28 minutes ago, GL95 said:

I’m in July 1992 when A-M is drinking himself into oblivion after he learns Nick is Alexandra’s son, and watching a lot of early 90s eps in close succession, I feel like they were setting the table for an A-M addiction story at some point.

I don't know if you're aware of this, but alcoholism runs in the Bauer family. Bill Bauer, Hope's grandfather, and Ed, her uncle, were both alcoholics.

The fact that they established this through 3 generations would have made an addiction story entirely plausible (AND it would have been a reason to reintroduce Hope).

In fact, I believe when AM first came back as a teen, he got into some trouble with drugs and they were worried about him, but I think he was selling, not taking the drugs. Again, that would have been a good moment to bring Hope back into the story.

Lots of missed opportunities.

1 minute ago, DeeVee said:

I don't know if you're aware of this, but alcoholism runs in the Bauer family. Bill Bauer, Hope's grandfather, and Ed, her uncle, were both alcoholics.

The fact that they established this through 3 generations would have made an addiction story entirely plausible (AND it would have been a reason to reintroduce Hope).

In fact, I believe when AM first came back as a teen, he got into some trouble with drugs and they were worried about him, but I think he was selling, not taking the drugs. Again, that would have been a good moment to bring Hope back into the story.

Lots of missed opportunities.

Yeah, I knew Ed and Hope were both alcoholics. That’s why it struck me when they had Ed say something to him about dealing with emotions through drinking. It felt pretty pointed to have Ed say it in a situation where AM didn’t actually get drunk.

In this scene they really have him acting like an alcoholic. Roger comes to try to lay the groundwork to have him join the Thorpe empire (Roger thinks Blake still wants AM and AM/Blake as a power couple in the family kingdom fits Roger’s dream image really well) and AM has had a whole lot to drink but talks about handling it well and does have his wits about him more than he should. He lashes out at Eleni when he gets home in a way that feels like they’re planting seeds-some of it is pretty clearly that being raised to be a Spaulding left him with zero ability to be vulnerable or deal with emotions, but AM not getting hit with a combination of the Spaulding/Bauer curse really is a waste. An AM addiction plot could’ve brought in a lot of different characters. I can just see the rock bottom being lashing out at a very vulnerable Michelle post Maureen’s death, and Ed not having the bandwidth to help AM calls Hope. The Spaulding side trying to actually show love/help that’s not about business or internal power struggles and AM’s parade of exes who eventually all have a soft spot for him.

The first iteration with Lucy ends with him getting wasted and saying cruel things to her (and he’s blackout drunk with her on a different occasion). Right after is when he goes back to wanting Eleni ( I believe getting very drunk when that starts), and the entire Eleni arc is more like an addiction arc than a love story on his end. There also would be an interesting backdrop for an addiction story at that time with Billy shooting Roger in a drunken rage.

It really feels like it was heading that way when they pivoted-best reason I can think of is they saw a Nick/AM face off as a Hail Mary to make Nick catch on. Them making them foils who basically switch places was so uninteresting with no real investment in Nick and recasts of Alan/Alex and Mindy.

Edited 3 hours ago3 hr by GL95

Thanks @DRW50 !

21 hours ago, DRW50 said:

@vetsoapfan @slick jones @Soaplovers @Tisy-Lish @Soapsuds @SoapDope78 @FrenchFan @Khan @jam6242 @Vee @Sapounopera @soapfan770 @Paul Raven @P.J. @DeeVee @Mitch64 @GL95 @Kane @alwaysAMC @Spoon @GL Oldtimer @kalbir @dc11786 @zanereed @Maxim @Franko @BoldRestless @Liberty City @Reverend Ruthledge @Speed Racer

The channel that tends to provide a few brand new vintage episodes a year for various soaps has found another for GL. In good quality too. April 1, 1953. I checked and couldn't find the episode elsewhere, although there is already some March and April around. There's always a double-edged sword in so much of one period being around when so much else is gone but I'm still very grateful and I'm sure you will be too.

Most of this is just the Roberts and the Grants, the former worrying about Kathy and the latter having Laura Grant at her most imperious in her schemes to break up Dick and Kathy. One surprise is we actually get to see Joey Roberts. I assume this is Tarry Green. I don't think we've ever seen him before, although I may be wrong.

I was going to say he looks a bit old for 18 but this is 1953...not sure how old Green was but I see he had been in Broadway shows starting in 1951.

Thank you dear @DRW50 for the tag. This was such a treat. Especially in this stunning quality.

On 1/18/2026 at 10:13 AM, DeeVee said:

Strap in, folks, we're taking a deep-dive into this storyline:

It wasn't convoluted, not really. Jackie always knew that Phillip was her son, she knew that her child replaced Elizabeth's child because it was going to be stillborn. She was shown discussing this with Elizabeth's doctor, who was also her doctor while she was pregnant. Then after the birth, she befriended Elizabeth and Alan so she could keep tabs on Phillip.

