All Episodes Talk

[TeeVee329]

13 minutes ago, Melgaypet said:

That [Cramers vs. Bukes at BE/CE] could have been gold, especially if at some point members of both families ended up being forced to work together on the board (while plotting against each other, naturally!).

Imagine Dorian trying to reel in a reluctant Natalie, who was on the outs with the Bukes at this point.

[Melgaypet]

54 minutes ago, TeeVee329 said:

Imagine Dorian trying to reel in a reluctant Natalie, who was on the outs with the Bukes at this point.

I was disappointed that Natalie and Jared had no role in getting BE back for the Buchanans*, given that it was Jared's scam that gave Dorian her "in" to take it. I can see Natalie agreeing to work for Dorian in hopes of stealing the company back and that just infuriating the Bukes (well, Clint) further. I also wanted Blair and Natalie to become genuine friends and throwing them together at BE/CE could have been a way to do it.

*Instead it was Nora, Ms. Morally Righteous DA, who got it back by blackmailing Dorian for...something. Something to do with Ray, I imagine. Hiring the hitman to kill him? Which reminds me that Nora, Ms. Morally Righteous DA, knew that her boyfriend Clint had been in cahoots with Ray the convicted felon to mess with Langston's custody and did NOTHING except half-heartedly scold him. I love Nora but that was not a good look.

[Dr.OO7]

I just realized it's been thirty years since the fateful Spring Fling.

The show was EXCELLENT that summer. I remember wanting to watch every day.

[drtslim]

Quote

 

I was disappointed that Natalie and Jared had no role in getting BE back for the Buchanans*, given that it was Jared's scam that gave Dorian her "in" to take it. I can see Natalie agreeing to work for Dorian in hopes of stealing the company back and that just infuriating the Bukes (well, Clint) further. I also wanted Blair and Natalie to become genuine friends and throwing them together at BE/CE could have been a way to do it.

*Instead it was Nora, Ms. Morally Righteous DA, who got it back by blackmailing Dorian for...something. Something to do with Ray, I imagine. Hiring the hitman to kill him? Which reminds me that Nora, Ms. Morally Righteous DA, knew that her boyfriend Clint had been in cahoots with Ray the convicted felon to mess with Langston's custody and did NOTHING except half-heartedly scold him. I love Nora but that was not a good look.

 

Jared was involved in the plot to get BE back.  Clint sent Jared to Colombia to bring Langston's uncle Ray Montez back and have him sue for custody of Langston with the expectation that Dorian would give back BE in exchange for keeping Langston.  Tess locked Natalie in the secret room while Jared was in Colombia.

[jsbt]

I guess this technically can go here: I doubt it's the first time, but the Sun appeared on GH last week. Anna Devane ended up on the front page (after saying she doesn't read that trash) - the Llanview, PA masthead was intact. No mention of EIC/publisher.

[Melgaypet]

I still amuse myself by wondering what happened to all our Llanview peeps. Loooong post of silly speculation ahead!

Like, did Jeffrey turn on the Triskelion cartel and help take them down? I think he does and has a redemption story, because I never thought he was Capital E Evil and he was clearly having doubts at the end there. Not that everybody forgave and forgot. He and Matthew never become friends again and instead have a soapy rivalry. Because Destiny and Jeffrey fall in love, of course! And also Jeffrey and Dani become uneasy partners in revitalizing the Sun.

Natalie also hates Jeffrey for what he did to Clint (100% fair), but is too busy to hold a grudge. She's running BE with Kevin (and Cord, but he's mostly out of town) and they're not always in agreement. She's also raising Liam and twin daughters with BackFromtheDead!Jared. Jared is her OTP, but Cutter is still around and is a temptation, especially with Jared becoming business partners with Kim! Kim now owns the Palace Hotel (Clint gave it to her as either part of a divorce settlement - I think they get married again in the wake of his public breakdown - or, sadly, he left it to her in his will. Because with Jerry verDorn gone, I think Clint has passed, too. RIP, my silver fox.) and wants to be taken seriously as a businesswoman. After everything he's been through, Jared doesn't want to feel as if he's been given a pity position in his wife's family's company - the company he once scammed his way into - and so he has something to prove, just as Kim does. So more delicious tension.

Who else? Brody is the town PI now. He's happily married to Jessica, who is now focused on her career, working at the Banner, where it's an uphill battle getting anyone to take her seriously, including Viki, who WANTS to support her daughter, but can't help wondering if Jess can handle the high-pressure job and also doesn't always agree with Jessica's ideas for how to keep the paper modern.

