The wrap-up of the Roger story, perhaps. But Marland came in and immediately made it his show. He did not like the Phillip paternity story, so he accelerated some of it (one of the first things he did was have Jackie tell Justin the truth). He also had a problem with Lezlie Dalton (Elizabeth). While he kept her on the canvas for a year, most of her storyline was leading up to writing her out of the show. It seems pretty obvious the Dobsons were heavily invested in the Mike/Elizabeth/Justin/Jackie quadrangle. They had spent a lot of time setting it up. That quickly died when Marland took over.
In the end, he never dealt with with Phillip's paternity, never did the big reveal--that only happened after Long took over. By then, major players in the storyline, Jackie and Elizabeth, were gone, and Hope was in the process of being yeeted out of Alan's orbit. I believe it would have played out much differently under the Dobsons.
I'm also convinced that the Alan/Hope storyline would have been vastly different if the Dobsons had stayed. There was a lot of foreshadowing that Alan was going to disillusion Hope before they left. Marland mentioned in an interview that fan mail indicated they were popular with the audience, so that's why he married them off very early on. While he didn't make Alan a model husband, he eventually gave Alan a redemption arc, which was quickly dismantled by Long after he left. The Amanda storyline also would have been different. It seemed the Dobsons were making her the spoiler in the Ben/Eve story, more on the manipulative side. He gave some of those qualities to Vanessa instead, and had Amanda just be a woman in love who made some mistakes getting and keeping Ben.
Early on he brought in his own characters: Nola, Kelly, Morgan, Jennifer, the Chamberlains, Trish, Josh, etc., several who became prominant that first year. Which is understandable; new writers do that all the time, but I think it's another indication he did not keep to the Dobsons storyline projections.
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DeeVee ·
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