When the Spauldings first came on the show, Alan was supposed to be from Chicago. They lived with Jackie while looking for a house. Then someone must have said, "Hey, it's too much of a coincidence that they landed in Springfield, where Jackie lived." So they changed it so that Alan's family was from Springfield and had a mansion in town.

If there's one thing that made no sense in this story is WHY Alan did this. He didn't even LIKE Elizabeth. She was never going give him children of his own. Why didn't he just divorce her and marry a woman who could give him children? Or if he could accept an adopted child, why not mourn the child he lost with Elizabeth and then somewhere down the road adopt one?

(It's possible this was explained in more detail at the time, but this is what I remember and what I've read in recaps).

He claimed he didn't want Elizabeth to have a breakdown, yadda, yadda--but he didn't care about her. Like at all. If she lost her mind he could have parked her in an institution and divorced her. The only reasons he flipped out when she left him was because she did the leaving and she was taking Phillip away.

(It's hard to ignore the fact that he was abusive. Not is a physical way, but in an emotional way. He made her life hell. That's why I'm convinced if the Dobsons had remained, he was originally slated to do the same to Hope eventually, which didn't happen until Ryder and Long took over the show).

So the thing that was missing here, again, is what was his motivation, other than to create a long-term baby switch storyline?

I think it had to do with Brandon. If the Dobsons had stayed, it might have been revealed that for one reason or another (my guess is a trust) he HAD to present Brandon with a male grandchild. He specifically asked the doctor for a male child. Remember, Alan Michael had a trust that he tried to get hold of, and even though that happened under different writers, it not hard to imagine that Alan wanted control of a trust for his first child, too. He would have almost certainly been the trustee and would have controlled it until Phillip grew up. (I also think a possible reason he married Elizabeth is because Brandon commanded it--which would be another reason for him to hate him).

He stays with Elizabeth because he falls head over heels for Phillip--come on, Phillip was the one true love of his life; that was the ONE thing that was consistent about Alan though many, many regime changes, right down to the last episode of GL. So much so that he was willing to give up having biological children. He even told Elizabeth after Brandon died and Jackie divorced him that it was unlikely he would ever have more children. It was really Hope who wanted to have a baby, and as we see over the years, AM was never as important to Alan as Phillip was.

There were various reasons why Marland didn't want to deal with the story: first of all, he was way more interested in his own characters and stories. That was pretty much true of every story he inherited. He had something against Lezlie Dalton and wanted to get rid of her. And, as mentioned, he just didn't like adopted children stories.

Also, he had to tackle ANOTHER paternity reveal dealing with Alan: Amanda being his daughter. What he did there, to make it more interesting to him, I would guess, is that when he created Jennifer, he gave her a teen daughter who he made one of the major players in his central young love storyline.

I can see him saying to himself, "Eh, I'll dump Phillip and Freddie in boarding school and deal with this down the road."

Even though delaying so much deprived the audience of a lot of the story beats playing out, especially because he shipped off Elizabeth and inexplicably killed off Jackie, I'm glad he did that. NO WAY would he have handled the reveal was well as Long (and Ryder, too, I think) did.

I'm just going to say it: he SUCKED at plot reveals and plot climaxes. He didn't know (or didn't care enough) how to have the reveals impact the story AFTER the reveal.

Holly is finally free of the threat of Roger and can remake her life, maybe confront her feelings about Ed? Shipped off for years. Alan is reunited with his first love who haunted him for decades? Nothing. They just become polite acquaintances. Amanda loses her child and flips out over the truth about her paternity? Has a brief mental breakdown (but only because Kathleen Cullen was going on maternity leave) then recovers and it's barely a blip. Hope finds out her father was right all along and Alan had been lying to her from the minute they fell in love? Nada. No biggie. She immediately forgives him.

On the other hand, it was Long and Ryder who set up the complex adult relationship between Alan and Phillip that played out for the rest of the life of the show.

So even though I'm p!ssed at Marland for mishandling the story, by kicking it down the road, he allowed other writers to use it to impact the canvas for the life of the show.

There were two people that Marland did not like when he inherited TGL - Mart Hulswit and Lezlie Dalton. Hulswit because he was critical of the writing, apparently too critical according to Allen Potter. Marland allegedly convinced Potter to fire Hulswit so he could replace him with a more dashing, leading man. Potter said later on (I wish I could find the source - it was in a book I read on soaps, in general) that he regretted doing it, and he would never be convinced liked that again. In regards to Dalton, I don't know what issue Marland had with her. It seemed that Marland had no idea how to write for Holly, or didn't care to. I think Marland was always going to write out Peter eventually, so the obvious play would be to put Holly back in Ed's orbit again.

