16 minutes ago, P.J. said:

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

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.

LOL at the bolded! 😂 I remember your hatred for Nadine because of this Billy/Van stuff. I need to go watch that full episode, but thanks for the background on how he landed himself there in that bed. I can't wait to see all that at one point... really makes me want to go back and see if Vanessa acknowledged Nadine's death... I can't remember off top of my head, and I'm thinking Billy wasn't even back by then, but when he did return, can't remember if he had a throwaway line about it or not.

That's so late for ATWT considering most of the other soaps had characters in the intros throughout the 90s. I do think the spinning globe for ATWT was so iconic/marketable, that maybe they were hesitant... similar to the iconic DAYS hourglass.

45 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.

Ohhh was that Reva? I watched the promo (thanks @DRW50 !) and was like wait, did a man just punch a woman??? Even awful to do today, of course, but especially unheard of back then. I'm glad to know it wasn't purposeful.

35 minutes ago, alwaysAMC said:

LOL at the bolded! 😂 I remember your hatred for Nadine because of this Billy/Van stuff. I need to go watch that full episode, but thanks for the background on how he landed himself there in that bed. I can't wait to see all that at one point... really makes me want to go back and see if Vanessa acknowledged Nadine's death... I can't remember off top of my head, and I'm thinking Billy wasn't even back by then, but when he did return, can't remember if he had a throwaway line about it or not.

That's so late for ATWT considering most of the other soaps had characters in the intros throughout the 90s. I do think the spinning globe for ATWT was so iconic/marketable, that maybe they were hesitant... similar to the iconic DAYS hourglass.

Ohhh was that Reva? I watched the promo (thanks @DRW50 !) and was like wait, did a man just punch a woman??? Even awful to do today, of course, but especially unheard of back then. I'm glad to know it wasn't purposeful.

I loathe that woman, but she had better writing than ****, and at least had some semblance of a life outside of Billy. I guess I'm really a sucker for the ex's that can't stay out of each other's lives, because ATWT's Jack and Carly are cut from the same cloth.

I don't think anyone outside of the Coopers really acknowledged Nadine's death. They find her body at the beginning of '96, right? Billy doesn't return until the end of '96. They really should've kept Vanessa and Nadine in each other's orbits after the fallout, but Guiding Light really didn't do longstanding rivalries. And I think they were trying to rehab Nadine after the divorce, and wanted the audience to forgive her a bit.

ATWT had some version of the globe for YEARS. Then I think they went to the "Seasons" opening after Marland's death. Which is a beautiful opening, don't get me wrong. They never abandoned the globe, per se. It was just incorporated differently.

Yes, that's Reva, and the kid Billy's fighting with is their son Dylan (this is before they knew him.) It's some of Morgan Englund's first scenes on the show. Late June of '89.

Edited 9 hours ago9 hr by P.J.

1 hour 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.

I recall there was a TV Guide article about the process of casting for soaps, and they used Sam's casting as a case study. Interestingly, Long was not for Suzy Cote. There was a blond actress in the running that she preferred. (Unfortunately, I can't remember her name). So she was overruled. I think she liked the other actress for more reasons than her physical appearance, but it is interesting that they didn't stop to think about family resemblence.

When they cast Amanda's mother Jennifer and sister Morgan, the three of them looked like they could really be related--they all had the same freckles! And definitely when they cast Grant and Carl as Phillip and Alan Michael, they both looked like their biological families. Rick I think was meant to look like his mother Leslie. And the Reardons...every single one of them looked like they belonged in that family. (Except for Sean, he was an outlier, LOL. But his son and daughter looked like Reardons).

Or course, appearance shouldn't be the primary reason they cast someone, but it is nice when people in the same family look related.

Edited 9 hours ago9 hr by DeeVee

Guiding Light promo (1996)

4 minutes ago, DRW50 said:

Guiding Light promo (1996)

That's one...unique promo. Alan looks like John Houseman.

3 hours ago, P.J. said:

I don't think anyone outside of the Coopers really acknowledged Nadine's death. They find her body at the beginning of '96, right? Billy doesn't return until the end of '96. They really should've kept Vanessa and Nadine in each other's orbits after the fallout, but Guiding Light really didn't do longstanding rivalries. And I think they were trying to rehab Nadine after the divorce, and wanted the audience to forgive her a bit.

Yep, just checked my notes and Nadine's body was found Jan/Feb of 1996 and Billy came back in Sept 1996. Gosh, I wish I kept more detailed notes in 1995-early 1996. It wasn't until late '96 that I kept really detailed notes.

I too wish GL had longstanding rivalries... I have noticed that characters/families tend to stay in their orbits unless there is a bigger umbrella storyline, but those are few and far between, and usually there isn't a ton of long-term payoff when those characters intermingle. Or, when the characters are recast and/or come back a few years later, they don't tend to revisit their history with certain characters and it's instead serving the current moment and storyline. I still enjoy GL though haha.

2 hours ago, DRW50 said:

Guiding Light promo (1996)

Oh wow, I've never seen this and that's LOL to me that this storyline got such attention. It was AWFUL and clearly it didn't resonate with viewers because that was Griffin's last major storyline. And to think it wasn't Alan at all, it was Griffin who orchestrated his own assassination attempt... and then he later becomes the prestigious judge of Springfield (with no storyline) haha.

I've always been so interested in seeing more of these GL promos. The GL episodes I watch usually retained the Y&R/B&B/ATWT promos (which the majority were Y&R which tells you who was CBS's golden child in the 90s)... but obviously they wouldn't show the GL promos while GL aired, so I always wondered what the GL promos looked like or what storylines or actors they highlighted.

Oh, I'm watching the Soapy episode with GH casting director Mark Teschner and Rebecca Budig (host) mentions she left GL on her own accord (which answers one question I had, because she soon after got her iconic gig at AMC and I always wondered if it was her choice to leave GL or they just wanted to replace her with the popular Reva clone actress :P )... anyway, so she left on her own accord, and she said it was such a weird exit, which was Rauch's doing, and she said Rauch was "interesting" (LOL)... but she hated that she hit 'some dude' in the head one episode and then the recast hit him on the head again in the next episode. Just interesting to hear that.

She also remembered that Laura Wright was on GL with her back in the day. I love that actors remember their times on all the soaps.

Edited 5 hours ago5 hr by alwaysAMC