26 minutes ago, DeeVee said:

I always liked Teri, too, and think it's a shame they squandered her when they had her on the show.

I think Jack and Lainie were on for a year, maybe? As far as I can recall, they never did anything like that for them. I just remember them hanging around in the background a lot.

Sure, they weren't rich jetsetters, but somehow GL came up with major storylines for Bill and Bert back in the day.

I don't know how they thought just putting these characters in front of the camera was going to result in them becoming the new heads of the Bauer family. A total, self-inflicted flop.

I think it was a way to answer the viewers' complaints that there weren't enough Bauers on the show. This was their way of saying, "Look! We have more Bauers on the show!". Uh, yeah. That's not what we meant.

Introducing another branch of the Bauer family should've been done while Theo Goetz was still alive. You really needed Papa Bauer to explain why no one had mentioned Otto or his offspring up to that point.

4 hours ago, vetsoapfan said:

I wanted Ellen Demming (the actress who had previously played Meta for 21 years) to reprise the role. She was only 63 years old in 1985. Springfield needed the stability and comfort of seeing familiar faces back on-screen. Having her and Mart Hulswit return would have mollified me a lot. Having Don Stewart and Elvera Roussel asked back as well would have helped me forgive TGL for all the crap it had heaped on viewers for the last few years.

Agreed. I think Demming would have been more than capable of reprising the role. Speaking of Meta, does anyone know why Irna Phillips decided to kill off Joe Roberts? I assume the actor wanted to leave the show? I haven't seen much footage of Meta's third husband, Bruce Banning, at all, so I don't know how their chemistry was.

Going to Dick Grant...I never found the character appealing at all. He never seemed to fit in as a leading man. I thought Paul Fletcher was a more interesting character of the Springfield doctors prior to the Ed Bauer and Joe Werner years.

1 hour ago, Khan said:

Introducing another branch of the Bauer family should've been done while Theo Goetz was still alive. You really needed Papa Bauer to explain why no one had mentioned Otto or his offspring up to that point.

I don't know...we accepted Alexandra as a never before heard from sister...I know at her intro she was estranged but all the drama around Brandon's death and will and she was never mentioned. I think a branch of the Bauer family was acceptable...but Johnny was just so damn dull!

I always wanted ATWT to bring on Chris Hughes brothers grandkids, this would have worked well during the Dobsons efforts to "contemporize" the show...I could see a farm girl moving in with Nancy and Chris and Nancy having another Lisa on her hands!

1 hour ago, zanereed said:

Agreed. I think Demming would have been more than capable of reprising the role. Speaking of Meta, does anyone know why Irna Phillips decided to kill off Joe Roberts? I assume the actor wanted to leave the show? I haven't seen much footage of Meta's third husband, Bruce Banning, at all, so I don't know how their chemistry was.

Going to Dick Grant...I never found the character appealing at all. He never seemed to fit in as a leading man. I thought Paul Fletcher was a more interesting character of the Springfield doctors prior to the Ed Bauer and Joe Werner years.

I don't know this for sure, but I think Irna killed off Joe Roberts to open up storyline possibilities for Meta. Meta was very much a central figure in the 50s, when Joe died, but she was kind of without story (as most happily married soap characters) are. And she was still young enough to be in a strong romantic storyline. After she married Joe, she was always present but just spent most of her time fretting over Kathy. When Joe died, Meta quickly went into a new romance with Mark Holden which led to a Meta/Mark/Kathy triangle and lots of juicy storyline. There were several different actors who played Bruce as the character was in and out of the story for 24 years. William Roerick (Henry Chamberlain) and a famous actor (Barnard Hughes) both played the part if you can use your imagine picturing them with Ellen Demming to ascertain if they would have had chemistry together. Although, with Bruce, chemistry was less of an issue with Meta. He was always waiting in the wings for Meta while she went off with other men. By the time she decided to marry Bruce, it was mainly because she was lonely after so many failed romances. It sounds disrespectful but Bruce understood this and was ok with it. She basically married him like she was putting on a comfortable pair of slippers to enter old age with. It was actually a good lesson on passion vs. companionship and which is more important. It was pretty clear in the story that companionship was the most important. She had that with Joe but, of course, he died. Every other relationship Meta had was based on passion or emotion with usually disastrous consequences. By the time Meta married Bruce she was moving out of that lead heroine role it made sense for her to settle down with Bruce. Although it was really the beginning of the end for the character. She would remain on the show for another 14 years but she was never front and center again. Anyway, Bruce was really the best thing that ever happened to Meta. Even better than Joe. Joe was good for Meta but he brought the baggage of hurricane Kathy with him.

I couldn't stand Dick. Nor could I stand Kathy. So I thought they were made for each other. You are correct that Paul was a much more interesting character. Dick was selfish, self-righteous and such a wimp. A lot of people found it hard to like Paul at first. In fact, Bert Bauer couldn't stand him. When anybody ever mentioned Paul, she'd always say, "Oh, that sour apple!". But Paul had his reasons for being cynical and stand-offish. Dick was a tool just because he was a tool. For some reason, most people liked Dick. Although I found Paul much more likable.

37 minutes ago, Reverend Ruthledge said:

She would remain on the show for another 14 years but she was never front and center again. Anyway, Bruce was really the best thing that ever happened to Meta. Even better than Joe. Joe was good for Meta but he brought the baggage of hurricane Kathy with him.

Quick follow up question - was Meta on the show consistently, or was she there off and on for those 14 years? I seem to remember that she and Bruce moved away from Springfield around 1966 (Papa was thinking of moving away with them), and then returned around 1971. Is the latter correct, or was Meta around during the latter half of the 1960's?

In defense of Long, she wasn't the one to introduce Johnny nor his annoying kid sister.. those characters were created during her time away from the show. She at least knew to write off the kid sister and change Frank D's character into Frank Cooper and replace the annoying kid sister with Harley.

And she did try to liven Johnny up by pairing him with Roxie, or were they paired before she came back as head-writer? I don't think the cancer did him, nor that relationship any favors.

@DeeVee In defense of Marland and the Phillip story.. when he took over, he probably had to focus on the Roger story right away most likely because Michael Z was leaving (I think I read somewhere Marland was bummed because he really wanted to write Roger). And by the time he probably would have been ready to start focusing back on the Phillip story, Cindy Pickett was pretty much ready to leave the show so he probably thought he needed to find a new Jackie and get the audience to accept her first so he pushed back that story and decided to build on the Amanda story first.

@DRW50 In regards to Barbara, I think having her run the restaurant that her son Andy bought for her was an effective way of keeping her in the mix and giving her purpose outside of worrying about her kids... but once MG quit and the character of Andy was written in a corner, her character became expendable.

A question I had was that in reading write-ups of Vanessa in 1980, it said that she remembered Andy because of how he up and left Trish Lewis so am I to believe that she knew of Billy Lewis long before 1983?

Another thing I never understood was once Jackie officially was killed off in mid 1982.. why the show didn't think to have Sara and Justin interact with one another since the two had a past with one another and Jackie had sabotaged both of their attempts at being together in the past. It certainly would have given Justin something more to do in the first half of 1983 other than trying to date Helena with Evie accidentally coming between them due to her own lonliness after Ben had left town.