NSA wasn't owed a job. She wasn't even the definitive Michelle in my book. While it wouldn't have made much of a difference at the end, bringing Michelle back without Danny would've been welcomed by me.

7 hours ago, DRW50 said:

I wish I could see his Search work. The story he had on ATWT I found extremely tedious, especially when the Dobsons arrived, but that was typical of much of the show.

I enjoyed him as Ed and I liked that he was never afraid to play Ed unsympathetically, but seeing Mart made me understand why a number of fans never accepted him. Mart just had such warmth.

I wonder if P&G ever considered hiring Jacquie Schultz as Hope.

Scott Phillips on SFT was Simon's strongest role, IMHO. I enjoyed his work on that show.

While I found the actor's storyline on ATWT to be laborious and tedious, I felt that Simon showed enough signs of life while working there to be acceptable. I always thought Jacqueline Schultz was colorless and drippy, however, and hated when she was cast as a ridiculously de-SORASed Patti on SFT. I would have hated seeing her cast as Hope Bauer.

3 hours ago, Spoon said:

I wasn't particilarly a Manny fan (they were okay from time to time), but JL's Michelle at least had charisma and chemistry with her costars- all of which NSA severly lacked.

We talked about Hope and Stacy. If you needed to recast Mike or Ed, who would you choose? Would Nicholas Coster have been a decent Mike Bauer? Strike that, I just thought of SB's Lionel Lockridge being Gina's dad. I guess its working for Tamara Braun and the guy who plays Noah on Y&R.

I've always thought Jed Allen would have been great as Mike Bauer. He could play all sorts of different "colors," romance, anger, vulnerability, sweetness, strength, and was more natural and less stiff and reserved than Don Stewart. (Tht being said, I would have kept Stewart on the show as my first choice.)

3 hours ago, kalbir said:

You put GL in cancel territory in 1985? In theory GL should have been in cancel territory in 1989 when it became CBS's lowest rated daytime drama but it wasn't until 1995 that the cancel rumors began.

Well, I mean as a personal preference. TGL was horribly gutted by then, or maybe by 1986, and in my heart, I would have preferred to see the old gal go out with some semblance of dignity, rather than watching rabid crows picking at the rotting corpse.

Of course, as it turned out, the show rebounded in the early 1990s under Nancy Curlee, so at that time, I was glad it had endured the dark years of the 1980s. I saw that with the right PTB, it still could have been saved. Alas, after Curlee left, the show never again had effective behind-the-scenes personnel who understood it or the audience, and it plunged back into its long, long decline.

3 hours ago, DRW50 said:

Whatever happened with PFS' 1982 stint may have put paid to her returning, although she did return to DAYS...

I thought PFS's brief tenure on TGL was wonderful. She instantly seemed to "get" so many of the characters and wrote lovely scenes for them. The sense of community was also there. I was aghast when she was fired, and the endless revolving door of much-less-talented writers took over.

2 hours ago, DeeVee said:

I could see Coster as Alan. Other people have mentioned him as a good possibility for Alan. He could do the patrician thing.

Ed's a lot tougher to cast, IMO. He's the good guy who has battled demons in the past. They should have begged Mart to come back.

I could have have accepted Coster as Mike, although my first choices would have been Don Stewart or Jed Allen. No other actor but Hulswit would have been acceptable to me.

2 hours ago, DeeVee said:

She wrote the show for 13 weeks after Marland left, and I really wish she could have stayed. She was the one who started laying down the groundwork for Alan and Hope's eventual breakup, and it was much more gradual an believable than the way Kobe and Long did it (because they were in a hurry to push Roussel off the show).

I would totally have been for it if she had come back to write the show.

God yes!

Edited 1 hour ago1 hr by vetsoapfan

42 minutes ago, vetsoapfan said:

I always thought Jacqueline Schultz was colorless and drippy, however, and hated when she was cast as a ridiculously de-SORASed Patti on SFT. I would have hated seeing her cast as Hope Bauer.

I totally get what you mean. When I saw her earliest work as Dee, I was a bit surprised as I thought she had more personality. Once the material with Brad and Ian and John starts going and going, she just seems like she's on heavy tranquilizers. I thought that initial work could have fit a recast Hope.