Ryan's Hope had a meat grinder with Jack and Mary. I think there was a man who worked beside Mary at the news station, then an old doctor friend of Jack's whose story was curtailed due to Kate Mulgrew's pregnancy, and finally, Mary's producer, played by Patrick Horgan.
Rose Alaio, whose work as Rose I dearly enjoyed, was also cut very short in Jack's life due to backstage issue,
For the show's first year, mobster Nick Szabo came and went, joined by his daughter, Reenie. Whatever plans Reenie was meant to have with storyline-allergic Bucky were cut short as the character vanished, with Julia Barr having better luck in Pine Valley.
1980 and 1981 saw the arrival of the "Ryan cousins," first Barry, who had a compelling intro as a music agent who juggled two women before falling in love with one of them (Delia). As Labine and Mayer could never let Delia mature, this was all thrown away, and Barry spent months judging Delia in-between a gambling story that ended in him being dumped from the canvas.
Inexplicably, just after Barry left, his sister, EJ, arrived looking for him. Her story amounted to yet another round of Delia being crazy to try to make viewers like her (spoiler alert: [spoiler]it did not work[/spoiler]), and being paired with Roger, who by this time had lost any of his compelling personality traits under sanctimony and tedium. EJ also helped to expose a soap actress played by a wasted Judith Barcroft. This "story" is a big part of one of the very last Soapnet episodes. Her 1982 material is not available, but as it heavily involves a man named Ox, I doubt it is very good.
Such a horrible waste of Maureen Garrett and Richard Backus (in what was maybe his only good - initially anyway - soap role).
The moral of the story is don't mess with Delia.
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DRW50 ·
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