Cary Tye was so hot. I remember an early episode where he and Harley are in bed and he's wearing tennis shorts and well....let's say practice and standards forgot to look closely. I loved Rick Hearst but Carl brought an earthy, sexy, rogue appeal even though his NYC accent flew in the face of the boarding school story.

1 hour ago, DeeVee said:

Putting Blake and AM together simply makes sense in a--I don't want to say in a Romeo & Juliet way, but something LIKE that--just because their family members hated each other. If they had a child that was a Spaulding/Thorpe/Bauer/Norris, that would be a lot of conflict! Soaps need conflict!

Once Holly got over Blake seducing Ross away from her, there wasn't much there there. They had to come up with crazy stuff like twins that might have been fathered by two men, yadda, yadda.

But a grandchild that forced all these people who hated each other to deal with each other? Seems like a no-brainer.

(Poor, Liz. It's tough to come in after someone like Sherry. I grew to like her, but I did not like what they did to Blake).

Yeah, this is my thinking. Couples that have more natural external conflict can actually be your better long-term couples in a soap IMO because you don’t have to jump through a bunch of crazy hoops to create drama. (See Reva/Josh.) Just the grandfather drama alone between Roger/Alan and the kid’s chosen grandfather Ed is interesting-and Ed/Holly/Roger basically sharing a grandkid? (I know Ed is not the actual grandfather but given his father figure role to both AM/Blake he’d be a de facto grandpa-if Ed/Holly started acting like primary grandparents together it would make Roger apoplectic.)

I know I’m in in the minority, and this probably comes from viewing Liz’s Blake first, but I think Liz/Rick had potential chemistry to be a long-term romantic pairing. There was a lot of mutual affection in their scenes of two people who know each other well/get each other with the little underlying resentment from the past simmering up here and there.

I’d have put them on some path to grow closer as friends who still have a spark-of course my unwritten fan fiction forever is AM working for Roger as his heir apparent alongside Blake. I know AM had lots of reason to hate Roger but Roger also understands AM’s motivations far better than his own family. (Maybe Hart decides he actually wants part of it but AM is now the son Roger always wanted and AM is the Phillip to Hart’s AM in that dynamic.)

I definitely agree Rick and Liz had chemistry---but it was a gentler chemistry, not the raw edgy chem that SS had with him.

Came across another 1989 episodes-September 1. There was a lot of interesting things happening. First, for maybe the first (?) but certainly not last time, Holly is visiting Blake in the hospital (not clear why she's there) telling her to let Phillip know she knows that Beth is alive and warning her that the lie will likely blow up in her face. A lesson Blake will not learn at any point in the future. Blake of course lies to him and convinces him that she will help him find Beth but he can't hide anything from her, which is some real masterwork.

Reva/Josh talk about her past sexual abuse and the rape when she was 14 I believe she's lying about which is actually her sleeping with Billy to conceive Dylan. (Have seen snatches on this but don't know the whole story.). Reva "has a feeling" she is pregnant (which she likely is with Shayne) and she blows off Josh's concerns about her having another child after her post-Marah coma. If she had listened we'd have no Amish Reva, island people, or Jonathan haha

Dylan/Harley have a conversation about Daisy/Susan. Dylan got himself a job doing the Lemays lawncare-Harley tells him AM has promised he'll get Susan/Daisy back for her using the Spaulding power but Dylan talks her out of try because Susan is happy. Dylan also has arranged for Sam to babysit and invites Harley to meet her just once-and after that the two of them agree to not see her again. (We know how that goes.)

1 hour ago, GL95 said:

Reva/Josh talk about her past sexual abuse and the rape when she was 14 I believe she's lying about which is actually her sleeping with Billy to conceive Dylan.

It's not a lie about her being SA when she was 13 or 14. In fact, Josh and Reva are referring to the scene where she confronts the man who did it to her. It's probably in an episode or two before this one. (Hate to sound like a cynic, but it came across as an obvious bid for an Emmy). Being the late 80s, of course they skirted around the issue (you notice she says he DIDN'T rape her, but she was a minor, so yeah, he actually did). It sounds like what the man was doing was grooming her.

Besides, I really can't imagine Billy having sex with a 14 year old. She must have been older than that, I think it happened after Josh broke with her. (The timeline with all this is weird, because then Billy marries Mindy's mother, THEN marries Reva).