Sara never was interesting again after Dean Blackford died. I really wish the Dobsons would have pivoted in 1979 and had Mike Bauer and Sara get closer, post Dean's death (due to the trauma Sara faced). Then eventually add in Hope by March of 1979, and it would have been the Jackie/Justin/Sara/Mike/Alan/Elizabeth entanglement. The Dobsons didn't seem to know what to do with Sara, though, other than having her go back to being essentially being in a supporting role.

I LOVE your idea about Brandon and a male heir/trust angle "threat" to Alan. Add to that Brandon could have made it a point that the first child Alan had must be a male heir. Meaning, Alan had to make certain to ask the doctor for a male child. Had other writers picked up on this or if the Dobson's would have used this premise, Brandon could have blackmailed Alan after finding out about Alan's liaison with Amanda's mother resulting in Alan's firstborn being a daughter (whether the mother of Amanda turned out to be Jennifer Richards or someone else).

22 hours ago, DRW50 said:

@vetsoapfan @slick jones @Soaplovers @Tisy-Lish @Soapsuds @SoapDope78 @FrenchFan @Khan @jam6242 @Vee @Sapounopera @soapfan770 @Paul Raven @P.J. @DeeVee @Mitch64 @GL95 @Kane @alwaysAMC @Spoon @GL Oldtimer @kalbir @dc11786 @zanereed @Maxim @Franko @BoldRestless @Liberty City @Reverend Ruthledge @Speed Racer

The channel that tends to provide a few brand new vintage episodes a year for various soaps has found another for GL. In good quality too. April 1, 1953. I checked and couldn't find the episode elsewhere, although there is already some March and April around. There's always a double-edged sword in so much of one period being around when so much else is gone but I'm still very grateful and I'm sure you will be too.

Most of this is just the Roberts and the Grants, the former worrying about Kathy and the latter having Laura Grant at her most imperious in her schemes to break up Dick and Kathy. One surprise is we actually get to see Joey Roberts. I assume this is Tarry Green. I don't think we've ever seen him before, although I may be wrong.

I was going to say he looks a bit old for 18 but this is 1953...not sure how old Green was but I see he had been in Broadway shows starting in 1951.

Thank you for alerting me to this @DRW50 . It is always great to see the original families from the TV years.

21 minutes ago, zanereed said:

There were two people that Marland did not like when he inherited TGL - Mart Hulswit and Lezlie Dalton. Hulswit because he was critical of the writing, apparently too critical according to Allen Potter. Marland allegedly convinced Potter to fire Hulswit so he could replace him with a more dashing, leading man.

I DO like Peter Simon, probably more than most people here (I was a fan when he was on SFT) but DASHING? Never, ever would I have called him that. 😂

It's been a while since I watched it, but on the Locher Room I'm pretty sure Mart said that one reason he was let go was because he was very active in the actor's union. But that doesn't negate that he was also fired because they wanted someone (SNORT!) more "dashing."

I have to say I wasn't the biggest Mart fan back in the day (I was young and shallow, what can I say) but rewatching him now, he brought something real and special to Ed. They made a big mistake when they let him go, IMO.

I can't imagine what it was about Dalton that he found so offensive. If he was going to kill off anyone, it should have been Elizabeth rather than Jackie. He pretty much destroyed the character by having her abandon Phillip, no matter how hard he tried to dress it up as a noble act.

31 minutes ago, zanereed said:

I LOVE your idea about Brandon and a male heir/trust angle "threat" to Alan.

Oh, thank you. It makes sense to me, because the guy literally chucked two of his heirs out of the family. He would have wanted to make certain a male line was in place, since I believe it was said he favored Alan over Alex only because he was male. If Brandon was as horrid a father as they implied, I would think Alan would see him establishing a non-Spaulding as the Spaulding heir a neat revenge on his father.

The Dobsons might have gone down a road somewhat like this. There was the whole Stenbeck heir thing on ATWT.

1 hour ago, All My Shadows said:

That was a pretty good episode. I thought maybe we’d seen it before because the “19-thrifty-3” ad is definitely familiar, but I guess it was used on numerous episodes.

This one’s a great example of how 15-minute soaps feel like “dropping in” on the characters going about their lives. No plot movement whatsoever, but it still feels like you’re “seeing” a lot. I get more and more interested in these 50s baddies like Laura Grant because the portrayal of such characters had to be done so delicately in that era.

Sorry for not tagging you - I always end up forgetting someone. I always enjoy your thoughts on old ATWT and LoL material which is found.

You're right. I do find Laura fascinating - maybe more here than in the other available episodes of her as she seems to be in full ice-cold mother mode (Irna really had some mother issues).

I think some other woman replaces Laura as the ice-cold rich mother in the late '50s.

It is very realistic that, IIRC, Laura is never happy with anyone Dick gets involved with. I imagine whoever he gets with after he leaves LA (the show was still in LA all through the '50s right?) would get that same bitterly frosty shoulder.