had a synopsis of what happened month to month of that year, and its interesting to see the transition.

And it was a car accident right? Could the driver in the other car have had a kid in the car and its really that kid who died? But how would Shae have gotten to him and spirited him away? Man, it must have been fun, despite the usual network b.s. to be a soap writer during the hey day of the 70s and 80s. Sitting around a room with other writers trying to make sense of something that couldnt possibly have happened in real life! The Dobson's time would have actually been a good time to do this, the Lisa Grant thing had gotten stale by then (how many times could a nutty woman get in between those two, by the time the Dobson's had Joyce faking dying, Grant was a certified idiot...Lisa and Grant had to have been the Lily/Holden, Carly/Jack of their time, viewers going "Again with this [!@#$%^&*]???" ) and the show needed an infusion of young blood, and with GH riding high in the ratings every show wanted a moody anti hero heart throb (not that I could ever understand how Geary was ever a heart throb...) so an angry kid, manipulated by his evil father would have been great then. And any kid that was the product of Shea and Lisa would have had to been a handful. I wonder why they killed him off back then? Seems a bit of a mean thing to do, have a kid die. Maybe to punish Lisa after all of those years of "kicking up her heels," ? She did seem to mellow after that.

Fulton said for years she asked if they would let her mention Chuckie...come across a shoe in a drawer and she would have a moment, which would have been great and given more depth to a character that lesser writers tried just made into a fluttering soul. I always thought that her relationship with her stepson Kirk would have been a good time for them to mention that she would have a son his age. I wish that Marland had brought the McColls back recast Kirk and Diana. There is a scene on You Tube of Lisa right after some goofy kidnapping she was saved from and Marcy and Kirk are in the kitchen telling Lisa that they love her and she makes the place a home. Nice for Lisa to have a family of her own. Anyway, Marland's original idea was to have Chuckie really be alive, (would have been interesting, maybe Shae wasnt really dead and he faked Chuckies death to punish Lisa, so Chuckie could have been trained to hate Lisa all these years...hey thats a good story!!) But Fulton said that it was impossible as Nancy buried him, and anyone who was "buried by Nancy Hughes stayed dead!" LOL.

I remember listening to my yell at the TV during that time (I was forced to have quiet time at 12:30 after my lunch so my mom could not miss a minute of the show and not miss seeing "What that damn Lisa is up to,") at Dr. Shea...so he must have been a corker. I wonder why they didn't bring him back from the dead, seemed a totally Marland thing to do. Lisa going to some South American country to try to find Scott, has an accident and is taken to some shack where doctors could treat her. As she wakes up out of her coma she sees a face,"Hello...Liiiisssaaaa!" fade to black for Friday cliffhanger Interesting. That was the year after Wagner left the show and they bumped McClaughlin to recurring, and then just never mentioned him again. I always thought it was a jab at the powers that be and now I can see he had even more reason to do that.

I can't believe they kept giving Bartholomew jobs after the hatchet job he did on ATWT. I guess recycling hacks is not new. I didn't really mind this era of Search, it was so much better then the spy crap that seemed to go on for years. Imagine what Marland could have done with Search? It was almost a blank slate for him..he had the core of Jo and Stu, etc, and he most certainly would have brought back Patti and other characters related to the core, but I do think a new family would have popped into town and I wonder if this would have been a certain farm family??/

Hmmm, I must have missed the yucks that either Dolan or Holmes ever brought to their roles. I remember them being quite dour going back to Marland (though I do remember a scene where Margo was laughing it up with Tom over airplane food and it was supposed to show them back in their charming devil may care days but it just fell flat..kind of like how Marland had to "tell," us that Ellie was funny because he couldnt really write humor.) I thought they were dour going back to Margos rape and yes, I realize it was well written and realistic and well acted and all that but I am sick of strong women being raped (I know it happens all the time in real life) on soaps and having to sit through socially relevant storylines so writers can win awards. Was the rape before or after Margo pulled the plug on Casey, another laugh fest involving Tom and Margo. ( I am not making fun of your opinion so I hope it doesnt sound like it.) I really think they should have just wrote them out back before it got to Holmes and Dolan. Marx and HBS were the last time that they were fun and had chemistry (can you really see Holmes and Dolan going at it in the sack???) But then, I would never had Margo sleep with Hal (how the hell did that happen anyway, I forget) which I think goes back to "ruining," them and made Tom look like a neutered fool. I do see why they would have Emily chase after Tom. She was always messed up and looking for a father figure, and at least on paper, Tom was that. I agree that FMB and everyone after her just made Emily a freakin evil loon. A triangle involving Margo, Tom and a sympathetic but still screwed up Emily could have lasted years and had effects on the extended families of the Hughes and the Stewarts...(but then you would have had to have Ellen there.) But yea, I think the Eddie Silva thing was stupid, (even though I found the actor kind of hot in an "Im embarrassed to admit it, " way) but the worst was that rich guy who I think was supposed to be a villian that Margo screwed. At least Eddie was humpy and stupid and you could send him on his way after having your way with him!

