When Long Ago Characters Resurface.

[ellabelle]

I loved it when a lot of old favorites came back for the funerals of Phoebe and Palmer on AMC. That was good, and I loved it when they came back for the anniversary shows. I also sometimes enjoy a return if it's done for say, less than a year, and it's part of a story arc, and then the character moves on with the door open for a return later on. That of course assumes there's a point to it. I have yet to figure out why Billy Clyde Tuggle was brought back from the dead for a return to AMC. Nostalga, I guess, but again, I'm not really sure why he's there.

[~bl~]

There was a story with Billy Clyde that was spoiled in summaries in Soap Opera Digest, so AMC was doing something with him. Due to how the show was edited, most of it was cut so who knows.

[SoapDope]

Y&R pissed me off when they brought back Liz Foster just to kill her off and Patty Williams as an insane nut job. Patty did shoot Jack back in the day, but in the end they parted on good terms. Then she shows up decades later obesessed with Jack talking to a dead stuffed cat and going on psychotic a rampage.

[John]

I believe that is still planned but the story will be revealed in S2

[Winchester91]

*Jerry Ver Dorn stepping in for Clint Richie...does that count? He made the role his own and re-established a character that was thrown to the wayside during the Gottlieb years.

*Gigi should've stayed dead. The wrong Morasco sister lived.

*Taylor's return on B&B ruined the character, though I must say she redeemed herself in the last week. (Now, that I think about it...I miss Hunter Tylo.)

*CamMat's return as Ryan in '03. The show suffered since...

[applcin]

I like JvD a lot as an actor and wanted to see what he would do (despite my having loved CR's Clint). JVD coming to OLTL was the reason I tuned back in after having quit because the show had foisted Mitch Laurence on me yet again. But I don't know if he made the role his own so much as the role was changed to suit someone other than Clint Ritchie.

[Aaron]

I think one of the worst examples of this was when Guiding Light brought on Mary Stuart as Meta Bauer. Although it was AWESOME to see Mary working again, and having her play a matriarch, it really did kind of piss all over established history. Meta hadn't been seen and barely mentioned since the 70s. She left with a husband (Bruce Banning) but somewhere along the line she either divorced him or he died and she went back to being a Bauer. Meta (and later, characters like Mindy) suffered from "on-hold" syndrome. American soaps do that A LOT. When a character leaves the canvas, their life essentially goes "on hold" until they return. God forbid they marry or have children while they are off-canvas. (Meta was past child-bearing years when she left, but my point remains.)

Anyway, Meta's return was tied in to Megan McTavish's plans for GL's 60th anniversary. That was when we had Zachary The Angel, who knew Reverend Rutledge, etc... it was all just ridiculous, and not only did a disservice to Mary, but to the entire Bauer clan. After that non-story fizzled out, Meta just sort of lingered around town issuing sage advice. Complete waste.

[antmunoz]

I'd never consider being able to enjoy Mary Stuart for six more years on daytime as the feisty Meta a waste. Her scenes with Claire during Michelle's labor are classic. And Meta did change offscreen--she was either divorced or widowed, right? And she decided to leave New York after 22 years to return to her family. Her son was long dead. Her stepdaughter and step granddaughter also. It made sense, to me. The show often shot around Mary's battles with cancer. I would've liked to have seen her more. I'm just glad I got to see her at all.

[applcin]

We seldom hear about their lives and then they just get made up after the character comes back and some kind of conflict or explanation for their presence is needed. Then in walks the heretofore unmentioned presumed dead spouse, the abandoned spouse, the psychotic ex, the secret child, etc. Jake Martin was back on AMC for some time before we met his ex-wife Cara. Prior to Harley returning to GL (after Ehlers and Derwin left together when their characters got married), nothing was said about a divorce from Mallet but something had to be made up for why she was coming back without her husband so all of a sudden it was said Mallet had cheated on her. On OLTL, Cassie's father David and his wife, Jenny, were seldom, if ever, mentioned in the years they weren't there, until Michael Zaslow reprised the role in his final months and we were told Jenny had died. We heard nothing about Asa's nephew Rafe and wife Delilah until once every decade or so Shelly Burch came back for one of Asa's funerals.

