15 minutes ago, DeeVee said:

Oh, now you've done it. You have triggered a RANT.

The way they wrote out Alan in 1989 was STOOOOOOOOOPID. This whole deal where he finds out that Roger is alive, so he gets a gun and decides he's going to shoot him at PHILLIP'S WEDDING was BEYOND RIDICULOUS.

(Yes, I'm aware I'm shouting. I can't help it).

First of all, I don't think Alan ever TOUCHED a gun before this. He would not go after someone (IN PUBLIC) to gun them down personally. If he were ever to be driven to want someone dead, he would HIRE SOMEONE to do it for him. He would never dirty his hands like that. Remember what I was saying before about how self-preservation was the main thing that drove Alan?

But I think it's completely out of character for him to even go that far. Alan had a million chances to get rid of Roger by having him killed. He never did it. So it's a pretty good indicator that 10 years later, he STILL wouldn't do it.

Then there's something else that apparently everyone forgot or chose to forget: Alan had nothing to fear from Roger at this point. Everyone knew everything that Roger had been holding over him in the past. He even briefly went to prison because of it.

Would he have been happy about a Roger return? No. Would he have been suspicous and assume Roger had an agenda against him? Sure.

But personally go after him with a gun and try to kill him? NO.

We're not done with the stupid part. Because Alan accidentally shot Phillip instead of Roger (as one does WHEN YOU'VE NEVER TOUCHED A GUN BEFORE) and then everyone turns against him and seems to be supportive of Roger, he refuses to use an attorney.

Right. Richest guy in town decides NOT to avail himself of the best attorneys in the country, so he ends up getting 5 years in jail. Someone with a public defender would have gotten a better deal.

Meanwhile, Roger gets his record expunged because he was a spook for the government. (Don't even get me started on THAT).

Apparently, Alan didn't avail himself of any attorneys WHILE he was in jail, so he serves the ENTIRE 5 YEARS.

Look, I get that they needed a way to write him out of the story and didn't know how long they were going to keep him off the canvas, but there had to be a much better, much more believable way to do it than this mess.

SIGH.

Rant over.

Haha thanks for the explanation. Not to get you going again but I’ve seen the Bloss wedding with the fear Alan was sending “another bomb” to one of Blake’s weddings. He also tried to blow someone up?

I had always assumed it was a white collar crime of some sort.

30 minutes ago, soapfave06 said:

With Alan in prison for those four years, would 1989-90 have been a good time to try and bring Amanda back for Spaulding? The actress had appeared for a visit in 1987 I believe, so maybe she would have been willing?

I feel like 1992 would be perfect right as Alex is trying to anoint Nick and ruin her plans. Plus Vanessa is president then and there’s bad blood there, right? (I don’t actually know why just that Van mentored Blake on dealing with Amanda.)

Edited 2 hours ago2 hr by GL95

1 minute ago, GL95 said:

Haha thanks for the explanation. Not to get you going again but I’ve seen the Bloss wedding with the fear Alan was sending “another bomb” to one of Blake’s weddings. He also tried to blow someone up?

Jeez, I forgot that part.

The wedding scenes are available online, btw. If you want to subject yourself to it. 😄

21 minutes ago, GL95 said:

Haha thanks for the explanation. Not to get you going again but I’ve seen the Bloss wedding with the fear Alan was sending “another bomb” to one of Blake’s weddings. He also tried to blow someone up?

I had always assumed it was a white collar crime of some sort.

I'm not sure it's a real bomb. There's something about a box that Nadine knows about.

19 minutes ago, GL95 said:

I feel like 1992 would be perfect right as Alex is trying to anoint Nick and ruin her plans. Plus Vanessa is president then and there’s bad blood there, right? (I don’t actually know why just that Van mentored Blake on dealing with Amanda.)

Yes, there was some ancient bad blood between Van and Amanda. Back in the day, Van had beefs with almost everyone to some degree. It started with Van making moves on Amanda's husband du jour, Ben, and exposing the fact Amanda had paid an art gallery owner to give Ben a contract. They also skirmished constantly at Spaulding, as Amanda was in charge and Vanessa chafed at being told what to do. Vanessa also engineers a scathing interview of Hope's to be printed that's highly critical of Amanda when she first takes the reins at Spaulding (while Alan is briefly jailed).

It's not exactly all out warfare, but they disliked each other.

For anyone who cares, a YouTube video claiming to be the wedding tells me that in fact the bomb exploded at the engagement party not wedding.

