Hmm, Lillian. Yeah, she was NOT a good person when she first came on the show.
She utterly failed Beth, looking the other way while her husband Bradley physically abused her. She refused to face the fact that Bradley raped her.
In the beginning. Later, she supported Beth. Beth, at the time practically a saint, forgave her mother. She forgave everybody, except for Bradley. Even Alan, who treated her like dirt. Then when Alan came back to SF, he treated her like dirt again.
I know this is hard to believe because 1990s-2000s Beth is SO different.
Anyway, BACK to Lillian: there was a brief time where they were playing around with a love triangle involving Lillian/Mike Bauer/Alexandra. There are a lot of theories around why this happened, but for whatever reason, they decided to fire Don Stewart, the actor who played Mike. So it never went anywhere.
After that, Lilian was pretty much the devoted mother and dedicated nurse. Dinah came to live with her. When Beth went missing, she and Dinah were very close. She was devastated, of course, when Beth declared dead (falsely, by Alan, because he wanted Phillip to "get over it" and stop looking for the missing Beth). Beth was eventually found, and they were happily reunited. (For some WILD reason, they brought Bradley back into the story. He was in jail while Alan was in jail. I never figured out the point of that).
Then a few years later she was diagnosed with breast cancer. During this time she and Ed, who were always friends, because closer and had an affair. Lillian (who was never the brightest bulb in the chandelier) wrote Ed a love letter. Mo found it. That's when she confronted both of them. While trying to get away from Ed, she crashed her car and died.
Of course, Lillian was really, really, REALLY sorry about her part in this, as was Ed. And then...pretty much everyone forgot about it. It was never really brought back into the story, when it should have been. Bridget and Nola adored Mo, there should have been scenes of them tearing Ed and Lillian new ones. Just goes to show how that storyline was used simply to get rid of a character rather than growing into more story over the years.
And, yeah, then after that, she was pretty much just the nice nurse lady. It's a shame they didn't use more of her complicated past, with her daughter, with Dinah, with Ed, with the people who loved Mo.
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DeeVee ·
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