I don't doubt any of this, but when I think of 1992 Ava, I think of all the Phantom of Burnell's stuff, which I don't hate (I feel like the Broadway references were ingrained into a lot of the New York soaps), but I don't think it's always the strongest story due to the outcome.
I am still furious how quickly McCarthy/Walsh or Nixon dumped the idea that the Sowolskys were the source of the Alden fortune. It was Ava's BeLieF moment and they squandered the energy in days for what seems to be the Gilbert story.
Sorry to hear he passed. I saw some of his work recently in the Italian episodes. In thoseclips, it appears some of the impotence story may have made it to air, but not much. Billy is definitely avoiding sexual encounters with his wife. It's no just that he's busy, but that he makes himself busy.
I feel like they could have done a more Cat on a Hot Tin Roof inspired story with Rita Mae and Billy. I think Rita Mae already was coming off as a Maggie the Cat type anyway and you had the football angle. I think they could have done the angle of Rita Mae / Jack / Billy triangle (as a way of drawing out the Lily / Jack story and giving Lily / Curtis more space to play) by making Jack and Billy's relationship complicated. An adopted Jack who had a loving father in Roger, but who seems to emotionally crippled at times, being drawn to his football coach in a mentor way while Billy is drawn to the memories of his own youth and possibly a friend who he lost like Brick Pollitt's pal Skipper.
Janie was tossed away too quickly. Things just really unravel a bit the farther into 1994 the show gets. I also think Janie was a bit of a version of what Agnes Nixon was rumored to have planned for Ava in the mid 1980s. Supposedly, Nixon wanted to reveal that Ava was biracial, which is why I assume, in part, Nixon was seeking Ellen Holly to appear as Carla. I imagine that the plan was to have Carla take part in Ava accepting her racial identity as a way of revisiting Carla's own story.
I think Buck's connections to the canvas with Curtis as his business partner and Trucker as his brother were also helping to ground him. I do think the connection to Janie would have been a powerful story to tell given Buck's history. His own father had abandoned him and he had such a strong parental involvement with Stacey's kids. Having him have to come to terms with his past and the child he abandoned would have fit nicely into that character arc.
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