6 hours ago, robbwolff said:

I can't see Larkin Malloy as Ed Bauer at all. While I liked Malloy in his roles on The Edge of Night, there was a sophistication in him and his acting that doesn't speak Bauer to me. Besides a decade-plus younger than the other actors who had played Ed, I can't picture Malloy as the father of Michael O'Leary's Rick, especially since Malloy was only four years older than O'Leary. Also, Malloy wasn't available when the recast happened. He was still on Edge, which didn't get word of its cancellation until late October/early November. Though a few years older than Gentry, Hulswit, and Simon, I can see David O'Brien from The Doctors as a possible Ed.

I think there was just a few months gap so I figured they could have sent Ed away. I thought of him mostly because this was the period where Ed was in high hog melodrama in foreign countries and with poisonings at the hospital, which Malloy could play. He was also decent in the everyday family moments on his other soaps - he never had many as Kyle. And he and Susan Pratt later worked together for several years on AMC so they probably could have gotten through Ed/Claire.

6 hours ago, DeeVee said:

He was on Y&R during a period I didn't watch it much. (I never really watched B&B). When he was on Dark Shadows he played a mute ghost for months. His performance was so intense that without saying a word he scared the crap out of the audience. When he played a human character later, he was a schemer and someone who easily manipulated women, and the audience just loved him. Perfect for Alan, IMO.

The only one more popular with the DS female audience at the time was David Selby. He also would have been a fantastic Alan, but he was eating it up on prime time from the 80s on.

Since all of this moot and time has long past, if I could pick ANYONE, even someone who would never do a soap, my ideal actor to play Alan during the 90s would have Chris Sarandon. He can play funny and charming, but also play villainous and dark. He's handsome without being pretty handsome, and believably play a powerful person. Those are the qualities that I believe an actor playing Alan needed to work.

I love fantasy casting. This is so much fun.

Coster and Reilly would both have been good--they were not that much older than Bernau. I would lean a little bit in favor of Coster. He was really good at playing complex characters.

I believe Reilly left GH around the time Raines was cast. Maybe he even auditioned for the part, who knows.

During Bernau's first run, he was replaced briefly twice (he was ill or maybe he was holding out for more money during contract negotiations). First David Bailey, who played Russ Matthews on AW, replaced him for a few episodes, and then later on Wayne Tippit who played Ted on SFT. At least one of the episodes with Tippit is available on the German channel. I have to say it was EXTREMELY weird to see him play opposite Elvera. He just did not work for me as Alan. But I could see David as a permanent replacement for him.

DHK I think was a bit too young for the part of Ed. Larkin Malloy--again, too young, and he played rich snots almost his whole career, I think for a reason. Even though Kyle was brought up by a madam, I don't see him having the middle-class vibe Ed would need.

Age aside, Ed is not so easy to come up with a good recast. Yeah, he's the good guy, but he also has demons. Ron Hale--yeah, I could see it. If I just think of him as Roger on RH, I would think he suited Alan better, but he could play other kinds characters. He was only a little bit younger than Simon, so age-wise he would have worked.

He was excellent on Dark Shadows. In some ways I think he played the menacing ghost and dark cad better than David Selby but suffered from the story being a retread (and also being sped up compared to 1897, which never seemed to end).

Chris Sarandon is a great suggestion. I remember him in that terrible Margaux Hemingway film.

There was a magazine article from before Ron Raines was cast which mentioned two names - I think Jed Allan may have been one. Joe Gallison was the other.

Jed was so off as Edward Quartermaine, but he did a decent job on PC before then so maybe he just suffered from where GH was at the time.

Reilly as Ed does seem very intriguing to me. Ditto for Ron Hale. He would have likely been thrown around more for Alan, but I think he could have played Ed's many shadings. By this time Ron was about to go on GH, where he did some wonderful work, but was often just there.

23 minutes ago, P.J. said:

Yes, there was some ancient bad blood between Van and Amanda. Back in the day, Van had beefs with almost everyone to some degree. It started with Van making moves on Amanda's husband du jour, Ben, and exposing the fact Amanda had paid an art gallery owner to give Ben a contract. They also skirmished constantly at Spaulding, as Amanda was in charge and Vanessa chafed at being told what to do. Vanessa also engineers a scathing interview of Hope's to be printed that's highly critical of Amanda when she first takes the reins at Spaulding (while Alan is briefly jailed).

It's not exactly all out warfare, but they disliked each other.

Did they also tangle about Mark Evans?

16 minutes ago, DRW50 said:

Did they also tangle about Mark Evans?

No. Vanessa was more resentful of Jennifer, as shortly after Mark dumped her, he ended up married to her. Vanessa quickly moved on to Tony and obsessing over him. By the time Mark and Amanda are having an affair, Vanessa is looking for her half brother. I think Vanessa knew there was something going on between them, but didn't care.

When Billy first comes to town, Vanessa is irritated whenever he spends time with Amanda. He's making moves on Vanessa, and his flirting with Amanda is mostly related to business, but Vanessa doesn't know that.