27 minutes ago, DeeVee said:

LOL, I was thinking last night while watching these episodes that I can't believe I dressed and had hair like that back then. Michelle Forbes is like 23 in these episodes and she looks 35 because of the hair and makeup. Josh's verging-into-a-mullet hair was also triggering. 😆

Josh's hair in that era just kills me LOL.  I also noticed in that episode that Tina Sloan hasn't aged a bit ~10 years later in 1997!

Re: little Alan in a suit... I could totally imagine Barron Trump like that in his childhood. 😂

22 hours ago, prefab1 said:

The real sexual chemistry was between Kelly and his speedos. 

You kinda wish there had been a storyline between Kelly (and said speedos) and Lucille Wexler, lol.

2 minutes ago, Khan said:

You kinda wish there had been a storyline between Kelly (and said speedos) and Lucille Wexler, lol.

I'm not kidding, back in the day I thought they were going this way--with Bert! I could not otherwise understand the scenes where he was walking around bare-chested and in speedos around her.

8 hours ago, DeeVee said:

You're welcome!

I think the reason they don't show Brandon's face is to make the scene in the point of view of the children. He's this faceless monster to them.

LOL, I was thinking last night while watching these episodes that I can't believe I dressed and had hair like that back then. Michelle Forbes is like 23 in these episodes and she looks 35 because of the hair and makeup. Josh's verging-into-a-mullet hair was also triggering. 😆

I know!  That's why I was shocked how young Michelle Forbes was when she started the show!

Harley's hair and makeup was even worse, IMO.  

LOL about Josh.  At least he looked good in his hairdo.

 

22 hours ago, DeeVee said:

Here you go. The flashback starts around 13:48.

Now I look at it again, Alex is definitely younger than Alan in the flashback scene.

Since it was clearly established in 1984 that Alexandra was alive before Alan was born I will fanwank this in my head that its how ALAN imagines himself as a child being the bigger stronger one in face of Brandon. It's the only way to get around this egregious mistake or deliberate attempt to retcon.

9 minutes ago, Lujack4Ever said:

Since it was clearly established in 1984 that Alexandra was alive before Alan was born I will fanwank this in my head that its how ALAN imagines himself as a child being the bigger stronger one in face of Brandon. It's the only way to get around this egregious mistake or deliberate attempt to retcon.

I don't think this can be blamed on the scab writers. Unless the air date on the YT upload is wrong, the strike started March 7. This would have been written and taped before that.

But this kind of thing is hardly rare on soaps. When Alan and Elizabeth arrived in SF, they had no house and were living with Jackie. No mention of a Spaulding family mansion, and Alan was supposed to be from Chicago. That was changed by the Dobsons themselves, who created the characters.

14 minutes ago, DeeVee said:

 

But this kind of thing is hardly rare on soaps. When Alan and Elizabeth arrived in SF, they had no house and were living with Jackie. No mention of a Spaulding family mansion, and Alan was supposed to be from Chicago. That was changed by the Dobsons themselves, who created the characters.

I suppose the real mess is the inconsistencies with Brandon Spaulding himself. He was presented as so many things a sick senior citizen dying in his bed, a dirty old  man skirt chasing Annabell's mom during a fishing trip, a tyrant being cruel to his kids and near the end of the series with that time travel nonsense a war profiteer collaborating with the Nazis and through all this we have that glaring anomaly of the quasi noble Brandon Barbados...a romantic man who only wanted to live out his life with his true love in a  star crossed romance with his island beauty.

Oh and I almost forgot thanks to that atrocious retcon that he was Amanda's real father he was also into the Lolitas. Now that character truly went through the ringer for never once having been a regular on the show.

20 minutes ago, Lujack4Ever said:

I suppose the real mess is the inconsistencies with Brandon Spaulding himself. He was presented as so many things a sick senior citizen dying in his bed, a dirty old  man skirt chasing Annabell's mom during a fishing trip, a tyrant being cruel to his kids and near the end of the series with that time travel nonsense a war profiteer collaborating with the Nazis and through all this we have that glaring anomaly of the quasi noble Brandon Barbados...a romantic man who only wanted to live out his life with his true love in a  star crossed romance with his island beauty.

Oh and I almost forgot thanks to that atrocious retcon that he was Amanda's real father he was also into the Lolitas. Now that character truly went through the ringer for never once having been a regular on the show.

YES! I actually remember Brandon as the sick, abandoned old man in the rest home. You could almost feel sorry for him then.

