8 minutes ago, robbwolff said:

Great commercial! I always loved both actresses. However, Judith didn't portray the role of Pat. Susan Trustman was the other actress who played Pat. Judith portrayed Lenore.

Oh you're right...totally blanked on that. Thanks.

1 hour ago, robbwolff said:

Great commercial! I always loved both actresses. However, Judith didn't portray the role of Pat. Susan Trustman was the other actress who played Pat. Judith portrayed Lenore.

Beverly is at her most beautiful and best styled there.  When I think of how AW wasted her and how her luminous talents could have been well utilized on other daytime shows…

 

Harding loved her.  I wonder why she didn’t continue in some form after the 25th anniversary.  That one arc could’ve been the renaissance of the Matthews. And Mike and Marianne could’ve easily have been any number of the random young people brought onto the show. 

47 minutes ago, anthonymolchan said:

Harding loved her.  I wonder why she didn’t continue in some form after the 25th anniversary.  That one arc could’ve been the renaissance of the Matthews. And Mike and Marianne could’ve easily have been any number of the random young people brought onto the show. 

There has been a vaguely substantiated rumor that (in 1988) Lemay's intent was for Pat to stay in Bay City after returning for the 25th anniversary episodes in May 1989.  And that Lemay's replacement, Donna Swajeski, originally planned to go along with Pat's return.  But it seems Swajeski changed her mind, almost at the last-minute, about Pat's permanent return, for unknown reasons.  If I'm not mistaken, one of the on-air promos for the anniversary week even foreshadowed Pat staying in town and causing trouble between Sharlene and John Hudson.  And of course, that never happened.  There are likely AW historians on this forum who know more about this than me, and can probably explain it in more detail.   

14 minutes ago, Tisy-Lish said:

If I'm not mistaken, one of the on-air promos for the anniversary week even foreshadowed Pat staying in town and causing trouble between Sharlene and John Hudson.  And of course, that never happened.  There are likely AW historians on this forum who know more about this than me, and can probably explain it in more detail.   

Another big change of direction of course was due to Mac's death. I know Pat worked for Mac at Cory but what kind of relationship did they have? Could her storyline have been intended to be with Mac and Douglass Watson's death put the kibosh on that? (This is utterly unsubstantiated speculation.)

13 minutes ago, Xanthe said:

Another big change of direction of course was due to Mac's death. I know Pat worked for Mac at Cory but what kind of relationship did they have? Could her storyline have been intended to be with Mac and Douglass Watson's death put the kibosh on that? (This is utterly unsubstantiated speculation.)

From what I've read, they became good friends after Pat started working at Cory.

I think she was the one that Mac confided in when he was sterile, which upset Rachel. 

I agree that Pat and Mac developed a close bond at Cory Publishing, especially during Pat’s tenure as editor of Brava Magazine.

That said, wasn’t there some tension when Mac promoted Cecile over Pat? I don’t recall it being explicitly stated that their friendship soured afterward, and Pat did remain at Cory Publishing until she left Bay City. Still, it was Mac who ultimately elevated Cecile. If memory serves, Cecile manipulated the situation—voicing concerns about Pat’s capability to lead Brava in what felt distinctly All About Eve-coded. So, Mac’s decision wasn’t necessarily a betrayal of Pat, but rather a consequence of Cecile’s calculated interference.

As for their deeper connection, I can’t say for certain, but it’s possible that Mac confided in Pat about his sterility—especially considering she believed herself to be infertile before unexpectedly conceiving twins. That kind of shared vulnerability might have deepened their friendship in ways that would've freaked Rachel out.

 

Anna Holbrook was indeed brilliant as Sharlene, so I'm not going to second guess that casting decision. There are enough other mistakes that could be looked at.  As I've written ad nauseam, I think the casting choices that really killed momentum during Swajeski's era was not finding a good replacement for Robert Kelker-Kelly. Who knew finding a replacement for him would be so difficult?!? All of the Sams were terrible and had no chemistry with Ferguson or Hossack. I think they bailed before I got to much of Brian Green's tenure so I don't know who they paired him with beyond Ferguson. 

Lemay's return in 1988 is loaded with so many rumors about big stories and plans. He even claims he had such plans including that migrant story that sounded horrific and tone deaf. It reminds of all the fanfare that happened when the Dobsons returned to Santa Barbara. Their first few weeks were glorious and then the bottom fell out as it became clear they didn't have a clear vision and they were alienating fans that had stuck around during their absence. AW was a different show from what I've read AW was during Lemay's first tenure. I don't know if he understood that based on his remarks. 

Yes, many plans for the show's course were likely changed when Doug Watson died.  

But here is my speculation about Swajeski's change regarding keeping Pat around:  I'm speculating that the problem Pat was going to cause between Sharlene and John was that Pat would stay in Bay City and slowly put two-and-two together to figure out that Josie was Russ's daughter. And that would cause difficulty between Sharlene and John.  