[SoapDope]

It's weird when family members of current characters are never mentioned and don't show up for decades till out of the blue, bam there they are. Jill on Y&R hadn't seen her brothers for 20 years onscreen till her mother Liz showed up announcing she had a brain tumor and that Jill was adopted. In all that time, look at the marriages, attempted murder, birth of Billy etc....they didn't bother to show up. Heck, I don't think she ever mentioned them at all in all those years.

[P.J.]

LOVE Mary Stuart...but I never understood who Meta was, why she suddenly decided to squat at the Bauer house, or why Rick or Michelle suddenly listened to her advice. As for Meta's history---I couldn't have told you ANYTHING about her, and I don't really recall them ever mentioning any of it anyway.

I know some problems were due to Mary's health, and most of the Bauer family tree was dead...but imo, it was one of those cases where making someone "family" for the sake of some kind of connection (and therefore not to be ignored) failed.

[MissLlanviewPA]

Even though the way it ended was atrocious, I'm forever grateful Gabrielle came back to OLTL, if only because we got to see her again after serving so many undeserved years in prison, and because she and Max ended on good terms (not in bed, like I preferred, but on good terms ).

Obviously there were parts of her return that could been handled a LOT better, but I'm trying to find a silver lining here.

[Sapounopera]

I like it when a character from the past shows up as part of a story, the way Y&R brought back Robert Laurence as a lawyer and Kurt Costner as a doctor. B&B used to bring back Connor Davis like that. I think Search for Tomorrow brought back Cathy as a lawyer for a trial as well in 1983.

I like it when friends and family members return for weddings or Christmas. Douglas Marland was great at this. Brad Bell used to do that as well.

Laurie Brooks' return was a disaster because she returned as Laurie in name only.

I never cared for the Days returns. Someone is always coming back all the time because TPTB don't have any original ideas. Reminds me of GL.

[EricMontreal22]

I admit, while I was a more casual GL viewer back then, I was pretty thrilled--simply because as a teen one of the few soap books that went into detail I could find was Chris Schemering's epic 50th Anniversary GL book--and before that when I first got into soaps, our library had a few records of old radio soaps--one having four episodes from GL around 1950 just when Meta had become undoubtedly the bitch/goddess star character on the show (stuck in a horrible marriage to a rich Brit, who took their "sissy" son out boxing to man him up, where he was killed so Meta shot her husband.... It was apparently one of THE big stories for any radio soaps.

ANyway, I agree with most opinions here. I love when characters return for weddings, funerals and holidays or similar reasons--and sometimes they can be waved brilliantly into the plot, but so often a long gone character's return doesn't work for me. Soaps (like with most things involving soaps) seemed to get worse with this when it became just a stunt to bring back viewers. I actually like Billy Clyde on AMC 2.0, but the last decade of AMC had a lot of bum returns--Maria DID have key story when she came in but it wasn't wellhandled, they threw Edmund's character under the bus in her story, and then she was stuck with nothing. Julia fared worse--she was brought back with much fanfare and had ZERO story for theyear or so she was back until she was killed off.

But I do like the sense of community and real family that mentioning and having visits of past characters does. Obviously they shouldn't do it too much (I believe Agnes Nixon was once asked why she didn't have Ann Tyler mention her first husband often which was meant to happen before the show premiered, and she said, and I mostly agree, thatyou simply can't have characters constantly talking about characters who have no bearing on the show.)

[applcin]

One thing that really struck me as a kid when I was able to catch Ryan's Hope here and there was how much the dead Mary Ryan Fenelli was mentioned long after she was gone. My first exposure to the show was around or soon after Mary's death and I remember having a vivid impression of Jack as the widowed father who went a long time before dating, much less marrying again (these days they would have him sleeping with someone 2 days later out of "grief"). It made it very realistic that her family would still mention her years later, that her husband still talked about her, that her daughter was told about her, etc. Of course, then they brought Mary back as a ghost. Mary was a character that still had bearing after death, more so than, say, Ed Coleridge or Nell Beaulac.