1 minute ago, DeeVee said:

I'm familiar with Walker--yeah, I think he could have worked.

I don't recall Lockerman that much, but looking at photos of him from when he was young--I TOTALLY can see him as Kyle. (As long as I ignore the awful 1980s moussed-up mullet hair style in some of his pictures, LOL).

Well, it was the style. :D

23 minutes ago, GL95 said:

I’ll admit my Michelle/Jesse recollections aren’t super strong. I watched all four CBS soaps off and on and changed which was my primary-admittedly Michelle often was fast forward fodder to me by the time Jesse rolled around if I was in a hurry and needed to get through 3.5 hours of recorded soaps fast back then haha.

Hahaha totally get that! Once you get through your watch up to early '95, it's worth going through that storyline when you get a moment :) You probably know this, or read about it, but they brought back Maureen for a bit during their storyline and I really thought Jesse's tie into Maureen was sweet (at first I thought wait, are they doing this haha, but then I ended up really liking it). I think that's one thing that frustrates me today, now that Jesse has been kicked to the curb and seemingly left with Drew, it's like everyone forgot the Maureen connection.

Other parts of their story was Jesse living on the other side of the tracks and Abby being attacked and almost raped, and then she murders the guy and is on trial, etc. Abby's last major story it seems, sadly.

3 hours ago, Mitch64 said:

I know that actors have egos but really, you can't expect to be the "winner" all the time, your an actor, play it. The actor was a very complicated person, and I always felt he just made Kyle seem..unpleasant, he was always going to loose no matter what.

It was more than being the "third" wheel in that storyline. Larkin Malloy had already played a storyline with Maeve being pregnant with his child, and Reva being on the outs. The storyline being pitched to him would be Reva being pregnant, and not knowing who the father was. Kyle or Josh. Larkin Malloy felt he had already played that storyline, and wasn't interested in doing it again. That is what he objected to, being stuck in the same storyline.

1 minute ago, TheyStartedOnSoaps said:

That is what he objected to, being stuck in the same storyline.

I can understand him feeling that way, but they HAD to do that storyline because Zimmer was pregnant.

9 minutes ago, DeeVee said:

I can understand him feeling that way, but they HAD to do that storyline because Zimmer was pregnant.

Exactly, so that is why he left. Molloy didn't want to spend a year doing the same storyline, he'd rather leave.

Well, a) I don't think GL needed to write in Zimmer's pregnancy. It was the easier option, and the show certainly milked it for nearly two years with the paternity switch weaved into the Sonni/Solita saga. But on the other hand, it also moved Reva past the troublemaker phase, which arguably, they could've also leaned into longer.

b) the haste with which Malloy jumped to AMC (wiki has his AMC debut in Feb) suggests he might've already been feeling out an exit strategy.

Although I do understand he might've been fed up with his stories spinning around babies. Even shortly after his arrival in Springfield, he was helping Reva deal with losing HB's child.

@DeeVee Didn't they try to quasi-redeem Bradley in 1989? Something about him trying to help Beth and she hits him with a shovel? I think someone at P&G just liked James Rehborn, which I can respect, but Bradley probably should have been left to the past, even if they may have wanted to try to use him to connect BC's Beth with Judi's.

@P.J. I think Vanessa and Lillian also interacted during that random scene where they were with Annie bitching about Reva (which led to some GL fans writing letters to SPW trashing Lillian as a hypocrite). I'd forgotten that they interacted at this time. I'd also forgotten about Billy's role here. It is delicious that Billy was the one who helped Vanessa see some sense - I wonder if Rauch was trolling a certain fanbase.

@alwaysAMC Thanks for your wonderful recaps, as always. I watched this era daily, even if I skipped some scenes, but so much has slipped my mind even with the basics still there. I remember Hart's boxing scenes well. They were panned by some of the soap magazines, but I thought they fit Grillo's Hart. I am not sure if Hart should have died, but Hart was never really a character anyway. The only time I was invested in him was his early years as the sweet young man played by Jeff Philips.

I am going to preface this by saying I don't think Matt is a horrible person, I think he is just very immature, but [!@#$%^&*] hell does it annoy me to read Matt reacting to any slight with Vanessa by shoving his tongue down Beth's throat and Beth repeatedly being the one to stop things from going further. I think you had to write that out about six times! He clearly wanted to cheat, and he likely would have gone all the way if not for the show's wariness about that fan base. I'm not saying I wanted Vanessa to be cheated on, but...is this really any better?

Matt is lucky that Billy was older and more worn out with life by this time as about a decade earlier he probably would have kicked Matt's perky little ass all over Springfield.

@GL95 I didn't remember a great deal with Michelle and Jesse either. They had so many obstacle stories and not much time to be a proper couple. I didn't think the relationship was bad, per se, but it seemed like one of those pairings the show didn't have a great deal of investment in. I liked him more with Drew.

Edited 15 minutes ago15 min by DRW50

14 minutes ago, P.J. said:

Although I do understand he might've been fed up with his stories spinning around babies. Even shortly after his arrival in Springfield, he was helping Reva deal with losing HB's child.

It's kind of hilarious when you think about it because his stint on AMC involved fathering Erica's baby, then fathering another with his ex-wife, then ANOTHER so they could have a donor to save the first one from cancer.

Let's face it, there are a lot of baby storylines on soaps.😂

1 minute ago, DRW50 said:

Didn't they try to quasi-redeem Bradley in 1989? Something about him trying to help Beth and she hits him with a shovel? I think someone at P&G just liked James Rehborn, which I can respect, but Bradley probably should have been left to the past, even if they may have wanted to try to use him to connect BC's Beth with Judi's.

I'm a little fuzzy on this, but I THINK Bradley found out while in prison that Alan had lied about Beth being dead. Then Alan told Phillip because he was trying to make up to him for, you know, shooting him at his own wedding. IIRC correctly, it's why everyone was skeptical, because Alan and Bradley were both congenital liars.

Yes, he was trying to convince Lillian and later Beth that he had changed. For a long time Rehborn was one of Hollywood's best character actors, so yeah, it's another case of a soap wanting to keep a really good actor who was playing an irredeemable character.

2 minutes ago, DeeVee said:

I'm a little fuzzy on this, but I THINK Bradley found out while in prison that Alan had lied about Beth being dead. Then Alan told Phillip because he was trying to make up to him for, you know, shooting him at his own wedding. IIRC correctly, it's why everyone was skeptical, because Alan and Bradley were both congenital liars.

Yes, he was trying to convince Lillian and later Beth that he had changed. For a long time Rehborn was one of Hollywood's best character actors, so yeah, it's another case of a soap wanting to keep a really good actor who was playing an irredeemable character.

Thanks.

James was simultaneously recurring on ATWT in a very ugly role (although the true ugliness had not ramped up yet) so it must have been confusing for viewers.