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 11 hours ago11 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.

23 minutes ago, DRW50 said:

@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.

😂 Isn't that something?? It was so bad but so comical. That was something I definitely remembered and had in my watch journal, but seeing it again was a fun laugh.

I use a Mac, so I just press Shift+Command+4 and it allows you to screen grab anything. It'll just save down to your Recents folder and then you can choose from there to post the picture. I just delete them on my computer afterwards :)

55 minutes ago, alwaysAMC said:

😂 Isn't that something?? It was so bad but so comical. That was something I definitely remembered and had in my watch journal, but seeing it again was a fun laugh.

I use a Mac, so I just press Shift+Command+4 and it allows you to screen grab anything. It'll just save down to your Recents folder and then you can choose from there to post the picture. I just delete them on my computer afterwards :)

Thanks.

They should've brought LuJack back instead of creating Nick, just say that his "death" was orchestrated by the FBI and that he was in witness relocation. Relatively easy fix.

@DeeVee spoiler warning for @alwaysAMC ....similar thing with Rauch in 1999 when Grillo and Moniz left together. Reports was that's why they killed Hart and tried to make it very hard to have Dinah return or be redeemed. Of course Ellen Wheeler/David Kreisman would bring back Dinah during their run.

Edited 4 hours ago4 hr by Spoon

31 minutes ago, Spoon said:

Reports was that's why they killed Hart and tried to make it very hard to have Dinah return or be redeemed. Of course Ellen Wheeler/David Kreisman would bring back Dinah during their run.

This amuses me as Rauch did even worse with Annie yet tried to bring her back within months. Maybe that's what he took for inspiration...

OMG---THANKS!! I've never seen the actual fight (I think part of the episode may have been preempted that day). that landed Reva that black eye. Josh's face is hilarious.

13 hours ago, DRW50 said:

@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)

2 minutes ago, P.J. said:

OMG---THANKS!! I've never seen the actual fight (I think part of the episode may have been preempted that day). that landed Reva that black eye. Josh's face is hilarious.

Neither have I. It looked crazy. Must have been something to choreograph.

9 hours ago, GL95 said:

I am up to November 26, 1991. Finally the Daniel St. John story went somewhere-the body of Jean Weatherill was just found in the pool. This really, really dragged.

I'm sort of amused by this long con of Suzanne who was just super sketchy for what, 8 months before it was revealed she was working for Roger? Or did it just feel like that long? Her actions from the beginning screamed I AM NOT WHO I SEEM from day one. ("I will work for free! Anything at all I just need THIS job! I am not sus, nope, not at all!"). It's a little alarming for the DA to be this gullible haha

I said it upthread, but it's sort of amazing how any attractive woman can pretty easily con Ross. I know he's about to get duped by Blake (in the beginning), which leads to tensions when Dinah dupes him, which leads to more tensions when Amanda dupes him. (Ross got really bailed out IMO by Blake sleeping with Rick because he was really terrible to Blake during the Amanda stuff-he kept gaslighting her that Amanda had no interest in him and that Blake was crazy as Blake was slowly disintegrating with insecurity and would get mad at HER for not trusting him.)

Random observation from this time period: it amuses me that Sam and Alan Michael look like siblings when Sam has zero physical resemblance to Phillip.

Ross does seem to like needy, wounded women. Some of the later 90's stuff is just unimaginative writing choices.

11 minutes ago, DRW50 said:

Neither have I. It looked crazy. Must have been something to choreograph.

Jordan is a big, physical guy. I'm going to guess he loved it, and was up for anything.

9 hours ago, GL95 said:

Random observation from this time period: it amuses me that Sam and Alan Michael look like siblings when Sam has zero physical resemblance to Phillip.

Sam didn't look like any of the actors who played her biological relatives, other than John Bolger. At a push, Cindy Pickett.

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

9 hours ago, alwaysAMC said:

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.

Yep, that's Nadine. Long story short, Billy fell off the wagon when Reva "died". Billy had ended things with Nadine, and gotten engaged to Van, but Nadine would sleep with him, knowing he was drinking. When Josh left (to look for Reva, who might've been alive), HB and Josh put Vanessa in charge of Lewis Oil. (Billy had made poor business decisions and nearly bankrupted the company.) This pissed Billy off, and he took Nadine to Vegas to gamble. He won some money and married her while he was drunk. It took him two years to shake that bloodsucking tramp loose.

re: the character pics over the long ending credits, I can't think of another show that did them. But I only watched the CBS soaps. Y*R had the sketches opening for a long while, but ATWT never had characters in the opening until nearly 2000, IIRC.

Edited 1 hour ago1 hr by P.J.

8 minutes ago, DRW50 said:

Sam didn't look like any of the actors who played her biological relatives, other than John Bolger. At a push, Cindy Pickett.

Well, the brunette Cindy Pickett. The blonde...not so much.