How should ATWT end and who should come back??

[All My Shadows]

I would say that it is similar to the Y&R thing. They were born on the show, aged pretty rapidly, were at the center of the action for much of the late 70s and early 80s, and then by 1984, both were out of there.

[TC]

You might be right about Parker. For some reason I was thinking Steve Fletcher but it couldn't have been him.

[Vee]

From what I heard it was neither Phil Carey nor Jameson Parker. The story I heard - and this is sheer rumor - is that it was the young teen who played Tony and Pat's son Brian.

[SFK]

Wasn't this discussed in a WoST podcast interview with the person in question? Someone help me here...

[DRW50]

They were also recast multiple times, which probably didn't help.

I still hope to get to see the Randall Edwards Annie at some point.

[P.J.]

Jackie Schultz was married to Bryggman at one point...I was amazed at imdb.com has her working on various episodics through 2004 on Drew Carey. (The only thing I remember seeing her do was an eppy of In the Heat of the Night)

The most surprising thing I found was she was the last Patti Tate on SFT and married someone on the last episode.

[JellicleCat]

Was that the same Glynnis O'Connor who later played Margo Hughes 1993-94 when Ellen Dolan left (and later replaced O'Connor when she came back)?

[Soapsuds]

Yes, it was the same Glynnis who played awful Margo. Irony is that ATWT was soaring in the ratings at the time with a 6.6 HH rating. Good times with Connor Walsh as front and center..sigh.

[DRW50]

The ratings were on a big upswing at the time? That's interesting. I had always thought the numbers slowly drifted down over the years, aside from the brief spike in late 1996. I wonder what the reason was for the increase. I'd like to believe it was Connor, as she was one of the main people who kept me interested in the show for most of 1993 and 1994.

[Soapsuds]

I believe it was either 92 or 93

The ratings were in an upswing...here were the ratings at that time

1. Y&R 9.6

2.AMC 7.0

3. B&B 6.7

4.ATWT 6.6

5.GH 6.4

6.GL 6.2

7.OLTL 6.1

9.Days 5.7

10. AW 3.9

11. etc...etc..forget which soaps were still left at the time

[Vee]

Those ratings are insane. Of course, I believe OLTL was at like 3.5 in 2003, which seems so far away now.

[Paul Raven]

Dee was definitely a viable character for the 80's and 90's.

She had only been married once and could have impacted on John when she returned as well as mixed it up with the new characters-Scott,Cal etc.

Annie had 2 marriages and the quads,so she wasn't so easy to write for.

[Vee]

I don't know; maybe I'm making too much of it, looking from the outside with the benefit of hindsight, but it seems to me that there was a trend in soaps around that period and soon after to purge some of the core or main characters, usually female, who had been frontburner or at least regularly active throughout the '70s. As though they didn't fit in with many shows' visions of their future, post-Luke and Laura. I'm not saying that what came next wasn't wonderful in most cases, but it seems that all at once, many shows decided to dump longtime ingenues and family members - Hope Bauer, the Stewart girls, some of the Horton women, and later, over on OLTL, people like Samantha Vernon. I'm not sure how this applies or doesn't apply to AMC or GH, but I believe they gradually tossed a bunch of women from GH including Heather Webber.

[Y&RWorldTurner]

I just thought back to AW's horrific final episode with that gorilla mess and realized that Goutman, Passanante, and Laiman all had their hands all over that one. If I weren't pessimistic about ATWT getting a decent finale before, I am now.

The only thing that saved AW's last episode was that last scene of Rachel touching those photos of people that meant something to her and the fade to black and frezeframe of a toast Mac once gave.

[DRW50]

I think a lot of that was new producers or writers wanting to seem "fresh" and make their mark. There was a rumor Hope Bauer was written out so Gail Kobe could show the cast who was boss -- like when JFP went to AW and fired Christine Tucci/Amanda Cory just to show who was boss.