Here's even more speculation: I've come to believe that Swajeski may have decided -- Since Russ is coming to town for the 25th anniversary week, why not keep him in town (rather than Pat), and allow Russ to be the one to figure out the facts about Josie's parentage.  Maybe Swajeksi decided keeping Russ in Bay City, instead of Pat, would lead to a cleaner storyline and more drama.  Again, all this is just my speculation based on what appeared on the show and what I have read regarding the time period.  

I'd love to hear other theories about what may have led to the decision not to keep Pat on the canvas after the 25th anniversary week. 

4 minutes ago, chrisml said:

AW was a different show from what I've read AW was during Lemay's first tenure. I don't know if he understood that based on his remarks. 

You are correct, it was a different show than it had been in the 1970s.  But I think Lemay seemed to understand that very well. His writing in 1988 certainly reflected that.  Although he wrote his signature "character scenes" and quickly reminded the audience that every important character has an "Achilles heal" that informs their behavior and their decision-making (in other words, sub-text) -- he also wrote much more deliberately than he had during his first tenure. His work in 1989 was significantly more plot-related. But of course, characters still came before plot.  That was quite an update for an aging ego-driven curmudgeon, who I happened to love love love...   

Speaking of Swajeski's work: 

Re Pat.

The decision to fire Penberthy in 82 was insane. Beverly looked great and Pat had only one marriage behind her.

AW should have followed Y&R's lead and have Pat marry into a new family to provide a link b/w new and old. Pat would be stepmother to new young characters, and her kids could return also.

Simple and effective. But AW thought we'd be more interested in brand new characters with no connection and history.

 

10 hours ago, Paul Raven said:

Re Pat.

The decision to fire Penberthy in 82 was insane. Beverly looked great and Pat had only one marriage behind her.

AW should have followed Y&R's lead and have Pat marry into a new family to provide a link b/w new and old. Pat would be stepmother to new young characters, and her kids could return also.

Simple and effective. But AW thought we'd be more interested in brand new characters with no connection and history.

This seemed to be a P&G-wide mandate. The biggest difference is AW never managed to find any successful young characters quickly - it would take 2-3 years, and even those were few characters who could not carry a show on their own (Jake, Marley, Vicky).

There's some irony in only a year after Pat's exit, the show seeing the arrival of Donna and Felicia, two woman who weren't too far off Pat's age, who became loved by viewers very quickly, and who would then stay to the end, even though they were much harder to write for than Pat and had far fewer connections to the canvas than Pat when they arrived, forcing the show to have to work very hard to maintain them. 

Another reason Swajeski may have decided not to follow Lemay's (supposed) plan to bring back Pat permanently in 1989 was that AW already had five 40 to 45-ish females in leading roles: Rachel, Iris, Felicia, Donna, and Sharlene.  Adding Pat to the cast would have made that six, and in an era where soaps were chasing a very young demographic, six middle-aged women in leading roles might have gone against the conventional wisdom of that time.  

In the early 70s, Pat fit a character type I’ve always had a soft spot for. Those anxious, upper-middle-class blondes like Anne Tyler on AMC or Amanda Howard on DAYS. But where those characters tended to disappear once their first act was done, Pat kept going. After her divorce from John, she didn’t fade into the background. She ran Brava. She held her own with Cecile. She had a younger lover, and the show didn’t treat it like a joke. It all tracked.

That’s really the issue for me. You don’t take a character whose arc was about becoming a liberated woman and then place her in the middle of a show that, at that point, was more interested in feather boas, European ex-husbands, and jewel thieves. By the time the focus had shifted to characters like Donna and Felicia, AW was playing in a different emotional register. Pat’s growth had been about independence, not reinvention through wealth or fantasy. Trying to put her in that kind of storyline would’ve meant ignoring what the show had already done well with her. It’s not that those stories didn’t work. They just weren’t built for a character like Pat.

Still, I think @Tisy-Lish had the right idea about timing. Once the Frames were back and the show started focusing more on class and community, Pat would have made sense again. Not because she was a legacy character, but because she'd already shown she could adapt to the moment. You just couldn’t style her into something she wasn’t.

Putting Pat into John and Sharlene’s orbit would’ve given us a triangle with some actual weight. Instead of being the one who got cheated on, Pat could’ve been the one who disrupted someone else’s story for a change.  Although, I loved Sharlene's scenes when she gets to confront Felecia for having an affair with John.  And, I don't know who I would've rooted for if it was a triangle with Pat and Sharlene.

Edited August 6Aug 6 by j swift

By a certain point, I don't think AW viewers would have cared about Pat and they would have resented her being shoehorned into plots. Aw viewers learned not to grow too attached to characters because they could be gone in a flash. Pat seems to be popular here on this thread, but I have no idea who Pat is, and as a AW watcher (1986 onwards), I would have been extremely aggravated if she had been integrated for no reason. For me, it would have been no reason. I'm not saying it couldn't have worked, but Pat's history would not have resonated with me. I'd much rather have kept the McKinnons (except for Jake who should have been shot and killed), kept Nicole, had a decent Sam recast, saved Maisie and Quinn from the Sin stalker, had an African-American family built around Zack or Quinn, etc.