Edited 17 hours ago17 hr by DeeVee

23 minutes ago, DeeVee said:

It's not a lie about her being SA when she was 13 or 14. In fact, Josh and Reva are referring to the scene where she confronts the man who did it to her. It's probably in an episode or two before this one. (Hate to sound like a cynic, but it came across as an obvious bid for an Emmy). Being the late 80s, of course they skirted around the issue (you notice she says he DIDN'T rape her, but she was a minor, so yeah, he actually did). It sounds like what the man was doing was grooming her.

Besides, I really can't imagine Billy having sex with a 14 year old. She must have been older than that, I think it happened after Josh broke with her. (The timeline with all this is weird, because then Billy marries Mindy's mother, THEN marries Reva).

I wonder if this is the same abuse Josh threw in her face when she returned in 1995 (which disgusted me).

11 minutes ago, DRW50 said:

I wonder if this is the same abuse Josh threw in her face when she returned in 1995 (which disgusted me).

In this conversation he basically asks why she let it happen when she was twelve-she said she enjoyed the attention basically and he asked didn’t she have enough love attention from Sarah/HB etc. He eventually concedes it wasn’t her fault.

16 minutes ago, GL95 said:

In this conversation he basically asks why she let it happen when she was twelve-she said she enjoyed the attention basically and he asked didn’t she have enough love attention from Sarah/HB etc. He eventually concedes it wasn’t her fault.

Thanks. I can't say I would have been able to stomach those scenes.

HB being mentioned just makes their later marriage even more offputting.

34 minutes ago, DeeVee said:

Besides, I really can't imagine Billy having sex with a 14 year old. She must have been older than that, I think it happened after Josh broke with her. (The timeline with all this is weird, because then Billy marries Mindy's mother, THEN marries Reva).

Yes, it's two separate incidents. Pharo's SA happened when she was around twelve.

Reva got pregnant at 17, when she had sex with Billy. Mindy's mother had died, and Josh went off to college at Berkley. I've never heard a direct reference to the gap between Billy, Trish and Josh. But from the way Josh occasionally referenced their childhood (watching Billy in high school football games, while he ran up and down the sidelines for example), I'd say there's supposed to be at least six years between Billy and Josh. Reva's at least a year younger, since Josh was going to college and she got pregnant at 17. I can't stomach the scenes around Dylan's conception (Reva is just ticking me off in the present as she remembers the past and having concocted the rape story for Sarah's benefit), but I think she may be talking about how Josh didn't come back to Oklahoma the summer after his first year at college.

One of the few references to Mindy's mother happens when Billy tells Phillip that he had gotten Mindy's mother pregnant and they'd had to get married. It sounded like that was during his college years.

And IIRC, Blake had a minor car accident when she was chasing after Phillip. She was afraid he'd found out that Beth was alive, I think. Phillip was being gaslit that Beth was alive, and tried to convince Lillian to exhume Beth's grave to verify if her body was in it.

Edited 15 hours ago15 hr by P.J.

A perfect time to revisit Blake/AM would’ve been off the heels of the Ex Wives club in 2002 where at one point Blake expressed a desire to return to the corporate world.

Joan Collins Alexandria is working with AM (recast) to wrestle the company from Alan/Phillip/Olivia. AM lures Blake in but she isn’t aware of the depths that Alex and AM will go to acquire Spaulding. Eventually I would’ve cowtied to the Bloss fans and have AM a one off (is she going to give into temptation or isn’t she? she doesn’t of course). Eventually she realizes Alex and AM are way too cutthroat and are willing to throw her under the bus to get Spaulding (maybe Alex sets Blake up as someone who is buying Spaulding stock and AM turns a blind eye to Alex wanting to railroad Blake) eventually Blake happily returns to Ross (roll eyes).

14 hours ago, GL95 said:

Came across another 1989 episodes-September 1. There was a lot of interesting things happening. First, for maybe the first (?) but certainly not last time, Holly is visiting Blake in the hospital (not clear why she's there) telling her to let Phillip know she knows that Beth is alive and warning her that the lie will likely blow up in her face. A lesson Blake will not learn at any point in the future. Blake of course lies to him and convinces him that she will help him find Beth but he can't hide anything from her, which is some real masterwork.

In this period, Blake was still being written in a less antagonistic way.

