As someone who loved the early Rauch era, despite the OTT stories, the major loss was both gutting the history of the show (aside from Victor Lord) and then failing to build any secondary families. They were swapping families left and right from the O’Neills to the Sanders to Julia and Debra Medina. They even scrapped great potential in Lisa Baron when Blair Underwood left, they fumbled the casting of Mari-Lynn despite excelling at casting multiple other characters (still don’t understand that one)
But I avoided the Gottlieb era aside from the famous Billy Douglas or gang rape stories, the YouTube clips I had seen just seemed darkly lit with loud music but now that I’ve actually watched 5 straight months they performed miracles on this show and I have loved the characters.
I never realized how much they used Wanda or Jason for that matter, and the way Jason, Blair and Luna fit into the canvas, livened it up and Llanview feel like home again after a quite dreadful 1990-1991 season is quite a feat. Max’s reintroduction after a dreadful recasting was top notch as was said above.
It WOULD have been nice though - had they brought back say Ina Hopkins and her boardinghouse, or Katrina Karr, whose scenes fascinate me. If they couldn’t get Carla, Ed or Sadie and didn’t want to bring back Marco, utilize Herb or use Ponzini as Vinny, I think there were a plethora of grounding characters they could’ve used even on a recurring basis to tie the “next generation” to the past even in a gentle way. Gottlieb also avoided the Rauch era overall (at least female wise since Max and Cord both returned) especially if the rumors were true Jensen Buchanan was willing to come back as Sarah. There isn’t much recognizable between say 1988 and 1991 on the show.
Now about Malone, did he seem out of steam by the time he left, or just coasting without Gottlieb?
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soapfave06 ·
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