6 hours ago, Paul Raven said:

It was poor planning not to give Mike a son at some point as he only had Hope and she was born early 60's.

I don't criticize the Dobsons a whole lot, but pairing Mike with a woman who couldn't have children was also short-sighted. Maybe they planned later for Mike to make another woman pregnant while he and Elizabeth were together/apart. (Jackie? Anne?) Of course, they couldn't know they would be abruptly switched to writing another soap. 

None of Marland's attempts to pair him with someone worked out. (And there were the rumors that Stewart didn't like any of the actresses/characters they were pairing him with).

As has been pointed out, there was no reason why off-screen Mike couldn't have remarried and fathered more children. But on GL, characters taken off the canvas went into some kind of cryogenic storage where their lives never again progressed. 😁

After Leslie died mid 76 Mike had to go to the widower position as standard for soap charcters.

Usually about a year. Ann was lurking in the background but they never went anywhere with it. I think Jackie showed interest and then he fell for Elizabeth but that fell apart.

Wasn't there a brief thing with Renee (Deborah May) who Marland brought back later as Brenda/Ivy?

Then Jennifer but it seems Don Stewart wasn't happy-although I don't know why actors get much of  a say. I guess could play it a certain way to add to a lack of chemistry that might be there.

Anyway that romance fell through.

There was Trish and Alex. Did he date Lillian?

Am I right in saying he wasn't happy with Trish cos he felt she was too young for Mike?

Which goes against theories that he wanted Mike with younger women.

Have we ever had definitive answers on why Don left so suddenly after so many years?

Did he clash with Gail Kobe? Was it a money/contract thing?

16 minutes ago, Paul Raven said:

Did he date Lillian?

Kind of. It seemed pretty obvious for a time that they were testing an Alex/Mike/Lillian triangle. 

No idea why Stewart left. Maybe someone has the gossip. I always assumed that he was swept out with most of the other actors/characters who were dominant during the Dobson/Marland eras.

On 10/1/2025 at 9:20 PM, DeeVee said:

I adored Melissa. She so impressed me from the baby storyline. Yes, they should have groomed her to eventually become the head of the Reardon family in SF.

Not sure I like the idea of her with Rick, but that's probably because I am forever on the Rick and Mindy train. Although with the problematic recasts after Simms left, that would not have worked out. 

Here's an idea--have Rita return with Ed's son. That should have happened at some point anyway. In spite of Rita's humble beginnings, she would probably see Bridget as too low for her kid. She always was very upwardly-mobile.

 

I LURVE Rick and Mindy..they should have gotten Krista back as she was one of the ONLY women that MOL had great chem with..you can see them as friends and more. Can't believe they waited until the end to bring her back and then had to have that Twitter thing after GL was dead where Mindy tries to settle into married life and being a new kind of Bauer matriarch..which would have been great to see on the show as the years went by. They both would seem to be the cute, nice suburban couple down the street, which just a bit of kookiness to make them interesting.

I actually could see Bridget being the start of bringing in a new family to SF..another blue collar family, maybe a Latino family...(not the Santos) Maybe a cop who keeps coming into Company...in a perfect world that Zaz didn't get sick it could be a cop investigating Roger..causing friction..Anyway, Bridget should have stayed ..she didn't even need huge storylines, just behind the bar at Company and at BH connecting all the dots in town even as Ms. Exposition..as long as the Cooper don't stink up Company!

42 minutes ago, DeeVee said:

Kind of. It seemed pretty obvious for a time that they were testing an Alex/Mike/Lillian triangle. 

No idea why Stewart left. Maybe someone has the gossip. I always assumed that he was swept out with most of the other actors/characters who were dominant during the Dobson/Marland eras.

Yea, they were setting him up with Alex and with Lillian. Stewart did not want to be paired with women his age...big dummy, and he was a bit of a pain..so Kobe took it as an opportunity to whittle the Bauer family down more, so she fired him. The problem was, that left Alex hanging out with her gaybestie Warren, Kobe recast Ed and killed off Hillary at the same time...so we really lost three Bauers at once.  

Kobe thought she could get rid of and recast the Bauers as long as she had Charita, but right after killing Hillary, recasting Ed and firing Mike, Charita was too sick to work and passed away. It was a mess and Kobe did nothing to climb out of it, (i.e brining back PS or MH, recasting Hope or Mike) then on the other side all the Reardon actors were quiting and then she wrote off Bea, who was the last character on canvas who could have filled it, at least for a while, for Bert. Kobe ranks up there with JFP as crippling GL at a point where it could have really gotten even stronger. 

1 hour ago, DeeVee said:

As has been pointed out, there was no reason why off-screen Mike couldn't have remarried and fathered more children. But on GL, characters taken off the canvas went into some kind of cryogenic storage where their lives never again progressed.

This was the perfect opportunity to revitalize the Bauers...when PS left during McTrash they needed to bring a recast Mike back and slowly introduced his teenage kids..maybe his wife died and he starts dating Lil again, getting a huge sideeye from Van. 

7 minutes ago, Mitch64 said:

Anyway, Bridget should have stayed ..she didn't even need huge storylines, just behind the bar at Company and at BH connecting all the dots in town even as Ms. Exposition..as long as the Cooper don't stink up Company!

I know you didn't want more Coopers, but I wonder why they never tried pairing Bridget with Frank. He was backburned along with nu-Eleni for most of the late 90s, but I think that Frank and Bridget could have had nice comic chemistry.