Dorian is mayor again, because I loved that. Blair is maybe running Craze again? Starr is off being Adventure Biologist, Jack is, I dunno, trying to be a professional DJ or whatever and is dating a bunch of dudes, Sam is in high school. Sam is like the Marilyn Munster of the Manning clan; totally, inexplicably normal. I think the double-dose of batshit crazy genes he got from both sides somehow cancelled each other out. He and his cousin Bree are still best friends. (This is a Cimz fanfic thing, but I love it and it's my headcanon now.) Bree is the rebellious troublemaker. She's also maybe kinda goth? I don't know.

Oliver Fish is Chief of Detectives by now. Kyle is the main doctor. They have Sierra and at least one younger kid. Sierra, Liam, and Ryder are the core younger-teen group (while Sam and Bree are the core older-teens). The three of them have a kid-sleuthing story where Sierra is getting messages purporting to be from her mother, Stacy; but all is not what it seems! (I have no idea what actually is happening, but Stacy is really most sincerely dead.)

RJ is in town and running a mellow jazz/R&B club as opposed to Cutter's more EDM-flavored place. He's possibly romancing both Tea and Cassie, who has taken a job as her mother's chief of staff, because why the hell not?

Layla works with Blair at Craze. She's married to Cristian (they totally reunited in Europe, you guys!) The have a daughter, Pilar, who is about little Drew Buchanan's age. Cris works as an art teacher at Llanview university and also as a professional artist. He also runs a boxing program for kids in Angel Square.

I don't know. These are all mostly amorphous ideas, not really stories, but I still find it fun to picture all this. Llanview is still very much alive in my mind, obviously!

Edited July 9, 2023 by Melgaypet

[TeeVee329]

I do still wonder, if PP OLTL had come back for more episodes, where they were planning to go with the cliffhanger of Natalie walking in on Alison Perkins drugging Clint.  Two of my favorites in the clutches of one of my favorite villains...color me intrigued!

17 hours ago, Melgaypet said:

Sierra, Liam, and Ryder are the core younger-teen group (while Sam and Bree are the core older-teens). The three of them have a kid-sleuthing story where Sierra is getting messages purporting to be from her mother, Stacy; but all is not what it seems! (I have no idea what actually is happening, but Stacy is really most sincerely dead.)

It's Kim!  In various story musings for my Kish fanfic universe, I always pictured Kim trying to assert her presence and/or Stacy's in Sierra's life and, intentionally or not, poking holes in the more sanitized origin story that Sierra got from Fish, Kyle, Gigi, etc.  Those revelations, of course, would then inspire some soapy teen rebellion antics from Sierra.

As for people you didn't mention, Roxy would still be living in Llanview, running the Angel Square Hotel, and building a strong mother/son relationship with Schuyler.  And as for Sky, given Roscoe Born is sadly no longer with us, if they wanted to dip back into the Cult of Mitch Laurence well one more time, I picture a story where the remnants of the cult snatch up Sky - Mitch's one blood heir - and try to force him to assume leadership.

Edited July 10, 2023 by TeeVee329

[Melgaypet]

1 hour ago, TeeVee329 said:

And as for Sky

Oh, I have ideas for Schuyler! He and his BFF Rachel open up a drug counseling center and while I prefer them as friends, their closeness makes Kevin suspect more, especially when Rachel becomes pregnant. (This is how Kevin's sterility gets debunked. I actually wrote a scene for a never-came-together fanfic where Kevin and Rachel had an actual conversation and decided not to use birth control, b/c Kevin believed he was sterile and they both had clean STD tests and had decided to be exclusive. I wanted to avoid the whole "how do all these allegedly smart and responsible women end up with unplanned pregnancies?" thing. Also Zane is around and the whole Sonfucking thing and eventually Kevin being revealed as Zane's dad comes out.) Anyway, Schuyler ends up delivering Rachel's baby and she names her Leah after his mother.

Still, he need a love interest of his own. I was thinking a returned Leslie Holden (though I have not yet formed an idea of her actual personality) or a character I made up - an ambitious young doctor who is also Larry Wolek's granddaughter.

[marypat57]

On 7/10/2023 at 1:46 PM, Melgaypet said:

….Anyway, Schuyler ends up delivering Rachel's baby and she names her Leah after his mother.

Still, he need a love interest of his own. I was thinking a returned Leslie Holden (though I have not yet formed an idea of her actual personality) or a character I made up - an ambitious young doctor who is also Larry Wolek's granddaughter.

I like your idea about Schuyler becoming involved with Larry Wolek’s granddaughter, the daughter of Dan, and possibly named Meredith, after Dan’s mother.  
 

[Melgaypet]

On 7/11/2023 at 8:38 PM, marypat57 said:

I like your idea about Schuyler becoming involved with Larry Wolek’s granddaughter, the daughter of Dan, and possibly named Meredith, after Dan’s mother.  
 

