Her never ending maternity leave! She also left like three times around that pregnancy. First one was when the whole family was gone for several weeks when they faked Laura’s death and found Lesley alive, end of 96-early 97. Then she left again after being back for a couple of months, and Laura/Lesley, and Lulu were all gone. She came back for a few weeks for whatever that faberge egg reveal was, looked very pregnant, and was gone until the Ball. There were rumors she was supposed to come back earlier for the Nikolas was shot story. But her return was pretty great during the ball.
Bob Guza liked to write for Laura until he didn’t. He took her pitch and created Nikolas. When he came back in late 1997 and was interviewed he said he was willing to do anything to get Genie to return from maternity leave. When he came back in 2002 one of the big stories they wanted to do was whatever the original Rick story was. I don’t know if he was just fed up with stories being interrupted by her exits, or if it was mostly Jill that kept Genie from coming back. Even Geary wanted her back up to the conclusion of her second JFP era return, which is when he really settled into miserable Luke that hated having a family talk and laid the groundwork for morphing Luke into Bill. And part of that was both of them were frustrated by what they considered a corny bait and switch on them with that second wedding from her first JFP return.
I have been on a real tear about JFP the last few weeks lol. Time to meditate or something.
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titan1978 ·
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