1 hour ago, prefab1 said:

I know you didn't want more Coopers, but I wonder why they never tried pairing Bridget with Frank. He was backburned along with nu-Eleni for most of the late 90s, but I think that Frank and Bridget could have had nice comic chemistry.

Im good with that..they did have Nola say to Bridget..when asking who she was interested in but won't say, "Frank? I mean he has a nice body but he's married."  My concern would be that they would make Bridget a Julie...chasing after Frankie while poor dull Eleni is at home, or as they made Nola chase after Buzz and made the Coopers look down their noses at the Reardons. 

Now if they sent Eleni packing, like they eventually did..say she goes to Greece to take care of that weird MaMa and those two dumb brothers for a bit...and Frank can't come for work, and Bridget and he eventually fall for each other...but soaps at that time didn't do triangles unless one side was EVIL and the cards were stacked for the good people. 

16 hours ago, DeeVee said:

Marland was not bad at doing character-driven plots, but when he did something totally plot-driven it stuck out like a sore thumb.

I agree.  I think that's true of most of this genre's greats: Marland, Bill Bell, Agnes Nixon, even Henry Slesar, who spent most of his time writing crime stories, but who knew how to do them so they were motivated by characters and not by plot.  

2 hours ago, Mitch64 said:

Now if they sent Eleni packing, like they eventually did..say she goes to Greece to take care of that weird MaMa and those two dumb brothers for a bit...and Frank can't come for work, and Bridget and he eventually fall for each other...but soaps at that time didn't do triangles unless one side was EVIL and the cards were stacked for the good people. 

Honestly, they should have sent Eleni packing as soon as Melina left. I just saw that Jennifer Roszell was there for 4 straight years--just as long as Melina--and I couldn't believe it, since she seemed like such a non-entity, and I didn't feel the chemistry between her and Frank. 

19 hours ago, DRW50 said:

That was about the Carrie Marler story from 1982. I don't know if Ross had any story in 1988 - maybe that's when he was with Nadine, I don't know.

You can get some glimpses of the story around here. I know that this won't make any real sense of the story, so for a summary (I'm probably getting a lot of this wrong - the clips also somehow got under the spoiler bar, sorry):

  Hide contents

Carrie arrived in Springfield and seemed to be bubbly. Ross, who up to this point had been more a selfish figure beyond pining for Eve [not the Eve you saw], was reformed by her goodness. 

Soon after her arrival, Alan's scheming secretary, Diane Ballard, was murdered. So was her lover/PI, Joe Bradley, who'd had a bitter falling out with her by the end. Carrie had killed them. I think Diane knew Carrie had been lovers with a man in their previous town and had had a child with him that she'd given up for adoption. Carrie went on trial but got off through temporary insanity or something along those lines. 

The "cured" Carrie married Ross, but was actually three people - the Carrie Ross saw, a tramp, and a schemer. The tramp slept with Josh and also seduced a teenager who was cutting lawns. 

The bad Carrie had issues with Ross' sister-in-law, Jackie, and lied to her that Ross' brother/her husband, Justin, had hit on her. I think she also threatened to hurt Jackie's kids with Justin if Jackie didn't leave. An upset Jackie fled town. 

When the true extent of Carrie's madness was uncovered, she recovered enough to try to convince Jackie to return home. When she got on a plane to return home, the plane crashed, and she died. A guilt-ridden Carrie divorced Ross and left town.

This rushed ending was down to the producer, Allen Potter, firing Jane Elliot, as he felt the story wasn't successful or popular, Jane was likely expensive, and he had some allegedly ugly conflicts with Doug Marland.

The second is a whole series of clips.

A whole episode with the Carrie story (and a lot of snoozeworthy material elsewhere as Marland's GL, bless his soul, often makes me drowsy).

 

This was great, thanks @DRW50! Appreciate the details   Carrie sounds like an interesting character, and I didn't even realize that was Jane! 

 

24 minutes ago, alwaysAMC said:

This was great, thanks @DRW50! Appreciate the details   Carrie sounds like an interesting character, and I didn't even realize that was Jane! 

Probably down to her voice being different.

Sorry to dump all those clips.

15 minutes ago, DRW50 said:

Probably down to her voice being different.

Sorry to dump all those clips.

No need to apologize, I appreciate it!   I saw the clip you sent too of Alan's secretary and noticed there are about ~30 parts, so one of these days soon, I'll try and watch those  

Hope is another Bauer who should have remarried, had kids off screen, and returned with them at some point  

23 hours ago, DeeVee said:

20 hours ago, kalbir said:

@alwaysAMC You're brave to continue watching 1998.

@alwaysAMC You are now irrevocably down the rabbit hole. 😂 Yeah, the story is insane, but it doesn't last that long, so there's that.

Hahaha, I'm happy to know it doesn't last too long. I'm actually just finishing up April 1998 and it's been probably my least favorite month of GL since I started my watch in February 1995. Part of the problem is you have Reva on an island with a new character, but then you have Reva as a clone with Josh/Cassie/etc, so 2/3 of each episode all month is Reva. The only other big storyline going on is Beth/Harley/Phillip and the mystery of who killed Carl. Carl is a new character with no history, was only on like 4 episodes, he's a creep, and we're supposed to care about who killed him in the family? Just move on already... it's a bad merry-go-round. The only positive in the story is Lillian is featured and has something to do!  LOL. But yeah, all the other stories/characters have been MIA in April, so it's been a grind getting through it. I'll post my April recaps later this weekend!