On 8/24/2026 at 3:52 PM, Franko said:

Wasn't Adam terminally ill, and for a while Gretel was the only other person who knew?

ETA: Nope, he had epilepsy. From Soap Central:

Soap Central (or as I call it, Sop Central): UGH. That site goes off on major flights of fancy and makes sh*t up to fill in the blanks about history they know nothing about.

Adam Brewster had serious complications from diabetes. That's the health issues he was fighting.

It was talked about on OLTL, and Jacquie Courtney referred to it when she appeared on a soap-centered episode of the Phil Donahue show.

Nathan Purdee interview at about 14 minutes. He was on Y&R at this time but is talking about his Superfly film. He also talks about his standup career and his painting and shows one of his paintings, which is hard to see.

Even after all these years I have a tough time sitting through Regis and Kathie Lee...

Vintage TV | Regis and Kathie Lee | 1990 California TV with commercials

In case some folks care, I've dived (dove?) back into OLTL '92 after some time away to breathe and I'll be writing up the first half of January (in which a lot happens!) soon. The midpoint definitely comes with a wildly over the top bang on January 16th! @DRW50 @EricMontreal22 @Franko @Paul Raven

Only Malone and Gottlieb could end an act on Andrew's wordless erotic fantasia with Megan, scored with wild ambition and bombast to Carl Orff's "O Fortuna"(!!), at which point the show cuts to... a commercial for KFC. Never change, daytime.

Edited yesterday at 02:41 AM1 day by Vee

As promised, I have returned to ramble ceaselessly onward about OLTL 1992! A year in which the Gottlieb/Malone ‘90s fully take shape.

We may as well begin with Cain Rogan, who is finally unmasked to the audience by name in his meeting with Asa after the ball drops. This turns out to be an unexpectedly earnest or even heartwarming sequence, as Cain expounds about Asa’s ‘first love’ (probably at least his third or fourth of those across the show’s history, let’s be real) Rose Smith, who taught Cain everything he knows about business and cons and, he claims, molded Cain in Asa’s image. This approach to Cain, who has gone unnamed until now via his multiple disguises since first appearing in June or July of ’91, is suddenly much more benign as his admiration for Asa seems at least somewhat genuine. Based on my recollection of the future in later '92 and '93 it isn’t, at least not entirely, and will soon go south but at the moment the relationship is intriguing. Asa is fascinated and enamored with Cain, while Tina and Viki are both out for blood.

“No man has ever taken advantage of me… recently.” - Tina Lord Roberts, 1992

“Oh please, anybody in pants with a credit card could con Tina!” crows Asa in the family meeting about their situation. (“That wasn’t kind,” Viki chides him.) The show wastes no time in giving Cain a little more humility though; upon being confronted by Tina again he initially hits on her, only to soften and apologize when he hears about Cord’s “demise” (yeah, remember Cord? dead a month?). Cain also makes a point of destroying Megan’s videotape that he recorded months before as “Heinrich” with her spilling some of Asa’s secrets; given her condition he feels too guilty to use it. Hiring Cain as his personal secretary, Asa is all in on redoing his Max Buchanan true heir drama all over again, something Renee calls him on much later in the month. But Max is the one who first comments on the meta of it all when he meets Cain again, noting that he used to be where the new man is. “You’re gonna think you’re having the chance of a lifetime, but you know what? You’re gonna find out it’s not your lifetime. It’s his.”

It is refreshing to see the gamesmanship between Cain and Asa here, as the younger man at least initially doesn't outwit or over-flatter Asa nearly as much as he expects to or as the audience might, with Asa onto his lesser games like pickpocketing his wallet and snapping him back into his place. There's a push and pull and almost a masochistic father/son mentorship, which is probably the kind of bond Asa prefers given how he historically treats his more straight-arrow sons Bo and Clint through the years. Cain also uses his assorted con identities to insider trade and drive up stock on a loser for Asa's benefit, or is it for himself? Either way he proves himself, just in time for both men to get taken for a ride by Max and Luna's wacky antique coin con to fund the Serenity Springs land deal within the first several weeks of the month.

