9 hours ago, Khan said:

And breaking this lifelong fan's heart in the process.

!!! That AMC opening is what I grew up on and what I still think today is the best soap opera opening of all time 😜

5 hours ago, P.J. said:

Oh...the reason I loathe Nadine with a passion...

Onto other things--

Josh had just left at the end of January. Arguably, Josh's scenes saying goodbye to Billy are the best of Robert Newman's career.

As a viewer, it now surprises me that there aren't A and B versions of the outro. Did soaps just not have them at that time? Or not do them as often? Guiding Light had two version when they went to the "My Guiding Light" theme, there was the Vanessa/Nola opening, and there was the Billy/Mindy opening.

Especially when the opening has a lot of missing major players.

Characters included: Blake, Billy, Ed&Maureen (lousy fake small picture) Alex, Roger, Hamp, Mindy, Mallet, Vanessa, Dylan, Harley.

No Ross, Holly, Samantha, Alan-Michael, Nadine (not that I mind...) Maybe that's why they did all the actors over the long closing credits. That was easily edited (I guess). This episode also features the long crawl, and Robert Newman is already out, while Grant and Beth Chamberlain are still in.

Ohhh, was that Nadine in the bed with Billy? I haven't watched beyond the intro and outro yet, but did see a hungover Billy get out of bed and see a big diamond ring on some woman haha.

Regarding the intro and outro... I don't think it was until 1996 when GL finally did an A and B intro so it could fully showcase their entire contract cast. They did make updates pretty timely from there until they phased that intro out in 1997, which irritates the crap out of me haha. I can't speak for all soaps, but GL was the first soap for me that did the contract character stills in the outro, so maybe that is why they felt the intro didn't need to get updated as often before 1996? On AMC, for example, they just used still shots from that day's episodes but it was never a focus on each character. But, AMC did a great job of having all their cast in A and B intros throughout the 90s/00s.

3 hours ago, DRW50 said:

I only ever saw a partial version of this episode until now so put the full version on Youtube. I don't think we're in a hurry go to back to 1996 but @alwaysAMC as you finished this period not long ago you may enjoy it.

@P.J. I also found an ad about Billy's return to Springfield. Those "wilder/wilder than ever" ads are so absurd. Beth Ehlers looks like she is about to crack up. I can't believe they even had Daniel Pilon do one with Alan's wheelchair.

Guiding Light promo (1989)

OMG - thank you for posting! You're right, this episode in the Vault only has the first ~28 minutes, so I remember missing the ending during my watch earlier in the year. I hope someone tech savvy can get this full episode in the Vault before YT takes it down. I just watched the ending and thankfully it doesn't seem like I missed much haha. Dinah with the very short hair, but Griffin's assassination fiasco, Quint's awful return, and Lonatrat were in full display here which were awful storylines ( @P.J. - you can see here how Marcus/Griffin are connected). I do remember getting to see the ridiculous/hilarious paper mache that Roger made of his face to help him escape the loony bin. So bad LOL.

Edited 5 hours ago5 hr by alwaysAMC

Does anyone know why the writers opted to kill Hillary Bauer because Marsha Clark left? Wouldn’t it have made more sense to recast immediately if they were pissed off with her? She was a Bauer. Stupid as hell.

2 hours ago, SanCristobelsFinest said:

Does anyone know why the writers opted to kill Hillary Bauer because Marsha Clark left? Wouldn’t it have made more sense to recast immediately if they were pissed off with her? She was a Bauer. Stupid as hell.

The story goes that Clark wanted to go to California for pilot season. Because she was in the middle of a big story (that dumb Dreaming Death story) they were forced to pretape weeks of her scenes.

It supposedly ticked off Gail Kobe (the executive producer) so much, she decided to kill off the character.

She did something similar when Vincent Irizarry (Lujack) left, killing off a hugely popular character without leaving the door open for a return. Which is why they eventually created Lujack's twin.

Whether these stories are 100% true, I don't know. It is pretty obvious that Kobe was fine with decimating the Bauers. She thought it would be enough to keep Bert and Ed, but then Charita Bauer died. So, yeah, in the long view it was a big mistake to kill her off.

@alwaysAMC Kudos for watching through. I know that is not an easy period to rewatch (hell I think I had quit watching by this point in 1996). I don't know how someone makes screen grabs from a Youtube video but that grab of the Roger mask is...something. Maybe Roger was watching a lot of DAYS in the asylum.