Planned Storylines that were changed/dropped

[Sindacco]

No, the stalker turned out to be Erics old friend from Colorado that had raped a woman and he was angry at Eric.

[cityfan01]

but wasnt it originally planned that he was a lover of eric's from CO?

[soapfan770]

Yes I think that's what I meant to begin with, sorry for the confusion!

[LoyaltoAMC]

AMC: wasn't there a plan for Janet to plant a bomb at Trevor and Laurel's wedding that was scratched because it was right after the first World Trade Center bombing? Also, there was supposed to be a Tad/Barbara romance in 1989, but new EP Felicia Behr and new HW Maggie DePriest quickly scrapped that. Other scrapped stories around that time were Ross/Karen, Cliff/Angie, and Jack/Julie. In 87-88, they toyed with the idea of developing a mid-life crisis for Joe Martin. There were a bunch of scenes of Joe being fed up with Ruth not being modern or adventurous in their lives, and there was talk of a possible involvement between Joe and Julie's mother Liz or a nurse who had a crush on him. None of that really went anywhere. The 1988 writers strike happened, and the story was never picked up when the strike was over.

GH: They toyed with a Bobbie/Rick Webber romance, but nothing ever really developed. And who could forget the whole Edward/Heather thing and Heather's supposed yen for Luke a few years back?

Ryan's Hope: I think they had big plans for an interracial romance between Frank Ryan and Diana Douglas, but I think that was quickly aborted and never mentioned again.

[bellcurve]

I remember that too.

[IMissAremid]

Can somebody tell me what the original ending for the EJ/Sami-Santo/Colleen business on DAYS was supposed to be? Supposedly Tom Casiello had a podcast where this was explained but I've never listened to it or got the full story about what Hogan's plan was before it got changed.

[MichaelGL]

How about these....

On Days there was the superb episode that was written by Cwikly and Brash: Stefano's Will Reading

I thought all the things Stefano had bequeathed to those in his will would spin into separate mysteries, especially the peppers Kate had received

Caprice/Celeste was a story dropped on Days, I think under C and B as well (Higley didn't give two shits about continuing or tying up the previous regime's stories)

On Guiding Light....Joan Collin's Alex was blackmailing Mindy when she came back for the Ex-Wives Club episodes. It was never revealed what Ms. Spaulding was holding over Mindy!!

Phillip was supposed to get in trouble for insider trading, something I think Alan had set up around the time they were fighting over Olivia.

Claire Labine wanted to have Reva run for mayor of Springfield, never hit the air.

I always wondered if there was more to the May (Cigarette girl) storyline with Labine and Co. as well.

[SFK]

I remember scenes with Tad being flirty with Barbara, they had a little thing, but then it seemed like he still liked her but she was kind of giving him the cold shoulder. The scene I remember in particular, he was over at her apartment and he guessed that she had "a twinkie in the oven" (I remember that because my mother giggled, she loved Tad). Barbara was pregnant by Travis and that kind of answered Tad's questions as to why she wasn't really feeling him.

[cityfan01]

yeah i'd like to know about this too!

[Cheap21]

here's an article I found of it when it happened

http://www.soapcentral.com/pc/news/2001/0924-terrorism_changes.php

[Cheap21]

too bad that didnt happened bc I preferred Kelli Giddish as Dixie over Cady McClain

[DRW50]

Yes. This was the rumor back before Laura Wright was cast, and then, a while after the story began and Laura was in the role, Kim basically said that she'd worn a wig and done a test, but she had decided it wasn't a good idea. I'm not sure how much was her and how much she was saving face, but either way, it was the right decision. I do think she could have done well with a limited dual role (she was fine as Dolly), but certainly not a woman who was supposed to be over 10 years younger than Reva.

I never knew that about Gus being the child of Alan and Rita! Did they try to get Lenore Kasdorf back?

I also never knew about a lot of the dropped AMC stories.

Other stuff that was dropped, from my vague memories and stuff discussed on boards...