What did FMB do to Tom and Margo that made them so unappealing (actually I never got the appeal of Dolan and Holmes Tom and Margo...its as if T & M went through three personalities...the Deas/Colin hippy T & M, the Marx/Whatsherface T & M (my favorite) as more normal people (and one half being hot as f*ck) and the Dolan/Holmes T & M who were uptight, annoying, sexless bores. Never understood why no one ever recast Holmes as Tom...

Hubbard reminds me of Bev McKinsey and Michael Zaslow and Peter Simon, really good actors who were prickly and demanding but it was all because of wanting quality and the best work, not that they have to be the big "star." I know that I read an article at the time where Marlnand liked to open the show with Lucinda because of Liz's energy, and Bryne wrote that when she first started working with her it was like Tootsie, it would freak her out as Hubbard would start out with her first line, go off on a tangent as she would paraphrase the writers, and then land on her last line and say it exactley on script for the next actor to pick it up. She says she and many others who worked with her the first time would stand there with their mouth open looking befuddled and forget what their line was! That had to be a huge stretch for Marland , or any other writer who was meticulous and a control freak to let Hubbard let go and it was a smart move. Which reminds me, Don Hastings always says that Bob has that beffudled look on his face in his scenes with Lisa as he never knew what would fly out of Lisa's mouth because Don never knew what Fulton would come up with as she would go off script so much.

Yea, it seems that anything earlier then 1980 has disappeared for ATWT. Would love to see some of the early Dobson stuff, the transition from the old stuff to the "new," stuff, etc. Would love to see of Annie Brad and Dee were as dull and lifeless as I thought they were!\ Would also love to see a scene in Nancy's kitchen, I have memories of it as a kid but I never have seen a clip on you tube, etc.

Ah, the last summer the show was "on fire," before it went to hell for several years really until the Curlee era. Never understood why the successful formula of the Bauers, Reardons, Chamberlines, Spaudlings and Lewises all mixing it up with a dose of camp, mystery, romance and goofy family schmaltz had to be thrown out for Infinity and constant Reva and the Lewises. During this summer the show hit number one and in the fall a radically different GL took over and the ratings dropped. Did Long or Kobe hate Brown? The Cabin Mystery had Nola written all over it and it should have gone to Quint and Nola instead of Tony and Annabelle and then Fletcher and Claire of all people involved. Loved the flash of cute Rick Bauer in the credits and then hottie Tony Reardon (Frank Cooper who???) I did notice the start of it falling apart. Loved Reva married to H.B. and bugging the [!@#$%^&*] out of Billy, and the rest of the society "fat cats," but notice Vanessa sitting there saying nothing. This was after they defused Vanessa and she became really boring and would cow tow to Billy instead of slapping the [!@#$%^&*] out of him like she would do later.

Which is so weird as they were so hard trying to modernize the show, Lisa and Kim are more vital and interesting then either of the Stewart girls and they dressed both of those girls as frumps chasing after a slummed should Brad (yes, I have a hard time seeing Lisa in that cramped little bookstore and you are right, it looks like Wheeler designed the damn thing in the CBS studio storeroom she housed the goody 7-11 set..but then I could never see Lisa with a book unless its "110 ways to get your man,")

MOL had work done? Big mistake as it was BAD. I remember up until really the time Abby left him he was still looking cute. Matter of fact, the Abby leaving episodes have him running around in some tight jeans with his shirt off and he looks great (obviously MOL had recently slimmed down, buffed up and wanted to show it off) so I always wondered what happened. As a fellow big Irish guy I know he probably has the same thing I do, when working out I build great but if you let it go it can turn to fat, and it looks like MOL really let himself go. Speaking of Abby, why did they let her go. I think those two worked as the nice couple in town, kinda normal but cute. Hated Rick with cold ass Mel. Rick and Claire did have a one night stand, she "pop his cherry," so to speak. It was played for laughs more then anything, with Mindy finding out and then locking him in a closet at Cedars to protect him/harrass him about it when Darcy was going on her rampage. I remember when Mindy married Phillip and they went on their honeymoon to Cross Creek or the Bauer cabin, and Mindy starts crying because Phillip doesnt make burgers like Rick does!! I hated that scene with Rick and Mindy in the fountain as it came out of nowhere and was just a plot point to move him toward Roxie. Kurt was a duller Rick, it was weird that they even did that. They aged the FM's way too fast, but I think that came about when they recast Phillip with an older actor. One day they are all in college, the next Phillip is 35 and running Spaulding and married to India, etc. The Rick Meredith thing was weird...Meredith had all the charm of a turnip and how either one of those guys like her...