HB and Bill Bauer were also portrayed as pervs during the fishing trip story, with only Henry--who was telling the story--and Tom Reardon coming out as gentlemen.

Sometimes Alan and Alex would talk about Brandon as a strict but caring father, other times they talked about him as an abusive a-hole.

It would have been nice if they had had some consistency. I do like how they had the male Spauldings repeat history, portraying generational trauma. At least that was consistent.

Brandon was almost always some kind of all-knowing, all-seeing evil master manipulator. He tore Alexandra's son from her arms (apparently being his flesh and blood grandchild didn't matter.) He knew about another grandchild (Amanda) and had her raised by his exlover. Or he slept with his son's lover and fathered her child, letting Alan think he was. He was mentally abusive to his children. He cheated on his wife, he ruined business rivals, and generally stepped on anyone who got in his way. (I can't remember if he ruined Jenna's father, or if that was some fiction of Roger's. Ditto for burying some expose of Kip McHenry's.)

Re: HB's morals, unlike the kinder, gentler old coot they turned him into after getting dumped by Reva, when he's introduced, it's heavily implied that he had many mistresses during his marriage to Martha. BIlly and Josh are constantly talking about HB's "infamous" disappearances and salaciously speculating he's with "Miss Sally" (which is rather twisted since they later made Billy her son). It's not exactly a secret either, because not only does Vanessa assume that "Rosalie" is some kind of low woman that he brought home while Billy was young (Rosalie turns out to be a horse that Billy tames), when Billy's presumed dead, she blames HB and calls him a dirty old man.

They're always a little cagey with character's ages. But why they felt the need to make Alan the older brother is nonsensical. What difference did it make if Alan was older? The point of the story was that he protected Alex's cat, which she loved very much.

LOL..I'm only surprised they didn't end up making Reva the youngest Shayne child.

So, Brandon was a Nazi?  Figures.  All evil white men are.  I wonder what the typical Scottish/English GL viewer thought of that development?  "Spaulding" is hardly a German sir name.

A shame that we didn't see Brandon Spaulding often donning tennis whites, bragging about the high quality of his tennis racquets.  Now THAT might have been fun!  Souring the Spaulding name during the tennis craze of the late 1970s/early 1980s might have generated a small brouhaha in the real world.  Imagine Nazis Brandon and grandson Phillip prancing into a room asking, "Tennis, anyone?"  LOL.

If anything, Brandon should have been a Stalinite.  With a real name of Ilya Vasilievsky or some such.  A name that even the great Maureen Garrett would have difficulty pronouncing.

 

 

2 hours ago, Speed Racer said:

So, Brandon was a Nazi? 

From what I remember of the time travel story, Ron Raines and Crystal Chappell (Alan and Olivia) played the villains in all the time periods Reva traveled to. They played German Nazis in France during the 40s.

Was it revealed that Brandon was an actual Nazi collaborator? I don't remember that part. 

Many American businessmen found ways to continue to do business with Nazi Germany. (Coca Cola invented Fanta for this exact purpose). It's one thing to say "collaborator," as in, they betrayed their country by collaborating with the Nazis. But it is absolutely true that many American businesses found ways to do business with Nazi Germany.

TBH, I was more offended by them making Reva's romantic rival a Nazi. It seemed to me insanely over-the-top in an effort to make Reva the heroine and Olivia the villain. She just wanted her man, not to take over the world and kill certain groups of people. But, you know, wanting Reva's man is the ultimate sin.

Along with the clone, that storyline belongs in the dustbin of soap opera history. 

7 hours ago, P.J. said:

He tore Alexandra's son from her arms (apparently being his flesh and blood grandchild didn't matter.) He knew about another grandchild (Amanda) and had her raised by his exlover.

This is another retcon that made no sense.

Why did Brandon leave his money to Amanda but not Lujack? You would think he would prefer a male over a female heir. We know why he didn't leave money in that will to Victoria.  They did a whole story to explain that.

Of course, when that story was written, there was no Alex and Lujack. But it left a hole there.

I've often wondered why Brandon didn't leave his money/stock to Phillip. If he wanted to give Alan a poke in the eye on the way to the grave, seems like that would have made the most sense. Amanda being the heir was just a plot device to put Amanda in Alan's orbit.

I don't think it was ever revealed, but in my mind, Alan told Brandon Phillip wasn't his biological grandson as part of his revenge against his father. That makes him settling everything on Amanda make more sense.

