Arthur fantasizing about Trisha is about a year later under Taggar and Guza. I believe they toy very briefly with a Arthur / Staige pairing in the fall of 1992 right before they wrote out Staige. I imagine that Arhur's story would have been some sort of Ugly Duckling tale where they would have made him handsome and probably paired him up with someone like Staige. Or maybe they were going to have Arthur fall for Casey before they settled on him and Ally.
Walsh's writing for Ava was pretty bad. The first six months are basically the winding down of the Paul / Ava / Carly story and storyline limbo before they put Ava at Burnell's with Casey where they sorta tease a Casey / Ava flirtation before settling on Ava / Leo, which would have been a forgettable pairing had Taggart and Guza not thrown Shana into the mix.
One of the few characters who were served well by Walsh I would say was Gwyn, but she has no story, just decent character writing.
I like Buck and Stacey more than I thought I would, but I will say I do find the money story, at times, a little shallow. I think if they were going to delve deeper into Buck's need to be a provider based on the fact that his father had been a wanderer and the fact that Stacey was raised in a rather large, stable Irish Catholic household that I think there would be story to mine from that. I appreciated the Buck / JJ dynamic and that scene from March, 1994, where Buck tells Heather he is leaving breaks my heart. It just is often a very surface level story amplified by strong acting, emotional beats, and strong, moody background music.
The more I've seen of Horan, he has grown on me. I think he does a good job playing a lot of Clay's pain and is saddled with a lot of byzantine backstory involving spies, espionage, and hypnosis. He is a real contender in those 1990-1991 episodes when his story is more grounded in the complicated relationship he had with Cabot and his layered romance with Gwyn (both Elizabeth Savage and Christine Tudor Newman).
I believe Larkin Malloy appears as Clay appears from like January - July, 1992 and then returns in September with Dennis Parlato assuming the role in early October. I think the month gap starts and ends with Malloy, but I may be wrong.
And speaking of recasts, I'm not hating what we are seeing of Robert Dubac, but its a very different version of the Alex character.
I also haven't seen a whole lot of Randy Mantooth as Clay, and, to be honest, anything I would see would probably be biased based on the story that comes later. I don't think Clay was particularly kind to Rick as he rejects Gwyn's claim early on. I don't remember if I have seen much of Mantooth with Burke Moses' Curtis, but I don't think there was a lot of overlap with them either (maybe 6-8 months). You'd think there would be some juicy material with Clay romancing Curtis' ex-wife, but I don't know. By the time Ava and "Clay" marry, Burke Moses has been gone for a bit.
I think there should be some overlap in time with Ann and Clay, but I'm never really clear when Callan White leaves. I think she returns briefly in 1990 for Trucker and Trisha's wedding or maybe it's Jack and Stacey's so she and Clay would be in town then.
The Isabelle scene is from March/April, 1989, and can be found in the recent uploads. I think King and Taggart try to frame it is as "a mother knows her child," but personally it felt like a plot device to negate some of the hostility Cabot was bound to feel towards Ava for keeping quiet about "Clay" being Alex. Isabelle goes on and on about how she did it to keep her family from falling apart. It is a bit of a stretch, and bless Dabney for trying to sell it.
Don't get me started on Clay is Tim Sullivan's son. It was such a bizarre story decision. I know when Walsh did the story on Riviera it was meant to negate an incest plot between an illegitimate son and the family's princess daughter. It also wasn't revealed until one of the final episodes. I could see how the reveal could have created real hostility for Shana and Clay, but I don't know what they were going to do with it as Shana is sidelined for most of 1992. I think there was some weight to be made about Clay being raised an Alden just like Jack was, but it was such an odd decision. This also climaxed during the rumored Haidee Granger ghost writing period so its possible we didn't see everything Walsh had originally intended. There is one decent scene from October, 1994, when Cabot gives the diner to Clay and Clay confronts Cabot about his paternity.
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