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 5 hours ago5 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.

Helene Benedict was the next snobby society matron who disapproved of her daughter Anne getting involved with Paul Fletcher. And like the Grants, Henry was much the much more tolerant father.

Agnes always liked that meddling mother type-Pheobe, Enid,although did OLTL have one?

38 minutes ago, DeeVee said:

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

Speaking of the Dobsons, I wanted to pick up on an earlier post about what they had planned moving forward if they would have been allowed to stay on TGL.

Does anyone know if the Dobsons' original plan for Roger Thorpe truly was for Dr. Renee DuBois to alter Roger's face, so that Michael Zaslow could exit the show (as he wanted) and the Dobsons would have brought on a new actor to portray Roger? If not, I wonder how they would have let Roger exit the show...?

I was told in the past that the Dobsons were finally going to reveal Phillip's true parentage to the entire town by the late spring of 1980. This would have resulted in Hope leaving Alan for a time, Justin and Elizabeth finally divorcing, and Jackie leaving town after a breakdown, as something was supposed to happen to Phillip. He would run away from home, I think is what I heard, and Jackie would blame herself for it and leave Springfield. I don't think Cindy Pickett was planning on staying past her contract when it expired in June, so it could be that Jackie left for a bit and returned later with a new actress portraying her...?

Were the Dobsons always planning on killing off Lucille? I've heard conflicting stories.

I have heard that the Dobsons never planned to actually marry Hope and Alan. Marrying them was all Marland. I'm not sure what the end goal was for Hope and Alan in the Dobsons' plans - does anyone venture a guess?

I think the Dobsons did have someone in mind for Amanda's mother, but I was told that it would have been an original character of theirs versus Jennifer Richards, who was an original of Marland's. Does anyone know if they had something in mind for the mother...?

I don't think Rita and Ed were the final game plan for the Dobsons - would Ed and Holly have eventually reunited?

Would Elizabeth and Mike finally have ended up together after she divorced Justin...?

What were their plans for Hillary and Katie...?

I'm trying to determine if the Dobsons would have redeemed Ross, or left him as the black sheep of the Marler family? It would have been fun to see Hope break up with Alan and start dating Ross. Neither Alan nor Mike would probably have been thrilled.

Edited 1 hour ago1 hr by zanereed

6 hours 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.

Jerry ver Dorn's natural charisma, charm and sweetness also helped. ❤️

6 hours ago, DeeVee said:

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).

Hope's absence was explained in a fairly well-written (!!!) scene on camera.

Hope telephoned Alan-Michael before the wedding. The show had hired a voice-actress to play the role and even I (who resented TGL for firing Elvera Roussel and never bringing the character back) thought the performer did a great job (much better than the voice-actor chosen to play Mike Bauer--with a Southern twang, no less--in a different telephone call.

Although A-M voiced his bitter disappointment and vowed not to let Alan anywhere near her, Hope told her son that she was feeling too fragile, and was simply unable to bear being at the wedding if there was any possibility she would run into Alan. She believed Alan would come after her if he knew she was in Springfield. It would decimate her already precarious mental health, so she had to stay far away from him indefinitely.

6 hours ago, DeeVee said:

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.

Lord, yes. The monster-SORASING of A-M (and later Leah) really screwed up the Bauer family's time-line and viability.

6 hours ago, DeeVee said:

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.

But the revisionist version of Amanda (whom I refer to as "pod Amanda") was so blatantly changed and so poorly cast, she just wasn't Amanda anymore. Making her Alan's sister, after establishing for years on-air that she was his daughter? Nooooooooooooooooooo. 🤮 That was one of the most egregious and idiotic blunders in TGL's history. I'm still vexed about it.

5 hours ago, Sapounopera said:

I could not see Robin Mattson as a Bauer. By that time she was playing a different kind of characters and I would hate to see poor Hope turn into a nutjob. Although this would make a good excuse for never showing up for her son.

As I have no doubt you already know, Mattson had previously played Hope in the 1970s. Unfortunately, at that point, she had not developed into a strong actress yes, and her Hope was bland and inconsequential. An editor in Daily TV Serials (I think it was) wrote that her potential pairing with Ben didn't work because she was a "bland baby girl." I was pleasantly surprised to see Mattson's much-superior work on other soaps, later on.

5 hours ago, Sapounopera said:

In the 80s perhaps Marcia McCabe or Arianne Munker, who was wasted in the Valere story.

I could see Patsy Pease or Kim Johnston Ulrich play Hope in the 90s.

I would have wanted Jacquie Courtney as Hope.

5 hours ago, DeeVee said:

Arianne Munker played Hope's friend Christie when she was a child. It was probably a total coincidence her new character was named Christine, but what a MUCH better story if it turned out she was THAT Christie. Maybe that was the plan--both Hope and Rita were mentioned at the time, so it seemed like there were thinking about bringing them back. But there were so many writer changes during that period it's possible that's why it never happened.