Actually, I was thinking of Meredith as a name for one of Natalie's twins. As something of a call-back to that Natalie's first Christmas on the show, when Viki gave her and Jessica family heirloom cameos that had belonged to her and Meredith.

It's funny, though. I had mapped out a whole idea with this Wolek granddaughter - I named her Mina - having conflict with her free-spirited younger brother who would eventually be revealed as Taebin (oh, yeah, I envision these two as half-Korean) a guy sleeping with Jack. I was getting deep into plotting this story before I remembered, right, those two would be related! WHOOPS. So I have to scrap that part of my headcanon/unwritten fanfic.

[marypat57]

6 hours ago, Melgaypet said:

Actually, I was thinking of Meredith as a name for one of Natalie's twins. As something of a call-back to that Natalie's first Christmas on the show, when Viki gave her and Jessica family heirloom cameos that had belonged to her and Meredith.

It's funny, though. I had mapped out a whole idea with this Wolek granddaughter - I named her Mina - having conflict with her free-spirited younger brother who would eventually be revealed as Taebin (oh, yeah, I envision these two as half-Korean) a guy sleeping with Jack. I was getting deep into plotting this story before I remembered, right, those two would be related! WHOOPS. So I have to scrap that part of my headcanon/unwritten fanfic.

Hmmm.  Now I am thinking.  Larry was the only Wolek who actually had a child.  As far as I remember ( i started watching the show on 7/15/68, but gave up watching sometime near the end of 1999), Larry and Meredith had Dan and his unnamed stillborn twin sister in the early 70s.  Meredith died when Dan was about a year old—this was when Larry and Dan went to live with Anna and Jim.  Larry and Karen Wolek never had children.  Vince and Wanda Wolek never had children before Vince was killed in the line of duty.  Maybe Larry could have fathered an unknown child during his college baseball playing days…..

[jsbt]

I had a lot of ideas for OLTL and the Woleks back in the day, but most of them I am saving in a drawer. You never know, lol.

One I will share though is that I always wanted to fill the post-Todd void in Blair's life by pairing her up with Daniel Wolek, who would return to town a darker international man of mystery involved with shady stuff, having long since left medicine behind. You could get a guy like Michael Park, Brian Bloom, whoever and that would be the basis for Blair's future long-term pairing. (Plus "Blair Wolek" just sounds right.) His children, Larry's grandchildren, cousins, nieces, nephews, etc. would ultimately help re-populate the show (along with the Grays/Halls) in a modular sort of giant family unit like what Marland built with the Snyders at ATWT. One thing you notice bingeing that show during the pandemic as I did is that Marland always had more Snyders set up offscreen being mentioned while several were already on. This was AFAIK by design; he knew that if some key characters or actors left he could just bring several new ones in to replace them as male or female leads, hence the larger clan became modular in that way. Lemay did something similar at AW in the '70s at the time with the Frames.

So you could, for example, introduce a streetwise, blue-collar distant teen Wolek cousin who could come on to romance Kevin's newly trans child Zane, and you have a story already. Daniel's estranged children could turn up at any age and to be paired with anyone. You have Ed and Carla Hall's grandson for Jack, and recast Josh or Jacob Hall and make him a local cop, add Carla's long-lost daughter as played by Victoria Rowell as the matriarch of a new hub for that bloodline, to avenge the family. And so on.

Edited July 14, 2023 by jsbt

[Grinaldi]

I think that's what Labine was trying to do with Mel Hayes during her tenure. He had three kids off somewhere who could have easily swooped in. All we ended up getting was big dull dud Dorothy unfortunately. 

[marypat57]

I did enjoy Mel Hayes’ character—especially his mother, played by Helen Gallagher.  It was interesting to see “Maeve Ryan” playing a sex therapist..

jbst:  your ideas sound great!

BTW:  OLTL turned 55 years old yesterday. Nurse Karen Martin saw (or thought she saw) Larry Wolek push Ted Hale down the hospital steps to his death.  And so it began…

Edited July 16, 2023 by marypat57

[TeeVee329]

On 7/14/2023 at 2:03 AM, jsbt said:

One thing you notice bingeing [ATWT] during the pandemic as I did is that Marland always had more Snyders set up offscreen being mentioned while several were already on. This was AFAIK by design; he knew that if some key characters or actors left he could just bring several new ones in to replace them as male or female leads, hence the larger clan became modular in that way.

I always appreciate that the foreign soaps do this, particularly with new families, setting up siblings or children off-screen that could be brought in at any time.

But I guess the US soaps were less prone to introduce new families at all (I mean, OLTL's last family were the Fords, who were terrible) so it's more about retconning characters into existing families.

