4 hours ago, GL95 said:

I am now into 1993 and watched the Maureen death/mourning episodes and again coming back to add to the Melissa Hayden love. With some of the best actors on the show all onscreen mourning (Maeve/MG/Zas/RH) she was the standout and the one who really drove the emotional fallout. I wanted to give her a hug through my TV from 30 years in the future. No one else really made me cry but I was heartbroken for Bridget.

Watching that whole Ed/Lillian plot line unfold, I hadn't realized just what a slow moving trainwreck that affair was. Ed is just terrible. Lillian is at least lonely and deluded that there's something real there, but Ed just seems to sleep with her because he wants to? (Though writing that letter and just delivering it that way is a monumentally dumb thing to do, and you almost have to believe she wants it discovered by Maureen. But Michelle could've been the one to see it just as easily?).

Conversely, I am also up to the Mindy return with the super dud Mindy recast whose name I am too lazy to look up. It's wild because the entire cast is absolutely bringing it and....she's there. Walking into Nick's place to find him in bed with Eve. I do love the soap thing of people having absolutely zero boundaries and thinking the best way to see an ex months after they left them at the altar is to walk into their home unannounced in the dead of the night. I mean, wouldn't a Lewis be raised to shoot someone who did that? Billy definitely would.

Harley/Mallet are trying to figure out what happened to Buzz after discovering he's not on the Vietnam War memorial wall. (They pan to Harley touching the 1959 wall and I am going to just say it's a random wall she was drawn to and not where she was looking to not completely lose my sanity with the timelines. I mean, in no world would Buzz be 34 at the time of his return.) It's a very odd story right now actually knowing what happens when Frank waxes poetic about how amazing his father was.

I started this loopback in June 1990 when AM is first released from his kidnapping and is going on and on to Blake about how the baby was the only thing getting him through the torture when we know there never was a baby. Then right before he finds out about Maureen's accident he apologized to Vanessa and showed real remorse for his past actions, talking about nearly dying when he was shot and how all he could think about was Eleni/the baby. He of course deserves what's coming having switched out the birth control, but it's a different viewing experience knowing what's coming. I definitely feel I've gone full circle on this stretch of episodes. (It's pretty crazy how AM never has a kid given how consistently he wanted one-he's referring to the future grandfathers right before he marries Lucy. But maybe the thought of the future grandfathers made Lucy/AM have second thoughts down the line.)

Oh this has me so excited to watch this era!

I still can't believe the writers had A-M and Marina pair up, even if it was years later. That's just... not ok.

22 minutes ago, DeeVee said:

One of my pet peeves! Phillip produced the only Spaulding grandchildren (until the Gus retcon, as you said). Not having AM or Amanda have children (or for that matter, Nick) was crazy.

Since they had Alan so consistent over the years about favoring Phillip over AM and Amanda, I don't think bloodlines mattered to him. But flip it--AM and/or Amanda angry that Alan favored Phillip's children over theirs--now there's a character-driven story.

I don't like that simply because there were few enough Bauers as it is. Bad enough they had Mike and Hope disappear never having had anymore children, and made Ed uninterested in having more children.

If they had kept AM around, probably he would have eventually had a kid--and like most male soap characters obsessed with having children, he would immediately have forgotten he had one. (Sorry, another one of my pet peeves).

I really can’t get over Blake not having a kid with any Spaulding, but Blake/AM having a kid even if they’re not together just has so many possibilities that develop pretty organically.

Otherwise my preferred scenario for an AM kid is a disappeared at sea AM rather than being saved by Zachary, leaving Lucy pregnant and sparing us the Michael Dietz recast. (Have AM call home and Amanda tells him Lucy died so he stays away or something.) Alan only loves AM when he’s in peril, so Alan thinking he’s dead will make him love AM far more than he ever did alive which would drive Phillip nuts to come in second to a ghost. Lucy moves into the Bauer house because she doesn’t want to deal with the Cooper/Spaulding feud, and Rick tries to make himself a candidate for raising the baby but just ad he gets his hopes up AM returns. Rick Hearst comes back for two weeks just in time for the kids’ birth and he and Lucy move to San Cristobal where’s been holed up.

Edited 1 hour ago1 hr by GL95