It's kind of a shame--Judi could have grown into a mature heroine on the show. Most of her career was working on soaps, so she didn't leave because she was ambitious for a night time or movie career. I think she left because she was unhappy on GL.
Long put a lot into the female characters she created--I wonder if like Reva, Beth and Mindy had aspects of her personality/life woven into the characters. There was a lot of care in creating them, which rarely happened with young soap characters. And of course, the casting was on point. The only time she really flopped doing this was with Jessie and Calla, who were clearly based on her (and possibly her mother) because of the beauty pagent stuff.
One of the problems with the revolving door of writers that year is they started stuff that got dropped. I really think they were building towards an Alan/India pairing. They even had CB and MKA do a Soap Opera Digest cover and spread. Then they dropped it. Which to me is a shame because I thought they had fantastic chemistry.
There was obviously going to be a major story involving the backstory of Alan's time in San Rios. Big build up and then--dropped. (Actually, I'm glad that was dropped, the "Encantadora" stuff was flashing "CRINGE! CRINGE! CRINGE!" all over the place).
Both Rita and Hope were brought up. Seemed pretty obvious they were planning to bring them back, then--nothing.
Sometimes we forget that RN left not that long after the Reva/Josh pairing was first established. IMO, we think of her being suffocated by him because after he came back it was always Reva/Josh, no matter who either one got involved with. They were always going to be the endgame, period. The fact that they were able to create a popular pairing for her with Kyle before RN came back shows that they did not have to be tethered to each other forever. But I guess TPTB believed the audience always wanted them together.
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DeeVee ·
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