I can see why they would want to keep Amelia Heinle around, but, as you said, without Cooper, there really isn't much to do. I don't have any use really for what I've seen of Steffi in the final months of Loving or the beginning of The City. Her role in Gwyn's demise is poignant and I'm not sure anyone else on the show could have sold that as well as Heinle does (I think even Noelle Beck would have been a hard sell though it would have been interesting to see).
The one-two punch of losing Cooper and Casey in the span of two months was a brutal final blow. The replacement crew for young men were very green or playing characters who were so disgusting it was really hard to connect to.
In my mind, Janie was poised to be the next Ava Rescott / Erica Kane / Rachel Davis. I felt like Nixon was finally getting to do what she had been rumored to want to do with Ava when Roya Megnot was in the role and combine the Erica storyline and the Carla storyline. Elise Neal had charm and played well against everyone on the canvas she interacted with. I would have loved to seen how she would have proceeded.
As has been stated, Janie's death seems to be used to propel the Curtis story when they decided they weren't killing off Dinahlee. And this was a huge mistake. As has been mentioned, people cared about Jessica Collins, not Dinahlee. The best modern day comparison I can make is to Ariane Zuker on Days of our Lives, who played a character who was sorta all over the place in terms of stories (often bad) but made the character work. Elizabeth Mitchell was too dry to sell the character.
By 1993, Trisha was a cornerstone character with so many of the shows characters tied to hers. Her parents were present, her grandmother, her husband, her brother, and her best friends. On a half-hour show, that's such a significant chunk of the canvas. Her absence was going to be such a glaring part of the canvas. I would argue characters like Phillip Spaulding and Bo Brady had similar impacts on their families/shows when they were gone in the 2000s and 2010s.
With that said, they should have acted sooner to replace her either literally or metaphorically. My suggestion would be to bring back Lorna Forbes to fill the role of the Alden granddaughter female lead. I would have cast Cali Timmins in the role and had her swope into town freshly divorced from Zach Conway ready to take on the world. Lorna going after Jeremy might have worked on several levels and leaned into a dynamic that was already complicated between Ava and Lorna. Gwyn could have mothered Ann's daughter, and Curtis could have used an ally.
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dc11786 ·
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