17 minutes ago, P.J. said:

I actually thought Lucy's mother had died. But maybe she just walked out on her and Buzz, which, knowing him, would've been the only real reason he "raised" Lucy.

It’s always sort of crazy that the 20-something generation on the show at that point had parents who were so bad that Buzz raising Lucy as a homeless grifter always on the run is seen as the height of fraternal stability. Half the “fun” stories she tells are objectively horrifying, especially when you consider that Buzz is not uniting her with his other family mostly out of cowardice.

There were times it was implied that Mike and Hope were very close. The last time I remember Hope being mentioned was when Maureen died. Ed called them ( they were on a trip together) and he told them not to rush back for the funeral.

52 minutes ago, GL95 said:

It’s always sort of crazy that the 20-something generation on the show at that point had parents who were so bad that Buzz raising Lucy as a homeless grifter always on the run is seen as the height of fraternal stability. Half the “fun” stories she tells are objectively horrifying, especially when you consider that Buzz is not uniting her with his other family mostly out of cowardice.

Well, that's Buzz for you. Horrifying "charming". And then he sends Jenna's kids off to her relatives to raise.

10 hours ago, Soaplovers said:

I think another thing that helped humanize Jackie was her friendship/mentorship of Evie Stapleton. If a sweet individual like Evie could see the good in Jackie.. than so could the audience.

I think that was also true of Rita. She also was a very complex character who could be very selfish. Evie helped to temper Rita with the audience. Marland also had Evie become friends with Ross when he decided to make him less of a villainous character. Which is kind of unusual; you don't see too many male/female friendships on soaps. But it did help change the audience's perception of Ross.

1 hour ago, GL95 said:

Watching starting in 1990 with how many times A-M is in peril and Hope never once coming is pretty wild.

Although several of AM and Harley's wedding episodes are available online, I can't remember anyone asking why Hope wasn't at her only child's wedding. Why she wasn't perhaps objecting to her 18 year old son getting married so young? (Did Ed--his great uncle--even put in an opinion on that? Maybe I have to go watch those episodes again).

I mean, we KNOW the reason. They SORASed AM so fast that they would have had to hire a much older actress to play his mother. They really painted her into a corner by doing it.

They papered over it at times by saying she had relapsed. But then you wonder...why wasn't her uncle helping her out? He was her sponsor.

Yeah, it was a big mess because no one gave it much thought. I've said it before, I LOVE Carl, Rick was also fantastic, and it's unlikely either would have done the show if they had SORASed AM more slowly. But they made it impossible to bring back Hope, who had tons of history that could have been used for stories. They got away with it with Amanda because she had no living children who could have been SORASed.

Gotta love the disregard for continuity, iirc a large part of Jenna's backstory was that she had NO living family. 😆 That's why she bonded with Henry and Vanessa as a surrogate family.

11 minutes ago, DeeVee said:

I think that was also true of Rita. She also was a very complex character who could be very selfish. Evie helped to temper Rita with the audience. Marland also had Evie become friends with Ross when he decided to make him less of a villainous character. Which is kind of unusual; you don't see too many male/female friendships on soaps. But it did help change the audience's perception of Ross.

Although several of AM and Harley's wedding episodes are available online, I can't remember anyone asking why Hope wasn't at her only child's wedding. Why she wasn't perhaps objecting to her 18 year old son getting married so young? (Did Ed--his great uncle--even put in an opinion on that? Maybe I have to go watch those episodes again).

I mean, we KNOW the reason. They SORASed AM so fast that they would have had to hire a much older actress to play his mother. They really painted her into a corner by doing it.

They papered over it at times by saying she had relapsed. But then you wonder...why wasn't her uncle helping her out? He was her sponsor.

Yeah, it was a big mess because no one gave it much thought. I've said it before, I LOVE Carl, Rick was also fantastic, and it's unlikely either would have done the show if they had SORASed AM more slowly. But they made it impossible to bring back Hope, who had tons of history that could have been used for stories. They got away with it with Amanda because she had no living children who could have been SORASed.

It’s a bit weird because they SORAS kids all the time where the original actor is still on the show or just ignore actors’ ages if they play older. Rick had two actresses around his age play up in years who worked closely with him in Toby’s Amanda and SS’s Blake (SS being 23 when she left the show blows my mind-even with Rick, SS’s Blake just seems so much older but ironically they started styling her younger late in her tenure I think to play up the Ross age gap). I feel like a late 30s actress with some gravitas could pretty easily pass as Rick/AM’s mom in soap world in the early 90s.

Edited 31 minutes ago31 min by GL95

3 minutes ago, GL95 said:

I feel like a late 30s actress with some gravitas could pretty easily pass as Rick/AM’s mom in soap world in the early 90s.

Hope was supposed to be around 24 when AM was born. The actress Elvera Roussel was actually in her early 30s. But she read as very young at the time. The thing is, part of the issues her family had with her marrying Alan is that he was much older. They de-aged Alan when they brought in Raines. (I never thought of it before, but that's probably why they de-aged Amanda). So they would have looked much closer in age. Which would have changed their dynamic.

(Yes, yes, soap math is a b!tch, LOL).

It's been said here a few times that TPTB had no interest in bringing Roussel back, even though she probably would have by that time been old enough to have had son AM's age onscreen, and they definitely could have made her look closer to her real age. Some people claim they thought she was too fat, or they didn't think she made that much of an impression in her initial run, even though Alan and Hope were a very popular couple. But one has to keep in mind she was popular with Chris Bernau in the role of Alan, and he was gone. So even if they brought her back, they couldn't do flashbacks, so they probably reasoned it was pointless.

We've thrown out names of actresses from that era who could have been a good Hope--she's not a character who would have been difficult to recast. Although I doubt she would have agreed to it, if they decided to just say "screw it!" about AM's age, Marcy Walker would have been fantastic as Hope, and would have had a role that had history and purpose and real connections to other characters on the show, unlike Tangie.

Re: Hope. They should've snagged Robin Mattsen to reprise the role when she was on the East Coast for AMC. Sorry @alwaysAMC