13 minutes ago, watson71 said:

AW was trying to copy the popularity of Miami Vice during this time with Larry going undercover.

I remember Larry with the sleeves of his blazer pushed up. I didn't watch Miami Vice so would not have noticed any other similarities. 

 

Larry got somewhat emotionally invested in Adrienne Morrow, who was the wife of the head of the designer drug ring.  Clarice felt that he was neglecting her and the kids. Larry and Adrienne never had an actual affair though. 

Edited September 8Sep 8 by mikeaw1978
Additional info

Could this be the last soap-related interview featuring Carmen Duncan? It's from 2010. Reuploaded recently.

Still so sad she's gone.

 

Thank you @DRW50for that Carmen Duncan interview. Such a fantastic and underrated actress. She was my Iris as I never saw McKinsey in the role. Duncan deserved an Emmy for her work. A shame she was never given the acclaim she deserved.

I also don't understand how they just wrote off the character of Larry. He just faded away as if he didn't even matter. So odd to me that shows do that as if viewers won't notice. We notice things like that. I was not watching then, but when I went back this summer and watched some the last months of his tenure, I missed Larry. I can't imagine what longterm viewers thought at the time.

Things were in such turmoil at that time that Larry was now considered a veteran character.

There was room for him and Clarice as sort of tentpole characters-him being a cop suited the stories of the time and Clarice  was a good talk to, running a restaurant/coffee shop. And they had Cory waiting in the wings to be SORASED.

But TPTB had other ideas and I guess longer running characters are more expensive and Clarice and Larry weren't really vital to the structure so...

6 hours ago, DRW50 said:

Could this be the last soap-related interview featuring Carmen Duncan? It's from 2010. Reuploaded recently.

Still so sad she's gone.

 

I love this woman so much. Thank you for posting. I hadn't seen this. So stunning, talented and classy. 

7 hours ago, Paul Raven said:

Things were in such turmoil at that time that Larry was now considered a veteran character.

There was room for him and Clarice as sort of tentpole characters-him being a cop suited the stories of the time and Clarice  was a good talk to, running a restaurant/coffee shop. And they had Cory waiting in the wings to be SORASED.

But TPTB had other ideas and I guess longer running characters are more expensive and Clarice and Larry weren't really vital to the structure so...

Larry and Clarice were dropped during Margaret dePriest's first HW stint, where she wanted to focus on Corys, Loves, and McKinnons. With Blaine and Sandy gone and Clarice's closeness with Ada and Mac forgotten, they were discarded. 

I know after the undercover drug thing Larry left the force to work as a PI with Catlin. I think but am not sure that he didn't go back, making it easy for dePriest to slot Adam Cory in as a police detective for MJ. I did like Adam, but it did feel like that was a mess.

 

16 hours ago, mikeaw1978 said:

Larry got somewhat emotionally invested in Adrienne Morrow, who was the wife of the head of the designer drug ring.  Clarice felt that he was neglecting her and the kids. Larry and Adrienne never had an actual affair though. 

Thanks! Larry's separation from Clarice didn't really seem to drive much story for them. And neither he nor Catlin really did much to deserve being taken back by Clarice and Sally. Especially with Sally, where it seemed clear that she reconciled with Catlin in order to hastily wrap things up in a tidy bow before they killed her off. At least though Catlin and Sally had scenes discussing their reconciliation. I think Larry just moved back in with Clarice one day and then they started to fade out.

Edited September 8Sep 8 by Xanthe
Clarity

Just finished Smoke on Apple TV and who should turn up in the  final episode as a kick ass senior police officer but Amy Carlson. It's like Josie continued her police career and ended up running the show.

Unpopular opinion, but I didn't hate the way that Iris was written off the show in 1994 considering her history and her obsessive devotion to all things Mac... her daddy.

Back in the 70s, she ruined relationships and marriages because of her obsession with being #1 in her daddy's eyes at the expense of everyone, including her stepmother Rachel.  

When Mac died, it was during a time when she had majored messed up things between her and him so she never got to make amends nor to receive his forgiveness.  So she doubled down on her obsession with her dad by working at Cory Publishing, being nice to Rachel, and protecting her daddy's legacy from outsiders (including her half sister Paulina).

As before, she ruined a great relationship with Hank (even Ada tried to get her to not throw away her chance of happiness with Hank) because of all things Cory just like she did back in the 70s.  So once Hank and Tommy were out of the picture, any chance of salvation for Iris was also gone.

The fact that Rachel moved on with Carl Hutchins of all people was what drove Iris over the edge.  So she tried to keep them apart by threatening them and then trying to shoot him with blanks.

So her ending up in prison over what happened to Carl was a fate that Iris could not avoid because her one track minded obsession with her daddy Mac proved her undoing.  And even when she was on the show Texas, her focus shifted from her daddy over to her son Dennis with the same obsession/drive.

1 hour ago, Soaplovers said:

And even when she was on the show Texas, her focus shifted from her daddy over to her son Dennis with the same obsession/drive.

I can see both sides of the way Iris ended -- that is, everything you laid out was a choice that may have been a logical step, but there could have been different choices along the way that led to a different outcome that would have kept Iris on the canvas or at least not removed her forever.

That said, your point regarding Dennis reminds me that when Iris was originally introduced, she was a very neglectful mother -- Dennis had a heart condition and she was divorced or separated from Eliot Carrington who had custody of their son and hired Alice as a private nurse. I'm not sure how to square that psychologically with the later Texas story where Dennis was the child of her True Love Alex Wheeler and her more possessive attitude toward him. Maybe I can rationalize it based on the elimination of Dennis' illness combined with the death of Alex?

 

2 hours ago, Soaplovers said:

Unpopular opinion, but I didn't hate the way that Iris was written off the show in 1994 considering her history and her obsessive devotion to all things Mac... her daddy.

I'm not sure if the story itself was unpopular, more that Iris never returned, with Michael Malone later essentially saying the powers that be would see her as too old to bring back.

Iris's departure story was VERY unpopular. I had the letters to the editor and the reactions at some point. If I can find them this week, I'll upload them. I was going to post them, but the discussion had switched to a different topic at that time months ago. People were not happy with what they saw as lack of story and character assassination for Iris/Carmen Duncan. The way Iris was written off insulted viewers who adored Duncan and the character of Iris. I think that's what they wanted. The last years of AW they seemed to make decisions with the sole purpose of driving away viewers. 

As a viewer, firing Duncan really severed my ties with the show. I was always hopeful I could return to AW as a viewer (I gave up on AW in 91), but that decision just seemed too idiotic that I knew I could never trust the show and I was right. Alice Barrett's firing only cemented that in the cruelest of ways.

Irregardless, I do think that story fit with the essence of the Iris character.. who always seemed to border on edge in regards to neurotic tendencies.

Granted, I do wish the show had decided to show Iris near the end of the show either still in prison and/or going to be released with her deciding to start over back in New York City and perhaps helping women restart their lives after being released from prison.

I was looking at the updates on the AWHP to the auditions page and I was surprised to read that Thomas Ian Griffith had originally been signed to a 9 month contract as Catlin in 1984. That struck me as very unusual. In the end he stayed for about 3 years even though Mary Page Keller had left when her contract was up in the spring of 1985. I had always imagined that he must have signed a 3-year contract or else he would have left much sooner. 

http://www.anotherworldhomepage.com/audition.html

Is there a precedent for signing new young actors for less than a year at first and then extending the contract to something rounder? I know the show could terminate contracts early at specific points but I thought they preferred to lock the actors in.