1 hour ago, wonderwoman1951 said:

the stern and black era didn’t begin until february 1996 — at the suggestion of cbs president, leslie moonves — months after john valente replaced laurie caso  in may 1995  

in june 1994, ‘world turns was still dealing with the sudden death of douglas marland in 1993. 

Thank god they weren't there long enough to call it an era. Maybe black spot on the record? Have you ever read what they said about writing for a soap? The poor things had to work so hard!  Not that you could tell any hard work had gone on from the results.

20 hours ago, alwaysAMC said:

2) LOL at how much she despises the Reardon's and vows to get them all 'out of her hair', yet just 12 years later she's engaged to one and is the shared mother of one (basically).  🤣

The other real irony about the engagement ball---other than the Reardons, it's really filled with Henry and Vanessa's business acquaintances. Vanessa has two friends there--Trish and Helena--and unless I missed her, the only true friend friend Nola had, Gracie, isn't there. Nola has a semi-repaired reputation at this point, but it's not like people didn't remember the dirt she'd done. The ONLY person that Vanessa doesn't know there is Billy. (Irony number 2)

17 hours ago, DRW50 said:

Can't remember if they ever had any serious interaction after that, other than group scenes I guess.

All of Tony's shots in this opening (the cup and the kick) annoy the hell out of me. Somebody should have put a foot in his ass. 

Re: Josh/Nola  --not that I've seen. It does answer a question though. There was a point where Josh is interested in who fathered Nola's child. I presume that had something to do with him trying to make Floyd a "star".

I do find myself really irritated by Tony now. 

9 hours ago, Mitch64 said:

Well, remember, she is screwing Tony too, a funny scene has Bea walking in while Van is doing her "fur coat but naked underneath thing" (and really Van ,what if you got caught in a car accident...) I never understood why Nola of all people didnt bring that up when she was nudging Van in 95.

Van was so much more fun then she was when she became town Matron. While I don't think Reva orginal recipe fundamentally changed GL on her own, Long's obsession with her nullified both Van (for her vixen role) and Nola (for the fun loving live wire) and that didn't need to happen( Van had the added issue of BevAlex coming in and becoming the business aristocratic ice queen.) Nola and Van I can see as Frenemies...the first to call the other out but hell to pay if anyone else messes with the other, but I never saw Van giving Reva the time of day, despite what they wrote.

I wish they had Van reexamine her life after her dumb disease goes into remission and return to some of her old ways, kicking Matt our to the street, and loosing the matron hair and clothes, rejoining Spaulding and kicking Alan's butt.

I believe Van also drops her coat for Mark. It seemed to be her early go-to move.

I couldn't ever really see Van and Nola as frenemies either. They just irritated each other too much. Yeah, I agree, Van and Reva aren't really friends. They get along, but they rarely naturally confided in each other.

I could seen Van as that strong town matriarch, had Maeve stayed. She wouldn't have taken Dinah's [!@#$%^&*], she'd have divorced Matt's trifling ass, and stepped in at Spaulding while Alan was too busy screwing Phillip's sloppy seconds. 

Thanks @chrisml . As @Contessa Donatella said, that just is not true about a lot of fans being upset with Philece Sampler (RIP) being replaced by Anna Stuart. I wonder if this is another case of Logan sticking up for his friends (or going after actors he wasn't fond of).

That quote about Maureen is a lot of BS. Essentially admitting they only killed Maureen so Ed could have story. The biggest problem with this idea is that by 1993, Ed - and the Bauers in general - had become isolated, had been isolated for nearly a decade. This just furthered his isolation, and they had to work even harder to come up with story for him. That's how we got Ed/Eve, which I think I liked more than most fans did.

Killing off an important character for the sake of a few strong scenes - and that was literally all we got here - is always a mistake.

This is also another reminder of how brutally male-dominated JFP's run at GL was.

45 minutes ago, P.J. said:

The other real irony about the engagement ball---other than the Reardons, it's really filled with Henry and Vanessa's business acquaintances. Vanessa has two friends there--Trish and Helena--and unless I missed her, the only true friend friend Nola had, Gracie, isn't there. Nola has a semi-repaired reputation at this point, but it's not like people didn't remember the dirt she'd done. The ONLY person that Vanessa doesn't know there is Billy. (Irony number 2)

Re: Josh/Nola  --not that I've seen. It does answer a question though. There was a point where Josh is interested in who fathered Nola's child. I presume that had something to do with him trying to make Floyd a "star".

