How should ATWT end and who should come back??

[DRW50]

Is this club run by Marty West?

[Vee]

With a cameo by John Conboy as the mysterious ringleader, sitting on his neon-painted throne, stroking a white cat. "Goooddd, gooooodddd..."

[DeeeDee]

:lol:

[Vee]

I'd actually like to see Betsy reappear, as played by Meg Ryan as well. Whereas Julianne could do it out of love for the show, it's not like Meg is doing anything else.

I'd love to see Jennifer's ghost appear; Gillian Spencer is still around. And let's not forget the most essential character from the past: Elaine Princi as Miranda Marlowe, Bob's wife the international spy. What the [!@#$%^&*] were they thinking?

[DRW50]

Was that before or after he dated the ballerina?

It would be great if Meg and Julianne did return, although it doesn't seem likely. I wish they could ask Marisa Tomei as well. She could return to ask Lisa to move with her to London, and Lisa ends up falling for a dashing duke who accompanies Marcy to Oakdale.

[Vee]

At this point, post-The Wrestler (where she was actually excellent), Marisa Tomei is actually more prestigious a "get" than Meg Ryan. But I never understood her role or place on the show other than she apparently tried to put the moves on Bob at like age 17. What was wrong with this show back then? Wasn't that the Dobsons, of all people? Were they also responsible for Miranda, side by side with James and Barbara and Danny Pintauro? I don't know about any ballerina.

I'd like to see at least one of those people make an appearance, preferably Julianne Moore. Two is too much to hope for but I'd push if I was the EP.

Incidentally, if anyone can think of a reason not to reunite John and Lucinda I'm all ears. That was a perfect tentpole couple.

[DRW50]

I think she was before Miranda. I think she may have also been played by Leslie Denniston, who went on to marry Don Hastings and then played Maeve on GL and finally Carolyn Crawford, of the endless Carolyn Crawford murder mystery.

I never knew that about Bob and Marcy. It does sound very odd. She kissed him to get back at Frannie, then wanted him for real, and jumped him in his office, and Miranda saw them and used it to divorce Bob.

I'm glad that story didn't happen now, she probably would have drugged him and done who knows what.

The Dobsons did Miranda, and James and Barbara, and James's sister Ariel, who married John, and was part of the John/James blood feud of the early 80s (John always stayed out of James's later returns -- I was never sure why). And Mr. Big and the Tom/Margo pairing. The other big feud was James/Gunnar, and Barbara having the past life visions where Gunnar was her stable boy or whatever and James was the cruel master of the house.

It's interesting that ATWT cast Meg Ryan, Marisa Tomei, Julianne Moore, and Courtney Cox all within a few years. Courtney just had a day player role, but that hasn't stopped her from being lumped in with ATWT for decades.

I would love to see that. I hope Larry might return, if they even bother to ask.

[Vee]

I understand the Dobsons made history with James, Barbara, Paul, Gunnar and all that, introducing Craig and Margo and Betsy and so on, and I like much of their work, but some of these other things are still so bizarre. I mean, why on Earth would Bob Hughes marry an international crook?

Incidentally, is the character Terry Lester played alive or dead? Royce? I never understood what was supposed to have happened there; did the story get altered or changed? What is the whole mystery regarding Kirk and Sam?

[DRW50]

I think they might have been told, or decided on their own, to spice Bob up. I don't think the people at ATWT then were fond of the Hughes family. Don was written out, and Nancy and Chris were sidelined and even put on recurring. I guess the pairing of this exotic woman and staid Bob was supposed to be interesting, especially when they added WTF stuff like Miranda going to the jungles to find her long lost teenage daughter, Bilan. The Dobsons did a lot of crazy stuff on ATWT. I guess it worked to a degree, but ATWT was never a crazy show. GL was more of an off the wall show than ATWT, not in terms of freezing the world, but in terms of emotional states being more high pitched and mad. Yet, they seemed a little more balanced at GL. I know the Dobsons are supposedly a little crazy. I wonder if boring Oakdale pushed their buttons.

The odd thing is that only a few years later, we got an international jetsetter who had heavy ties to criminal worlds, and who had a long lost daughter she had left in the jungles of Montega. And yet viewers happily embraced Lucinda and Sierra.

Royce is still alive. His split personalities murdered his sister, Neal. After he integrated, he no longer knew himself, and he dumped Emily at the altar. He stayed around Oakdale for several months, helping to introduce Samantha (who was conning the Walshes, but actually turned out to be a real Walsh after all) before leaving, as the show had no story for him. I think Marland had planned a longer story involving Royce's multiple personalities and murdering his sister Neal, but then he passed away.

Royce was a tough sell but I did love Neal, his sister. I was very upset when she was killed. 1993 was a very hard year for me and ATWT...