Speaking of Max: At the same time as Cain is unveiled on New Year's Day, there's the aftermath of Max and Blair’s big NYE meet-cute to Roberta Flack in an episode marked as 1/2/92. You can tell Max is smitten with Blair because he only kisses her on the forehead that night. He does notably cotton to her “shy [Asian] stereotype act” immediately, and it’s nice to see it pointed out explicitly in the script as he tells her to drop it. But she still isn't giving up much.

After their initial rendezvous the show makes an interesting and unusual choice to very explicitly jump ahead “two days later,” complete with an onscreen title card marking it mid-episode. We cut to Blair interviewing Congressman Dudley for the Banner in a random cafe, where Blair finagles some spicy off the record comments from the politician while Tina listens in. A slightly clumsy transition and setup for daytime and a sign of a very different creative team, but as good as any to move things along. When Blair runs the article in the Banner and claims Dudley was on the record after he files a complaint, Tina dimes her out to Clint and Viki in very short order. Blair immediately resigns from the paper when confronted, but stonewalls to the Buchanans with unusually hard steel; Viki notes it's unlike the shy, sweet Blair they think they've come to know. I do wonder why they had Blair work at the Banner and ingratiate herself to the family for the better part of the last 2 months (including at Christmas with her jewelry) only to have Blair immediately flush it all and re-set her sights on her real target: Dorian, and the Intruder.

Meanwhile, Max has other fish to fry: Lee Ann refuses to accept Max not wanting to marry again post-Gabrielle and they finally break up on 1/3 as Jason helps her dry her tears. (No comment on Max appearing as the pope-hatted pontiff in Lee Ann’s religion-tinged marriage fantasy; I am not making this up.) Lee Ann opts out of abortion while fooling herself into thinking she’d at least have Max’s child which, oy. They really hammer home what they were clearly after from the start in this quad, etc. setup that is emerging: Lee Ann immaturely pines for Max while settling for adolescent adoration and security with Joey Thrower's super-earnest Kevin, who not only proposes but is naively overjoyed to hear she's pregnant. But Lee Ann can't see that it's Jason who truly understands and is devoted to her, while Jason in turn distracts himself from Lee Ann with Dorian's easy, high-class wealth, sex and hedonistic pursuits, even as she calls him on being fixated on someone else. Lee Ann and Kevin ludicrously present their engagement to poor, hospitalized Viki after her kidney transplant drama with Megan (Erika Slezak is really good at playing drugged up), then get irate when she's less then enthused and outright lie when she asks if Lee Ann is knocked up. I can't really blame Viki for being wholly over it. They're acting like little asshóles!

They reestablished and re-cemented the Llanview class struggle at the core of the show very quickly in Gottlieb's first months by frontloading working class strivers Jason and Lee Ann and making the class struggle very explicit in dialogue and themes, even with dayplayers like the recurring staff at the Banner in the city room and the loading docks, but it also comes forth with Blair, toiling in poverty after a life in foster homes and weaving stories to Addie about how her homemade robe is 'made of the finest silks from Peking'. Max and Blair quickly meet again at the Buchanan stables (and will reunite around horses once again in January of ’94, after KDP takes over the role). In keeping with Malone's openly kinky material this is easily the most fetishistic stable stuff since Doug Marland's horny Snyders of ATWT '86! A lot of horse and rider analogies, etc. Blair's monologues to Addie about Max humanize and further flesh out a new character who has been ambitious, devious and at times opaque in her early months; here, her drive and philosophy on life are lain bare, which is more than a lot of new soap characters get these days (or back then, for that matter). Having fought and scrabbled for everything, even making her own clothing, Blair fundamentally misunderstands why Max would give up a golden opportunity on life as Asa's heir apparent. "He never wins," she chides aloud. "Just dreams." And as Blair tells Max outright before that when he lays one on her at the stables on 1/10, she doesn't have time for dreamers. She prudishly rejects him sexually too, which makes me wonder if I am misremembering that Mia Korf's Blair was suggested to be a virgin before she later goes to bed with Max. Is that right or not? I can't recall, but however singularly driven she is I'm not sure I'm buying it lol. She tells him dreams aren't worth much and to call her when he gets the land for Serenity Springs, and not before.

