9 hours ago, Vee said:

What irks me is I don't think they ever explained Reva being seen alive in that tourist video that sends Josh off searching for her. (I've always wanted to see those scenes but don't know where to look - did Kim return for them?) It also strains credulity beyond belief that she ended up in both San Cristobel and the Amish country, amnesiac both times.

8 hours ago, Khan said:

IIRC, she didn't. The travel video - which, I agree, shouldn't have been dropped - was a sort of Carlivatian device where characters would look at it on TV, but we ourselves didn't see any of it. At least, that's my recollection. Maybe they showed the actual footage and I just didn't catch it that day, lol.

That's correct. We never see the footage. It wasn't like after Beth "died" where we saw a body double. It's everyone's reaction to the video that we see. What's in the vault from Jan'91 doesn't cover it. The only episode in English that I've found is below, and only about the first fifteen minutes is GL. I know I've seen when Billy and Sarah actually first see the report, and Billy becomes obsessed by it, taking it to some video expert that tries to blow up the image, etc. Here, Billy has blown up an engagement party of sorts with the news.

I think when Josh came back in '93, he just says he searched and searched and never found anything that led to Reva, so he gave up.

5 hours ago, Paul Raven said:

Desert Sun, Number 120, 22 December 1983‘Guiding Light’ writer looks for fresh ideas

By TOM JORY Associated Press Writer

“I get really upset,” says Pamela Long Hammer, principal writer for the CBS soap opera since March, “because I’ll come up with this neat scenario and someone will say, ‘That’s like “Strangers on a Train.’” “I think, ‘They keep stealing my material.’

Often, that involves inventing new characters. “‘I look at Vanessa (Maeve Kinkead), one of our leading ladies,” Miss Long Hammer says. "What could make theaudience care more about her? “Then I think, ‘Why can’t she find a man she can love, who will also love her?’ Voila, here comes Billy Lewis (Jordan Clarke).

“Another example,” she says, “is Alan Spaulding (Christopher Bernau). All of a sudden, he’s got a sister no one ever knew about. “They come complete,” says Miss Long Hammer of the serial’s characters, including the new ones. “We know who they are and where they came from long before the viewer gets all that information. That’s one of the most interesting things about daytime, the complexities of the characters.”

One, Pam Long never met a movie she couldn't rip off, whether that was GWTW, Grand Hotel, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof or (I assume) something like The Manchurian Candidate (or wTfever Infinity was ripped off from). Not that this is unique, everyone did. (I was binging The Love Boat and was amazed to realize they ripped off an entire movie, at one point, including the final shot, with only tweeks that updated it from the '30's)

Two, she didn't exactly invent Billy, he'd been mentioned for years. She just fleshed him out and gave him to Vanessa. Which, obviously worked.

Three, I can't believe they spoiled Bev McKinsey's being Alan's sister nearly two months before she popped up in Springfield.

And four, shout out to the forgotten continuity people. Although if Long really wanted X and Y to speak, she simply had to invent a reason for them to do so. It's called motivation. Kobe simply solved that problem by firing most of the actors who'd been on prior to Long's arrival.