 

Edited August 16Aug 16 by DeeVee

I don't remember the details just that he was some how making money off working with the Nazis. I was barely paying attention at the time as the show had gone over the top. Think about it. Reva was involved in not one but two of the greatest Firsts in human history. Cloning and time travel. You know you are in trouble when such plots make the Mob running rampant in Springfield and fairytales on tropical islands that have blizzards look good.

All the Spaulding heirs and their inheritances was complete spaghetti by the end. To this day I don't accept Gus was a real Spaulding. It had to be a lie or a con by the nun. Though I will admit the one bright spot was the grandfather Alan/Rafe relationship. They really did seem to care for each other and that is saying a lot when you are talking about the cartoon version of Alan.

11 hours ago, Lujack4Ever said:

Since it was clearly established in 1984 that Alexandra was alive before Alan was born I will fanwank this in my head that its how ALAN imagines himself as a child being the bigger stronger one in face of Brandon. It's the only way to get around this egregious mistake or deliberate attempt to retcon.

Or have him just be taller than her and thus seem older?  

Yeah, I get what you mean.  The show ends up making it seem like Alan is older in the end though.  

Reva's time traveling nonsense is just that---nonsense. 

I could justify Brandon not leaving anything to Lujack though. He'd always favored Alan over Alexandra. Of course he'd see Alan's progeny as stronger than Alex's. The very choice to have a child with a pianist would taint Lujack in Brandon's eyes. (Were she and Eric even married, or were they simply living together?) With that thinking, it might have even contributed to Alan arranging to replace his dead child with Phillip. To give Brandon a male grandson. C'mon...with his history, do we really think Alan cared about Elizabeth's mental health?

But yeah, in 1979, there was no Alex or Lujack. Another example of why bringing on people as single children is just kind of short-sighted. Some family member is always bound to show up.

2 hours ago, Lujack4Ever said:

I was barely paying attention at the time as the show had gone over the top.

That's probably why I don't remember the Brandon connection. The minute Raines and Chappell showed up in Nazi uniforms, I was out.

2 hours ago, Lujack4Ever said:

To this day I don't accept Gus was a real Spaulding.

Me, neither. Look, I get why they wanted Gus to have a connection to a core family. Why not make him a Bauer? Mike's long-lost progeny would have made way more sense. 

And then they killed him off? So what was the point?

(My personal soap opera rule: NEVER permanently write out or permanently kill off legacy characters. EVER. It always ends up being a disastrous mistake. GL broke this rule SO many times).

1 hour ago, P.J. said:

(Were she and Eric even married, or were they simply living together?)

I recently watched a scene where Harley somehow got a hold of Alex's wedding dress and was trying it on. Alex had a total meltdown. She explained that the last time she tried on the dress, just before she was supposed to marry Eric, was the last time she was truly happy. Eric took Lujack and left right after that. So, no, they were not married. Which I suppose it why Alex was able to get Lujack to use the Spaulding name. It would have been his legal name.

1 hour ago, P.J. said:

it might have even contributed to Alan arranging to replace his dead child with Phillip. To give Brandon a male grandson. C'mon...with his history, do we really think Alan cared about Elizabeth's mental health?

Nope, I never bought that for a minute, not even when Marland was "rehabilitating" Alan. 

In my head canon, Alan knew Brandon would settle a trust, probably including a generous chunk of Spaulding stock, on his first legitimate grandson. As Phillip's father, he would have been in charge of the trust and could have used it eventually as one of the weapons to bring down Brandon.

If you think about it, there is a huge plot hole here. After finding out Elizabeth would never give him children, why not divorce her and get married again to someone who could give him biological heirs? According to Elizabeth herself, their marriage went south almost immediately. Get divorced, have kids with someone else. Problem solved.

My solution to filling in this hole: he HAD to be married specifically to Elizabeth because his father insisted on it. I think she was her uncle's sole heir. I seem to remember he had mills all over New England or something, so Brandon probably wanted them to become absorbed into Spaulding. That's why he had to do the baby switch. He couldn't divorce Elizabeth without risking losing the mills, or whatever else it is she brought into the marriage, and Brandon probably would not have settled anything significant on adopted grandchildren.

This ties into the Barbados storyline, which revealed Brandon married Penelope because she was a rich heiress and came from a good family, which raised the Spaulding fortunes. It would makes sense that he would have insisted the same from Alan, ESPECIALLY after his sister ran off with someone "unsuitable."

Edited August 16Aug 16 by DeeVee