You are a much better, and more creative, writer than anyone hired by this show post-Nancy Curlee.

46 minutes ago, Paul Raven said:

Helene Benedict was the next snobby society matron who disapproved of her daughter Anne getting involved with Paul Fletcher. And like the Grants, Henry was much the much more tolerant father.

Agnes always liked that meddling mother type-Pheobe, Enid,although did OLTL have one?

Thanks. That's who I was thinking of.

Agnes did that and also liked to have the earth mothers/long-suffering mothers.

On 1/17/2026 at 4:09 PM, Soaplovers said:

Blake and her friendships with Frank & A-M were abandoned by 1995. It was as if the second she married Ross, her whole orbit had changed and she hardly interacted with either Frank nor A-M after 1995 until the show finally wised up and paired her with Frank near the end.

I had no idea that Blake/Frank had been friends and had also hooked up going all the way back to when SS played Blake. However, there were scenes with Blake/Frank hanging out, going for a dip, listening to one another,.. and it really gave SS's Blake more layers.

I also remember one significant friendship scene between the two when in early 1994 when Blake came over to be a shoulder for Frank to lay on after the whole Eleni/Julie situation blew up. She said she had no judgment for whatever he was going to tell her... listed to him, and than asked a very valid question after he was done venting to her. She asked if he enjoyed the attention Julie was paying him and if perhaps he felt something for her back in return. I don't recall how Frank answered it, but I think it did make him do a little soul searching about how things went south between him and Eleni.

@alwaysAMC Reading your write-ups of 1998 and the whole Blake/Ben/Ross situation made me remember being a young teen during that era and having a few of my friends coming over to hang out. The moment Blake was on screen in the wheelchair, my friends took notice and watched her for a few moments before turning to me and asking 'what's her story?'. And they sat down and watched that story in particular because they were fascinated by Blake.

It's interesting to me that when I was in college in the early 00s that I got several people to switch to watching Guiding Light... and it was all because of the Blake/Ross/Tory story that was going on. The show never really understood the appeal she and Ross had.

I love to hear this! We're about the same age haha. I actually find Liz's Blake to be fascinating too, for some reason. She and Ross (along with A-M, Frank, Eleni) were the characters I remember about GL when growing up. Now I'm curious about this Tory character! :)

During this storyline with Ben, they did mention how Blake and Frank slept together. It was when Ben planned to bring all her former lovers out and they mentioned Frank... that was the first time I realized they had a history, which was interesting. I know they end up together in the finale (I watched it last year), so I've been watching their interactions lately just to see if there was any hint, but I guess there wouldn't be between all the different writers and EPs.

2 hours ago, zanereed said:

There were two people that Marland did not like when he inherited TGL - Mart Hulswit and Lezlie Dalton.

Marland almost always came across as a gentleman. I was really disappointed when, in a magazine interview, he snidely referred to Hulswit as a "dodo bird," whom Lenore Kasdorf allegedly couldn't stand working with and begged to be separated from.

2 hours ago, zanereed said:

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.

Imagine anyone thing Peter Simon was "a more dashing leading man."🙄

PS was good on SFT, but as Ed Bauer, he was listless and morose, and lacked the charm and passion MH brought to the role. A few years later, when TPTB slaughtered the Bauer family, it would have been a comforting link to the past to have Hulswit in the role. Instead, we had the sparse remains of the core family on screen, and a non-descript actor as "new Ed" (which is how I referred to him for the next 27 years, LOL).

2 hours ago, zanereed said:

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.

Dalton, as Elizabeth, was never one of my favorite actresses, but it was short-sighted and damaging to the drama, to have Elizabeth just disappear and remain off-camera, in limbo for years. We didn't even know if she was alive or dead for the longest time, until it was acknowledged she had died years before.

An actress of Maureen Garrett's caliber should never have been written out. She and MH's Ed worked beautifully together.

2 hours ago, zanereed said:

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.

Yes, she became a supporting, talk-to character; supporting instead of a lead. I hated the way she was written out: announcing she was taking a three-month sabbatical from Cedars...and then disappearing into the ether and never being seen or heard from again. Why not just SAY she was retiring or moving away permanently?

2 hours ago, zanereed said:

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).

Again, a poster in this forum who is a more creative than the actual TGL scribes from the 1980s, and from after Nancy Curlee's departure.

1 hour ago, Paul Raven said:

Helene Benedict was the next snobby society matron who disapproved of her daughter Anne getting involved with Paul Fletcher. And like the Grants, Henry was much the much more tolerant father.

Agnes always liked that meddling mother type-Pheobe, Enid,although did OLTL have one?

OLTL had Eileen Riley Siegal, who became a meddling, controlling mother type after her husband David died. Like Mary Williams on Y&R, Eileen was never obnoxious like this until becoming a window.