By contrast, despite her growing romantic fascination with Max Blair makes it plain to her mother that Asa is what she thinks she wants. "I don't think that man ever dreams," she marvels. "He just acts." Compared to the Blair a decade from now, who had transmogrified into too often being Todd's weepy romantic dupe beginning with the Gary Tomlin regime, this mercenary drive is a nice contrast. But it's not something alien to Kassie DePaiva's Blair either, who had that same steel in her better periods. When KDP came on Blair was very much the same as Korf's, only a bit more extreme/broad. But the core (Blair's ambition and fury, her art, her gritty background, her love for her mother) was all still there in the mid-90s. It probably goes back to what Kassie always said, that only Malone understood Blair.

Also of note is a hilarious scene with Max and Evan Bonifant's Little Al on 1/9, in which he monologues to Al about losing the Holden Towers to (I think) Michael Grande and Gabrielle, who he pointedly avoids naming, only for Al to smack his father's hand when he tries to steal his french fries. Max muses about power and success but Al's response is simply to ask for more ketchup. I can't say enough about how strong JDP has been in this return period, a real electric force since his first day back in October. He's also very, very good with Susan Batten, Mia Korf and most others. It is a bit laughable when Max tells Blair he's never met someone as passionate as her less than a year after ending things with Gabrielle but I'll chalk it up to a deeply wounded heart, particularly when he tells Blair that 'the love of a bad woman' made him realize only he could make his fate and bring him his fortune. Meanwhile, a jealous Luna agrees to another date with Jon Russell after seeing Max and Blair canoodling on 1/10, because of course she does.

This is already too much so you'll pardon me if I split these posts up. More on the rest of the canvas shortly.

Edited 12 hours ago12 hr by Vee

Meanwhile! The Andrew and Megan of it all is getting very serious in January '92, almost as serious as her fatal lupus. You can see a couple posts above this one how this will all culminate with Andrew's grand erotic fantasy, but the big human confessions in the story actually come a week or two before that. First Sarah presses Megan about her feelings for Andrew, then Andrew and Sarah discuss unrequited love (his for Megan, hers for the seemingly happily married Bo, who takes a powder for a good portion of January "away in DC"). We get some lovely birdwatching scenes with Andrew and Megan where the subject of his transferring out of Llanview comes up again. “It’s you,” Andrew finally confesses at the end of the first week of January. “You’re the reason I have to leave. […] “The congregation deserves better than a minister who is hopelessly in love with a married woman.”

This reveal plays on January 6th with them in the park just before Megan's condition spirals out of control, but it isn't played for high bombast or howling and is instead quiet and intimate. Jessica Tuck plays Megan's initial reaction a bit close to the chest as to her own feelings; she is neither repulsed nor closed-off or embarrassed, but instead seems intrigued and fascinated as their wistful talk quickly segues to headier Malone stuff, namely the mystery of both faith and love, and how they parse faith and belief vs. someone like Luna with her New Age beliefs.

"Isn't that what we're all trying to do?" Megan asks. "Figure out the mystery?" "I guess I figure the meaning's in the looking," Andrew responds. "Maybe the meaning of a mystery is in love," Megan says. "I'm gonna miss our talks. You're a very special friend, Andrew. I need you. Maybe in another place, another time... it's true..." But Andrew shuts her down before she can finish articulating herself, and simply says 'you're my special person too.' He tears up his transfer letter to the bishop and agrees to stay in town, and they embrace only for Megan to collapse, which leads directly to her hospitalization. From this point on, as we all know, Megan is on a clock: She will be dead in less than a month of airtime. At the hospital Andrew is at Megan's bedside for days at a time before and after the kidney transplant, clutching her hand devotedly; you would be forgiven for just tuning In and thinking they are lovers. He apologizes to Megan for his confession, but she says that he’s a gift to her... and that she needs to talk to Jake (about what?). What was more striking was Andrew confessing his feelings to Viki on 1/9. I gotta say, Viki really takes it in stride lol.