I do find myself really irritated by Tony now. 

Thanks.

You can tell Long and Kobe had no real use for Nola/Quint, separately or together, by the way they wrote out all of their satellite characters in such a quick space of time. It just makes them lingering on for another year and a half even worse.

Edited April 9Apr 9 by DRW50

21 minutes ago, DRW50 said:

Thanks @chrisml . As @Contessa Donatella said, that just is not true about a lot of fans being upset with Philece Sampler (RIP) being replaced by Anna Stuart. I wonder if this is another case of Logan sticking up for his friends (or going after actors he wasn't fond of).

Thanks for reiterating this one. Philece was amazing on DAYS but she was no Donna Love. Logan made me mad with this. I mean someone from the show called Anna once a week the whole time asking "are you ready to come home yet?"  That's a rising inflection because they were hopeful. 

21 minutes ago, DRW50 said:

That quote about Maureen is a lot of BS. Essentially admitting they only killed Maureen so Ed could have story. The biggest problem with this idea is that by 1993, Ed - and the Bauers in general - had become isolated. This just furthered his isolation, and they had to work even harder to come up with story for him. Killing off an important character for the sake of a few strong scenes - and that was literally all we got here - is always a mistake.

This is also another reminder of how brutally male-dominated JFP's run at GL was.

This reminds me of people who point out that Ellen Parker was on several times as a ghost & also that she won an Emmy. Good grief! Do those people miss the point entirely? Mo was dead. Not even that fabulous line about making them a suburban joke can make up for that. What do they not understand about dead?

Edited April 9Apr 9 by Contessa Donatella

3 hours ago, Spoon said:

Quint is Vanessa's half brother, Henry's son and Dinah and little Bill's uncle.  Quint is why Vanessa and Nola were enemies back in the day.  I think being a Daddy's girl she was jealous that Henry adored Nola and treated her like another daughter

It's a combination of things. Vanessa and Henry had been so close, that just the fact he was keeping something secret from her threatened her. She felt herself being cut out of Henry's life--his interest in Bea and her family, the friendship he was developing with Quint even before he knew Quint was his son, and then Henry's doting on his new found son and praising him to the heavens, while (understandably) seeing Vanessa's plethora of shortcomings (Quint's self-made and independent while Vanessa's spoiled and can't even manage her money). 

But yeah, getting "replaced" by someone as "common" as Nola--wasn't ever going to sit well with Vanessa.

39 minutes ago, DRW50 said:

That quote about Maureen is a lot of BS. Essentially admitting they only killed Maureen so Ed could have story. The biggest problem with this idea is that by 1993, Ed - and the Bauers in general - had become isolated, had been isolated for nearly a decade. This just furthered his isolation, and they had to work even harder to come up with story for him. That's how we got Ed/Eve, which I think I liked more than most fans did.

I kind of understand why Curlee had to sell it publicly as "we need story for Ed", but geez. If they really would've had balls, they'd have canned Peter Simon. They could've then written a story of Mo getting her groove back after having to "publicly" grieve this marriage after learning she'd been cheated on for the third time. 

2 minutes ago, P.J. said:

I kind of understand why Curlee had to sell it publicly as "we need story for Ed", but geez. If they really would've had balls, they'd have canned Peter Simon. They could've then written a story of Mo getting her groove back after having to "publicly" grieve this marriage after learning she'd been cheated on for the third time. 

I think the same line was used when Frankie was killed on AW by JFP a few years later. It just doesn't work unless the character is hugely connected to the show. And even then, soaps often move on with the many "loves of my life" characters have.

I agree that writing Ed out for a while and showing Maureen cope, as a single working mother, would have been more compelling.

Edited April 9Apr 9 by DRW50

21 hours ago, Gatecrashers said:

That would only work if they revealed that Michelle was biologically Fletcher's child.

But in my personal reboot Michelle is with Bill. They are the fulfillment of Rachel Minor & Bryan Buffington, their youthful promise.

 

19 minutes ago, Contessa Donatella said:

But in my personal reboot Michelle is with Bill. They are the fulfillment of Rachel Minor & Bryan Buffington, their youthful promise.

 

Did Michelle and Bill have one of those Tara/Phil promises like early AMC?  Young love stories like that are something very unique to soaps, because soaps actually have the time to play them out long-term.     