In fact, she does end up kind of helping with figuring out if Beth is alive or not (there is an episode later in the same month that sort of reveals the clues presented around this time are a hoax.. but viewers are shown in that very same episode that Beth actually is alive).

In regards to SS as Blake vs LK as Blake.

BlackDahlia1972 has a bunch of Blake/Ross scenes starting from 1992 (in the last few months of SS playing Blake) going all the way up to the 2000s.

These are leading up to SS's final episode where she and Ross seem to be drawn to one another even though they know they're wrong for one another. It had more of a forbidden element to it... and a good Frank/Blake friendship scene with Holly even stating that Frank would be perfect for Blake (I always smiled when the show ended with Frank/Blake becoming a couple because I always thought that they would make a nice couple especially when LK was playing Blake)

These are the first scenes, or close to them, for LK as Blake. The writers were still writing Blake as if SS were playing the role... but LK obviously couldn't deliver these lines in the same manner. SS had a more dry and cynical way of delivering these lines that made her seem in control while LK's attempts came off as play acting. There was potential in keeping Blake as a corporate shark with LK in the role, but it required modifying the lines just a bit to match with how LK spoke and carried herself.

Sadly instead of adjusting the lines slightly to fit LK's initial take and still maintain the essence of Blake... the show drastically changes the character within a few months turning her into comic relief.

Edited 4 hours ago4 hr by Soaplovers

17 minutes ago, Soaplovers said:

In this period, Blake was still being written in a less antagonistic way.

In fact, she does end up kind of helping with figuring out if Beth is alive or not (there is an episode later in the same month that sort of reveals the clues presented around this time are a hoax.. but viewers are shown in that very same episode that Beth actually is alive).

In regards to SS as Blake vs LK as Blake.

BlackDahlia1972 has a bunch of Blake/Ross scenes starting from 1992 (in the last few months of SS playing Blake) going all the way up to the 2000s.

These are leading up to SS's final episode where she and Ross seem to be drawn to one another even though they know they're wrong for one another. It had more of a forbidden element to it... and a good Frank/Blake friendship scene with Holly even stating that Frank would be perfect for Blake (I always smiled when the show ended with Frank/Blake becoming a couple because I always thought that they would make a nice couple especially when LK was playing Blake)

These are the first scenes, or close to them, for LK as Blake. The writers were still writing Blake as if SS were playing the role... but LK obviously couldn't deliver these lines in the same manner. SS had a more dry and cynical way of delivering these lines that made her seem in control while LK's attempts came off as play acting. There was potential in keeping Blake as a corporate shark with LK in the role, but it required modifying the lines just a bit to match with how LK spoke and carried herself.

Sadly instead of adjusting the lines slightly to fit LK's initial take and still maintain the essence of Blake... the show drastically changes the character within a few months turning her into comic relief.

You actually inadvertently outlined why I think the Blake/AM scenes work for me with Liz. The exes who still have a connection works with the recast with the softer chemistry, and it has a lived in feel to the dynamic that I like. Granted I watched out of order, but I completely bought from their first scene that they had a history even if the actors didn't. I feel like in the scenes with Ross since that's the A plot with Blake that Liz is trying to act like Sherry and the writing is trying to keep the Ross/Blake dynamic roughly the same at first, but Liz could do more her own interpretation of Blake in the AM scenes that feels more natural in those early months.

I actually think Blake/Ross becoming a stable couple had a pretty big butterfly effect on the show that's not just the recast. For all intents and purposes, Blake basically chooses Ross over Roger. It also takes her out of the Spaulding orbit even though they built up a lot of history there. They really had no idea what to do with Roger for Zas's last couple of years, and the Roger vs the Spaulding family loses something when Blake doesn't have some sort of alliance with one of the Spaulding men. (I think one thing to have done was have Blake immediately come clean with Ross about the night with AM and he forgives her since she's actually being honest and he had broken up with her first, then it turns out she's pregnant with AM's baby a month or so after that after Ross is pretty fully committed.).

@DRW50 @Soaplovers @GL95 @DeeVee @MichaelGL Has anybody read "A Capitol Idea," the article by Michael Logan that appeared in the January 18, 2003, edition of TV Guide? It was about John Conboy become executive producer of Guiding Light, was it not? What did the article particularly say about the 1980s soap opera Capitol? During the 1990-91 period, Conboy was the executive producer of Santa Barbara when that soap still had future Guiding Light regular Marcy Walker.