On AW, didn't Ben McKinnon and Thomasina Harding kiss at a summer picnic? Then the whole thing was forgotten. Ten years later, AW tried an interracial romance between Felicia and Marshall, and that was also dropped after a kiss. During the JFP era, there was a brief story about Tomas and a vampire. Eddie Drueding mentioned these stories:

http://www.igs.net/~awhp/eddietor.html#jfp

Also on AW, when Anna Stuart left the role of Donna in 1986, after being gaslighted by her evil father Reginald, her exit was Reginald showing her a photo which made her snap. She clutched THREE pillows and said "Don't take my babies!" This was supposed to be Marley, Vicky, and Scott, who had been raised by Reginald and an amnesiac Mary McKinnon. When they recast the role with Philece Sampler, she looked too young to be a mother to Marley and Vicky, much less the guy who played Scott. So this was changed to a photo of John Hudson holding the baby twins, and Donna had freaked out because John was Michael's brother and she'd had a fling with him around that time.

On GH, Miranda, Jax's ex-wife, was supposed to be Stavros's long-lost daughter. That's why she was so upset when she met Stefan. I guess Miranda flopped and they gave some of this to Alexis later on.

On OLTL, Rex was originally supposed to have a thing with Jessica's boyfriend Seth. Joey Buchanan was originally supposed to be gay, but the network said no, so they had to give him a best friend and make the friend gay. On AW, Harding Lemay originally planned to have Michael Randolph revealed as gay, thus splitting his parents up, but P&G said no. He had to change this to them splitting up over Marianne Randolph.

On GH, didn't they originally plan to make Roy DiLucca Carly's biological father?

And on OLTL, Miles was supposed to be Blair's brother and Addie's son. That ended because of the strike. They also ended the story of what secret was on the DVD Allison Perkins had.

[DRW50]

On the topic of British soaps, can anyone remember some changes? Or other foreign soaps?

The BIG changes of course would have been on Coronation Street, where, around 1968, a new producer came in with plans that would take the lily-white, generally conservative Street and...

- introduce a new black family

- have Jerry Booth, a loveable schlub who never had a lot of success with women, realize he was homosexual

- have teenage Lucille Hewitt fall into drug addiction

- have religious spinster Emily have an affair, get pregnant, and decide to keep the baby and raise it on her own

Needless to say, none of this happened, as interesting as some of it might have been. The most "daring" the show got was having Lucille live with some harmless hippies for a few months, and having a teenage, recently married couple move onto the Street.

[LoyaltoAMC]

Some other changed/dropped AMC stories throughout the years that I recall:

Supposedly they were going to do a sweet late-in-life triangle between Myra, Jasper Sloane and Kate Martin (I kid you not!) some time in 82 or 83. That was about the time that Jackie Babbin replaced Jorn Winther as producer, so maybe that was a factor in dropping that. I remember the old Daytime TV magazine mentioning it in their summer previews that year. Also, after the Peg English Cobra thing was over, there was speculation about who Brooke's real mother was, and Agnes was toying with the idea of making her Daisy's long-lost daughter, but obviously Agnes decided not to go that route. Anyone remember the proposed Angie/Cal/Pat triangle from aroun 1990. This was after Angie/Cliff broke up and Peter Bergman was fired. I remember Agnes raving in SOD about how great a story this was going to be for Debbi Morgan. Morgan up and quit a few weeks later. When Saundra Quartermain took over the role, the story quickly fizzled, leaving Count Stovall, who played Cal, with little to do. They steered Quartermain's Angie in the direction of new character Derek Frye, which itself was soon aborted after the unpopular Quartermain was let go. Another more recent scrapped story was David's revenge on the Martins after Leora died. Rayfield/Cascio set up some big revenge story, but McTavish nixed that when she took over.

[DRW50]

Poor Count Stuvall, he was quite good on ATWT as Roy Franklin.

Kate in a love triangle. I'd have loved to have seen that.

You're right, I forgot about the revenge against the Martins.

I guess we can count the bit with Alexander Cambias telling JR he hadn't really killed Dixie, right? Not that I'm sorry this is dropped.