21 minutes ago, DRW50 said:

I think that scene may be in the summer 1966 episodes which are on Youtube.

Thank you. I would have been seven years old, and my mother was pregnant with my younger sister so I was aware of what a miscarriage could be. Probably why I remember it. I will look for it.

Edited April 26Apr 26 by Stevel
Added text, typo

I have a lot of thoughts about 1961. I took a lot of notes while reading so it may take several days to organize everything, but I'll start with Dick / Marie.

I’ve never been a fan of Dick and Marie, but this is the first time I have really started to enjoy them. Marie’s desire to have a child seems less neurotic now that the need is filled with Phillip, bu it is quite brutal to give young Phillip a heart condition and nearly destroy Marie’s chance to be a mother. I do think it was smart to use Phillip’s ailment to reunite Marie and Dick. 

I like the work that Nixon does with both Marie and Dick during the Phillip story. Dick realizing that a child doesn’t mean losing his wife and Marie realizing that a doctor belongs to his patients and his wife are important emotional shifts for both characters. I do think I would have grounded some of Dick’s issues more in Robin’s paternity and the early days of his marriage to Kathy. The ghost of the Kathy / Bob / Dick history would be very relevant to the Robin / Michael / Karl story as well as causing issues in the more current Alex / Robin / Michael story. Robin has so many nice father figures, I do wish a bit more was spent on the Robin / Dick dynamic (do they ever really interact like this was the child he once thought was his?)

The emotional angst with Dick and Marie, both separately and together, hoping and praying that little Phillip will recover would have been pulling at the viewers’ hearts. In a way, it almost seems like Phillip was just a vehicle for uniting Marie and Dick, but also a tool for Joe to try to get Marie to be with him. I am not a Joe fan, but he was too quick to not only leave Phillip, but to invoke his name to try to get Marie to stay with him. 

Using the divorce laws to prevent Joe and Marie from quickly marrying was a nice twist, but I wish that Joe had gone a step further and suggested that Marie was willing to return to Joe because of his softening stance on children. With a newly child friendly husband, Marie was more likely to achieve her dream with Dick in a shorter amount of time than she would with Joe. I have no real use for Joe so his exit was much appreciated. 

Marie emerged as a much more interesting character to me in this period. There was something about Marie that always came off as weak and emotionally exhausting. In these summaries, there is a vibrancy to Marie, especially noted when she stands up to Alex Bowden. Alex is a menacing figure, maybe not physically dangerous, but very much so emotionally. For Marie to manage to hold her own against such a powerful figure was a pleasant change of pace. 

One of the elements I really enjoyed in the crossing of stories was Marie and Bert’s friendship. Marie always seemed to be willing to give Bert tough love and call her out over things, as well as vice versa. I do wonder what will happen to Bert without that sort of moral core coming from a female figure. Papa represents a similar role, but the Bauer family dynamic does lean towards outsiders and insiders with Bert seemingly assuming both roles at different time and, on occasion, both roles at the same time. Marie seemed to be a level head.

I do wonder how much of this was replicated on All My Children, a question I ask a lot while reading through this year’s synopsis. Is Philip Collins an early iteration of Phil Brent with Joe Martin and Ruth Brent as the spiritual successors to Dick and Marie Grant? Collins and Brent were both adopted. Ruth and Marie were both involved with doctor characters. I think Ruth and Joe’s bonding had a bit to do with the connection between their children so that is a bit of a variation. 

There was a Dick thread that seems to go a bit unresolved with Amy Sinclair. The suggestion was that she may have had more sinister intentions with Dick, were those ever resolved? Thinking through the lens of All My Children, I wonder if Amy would have been revealed to be Phillip Collins’ mother. I believe they both appeared in about the same month.  

By the time Marie and Dick are having the same arguments about Doris that Paul and Anne are, I feel that there time is up and they have reached a natural conclusion to their story.  I don’t think there was much story left wihtout going in wildly different situations. I like Marie’s role as Bert’s friend, though. I think a lot of Dick’s role and position on the canvas is consumed by others. It does feel that once Dick and Marie got back together, there wasn’t much to do. They could have explored the situation with Phillip further, but I just don’t see that being brushed upon. I think a Phillip / Ed friendship could have caused some Marie / Bert tension had Ed been a wild child who was getting the two in trouble. For the sake of a 15 minute soap, Dick and Marie leaving makes sense. 

As someone who thinks a Dick and Kathy reunion at some point would have been more compelling, I will say that I think Nixon did a good job reforming both Dick and Marie while providing them a happily ever after.