Geoffrey Ewing from Loving is here, BTW! He plays Megan's doctor in her lupus crisis, leading to the kidney transplant. Donor Viki almost dies on the table, leading to a confrontation between Larry and cocky Dr. Ewing over his methods that makes me think they intended to add this guy to the ensemble, otherwise why spend so much time with him clashing with Larry and Viki. In any event we know the even cockier Hank Gannon will be here soon.

The flop storyline with Grace Phillips' Sarah and her hunky therapist Dr. Jonas (Christopher Durham) begins in the first week of January as well. I actually find their introductory scenes worthwhile and intelligent; he's hot and Phillips fences nicely with him as they unpack Sarah's history of people-pleasing doormat behavior. But this is also the beginning of Sarah’s infamous pill addiction arc as she is prescribed meds and immediately begins overserving herself! Well, Malone's OLTL never did anything halfway. Both Phillips and Laura Bonariggo are both sort of drifting along for the first half of this month so far mostly in other people's stories, with Cassie as a foil/friend for Blair and Sarah's PTSD occasionally getting checked in on. This is probably for the best considering how heavily they got played along with Bob Woods in the last month or in LB's case several months, often with exhaustingly histrionic material, but it's still a bit of a shift to see him suddenly gone and the two women just chilling for a bit.

Susan Haskell debuts as Marty Saybrooke on 1/15! Megan ‘recovers’ from her transplant in the hospital's sun room while Marty demands the crossword puzzle and introduces herself as the scourge of the society pages and a ‘punk heiress’ (again, Malone was always very fond of unsubtle wordplay and titles), while Megan immediately makes the explicit parallel to herself in her younger days so uh, get ready, audience. Subtlety may be for the birds here, but this is another example of this regime externalizing and making the class drama very literal on the new/old OLTL in what I feel were bold and mostly necessary ways for that period, as across town in the very same episode Dorian orders Jason (first lover then freelance photographer) to get pix of Marty’s infamous socialite Aunt Kiki at Rodi’s for the Intruder gossip page. This is a dive bar for have-nots and Kiki is a high class woman. Rodi's was last seen during Megan's post-diagnosis rampage in late December, which makes me wonder if that was actually its introduction to the canvas; it remained a key locale for almost the entirety of the show's network run. Like Marty, Dorian makes a point to note that the Saybrookes are another old Pennsylvania Main Line family a la Agnes Nixon's roots. 'Next to her I look like a pauper,’ Dorian sniffs of Kiki. Cut to Luna and Jon Russell dancing to the Rolling Stones at Rodi's! I didn't realize Kiki first appeared this early. She is introduced with her downmarket boytoy who blatantly mentions what she 'stuffed up her nose'. Blithely gabbing about a middle-aged lady doing coke wouldn’t necessarily air at 2 PM on ABC these days, but here we are, America.

Anyway: Obviously Marty comes on very strong both in performance and in the text, but regardless of the occasional afterschool special edge to some of this Susan Haskell already has it. Incidentally, it is odd to see Lee Ann and Kevin together in the same episode where the show introduces Marty. Marty will become Lee Ann’s inevitable replacement as young heroine a year from now as the show allegedly dispensed with plans for a potential Sydney Penny recast, and part of Lee Ann's exit story also involves Marty, who willingly tarnishes her reputation further by running a con with Jason to convince Lee Ann to give him up for the sake of her son.

One last tender moment: Blair is touched to hear of Viki's kidney transplant for Megan, and visits her at the hospital. She gives her another piece of homemade jewelry, apologizing for the trouble she caused. She even tears up on the way out. This gentle relationship with Viki (and Tina and Blair's antipathy when Tina comes across Blair outside) would last to the end of the show in 2013. In fact one of the last scenes for either woman in '13 was with each other.

Edited 14 hours ago14 hr by Vee

I really enjoyed reading this - this is a period of months that absolutely blew me away. Those Megan and Andrew scenes in the park bird watching might be among my favorite of the entire show.

