Another World

[Marissa Gallant]

A few, but I don't know that I would say many. 

[AbcNbc247]

Not a lot. Pretty much all the pre-1979 clips that were uploaded before were reuploaded to the channel 

[AbcNbc247]

So I finally made it to the end of my AW re-watch, and I'm curious, does anybody know what would have happened on the show had it not been cancelled? I did hear a rumor once that Leah Laiman had over a year of story outlined before the cancellation came down.

Was Anne really going to turn out to be Frankie?

[Efulton]

I would love to know what was planned as well.  Especially about Anne/Frankie.    

[amybrickwallace]

That was a huge rumor, especially as the show was winding down. I don't know if it was true, especially given the violent, on-screen demise that Frankie suffered. Then again, it's a soap...so who really knows?

[AbcNbc247]

Idk. It would've been great to have Frankie back but we all saw that episode; Frankie was gone and to bring her back would've really messed up AW. To her bring her back would have been like the final step to making it a DOOL clone. 

[FrenchBug82]

I had never heard this and I have been trying to wrap my head around it but... I can't.

I mean, one of the major problems with Frankie's death is that we SAW as much of it as they possible could show us short of seeing her actually gurgling and turning blue, down to that goddamn begging. I can't possibly see how they could have written a remotely plausible (even by the loosest plausibility standards of soaps) story as to how she could be Frankie.
Of course this is the show that cast two different actresses as characters we had known for fifteen years to be identical twins so...

The other reason I am skeptical is that that would have been the exact Kathleen/Cass/Frankie story of a few years prior, wouldn't it?
Repeats are not unheard of but that would be quite on the nose.

Of course if that had been the plan I would have accepted because I love AB (although history has proven that you can't recapture chemistry twice) and while I love Lisa Peluso and Cass/Lila had fun chemistry, they didn't feel like an "endgame" couple to me.
But I would be surprised if that had been anything more than a thought bubble thrown out there as a Hail Mary to save the show 

Edited September 13, 2021 by FrenchBug82

[Xanthe]

I don't mind a return from the dead if they can make the case for how it was faked and why. But in the case of a violent onscreen death it's hard to swallow. 

I was recently watching the scenes where Cass meets Kathleen in New Orleans after realizing she was alive. Kathleen blamed him for not having tracked her down after the accident and he never pointed out that he had been a prisoner of his evil double Rex for months. On the whole though Kathleen's return from the dead was pretty successful.

Was Mitch the earliest back from the dead character on AW? Was his resurrection planned all along?

Some characters are introduced as dead with the intention of revealing them as alive as part of that storyline. For example, Brittany,  or John Hudson. In other cases the character was introduced as dead but the idea that they could be alive seems to be retconned in for a new storyline, e.g. Mary and Reginald. 

The classic back from the dead storyline is more like Kathleen or Sharlene where a living character was killed off and when the same actor is willing to come back they go for it. I feel like those are more likely to be successful than the ones like Steve Frame when they also recast, but maybe I don't have a statistically significant sample on which to judge. 

[AbcNbc247]

According to AWHP, Ted Bancroft was the first. He was briefly presumed dead in 1979. As for Mitch, it had to have been planned, since the viewers saw that he wasn't dead.

[amybrickwallace]

In retrospect, I wonder if AW ultimately regretted letting Alice Barrett-Mitchell go in order to pay for Robert Kelker-Kelly. So much fanfare, and such a convoluted story. The ONLY good thing about the Bobby/Shane mess was that we got Lisa Peluso. That's it!!

[FrenchBug82]

Probably an unpopular opinion but while I disliked the Heaven Can Wait story a lot, I initially liked RKK as Bobby Reno. Not in any way shape form enough to justify to fire anyone to get him, let alone Alice B., but I liked the rough but sensitive blue-collar thing he had going. A bit cliche but it worked (problematic as he is, RKK can act) and he and JB had decent chemistry. It helped too that I disliked Jake/Vicky.
It is when it turned into the ridiculous Shane mess that they completely and utterly lost me. I don't know if I ever knew or forget but why did they completely change the story and who he was? That possibly can't have been the intended story all along since the Ryan-as-a-ghost story does not make sense if Bobby wasn't intended to be Bobby at the beginning.
So what happened? What possessed them to do that?

[amybrickwallace]

I really don't know what all happened. There was an EP change during that time (JFP to Charlotte Savitz). Also, there were rumors of conflict between RKK and just about every other leading lady before her, Jensen Buchanan. I wasn't following AW all that much at that time, but I'm sure someone else here can fill in the blanks.

[Xanthe]

Was making him Shane the mechanism to introduce Lila? 

[FrenchBug82]

I am sure they could have found a way to introduce a clingy ex for Bobby without coming up with this incredibly convoluted story that completely changed the character, from his name to his entire personality.

Unfortunately all I could find was this:

https://www.welovesoaps.net/2013/09/robert-kelker-kelly-interview.html

Which is ... not helpful.

On the other hand this was interesting albeit leaning a bit too much on the JFP spin imho. 
Does not explain NBC wanted him so much.

 

Edited September 13, 2021 by FrenchBug82

[amybrickwallace]

Yes. She was his never referred to before wife.