Well, as much as I might complain, I have to admit I haven't seen a lot of the years of AW before DePriest, so I can't say it was better before she arrived. She also brought the ratings up a fair amount, from what I've read, and probably saved AW from the axe.

To me Lau's Jamie was just not charismatic, and I did not see why two women would want him. I'm not sure Adam/Lisa would have been any better, as Adam was kind of dull and self-righteous. I would have paired Lisa with more of a jerk who would have pushed her buttons - sort of like Dean/Jenna.

Does anyone have a favorite "triangle" from AW? I would have to say that the return of Kathleen and the Kathleen/Cass/Frankie one was probably the only time on a soap that I could not take a side! I was a big fan of Cass and Kathleen back in the day and grew to love Cass and Frankie just as much. To me, that was a great story because I didn't even know where I wanted it to lead.

I was then later VERY disappointed when AW was cancelled and missed out on the Lila/Cass/Anne (Frankie) story. I thought that story could have had great potential.

I felt like they downplayed a lot of the Kathleen/Cass appeal for Cass/Frankie. I remember a scene where a big deal was made out of Cass no longer eating meat (which I don't think was ever mentioned before) and how this upset Kathleen. They were usually sullen, and Kathleen was very isolated. There was also this annoying need to have people who generally didn't even interact with Frankie by that time show up just to verbally abuse Cass or Kathleen - Dean being the usual culprit. I ended up not wanting Cass to be with either of them, which presumably wasn't the idea.

Edited January 10, 201213 yr by CarlD2

Favorite triangles...I think there was huge potential for Rachel/Mac/Janice, and by extension, Mac/Rachel/Janice/Mitch. I'm sorry the show cut that short.

I agree that the show handled Kathleen's return badly, but longtime viewers had such an affection for Kathleen and Julie Osburn that it overcame the obviously stacked deck against her. Like Melroser, I was a fan of both women and both pairings -- though Cass and Kathleen are one of may all-time favorite couples.

The classic AW triangle, the one that really set the tone for all soap triangles after it, was Alice-Steve-Rachel.

Paulina-Jake-Vicky wasn't really played as a triangle but it was in my mind because I could never accept that Jake and Paulina stopped loving each other.

I also liked Paulina-Jake-Vicky and although I am a big fan of both Judi and Jensen, I would have loved to see that triangle with Cali Timmins and Anne Heche. I thought Paulina and Vicky were much harder edged characters with those actresses and that could have been a great onscreen rivalry. Tom Eplin's chemistry with Cali was amazing and, of course, Anne Heche could have knocked anything out of the park.

I remembered my favorite triangle, bar none: Rachel-Mac-Iris. Not the traditional romantic triangle, but it was a doozy!

I thought Kathleen/Cass/Frankie was fascinating but I was disappointed by the end of it with Kathleen leaving like that. The whole Frankie miscarriage thing was obviously for Kathleen to look very bad.

It never made much sense that Jake and Paulina just drifted apart like that. They brought back Jake from his presumed death to have him do nothing for the longest time.

Was Anne going to turn out to be Frankie in the long run? I thought it was going to happen that last week but then was sorely disappointed by Anne's "big" secret(She was Fax Newman's lawyer before killing Frankie.)

Felicia/John/Sharlene/Michael might possibly be one of the worst quads in daytime history.

Edited January 11, 201213 yr by soapfan770

i didn't like Felicia with John either. I thought it to be very odd.

I thought I had read an article once where Alice Barrett said she wasn't really sure where the character of "Anne" was going and if she'd turn out to be Frankie or not. It did seem like it was going to go in that direction but then they had to suddenly wrap things up to do a finale, that if i remember right, they didn't have much time to prepare for. The show never had any 'returns' to speak of for their final months.

Charles Keating was the only return.

What always annoyed me was that Sam Groom came back as a minister...Russ' daughter was still a main character on the show! Did Goutman just not know that he had played Russ???

Perhaps, perhaps not. Groom's presence on the show even predated Wyndham's and his Russ was married to Strasser's Rachel. Then again if GL brought back Robert Gentry(although his soap career was bigger than Groom's ever was) I suppose it would have been a nice touch. My guess is they didn't think fast enough and it ended up being a nice gesture to Groom or something.

I was happy that Keating and Carl did come back alive.

I do believe that (had AW not been cancelled) it was the plan for Anne to be Frankie. I know I am in the minority, but I liked Cass even more with Lila than with Frankie.

AW really cannot be blamed for the lack of veterans returning for the finale. That's because only about 1.5 months elapsed from the cancellation date to the final day of taping. (The actual finale aired about a month after it was filmed.)

The lack of returns didn't bother me too much, although I would have loved seeing Iris and Nancy back. But as Max said, there wasn't any time to pull much off. I would have been fine with Carl Hutchins not being there as I only knew him as a killer, but CarlD2 explained upthread that he was redeemed (supposedly) at some point. I never really got my head around that as I watched the last few months of the show after about a decade away.

The Kathleen/Cass/Frankie triangle should have been great because there should have been no villain. I guess I'm lucky that I missed Julie Osburn's return because it sounds like it wasn't handled well There was a warmth about her that I liked and I completely bought in to the Cass/Kathleen pairing.

I didn't pay too much attention to who the writers were, but I seem to remember reading Margaret De Priest wrote the Sin Stalker story only a couple years after she wrote the Salem Slasher story on DAYS, and there was a lot of criticism of her for writing multiple serial killer of women stories. I was furious on DAYS when Trista and Letitia (Ruth Buzzi's character -- Eugene's cousin with the pet lion) were murdered, and so I took notice of that article since the Sin Stalker claimed Maisie and Quinn -- two other characters I liked.

I wish I had seen AW a few years earlier. The years I watched consistently are definitely considered the "bad" years, yet I enjoyed the cast and characters, if not always the storylines.

I've read several times (although I forget the exact sources) that the original plan for the ending of AW was supposed to have included Rachel opening the front door to McKinsey's Iris, returning to Bay City, but McKinsey was too ill at the time to appear (as it was around the time of her kidney transplant), so the idea was scrapped.