36 minutes ago, Tisy-Lish said:

I remember when the quads were born, but I don't remember much else about them.  Were they identical quads?  Were they all the same sex?  

 

That's pretty much all they did. Be born. Annie left town with them shortly after she gave birth. They did come to Chris and Nancy's 50th anniversary party though. There were two boys and two girls. 

55 minutes ago, Tisy-Lish said:

I remember when the quads were born, but I don't remember much else about them.  Were they identical quads?  Were they all the same sex?  Truthfully, it would have been very very difficult to get "real" identical quads who were all actors, and all "good" actors.  And because of the challenge of finding actors, would bringing all four quads back at the same time have even been doable??  It is difficult enough to do twins on soaps, so doing quads would have been even more of a challenge.  Maybe not impossible.  Any thoughts on how it could have been done??

I don't think it would have mattered. Frannie and Sabrina went from lookalikes to looking different. 

16 minutes ago, DRW50 said:

I don't think it would have mattered. Frannie and Sabrina went from lookalikes to looking different. 

Well, if the quads were of different sexes, then none of them would have likely been identical anyway. I'm no expert on multiple birth biology, but I believe this would be the case.  

Edited August 25Aug 25 by Tisy-Lish

The quads wouldn't have all had to be introduced at the same time. Maybe one by one over  several months. Or 2 at first and then the others later.

Their names were Lowell Gregory Maria and Nancy.

Lowell I get as it is a family name. Nancy was named for Nancy Hughes? But she wasn't on the show at the time, so maybe not. As for Maria and Greg maybe they were someone in Jeff's family?

I would have named them Lowell, Claire (after Annie's grandmother) and picked 2 more 'trendy' names for the Ward side of the family. Maria, Nancy and Greg all seem a bit old fashioned had they turned up in the 2000's.

29 minutes ago, Paul Raven said:

The quads wouldn't have all had to be introduced at the same time. Maybe one by one over  several months. Or 2 at first and then the others later.

Their names were Lowell Gregory Maria and Nancy.

Lowell I get as it is a family name. Nancy was named for Nancy Hughes? But she wasn't on the show at the time, so maybe not. As for Maria and Greg maybe they were someone in Jeff's family?

I would have named them Lowell, Claire (after Annie's grandmother) and picked 2 more 'trendy' names for the Ward side of the family. Maria, Nancy and Greg all seem a bit old fashioned had they turned up in the 2000's.

One could have started with "Nan", a nursing student coming to town to stay at Gran's house, interacting with Ellen, Emily and Susan, caught between Aaron and Alison.  Her brother, "Gee" (Greg) a budding musician involved with Luci Montgomery and her brother Bryant and his Band. Jennifer is involved with Bryant, but realizes "Gee" is really Bryant's muse...

It would have been easy to weave 2 quads in with the characters on the canvas in the early 2000s. A brief visit every so often from mom, Annie  or Aunt Dee and Ellen at a local eatery could have conceivably kept Bruder into the 2000s, without needing a shoehorn. Maybe we could have been saved from a decade of Howarth chewing scenery with a viable youth group on the scene.

58 minutes ago, slick jones said:

One could have started with "Nan", a nursing student coming to town to stay at Gran's house, interacting with Ellen, Emily and Susan, caught between Aaron and Alison.  Her brother, "Gee" (Greg) a budding musician involved with Luci Montgomery and her brother Bryant and his Band. Jennifer is involved with Bryant, but realizes "Gee" is really Bryant's muse...

It would have been easy to weave 2 quads in with the characters on the canvas in the early 2000s. A brief visit every so often from mom, Annie  or Aunt Dee and Ellen at a local eatery could have conceivably kept Bruder into the 2000s, without needing a shoehorn. Maybe we could have been saved from a decade of Howarth chewing scenery with a viable youth group on the scene.

Keeping Bruder in the cast would have been nice.  Ellen was an original character, and with David dead, a decent head-writer could have written interesting things for Ellen -- especially with Emily and Susan in the mix.   

3 hours ago, Reverend Ruthledge said:

That's pretty much all they did. Be born. Annie left town with them shortly after she gave birth. They did come to Chris and Nancy's 50th anniversary party though. There were two boys and two girls. 

This is exactly what I'm talking about. They were born and then disappeared almost immediately. What is the fascination with them? What is the hold these barely-were-ever-on-screen-babies have over ATWT (I'm assuming early) fandom? They just get brought up so much, you'd think the characters were on the canvas for years like Bryant, Lucy, Katie, Jennifer, Will, Chris, Adam and Casey.

14 minutes ago, adrnyc said:

This is exactly what I'm talking about. They were born and then disappeared almost immediately. What is the fascination with them? What is the hold these barely-were-ever-on-screen-babies have over ATWT (I'm assuming early) fandom? They just get brought up so much, you'd think the characters were on the canvas for years like Bryant, Lucy, Katie, Jennifer, Will, Chris, Adam and Casey.

I'm assuming the fascination is mostly because they were quads.  The only quads ever born (or even referenced) on daytime. Believe it or not -- when they were born, it was a VERY big deal in the soap press.  So I'm not surprised long-term ATWT viewers wished for their return to the canvas.  But without Ellen, the return of the quads was not going to happen. They were only cousins to Emily, and no blood-relation at all to Susan.  So not much of a connection to the remaining Stewarts -- unless Ellen returned.  Plus, adding four siblings of the same age to the show at the same time would have seemed contrived.  It simply would not have worked.   

