Guiding Light Discussion Thread

[P.J.]

They could've had everyone of Mo's family show up, and people still weren't going to be happy.

I'm not saying it couldn't have been better, but other than Michael O'Leary (and maybe KdP) I'm not sure who they could've realistically brought back.  

 

[DeeVee]

Lisa Brown was still on ATWT--as that was both a P&G and CBS soap, they might have been able to made a deal to bring her back for one or two days. Possibly Lee Lawson? That would have been way better than literally no one on screen from Mo's family.

Of course it's possible they tried and were turned down. Though after the storm of protest, they probably would have said  they had tried.

[cassadine1991]

Y&R. Though I wish he went to GH or a different US soap

[DRW50]

I think Lisa would have returned. Kassie DePaiva wasn't at OLTL yet so she might have returned for a day. Lee Lawson. They just didn't care. I think JFP, who bragged about making viewers get invested in Maureen in the last six months of her time on GL, genuinely did not think viewers cared about Maureen and felt the only interest would be in how her loved ones reacted.

People were still going to be unhappy, but at least they could have come away thinking the show had some respect for Maureen. Instead, it was clear JFP did not.

[chrisml]

JFP has never struck me as someone who likes nostalgia or honors the history of the show she's producing.

Very true about how nothing was going to satisfy viewers but they really didn't try. Interesting how GL writers (interviewed on Locher) believed they allowed the town to properly mourn Maureen's death and I thought, "Did you watch the show you wrote?" As Maeve Kinkead said, the story became ghoulish with the organs and everything. There was a mean-spiritedness to it even beyond killing off the character. 

[P.J.]

I guess the purpose of cameos is for the audience...but for me, the effect would've been blunted by the fact we'd never had Lisa and Ellen Parker in scenes together. Ditto Tony and Jim. Even if Lisa had been willing, she was being heavily used in ATWT's Aaron story in the same timeframe. Lee Lawson had at least had scenes with her, but to show Bea without any other child (other than possibly Chelsea) wouldn't have seemed right either. 

I would've much rather heard Ross' eulogy as characters flashed back to scenes with her (even if they had been newly created. Vanessa tells a story about Mo making her sing at a piano bar that is flippin' hilarious). But I think GL knew that if the audience sat and watched Michelle in a pew for an hour, crying her little eyes out, the fans would've wanted to string Ed up by his little surgeon. 

[P.J.]

I found some of the "mourning" odd....Fletch has some moment where he's like "yeah, I really should've tried harder when you were interested in me", and Roger's "I was sexually attracted to you the night of the blackout." And I think they should've showed things that were later talked about, like Michelle pulling away from her friendships with Bill and Ben, and not wanting to be around Vanessa. 

I think they were afraid that talking too much about Maureen would depress the audience, but honestly, there's this kind of melancholy that emerges anyway. I think the first half of '93 is the end of the last great era of GL, with some really noteworthy acting. But there aren't a lot of light-hearted moments in it.

[Contessa Donatella]

Not a fan, okay  I see.!!  We all know what that feels like - unfortunately!!!

[P.J.]

It's too bad GL didn't have the time to try out Claire and Josh. Susan Pratt and Robert seem to have some major chem going on when Claire is his doctor/life coach.

[alwaysAMC]

I'm up to Dec 15, 1995.  

These past two weeks have been fantastic soap opera!  Major storylines are weaving together and culminating into fantastic cliffhangers.

Annie/Josh are getting married, in the middle of a snowstorm, with many Springfield residents in attendance. Marian, who is getting more and more unhinged, is using the night to her advantage by expecting to find Lucy alone at the boarding house. To Marian's surprise, Lucy already left for dinner with AM/Nick and found Susan in her shower instead. What a fun Psycho-style scene that was in the shower with Marian's big butchers knife! Susan fought hard, but succumbed to a hard hit to the head with an alarm clock. Susan recently learned she has AIDs, but Nick has been so sweet to her and he was planning to propose to her that night at dinner with Lucy/AM there with them. Thankfully they found Susan's body and got police and medics to help her, but I'm curious if she'll remember what happened when she wakes up!

Meanwhile, Hawk is in the hospital because he had a heart attack after seeing Reva. He wakes up and tells Alex he saw Reva and is sure that she's Rebecca, so she goes to Buzz and convinces him to let her watch the CCTV footage of he and Rebecca dancing and she realizes it's really Reva.  She rushes away, but her car breaks down in the snow and she finally stumbles into the wedding after Josh/Annie are pronounced married (where all the guests are on that damn carousel, I seriously don't understand their obsession with that thing). She starts yelling to everyone that Reva is alive!  Josh is stunned and Annie is heartbroken. Meanwhile, Alan and Reva are about to fly away forever on his plane, but they're stuck because of the snowstorm. Buzz, Josh and Alex get to the plane before they take off and BAM, we finally see Josh and an alive Reva together again... 6 months later! Finally.

I do feel really bad for Annie, she can never get a break from Reva and Josh's obsession with her. I think she just needs to dump Josh at this point and go back to Rick.  Rick, btw, is sporting this new slicked back hair look and it's LOL. I guess he isn't liking that frizzy mop anymore.

I do think this Reva storyline has been weird and inconsistent. I'm still not convinced by the Ghost Reva explanation, but it's a soap opera, so I'll go with it haha. They tried hard to explain why she would be ok to leave her kids and family and go away forever with Alan, instead of telling them she's actually alive, but I just don't buy that either. Once she got her memory back, she should try everything she can to be with her kids. I also thought it was weird that she just left her father at the hospital post-heart attack without really wanting to have a reunion with him. Seems like she wasn't really that close to him after all.  What has remained consistent is Alan being a selfish pig who cares about no one but himself. He doesn't even really care about Reva, he just cares about fulfilling himself by having her.