 

34 minutes ago, P.J. said:

I kind of understand why Curlee had to sell it publicly as "we need story for Ed", but geez. If they really would've had balls, they'd have canned Peter Simon. They could've then written a story of Mo getting her groove back after having to "publicly" grieve this marriage after learning she'd been cheated on for the third time. 

Yabbut then there's this:

GL HW Nancy Curlee when asked if she had any story regrets,

"Although Maureen's death was a lynchpin in a carefully conceived, well-executed story, Ellen Parker was so fine & so well loved, that her absence left a hole in the show that was later hard to fill."

More like impossible to fill!

And I am reminded that Jill didn't even have the guts to fire Ellen in person. That day they were both at the studio, working. Jill waited till that afternoon, called Ellen at home, told her on the phone. Did you know that?

I have a list, a Jill list. It includes so many things I hold against her. It includes 3 things she can take credit for. Just 3. Balanced against possibly hundreds.

 

7 minutes ago, Tisy-Lish said:

Did Michelle and Bill have one of those Tara/Phil promises like early AMC?  Young love stories like that are something very unique to soaps, because soaps actually have the time to play them out long-term.     

 

YES!!!! Exactly so. 

4 hours ago, chrisml said:

I have a few Michael Logan columns lated to GL. One is Nancy Curlee talking about Maureen's death. The other is where he gives the best of 1992. I was surprised to see he chose AW as the best soap of 1992.

Two things about this:

Doing the math, it made me realize Heather Tom is FIFTY YEARS OLD. OMG, I feel so old. 😩 (I am old, but I didn't need the reminder, LOL.)

As to the comments about why they killed off Maureen, gee, unless I missed something, I don't remember anything memorable involving Ed dealing with her death. Not like Jack on Ryan's Hope when Mary died, or Tony on GH when his daughter died. When Cassie died on Y&R it impacted the show literally for years. They screwed up bigtime and couldn't even be bothered to at least write something compelling to make her death worth it, story-wise.

53 minutes ago, P.J. said:

I kind of understand why Curlee had to sell it publicly as "we need story for Ed", but geez. If they really would've had balls, they'd have canned Peter Simon. They could've then written a story of Mo getting her groove back after having to "publicly" grieve this marriage after learning she'd been cheated on for the third time. 

That would have been great! Or why not have the guts to write a real love triangle with Mo/Ed/Lillian? Or have Maureen not really die somehow but everyone thinks she's dead? She could have had amnesia (that would have been necessary, because she would never leave Michelle). Maybe Roger could have found her and kept her from Ed out of spite. 

There were like a million possibilities that did not have to end with her dying.

27 minutes ago, DeeVee said:

As to the comments about why they killed off Maureen, gee, unless I missed something, I don't remember anything memorable involving Ed dealing with her death. Not like Jack on Ryan's Hope when Mary died, or Tony on GH when his daughter died. When Cassie died on Y&R it impacted the show literally for years. They screwed up bigtime and couldn't even be bothered to at least write something compelling to make her death worth it, story-wise.

There was a little - he had to cope with being a single parent to Michelle, she began leaning on Holly, which caused problems for Holly due to Holly being drawn back to Roger, etc. But not near enough fallout, because ultimately Maureen and Ed were not huge characters on the canvas. I don't even know if GL got much story out of Bert losing Bill, and that was when Bert was at the center of the show. These stories rarely pay off as much as they should.

58 minutes ago, Contessa Donatella said:

Yabbut then there's this:

GL HW Nancy Curlee asked if she had any story regrets,

"Although Maureen's death was a lynchpin in a carefully conceived, well-executed story, Ellen Parker was so fine & so well loved, that her absence left a hole in the show that was later hard to fill."

I just meant that publicly Curlee couldn't just say "hey, my EP is bored by housefrau Mo, and we're going to try and reset the character of Ed the same way we did Ross, by giving him a hot young thing."

Unless I'm forgetting something, they didn't even really try to fill Mo's shoes until they brought Meta on. They tried giving Michelle a mentor in Holly, and they might have tried making Van and Billy that "stable" couple (had not Jordan been fired)....but after that, they sure weren't leaning into "Vanessa the matriarch" giving her that himbo Matt. 

And re: 1992---because it can't be said enough---I HATE the Ross' election nightmare episode. I get that a lot of work went into it---but I still HATE it.

Edited April 9Apr 9 by P.J.

11 minutes ago, P.J. said:

And re: 1992---because it can't be said enough---I HATE the Ross' election nightmare episode. I get that a lot of work went into it---but I still HATE it.

Is that what Mulcahey is proud of?