Kirk and Sam, in late 1998, got a note asking them to come to the docks. They had a picnic there, or something, and then they were never seen again. They were, presumably, taken by someone. The implication was James Stenbeck, or his son David. I don't know if the show planned to ever address this again (the timing was horrible, as Sam's daughter Georgia had just come on the show), but it has been dropped ever since.

[DRW50]

You've probably already seen these, but patc2000 has some good clips up from the Dobson era, with Tom, Margo, James, Barbara, Gunnar, the OTT Dee murder trial with the noisy crowd and face-pulling jury (remember when soap trials had a lot of extras?). Lots of good stuff.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQj-3SGWdUQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLIS9KLhaHc&feature=related

[Vee]

Thank you for the clips. "Bilan" sounds like some sort of deadly bacteriological agent.

Yes, I remember the endless, labyrinthe paternity/child stories the Dobsons did on GL and ATWT complete with international intrigue. I liked a lot of what I saw of their GL, and I suppose the James and Barbara story worked great on ATWT given the rush in the '80s to emulate the adventure tales on GH, and we got Tom and Margo and so on, but some of the other stuff seems so out of place and ill-suited for Oakdale. Then of course they got Santa Barbara. It's a pity they were driven out of daytime, odd fit for Oakdale or not; their complicated, over the top madness was for the most part divine.

Since it's turned into a history lesson can someone explain to me the deal with Holden's amnesia on ATWT? Why did Marland do that, and didn't he want it to be permanent? What is the timeframe; was Martha Byrne gone at the time, and when and how did she return?

[SFK]

Neal was Mary-Kay Adams, right? I saw Julianne Moore on The View and she seemed to have a huge soft spot for the show, then again, she seems like a lovely person generally speaking. It would be a beautiful gesture if she came back for a day, though I could totally see her people being all, "Whaddayou, CRAZY!?" I know they recast Frannie and Sabrina with actresses who did NOT look alike, I'm not sure which was which, but Claire Beckman (aka Silver Kane #2 on AMC) played one of them and she runs a theatre company in Brooklyn. Obviously Moore would be the real draw though.

[DRW50]

The odd part of their ATWT run for me is that they wrote heavily for the Stewarts, which had not really been done in some years, and was not done afterwards. Their run was basically the only time in about 25 years that Ellen Stewart had stories. I'd love someone to ask them why they preferred the Stewarts to the Hughes family. I also wish they had gone back to GH at some point. Perhaps they still could. I would love to see Steve Burton read a script where he uses farming equipment for sexual references, or serves his pet Spinelli for dinner.

Martha Byrne had left the role of Lily in 1989. Lily was burned in a fire that killed her con artist husband (ageless Thomas Gibson of Dharma and Greg/Tales of the City/Criminal Minds) and she fled Oakdale. She lived with nuns or something. Lily returned in late 1990, with plastic surgery, played by Heather Rattray.

Lily and Holden married, but she had a miscarriage, and they drifted apart. They were just about done when he learned Julie had had his son and given him to Iva to adopt. Holden confronted Julie in her New York apartment. On the street outside, he was mugged and left for dead. He had permanent brain damage. He could not remember anything about his life. It was a precursor to when this was done with Jason on GH. Marland said it was not amnesia and Holden would never get his memory back.

Holden could not remember Lily, or anyone. Rattray's Lily left town. He had to start over again. Marland at this time called Martha Byrne and asked if she would return as Lily. Byrne agreed. This led to when Holden ended up going to Malta and saw Lily singing in a club, recently married to Damian Grimaldi.

Holden fell in love with Lily again, but he was very, very cold, and it just never felt right. I don't think it helped that Marland died not long after the story began. The future writers had little idea of how to deal with Holden. It was a particular black mark for me when he took Aaron from Iva because Aaron was "his" son, and then proceeded to foist the child on Emma because he was more interested in pursuing women. One of the women had a son and he treated her kid more like his own than he did Aaron. Or I thought so at the time.

Anyway, Jon Hensley left in 1995, after Lily decided to stay with Damian and their baby son, Luke. When Jon returned a year later, the new producer, Felicia Behr, decided that Holden needed to be the "real" Holden again. Holden got in a bar fight, hit his head, and all his memories came back. He was his old self again.

It was disrespectful to Marland's work, but I think they made the right decision.

[SFK]

And you know, Miss Parker Posey also lives downtown like Julianne Moore, wouldn't it be nice to see Tess come and visit her ex-aunt Barbara? Though I would be beyond jealous if Pelphrey got to do scenes with her.

[Vee]

The curious thing for me is, why was the amnesia/brain damage done? Sure, Heather Rattray was a cold fish, but did Hensley want to go "darker?" What did they have in mind for him if not Lily, or were they always banking on Martha Byrne coming back? I wonder.