Also, my thoughts on the evolution of Bert Bauer:

I have very mixed feelings about the reformation of Bert Bauer. I was completely unaware that Bert’s cancer crisis was used as a bridge to heal some of the wounds between Mike and his mother. The relationship between Mike and Bert is very complex, and I think this has been lost to time. As a result, it has been overshadowed by the Ed / Bill dynamic of the later 1960s. Here, in the late 1950s/early 1960s, not only is the Bert - Mike dynamic a powder keg for domestic drama, it is the primary fuel source for the animosity between dueling matriarchs Bert Bauer and Meta Bauer Banning. 

Early in the year, Bert’s realization that she is becoming like her own controlling mother was a critical insight into Bert’s psychology, which is something we get with all the characters this year.  The tension between Meta and Bert remains very strong throughout the first half of the year with Meta and Bert both feel vital to the canvas and fully realized characters. I wish more shows did this sort of matriarchal rivalry with one more sympathetic and one more controlling mother figure. I think the mellowing of Bert could potentially set in motion a long term shift that leads to Meta’s eventual departure several years down the line. 

With that said, every time in the summaries I expected a more sympathetic Bert, there was a shift back to the more devious, cunning, and manipulative nature that fuels so much of the familial conflict on the series. In 1961, the great love of Bert’s life isn’t Bill Bauer, but her son, Mike. With Mike back from Venezuela in late 1961, maybe Bert will finally let Mike move on, but I am not convinced we won’t see the eventual pendulum swing back in the direction of Bert the family agitator. 

With a more toothless, at times at least, Bert, a new enemy has emerged for the Bauer family, Alex Bowden. Alex is a captivity complex character who seems to shift into a bit of a neurotic mess towards the end of the year, but that may have been a misreading on my part. When Alex first arrives, he is presented as a sort of modern day aging playboy in the mold of Charles Cunningham and Ted White before him. In particular, when he recalls his complicated childhood revealing that his parents divorced and he was neglected, I was reminded of David White’s recalling his son Ted’s childhood during Meta’s murder trial. The Guiding Light loves to have echoes of the past, and I don’t hate that. 

Alex’s childhood also provided an interesting insight into his marriage to Doris. You could see why Alex might not be so quick to dispose of Doris having seen the impact it had on his own parents and sense that there may have been, at one point, a true desire to make it work. Ultimately though, it would appear that Alex ended up repeating the mistakes of his own parents and sets in motion yet another round of misery and emotional destruction through his involvement with Robin. 

The set up of Bert and Alex as potential partners in crime only for Alex to reveal that he is onto Bert is delightful. Very early on, Alex shows that he has no use for strong, independent women in control of their own lives. He equally has conflicts, to a much lesser degree, with Marie Wallace Grant and Meta Bauer Banning. He doesn’t like women who don’t crumble under his control. It would have been equally captivating, if Alex had managed to get Bill Bauer, a weak man, under his control. For a moment, when Alex had his lawyer George Hayes investigate Bill, I thought this might be where it was heading. And what a delight it would have been for Alex to shower Bill with money and for Bert to have to convince BIll not to chase the golden road leading to wealth. I would be curious to see if Alex ends up interacting more with the fairly secondary Bill Bauer at this point in the story. 

The build of Alex and Bert’s dynamic is intriguing as they are such different characters united beautifully by circumstance. Bert is such a low level domestic schemer compared to Alex, who is pathologically manipulative and psychologically cruel. The dynamic each individual has with Robin Lang is complicated, but neither is positive. By maintaining Robin’s ties to the Bauer clan not only through Mike, but through Meta as well, Robin becomes central as the crux of the conflict in the war between Alex and the Bauers. It’s fascinating as I believe this dynamic continues with Alex and the Bauers when Alex becomes involved with Mike’s second wife, Julie, as well. 

Bert being frightened by Alex was also a nice change of pace as Bert seems to lose power and position with this man around. This is why I would be curious to possibly see Bill in Alex’s employ especially if this were to occur during the reformation of Bert Bauer. Dragging out a new reverend character in August to play a part in the absolution of Bert Bauer was a nice nod to the show’s origins in both 1937 and 1947. 

Alex seems to make enemies with everyone in the Bauer clan to the point I wonder if Nixon was considering a murder mystery. He fights with Bert over Robin and Mike’s relationship, would have fought with Mike if he was in Los Angeles, sparred with Meta, caused Papa to state that no one would keep him from loving his granddaughter, and Bruce seems to be set in motion as a potential foe when Bruce succeeds Dick as Alex’s physician during his gastrointestinal crisis late in the year. One could only imagine Ed is off in the attic somewhere play fighting with a make believe Alex Bowden.