17 minutes ago, Franko said:

Hindsight is 50/50, but I wish they'd have killed off Decker instead of Dawn and given her Jenny Eckert's storyline. Was Jennifer Guthrie about to leave or fired by Monty?

Pretty sure fired by Monty.  And she wanted to sideline the Quartermaines anyway.

 

The sad part about Monty’s second run is that she was right about some of what she wanted.  After Duke 2 and with the current characters on the show it was time to pair Robert with Anna.  Holly should have been more of a spoiler there, and bringing her back was the right time.  A family like the Eckerts was needed on the show.  They had lost any semblance of a true blue collar family on the show.  Mac was a good idea too, and it could have all been good.  But she didn’t hire strong writers and rushed the changes too fast, and got rid of too many things people were responding to.

 

I read an interview on We Love Soaps with Denise Alexander once and she said Monty was dramatically brilliant.  She knew how to get the most drama out of a story.  I think that was absolutely true.  But that seems to only be true when folks like Marland and Falken-Smith we’re providing the stories, other times she relied on the charms of her cast and her dynamic production to push through crappy stories.  And her return in the 1990’s was too ego driven.

On 3/6/2018 at 5:21 PM, Paul Raven said:

Taylor only agreed to a 1 year contract. She planned to leave so they killed off Sally for the drama.

Probably better to have her leave town or go missing.

 

Right. But I understand that she chose not to renew because they wasted her. The great outcome is that she returned to AMC... just sorry that Sally Frame became a casualty. 

 

2 hours ago, Franko said:

Hindsight is 50/50, but I wish they'd have killed off Decker instead of Dawn and given her Jenny Eckert's storyline. Was Jennifer Guthrie about to leave or fired by Monty?

 

Guthrie was doing fine in the role. (So was Sharon Case two recasts earlier, but anyway...) But yep, she was let go. And then things got even more weird when, a few months later, Camille Cooper was cast as Nicki Langton - who, like Guthrie, looked like a younger Monica Quartermaine. Except she shared the same father as Dawn, and not Monica as a mother. And then they got rid of her, who was also pretty good, along with Gerald Hopkins, who was a compelling grown-up AJ Quartermaine. All this happened like in a year's time, so no one could blame viewers if they had psychological whiplash from all the musical-chair cast changes.

 

2 hours ago, YurSoakinginit said:

Guthrie was doing fine in the role. (So was Sharon Case two recasts earlier, but anyway...) But yep, she was let go. And then things got even more weird when, a few months later, Camille Cooper was cast as Nicki Langton - who, like Guthrie, looked like a younger Monica Quartermaine. Except she shared the same father as Dawn, and not Monica as a mother. And then they got rid of her, who was also pretty good, along with Gerald Hopkins, who was a compelling grown-up AJ Quartermaine. All this happened like in a year's time, so no one could blame viewers if they had psychological whiplash from all the musical-chair cast changes.

 

Tee-hee ... I just got done posting what might be the definitive list of who was in and out during Monty 2.0. Cooper was in and out within 1992 (with a guest spot in 1993, I think). Hopkins was summer 1991-December 1992.

Believe it or not, I actually enjoyed Gerald Hopkins as A.J.  More so than I did anyone else, really.

3 hours ago, Khan said:

Believe it or not, I actually enjoyed Gerald Hopkins as A.J.  More so than I did anyone else, really.

 

So did I... I'd even say that I was really shocked that he was let go. But I guess that was actually Wendy Riche's move to recast the role.

Mickey Horton, DAYS.

 

When John Clarke retired in 2004 they first recasted with Richard Voigts temporarily. Then John Ingle played the role for about two years, he was awful, and looked older than Frances Reid. Then Mickey was off-screen for two years, always said to be in the other room, until they recasted again with Kevin Dobson, who felt too young and played Mickey like a mob lawyer or something. I felt bad for KD because during the Day of Days event in 2008 he kept talking about playing the new and improved Mickey Horton. What he didn't know was that he had already taped his final scenes. A year later Mickey was killed off off-screen and the flashbacks they used were of course of John Clarke.

15 hours ago, Khan said:

Believe it or not, I actually enjoyed Gerald Hopkins as A.J.  More so than I did anyone else, really.

Same.  I thought he was attractive, could act, and had a rootable factor that Kanan did not.  I still feel Billy Warlock was a terrible miscast.  And I like him, but it didn’t work for me.

11 hours ago, Sindacco said:

Mickey Horton, DAYS.

 

When John Clarke retired in 2004 they first recasted with Richard Voigts temporarily. Then John Ingle played the role for about two years, he was awful, and looked older than Frances Reid. Then Mickey was off-screen for two years, always said to be in the other room, until they recasted again with Kevin Dobson, who felt too young and played Mickey like a mob lawyer or something. I felt bad for KD because during the Day of Days event in 2008 he kept talking about playing the new and improved Mickey Horton. What he didn't know was that he had already taped his final scenes. A year later Mickey was killed off off-screen and the flashbacks they used were of course of John Clarke.

 

In hindsight, DAYS should have killed off Mickey as soon as John Clarke retired. In turn, GH shouldn't have let John Ingle go (though he did return after DAYS). Those Mickey recasts were all over the map.

1 hour ago, titan1978 said:

Same.  I thought he was attractive, could act, and had a rootable factor that Kanan did not.  I still feel Billy Warlock was a terrible miscast.  And I like him, but it didn’t work for me.

 

He was definitely more complex and rootable than Kanan. He was handsome and had a sharp demeanor that you'd expect to see in a rich boy spoiled... whereas Kanan had this rougher, street vibe that was more in line with a less sophisticated, dumb-jock stereotype. Hopkins looked enough like his on-screen parents & half-brother. Kanan looked TOO much like his half-brother, but strangely somehow, not nearly as much like his parents.

 

And you're right: Then came Billy Warlock all the way from Mars, looking nothing like either of his predecessors, to play neither of their versions of AJ. (This accomplishment obviously made him a shoe-in to replace Michael Lowry, who replaced Shawn Christian, as Ross on OLTL.)

 

BTW, Hopkins has worked as a Data Systems Administrator since leaving acting. And his teen aged son, Jacob Hopkins, has been a pretty successful actor & voice performer for a while now.

 

Edited March 12, 20187 yr by YurSoakinginit

1 hour ago, titan1978 said:

I still feel Billy Warlock was a terrible miscast.  And I like him, but it didn’t work for me.

 

I know I'm crazy for saying this, but I think Billy Warlock might have made a better Blackie Parrish recast.

1 minute ago, Khan said:

 

I know I'm crazy for saying this, but I think Billy Warlock might have made a better Blackie Parrish recast.

 

You're probably right, but then the John Stamos fans would protest (even though he hasn't been on the show since 1984, 1985). 😨😂

IKR?  And the irony is that Stamos would probably rather contract genital herpes than come back full-time to a soap opera.  You can tell that he thinks he is much too big for that kind of work now.

I think he suffers from Robin Wright Soapitis. 😉😂

16 minutes ago, amybrickwallace said:

 

In hindsight, DAYS should have killed off Mickey as soon as John Clarke retired. In turn, GH shouldn't have let John Ingle go (though he did return after DAYS). Those Mickey recasts were all over the map.

John Clarke asked TPTB to kill Mickey off instead of Maggie during the Salem Stalker storyline. He wanted to retire and he didn't want Suzanne Rogers to lose her job. Since they brought all the SSK victims back from the dead they might have been forced to recast the role anyway.

The Salem Stalker storyline was so utterly pointless, since no one actually died. I still wonder what Ken Corday was smoking.