I feel like if Bryant, Jennifer, Lucy, Chris Hughes, etc. are brought up in the same breath as though they have the same amount of dimension (or lack thereof) as these infant quadruplets no one ever saw much of after the Reagan administration, that's more a problem with the onscreen characters than those four random babies.

10 minutes ago, Vee said:

I feel like if Bryant, Jennifer, Lucy, Chris Hughes, etc. are brought up in the same breath as though they have the same amount of dimension (or lack thereof) as these infant quadruplets no one ever saw much of after the Reagan administration, that's more a problem with the onscreen characters than those four random babies.

Exactly. It's something where we can wonder what might have been. The above characters were mostly dull and forgettable so I have nothing to say about them.

I don't understand what bothers certain posters. That many of us that watched ATWT since the early eighties want to see characters connected to the characters we watched over the years, or the fact that we just couldn't stand the Schlocky characters created after say 1996.  There were some good characters, Maddie, Gwen, Casey. But the show also did away with the personalities of most of the characters. Not to mention the monkey shine antics of the ever mugging Roger Howarth who ruined Paul Ryan for viewers. 

Any combinations of the Stewart Grandchildren could only have added to stories, had they been cast properly. 

46 minutes ago, Tisy-Lish said:

 Plus, adding four siblings of the same age to the show at the same time would have seemed contrived.  It simply would not have worked.   

We are only imagining and as I stated previously, there was no need to introduce them at the same time.

One of the assets of soaps is the long term association and memory of viewing-that builds loyalty.

Replenishing of core families should have been a priority for TPTB along with other new characters. A balance.

But instead they seem to think that new characters were the way to go. That and revolving head writers meant there were too many changes.

Actually ATWT suffered less than GL or AW in that regard.

But why Frannie, Andy etc never returned is a mystery. As a viewer you wondered what Kim and Bob had done to deserve children they seldom saw. The show is supposed to be about family.

2 hours ago, Tisy-Lish said:

I'm assuming the fascination is mostly because they were quads.  The only quads ever born (or even referenced) on daytime. Believe it or not -- when they were born, it was a VERY big deal in the soap press.  So I'm not surprised long-term ATWT viewers wished for their return to the canvas.  But without Ellen, the return of the quads was not going to happen. They were only cousins to Emily, and no blood-relation at all to Susan.  So not much of a connection to the remaining Stewarts -- unless Ellen returned.  Plus, adding four siblings of the same age to the show at the same time would have seemed contrived.  It simply would not have worked.   

There were soOoOoOoOoOoOo many characters who were introduced in the 1990s and 2000s who were no blood relation to Susan and had not much of a connection to the remaining Stewarts lol for the life of me, I've never understood the idea that it's pointless to bring back characters if they don't have many connections on the canvas while new characters pop up with 0 built-in connections to the canvas all the time.

If they brought in one or two of the quads, then they would have been "the remaining Stewarts." They would have also been completely fresh slates, ripe for building their own relationships with the rest of the canvas at whatever time they would have showed up. And then, maybe, under TPTB that cared, their presence would have then prompted return visits from Ellen and/or Annie.

2 hours ago, adrnyc said:

This is exactly what I'm talking about. They were born and then disappeared almost immediately. What is the fascination with them? What is the hold these barely-were-ever-on-screen-babies have over ATWT (I'm assuming early) fandom? They just get brought up so much, you'd think the characters were on the canvas for years like Bryant, Lucy, Katie, Jennifer, Will, Chris, Adam and Casey.

The fascination with them is that they were characters born into the second-most important family of the show's first 30 years on the air and were never reintroduced later on as a means to maintain the Stewarts' position on the canvas via adding a new, younger generation to the family. The fact that they were born and then disappeared is perfect because, again, fresh clean slates. 

ATWT rolled in so many short-term, out-of-the-blue characters near the end (remember Elwood!? The Z twins!?). Several of them could have been written as Ward quads instead (and no, I don't mean all four showing up all at once). It might not have made a difference story-wise, but it would have provided something all of the newly-created characters couldn't have - continuity. ATWT was on the air for 50+ years, and it wasn't an anthology series. It was meant to trace multiple generations of these families over the decades. Bringing in even just ONE of the Ward kids would have honored that original premise in a huge way.

PS. I don't think Christina Hughes ever existed onscreen outside of her mother's uterus, and plenty of people spent time wanting her to pop up in toward the end of the show's run, too! The whole point of wanting that was so that she could indeed become a fully realized character.

27 minutes ago, All My Shadows said:

I don't think Christina Hughes ever existed onscreen outside of her mother's uterus, and plenty of people spent time wanting her to pop up in toward the end of the show's run, too! The whole point of wanting that was so that she could indeed become a fully realized character.

I'm pretty sure Marland wrote the birth of Christina anticipating down the line with SORAS she would be available to replenish the Hughes family.

Marland created Chris Hughes, brought in an adult Emily, wrote stories for Frannie, created Sabrina and Scott  Eldridge etc all to keep the Hughes and Stewarts present on the canvas as well as creating the Snyders to pit a fresh family in the mix.

Subsequent writers were pretty random about using characters from history.

10 hours ago, All My Shadows said:

ATWT was on the air for 50+ years, and it wasn't an anthology series. It was meant to trace multiple generations of these families over the decades. 

You've captured the very essence of what I think set daytime soap operas apart and made them great. Funny how so few of those involved in soap operas after the pioneers in the industry were gone failed to grasp that concept.