This makes me so nostalgic for OLTL. This period (minus a few blunders) was so good, and I miss Gottlieb's OLTL. Gottlieb did try to bring back the class consciousness that Rauch had removed. There's something comforting about a regime where you can feel the care they are taking with the show even when not all of it works.

@Vee Those are beautifully written reviews. I tend to enjoy them more than the show itself in that period, as you hone in on what works best and explain the motivations for what doesn't. What makes this period so interesting to revisit is how clearly on the fly it was.

I love the Andrew and Megan relationship, the mix of ambiguity and purity in their bond. When Hogan Sheffer was going on his endless media praise tour, he talked about how he wanted to have all kinds of characters having sex at ATWT but wasn't allowed. Malone, also a newcomer to daytime, certainly had many steamy sex scenes, but he knew soaps aren't just about rutting. He trusted the audience enough to understand that Megan could have deep feelings for Andrew even as she was deeply in love with Jake. He also got the balance right in their relationship. You so rarely get this on soaps.

That scene with Blair in the stables where Renee classily calls her a whore I watched repeatedly on the OLTL weddings tape.

I never knew Geoffrey Ewing was on Loving.

The whole passing-the-torch moment for new characters and exiting characters doesn't get talked about enough with soaps. A few years ago on Home & Away, there was a character named Felicity who had started out as a party girl, chaotic, only to mature (somewhat) over the next few years. They brought in a young woman who was the sister of Felicity's good friend, and who acted a great deal like Felicity had when she'd joined the show. An episode or two later, Felicity dropped dead from an aneurysm.

15 minutes ago, DRW50 said:

@Vee Those are beautifully written reviews. I tend to enjoy them more than the show itself in that period, as you hone in on what works best and explain the motivations for what doesn't. What makes this period so interesting to revisit is how clearly on the fly it was.

I love the Andrew and Megan relationship, the mix of ambiguity and purity in their bond. When Hogan Sheffer was going on his endless media praise tour, he talked about how he wanted to have all kinds of characters having sex at ATWT but wasn't allowed. Malone, also a newcomer to daytime, certainly had many steamy sex scenes, but he knew soaps aren't just about rutting. He trusted the audience enough to understand that Megan could have deep feelings for Andrew even as she was deeply in love with Jake. He also got the balance right in their relationship. You so rarely get this on soaps.

This gets muddled a bit more later in January, as Megan dreams of Jake but calls out for Andrew instead in her sleep, much to Sarah's consternation and Megan's own confusion. Andrew's superior "Bishop McBain" (yep; remember, Malone also created the McBains) then warns him off leading a parishioner to commit adultery. I think the idea that precipitates Andrew heading to Jaba City to rescue Jake himself is that if he doesn't bring back her wayward husband, Megan might fully fall for him too. But I'm not fully there yet, though I've seen the rescue episodes and the conclusion week of this story before.

I think the show is pretty great in this period. Even when it goes OTT or very grand in its stylistic flourishes (like Andrew's O Fortuna dream) or its declaration of concepts or themes there's generally such an intricacy and artistry to it, a real power and depth of feeling, a rich texture to the characters or stories. You can't help but get swept up in it, and I think a lot of the high style and explicit class drama works. In Malone II he often tried for the same things, but the lack of care in the day to day finished product and various lesser actors (and the heavy network meddling, I'm sure) made a lot of it come off just crashingly obvious and hokey or Jim Reilly-esque. Malone II is a funhouse mirror of a lot of his classic golden era in many ways, but without so much of the technique Gottlieb and probably some of the other longtime writers and directors brought to it, and yes, more restraint. A lot of the sex/love/longing/dating games that characters like Max, Blair, Lee Ann, Luna, Jason, Dorian, even Jon Russell play out in this period are things you can see characters such as Jen Rappaport, Joey, Rex, Lindsay (as Rex's short-lived society and sex 'mentor,' a la Dorian to Jason), Flash/Sarah, Riley Colson play out in '03/'04 in various permutations. It's just that most of those characters or relationships didn't work well together, or the actors didn't work, or the characters and stories were much, much thinner than Malone I.

Edited 4 hours ago4 hr by Vee