We did get a pretty epic showdown between Annie and Reva on that plane though. Watros and Zimmer really acted their butts off in those scenes.  Probably Watros' best so far at this point.  And even after all that drama, Alan is still like "Ok Reva, are you ready to take off, let's go"

Please register in order to view this content

 He's such a broken record. 

In other news, Hart, who is a hottie, is back in town and just found out Peter is his son.  Bridget and Vanessa really tried hard not to tell him, but Dinah let the cat out of the bag.  I'm looking forward to this storyline, because it seems like Bridget will get more screen time. Can someone remind me - why did Vanessa get half custody of Peter? Matt wouldn't have been in the picture yet, so I'm trying to figure out what her relationship to Peter and the story was between Bridget, Hart and Roger. Also, it's clear that Hart hates his dad, but was he also a bad boy? That's the sense I'm getting based on how everyone is talking, but they aren't specific. Were Blake and Hart close as siblings?  I haven't seen them interact yet.

Holly just found out her baby will have Down's, which is sad. Was Maureen pregnant in real life at this time? 

Oh! Michelle also came back from Europe, now played by Rebecca Budig. It's so fun seeing her, pre-AMC, in a younger role. She came in with a huge smile on her face the entire episode, which was cute. Little Billy kept eyeing her at Josh/Annie's wedding. I'm sensing a little crush coming on.

Looking forward to finishing up 1995!  

[P.J.]

 Can someone remind me - why did Vanessa get half custody of Peter? Matt wouldn't have been in the picture yet

 

When Nadine was married to Billy, she was constantly worried Billy would leave her for Vanessa. (Not without reason, Billy had married her while drunk, and he was constantly making moon eyes at Van. He and Van even slept together while married to Nadine). She kept doing stupid things that sabotaged his trust in her. The breaking point was when Nadine leaked Van's name to a scandal rag. Van had nearly been raped by a business associate named Jack Kiley. She pressed charges, but wanted to keep her anonymity. The creep reporter outted Nadine after the trial was over, and Billy walked out on Nadine.

Nadine hatched a scheme to get pregnant to save her marriage. When she couldn't lure Billy back into bed, she talked a pregnant Bridget into agreeing to give Nadine her baby to raise. It worked---Nadine knew Billy wouldn't walk away from his child. When it all came out, Vanessa realized that Bridget was Peter's mother. Maureen had died, and Bridget was going to ask Ed if she and Peter could move in with him and Michelle. They were having a hard time dealing with Maureen's death, and that discouraged Bridget from asking him. 

Billy meanwhile divorced Nadine in a nanosecond and proposed to Vanessa. Trusting that Billy loved Peter, and they would give the child a good home, Bridget allowed them to adopt Peter. Billy and Van divorced after Billy admitted shooting Roger, and Bridget took Van to court to get Peter back. The case got pretty ugly, with Ross tearing down Van on the stand, and Van's lawyer was ready to do the same to Bridget when Vanessa stopped him. Billy had written a letter from jail saying that Van and Bridget both deserved Peter, and they ended up agreeing to share custody rather than continue the case.

Blake and Hart were not particularly close. There was a revolving door of Harts, and Blake of course had been green with jealousy when Roger found out he had a son. Hart was a "bad boy" after the first recast. OG Hart was a sweet, naive kid devastated to learn Roger was his father.

OGBill was actually born a year before Michelle. When Budig was cast, it totally looked whack.

 

Edited Tuesday at 04:28 AM by P.J.

[cassadine1991]

No, I was a fan. 

[DRW50]

@alwaysAMC A great read. Thanks.

I think it was only in these few years that Michael O'Leary tried that unfortunate hair, although I may be wrong. It just looked genuinely awful. 

When Rachel Miner played Michelle, she and Bill were close friends, and even had a date, mostly treated as a cute moment showing their family helping them. I assume they had no plans to revisit Bill/Michelle at this point, as Budig looked 10-15 years older than Brian Buffington. 

I had forgotten Alex was the one who blasted the news about Reva. McTavish paired up Hawk and Alex a lot, which I tended to enjoy.

When Hart began on the show, he was very sweet and lived with his grandfather. Roger ruthlessly went after their family farm, leading to the grandfather's death. Only after all of this did Roger learn that Hart was his biological son, via some woman who was a spy with Roger or something, I don't remember. Roger tried very hard to keep the truth of his role in the farm theft from Hart. When Hart found out, he was devastated. Before he left town, he had a one-night stand with Bridget, leading to Peter's conception.

Hart returned about a year later, now clearly a bad boy. He seduced his ex-girlfriend Julie right before her wedding to Dylan Lewis. Bridget exposed the cheating at their wedding. Bridget would later get involved with Dylan. You may have seen him at the start of 1995. During this time Bridget kept the truth from Hart. He likely would have learned but Leonard Staab, who played him, was nearly killed in a hang-gliding accident, leading them to temporarily recast the character long enough to write him out. 

When Hart was first revealed as Roger's son, Blake resented him, feeling that he would take her father's love from her. Only in later years do they become closer.

You aren't wrong about any of the writing for Reva in this story. They went out of their way to give reasons as to why Josh wouldn't get back together with her as soon as she arrived. It did the characters no favors, even if the payoff was eventually worth it.

Edited Tuesday at 08:55 AM by DRW50

[Contessa Donatella]

Oh my, total confusion on my part, LOL!!

[Contessa Donatella]

Only because they had SORASed her & hadn't yet with Bill.