I HATED the Roxie character, as there were just too many damn Lewis/Shaynes in too short of a time. I really hated her as they used her to break up one of my fave couples Rick and Minday (no one watching later on would believe me that MOL was cute as hell in his younger years and he and Terseu were just a cute couple together.) Not that I didnt think that R & M could break up, it just was a quick switch from Rick accepting and actually liking Mindy with all of her quirks, to him being totally in love with Roxie and hating Mindy for being vain, etc. Plus that dumb ass story they gave her of having a split personality...sorry, the actress was cute and had a nice warm personality but she could NOT act more then being cute, young and nice. Giving her heavy emotional scenes was ridiculous. I thought Long was still there for Andy Ferris and Infinity right? It doesnt seem like her though???

I think the Marland critiques really come as a backlash of the "Marland is genius," group, but it also comes from the fact that Marland is so good, that you actually CAN take a critical look at his work without condemning it totally as I would Sheffer, Kreizman, Weston. Marland WAS good but he had a particular distinctive style which had it quirks..at least on ATWT...(I dislike that his characters are SO damn polite, the sex scenes dont sizzle, his tendancy to cast some pretty plain people in some roles, which is fine, ATWT was like real life, but when those plain people would become supermodels and people would rave about how beautiful they are, and of course, the tried and true homoerotic stable boy/farm hand/mechanic in tight jeans in love with a woman who was not half as pretty as they were.) Other things I do love, his focus on history, and the little quirks of characters (love how he revives the Lisa/Ellen feud, without making it a big deal, they would simply snipe at each other with no reference to the past no big scenes, they just reacted to each other as anyone would with that history) how everyone had something to do, even poor Ellen Stewart with no family in town, etc. Its almost like some of my favorite popular authors who I really really like and can read and be entertained by and I am invested enough to take a step back and critique the work. The only other soap writer I can say that about is Pam Long, who I have a love hate relationship with her work and what she did to GL. The Jay actor was simply let go during the Dobsons, and was referred to for months as just being in the next room while Carol flirted with greasy Steve Andropolous...until they finally killed him in the silver mine cave in and his death had no impact as we didnt see him for six months. The Wade Bookstore thing was bad in a way, it was kind of like Company was to GL during the last 20 so years, always there and people converged to talk and gossip and overhear each other. Some of my earliest memories was Lisa holding a stack of books, etc. I can see them transfering the bookstore to the hospital as it would include Lisa in shenanigans at the hospital but it never panned out and the set was ugly as hell. During the youthifying of ATWT the Dobson tried their first time, they should have made the bookstore a coffee house bookstore, maybe had one of the younger characters take it over and it could have been a spot for the younger people to hang out while carrying on the tradition.

I stopped watching ATWT at that time, but do remember her occasional appearance. ATWT had gotten so boring and I thought unweildy at that point. Marland broke what he fixed when he first came on, trimming the show down to be about the Hughes family at the center, and everyone swirls around them, with the Snyders as their rural counterparts. All of a sudden these extraneous characters are running around, like Aunt Mary and her stupid coffee shop!

That was actually more like Irna's Nancy Hughes. A bit cold, with tougher standards. Marland turned her into a softer grandmother. But remember, Marland's Kim, while certainly warm and loving, was not one to mess with and could kick ass with the best of them, so it kind of makes sense that Nancy would mellow as the years went by and then Kim took over as matriarch. Always wanted Nancy to at least give a nod to her past and council either Kim or Lucinda in the error of over meddling in your kids lives. Funny that when Wagner came back to the show, Lemay was writing or at least consulting for the show. He always considered Nancy Hughes to be the prototypical Irna matriach...judgmental and contolling. He hated Mary Matthews because of that, and killed her off and created Liz Matthews to be his take on the meddling matriach, instead of everyone viewing her with respect, they were annoyed with "Aunt Liz." So he actually had Nancy act more like Irna's Nancy.

I always thought that Marland should have made Sabrina an all out slattern drunk bitch...kind of like Moniz Dinah on GL...the atithesis of everything the Hughes stood for. I think both the Hughes and the Bauers on GL suffered when Marland was not writing them as there was no internal conflict for them. When Irna was writing it was Lisa, which actually was pretty brilliant. Lisa was a family member and mother of a Hughes so Nancy went back and forth from keeping her in line (right up to the end..I love the line, "Lisa dear you are NOT helping!") to protecting her. The Bauers were always more edgier then the Hughes as Bert started out as a money grubbing nagging housewife, Ed an alcholic, Bill an alcholic who had affairs etc. During the later years they needed some internal conflict (which I though a son that Ed had with Rita would fit the bill.) Otherwise both families were considered "boring," by less imaginative PTB. Would love to see Bob and Kim having coffee in the morning and Sabrina stumbling in the back door. "Ello loves, could use a spot of coffee after the rogering I got from young Dusty Donavon. Dont mind if I smoke do you???"