He was a better, more intense actor when he was younger. I remember really liking him during his Nina storyline, and his alcoholism, and his role between Katherine and Jill. His death was one example of a legacy character that should have remained dead and provided excellent story for years.

yes he was horrid

Maria's return on AMC. They wasted Edmund much of the time that Maria was away, matching him up with TKFP (which was also not a good story on the stage as it had been nearly 10 years since Jackson Montgomery had lamented about the sister whose death he thought he was responsible for), and then the mishap with Alex/Anna (which was story that felt as if it was being written as it went along rather than any long term vision).

TPTB held off on reuniting Edmund and Brooke long past the point of it feeling organic. Edmund was pissed after Alex returned to Dimitri, and Brooke was torn up after finding out that Eliot was really the man responsible for killing her daughter.

The two bonded over their broken hearts, and it was the perfect time to bring these two characters back together, it would have given the Edmund/Brooke fans the wedding they wanted, allowed the characters to form a family, and then bam - Maria's back on the scene... perhaps right around the time Edmund's kids are starting to call Brooke, "Mommy."

Instead, with three different writing teams responsible for Maria's return, her reunion with Edmund, and then her betrayal with Zach, it was a major clusterf... all around. Brooke became the monster who lied about Maria being alive. Edmund became the monster who drugged Maureen, and then planned his divorce behind Maria's back. Maria/Maureen was just a mess, who couldn't decide from week to week if she was Maureen or Maria.

I hated the way both Edmund and Brooke were destroyed during Maria's return. ITA, it should've been about Maria showing up just as Brooke & Edmund were living happily ever after!

The way I remember the Alex situation was, they initially wanted her to be revealed to be Anna after all but someone pumped the brakes on that - Angela Shapiro, Finola, the writing team, I have no idea. Then they came up with this dumb nonsense where Alex had been brainwashed and 'trained' to be just like her sister, not that the idea of Anna-as-Alex was any better (I hated that idea). Then they realized Finola had much more chemistry with the fired Michael Nader than John Callahan and reversed themselves - and brought on Anna herself, hoping to use Anna-in-the-attic as a consolation prize for Edmund, which BTW was so [!@#$%^&*] gross. When they finally realized neither Finola Hughes would ever have chemistry with Callahan, they paired her with Vincent Irizarry and let the whole thing go.

I liked Anna on AMC a lot.

I grew to like Anna on AMC once she was paired with David and it may just be me, but I really liked Alex better.

Edmund looked like a jerk, and then with the show's attempt to put Aidan (Frons hot flash at the moment) with Maureen, and Edmund doping Maureen with experimental drugs - he just continue on the downward spiral, including him looking like mean, spiteful and revengeful when Zach came on the scene.

I truly wish that Richard Culliton had been given one more year to play out his stories. While not everyone likes his style as a headwriter, he took a dreadfully dull show when he came on board, and gave it some true excitement. And while I think Edmund and Maria would have ultimately ended up together, I think a lot less damage would have been done to Brooke and Edmund's characters all for the sake of bringing back Eva LaRue, who was just pressured into coming back, and then wanting out once it was clear her real life marriage to JC was over.

Ewww, I had wiped out the memory of Aidan & Maureen on location with his ex-girlfriend and it just came flooding back.

I also wish Culliton had been given more time to develop his stories. I think the Edmund/Brooke/Maria story and Liza/Adam/Mia had potential to be riveting if they weren't so rushed for Frons' sake. I wonder if Brooke would've ended up in a triangle with Liza and Adam after Edmund and Maria's eventual reunion.

I thought Culliton's time was the last really mostly solid year the show had on ABC. It wasn't perfect but I enjoyed it tremendously. They were cooking. But Frons took him out.

ICAM!

I don't blame Culliton. I thought Trey was a dud of a character, played by an even bigger dud of an "actor," and making him Vanessa and Richard Fields' son did NOT help.

I despised Trey for burning down Erica's house and not caring that he nearly killed Bianca. I also agree the "actor" was quite weak, so when Trey was written out to pay for his crimes it didn't bother me at all.

IMO, no matter what Culliton would have been allowed to do in year two, could have possibly been worse than the poison pen of Rayfield & Cascio from the Fron's inkwell.

The show was absolutely horrid during their headwriting regime, which is one of the reasons that Megan McTavish, who starts out strong was a welcome change, even from viewers like me, who have real issues with her storytelling.

Rayfield and Cascio was the first time the show became completely unrecognizable to me. The cutting, the direction (split screens, four screens in one, weird digital FX when the teens phoned or IM'ed each other), the new characters, the random stories, everything was bizarre. There was nothing like it before or even after that - it was as though space aliens with a median age of 14 had re-imagined AMC and then beamed the show in from their brains direct via Planet Jupiter.

It was, IMO, the most overt Fronsian makeover of any of the ABC soaps shortly after he took over - he wanted to turn the show into "Sex and the City" meets some sort of teen soap, referenced the parallel regularly in press at the time, and while he certainly put his stamp on OLTL and GH, nothing was nearly as shockingly foreign to its existing show as what he did to AMC for those few months. Carlos, the men of Fusion, Michael Cambias, the insta-characters of Lena and yes, even poor Reggie, who I liked, but appeared overnight - he caught on because Michael B. Jordan was so good, but their initial storytelling with him was lame as hell.

Rayfield and Cascio's run - which was really Frons's run, IMO - was absolutely unwatchable to me.

ICAM with you both! As I stated above, Culliton's AMC had so much potential to be great and it was completely ruined by Rayfield & Cascio.

I'm going to add the whole Todd Manning storyline from 93-95, although I know this was a very powerful story for many.

I remember that at the beginning of Wheeler's GL tenure, a storyline that involved Sebastian and Roger generated much excitement, only to turn into disappointment in the end.

I remember that at the beginning of Wheeler's GL tenure, a storyline that involved Sebastian and Roger generated much excitement, only to turn into disappointment in the end.

Yeah because Roger wasnt here to play it. Watching his never before mentioned son be a psycho was just stupid imo