[jsbt]

I have said it before in the GH thread, but I always wanted to experiment with the UK soap method of introducing new families there: Bringing back Sarah Webber as played by OLTL's own Gina Tognoni, now a very successful surgeon, seemingly happily married with a couple kids only one of which might be a teen or approaching adolescence. This would throw a shoe in Elizabeth's place in the world at GH, as head nurse who abandoned her own ambitions as an artist to slave away at the hospital to support several boys by several different men, now in the shadow of her big sister's seemingly perfect life. But the point is you'd bring on Sarah and her husband and the kids all at once en masse, which is something the British soaps do all the time with a family - it is a whole production PR-wise, and they introduce them usually in one fell swoop. We don't do that here often because American soap audiences don't tolerate it, usually for good reason. But it would also have a purpose, as eventually the perfect family would fall apart with Sarah's husband turning out to be bad news, etc. Anyway, it's sort of on-topic because of Gina.

Edited July 17, 2023 by jsbt

[Melgaypet]

I remember you talking about this, @jsbt. IIRC, you said you would eventually reveal Sarah's youngest child to be an illegally-adopted Hope Cramer-Thornhart, right?

I never know what to do with Hope when I envision things. I always want to go back and make it so the switch wasn't discovered and she was raised as Chloe Brennan Lovett until she's like 15.

[jsbt]

11 hours ago, Melgaypet said:

I remember you talking about this, @jsbt. IIRC, you said you would eventually reveal Sarah's youngest child to be an illegally-adopted Hope Cramer-Thornhart, right?

Yeah, that was the idea when I first thought it up almost a decade ago - the husband, a duplicitous Hollywood guy, would know but Sarah wouldn't, and by that time the kid would be like 5-8 years old. But I think at this point given all the OLTL favoritism bullshit there with Howarth and Easton's umpteenth characters since and a dozen other things, GH fans would probably storm the studio January 6th-style if that happened, with good reason this time! So there'd probably be some other dark secret today I guess.

I have no idea how I'd handle Cole and the baby today. I do know Starr would only make visits/do stints for a long time, which I feel bad about because Kristen is delightful with her boyfriend on Twitch. I suspect I'd say she is with them offscreen but not elaborate on the details, or maybe divorced. I don't want to deal with Starr having a teen child anymore than I do the way too many kids on GH for various young women like her. Maxie Jones should not have one kid let alone three. So maybe Hope would stay dead, I don't know, even if killing her and Cole always left a bad taste in my mouth (the same with the Victor/Tea kid, which just seemed like insult to injury for their fanbase). I never wanted Hope to exist anyway.

Edited July 18, 2023 by jsbt

[TeeVee329]

12 hours ago, Melgaypet said:

I never know what to do with Hope when I envision things. I always want to go back and make it so the switch wasn't discovered and she was raised as Chloe Brennan Lovett until she's like 15.

It is surprising how short that switch was, just November to May, not even a whole year.

I do like the idea of the swap staying secret for years, but the one downside is that we, the audience, would know that Jess wasn't truly integrated that whole time, which would make watching whatever she got up to a bit messy.

[dubbel zout]

On 7/17/2023 at 8:30 PM, jsbt said:

I never wanted Hope to exist anyway.

Nor did I. I was so disappointed she made it. As usual, once she was born there was no point of her.

[marypat57]

Here is another item I thought might be good for a bit of Wolek family fanfic.  
in the beginning of the show (7/1968), it was mentioned that the Wolek parents, Dan and Maria(yes, Larry’s son was named after his grandfather), came from Poland before their children were born.  
Perhaps it was true that they wanted to come to the USA to have a better life for themselves and their children, but somehow they got involved in some sort of espionage activity and they had to escape Poland before they were captured by the bad guys . It could have been near the time that Hitler took power.  Perhaps they had help escaping to maybe London first and then made their way to the US.  
I’m thinking that the accident that killed the parents (I assumed they died together) may have been caused by someone connected with whatever they had been involved with in Poland.

The “new” Woleks could be distant relatives or people somehow connected to the Communist regime in Poland as t that time…

[Melgaypet]

Wonder what Bo and Nora are doing now? I joked awhile ago that they both retired and went on a round-the-world cruise.

I actually think Bo would enjoy retirement - he could spend his days fishing and camping and horseback riding and being a grandpa to little Drew - but Nora would lose her mind without something to do. Maybe she'll be like Hank and start teaching law at Llanview University.

Oh, wait, even better. Fraternity Row hires her as a legal consultant and she regularly comes home ranting to Bo about the utterly insane things the soap does with courtroom stories.

[UYI]

20 years ago today.

Still bitter.

 

[Melgaypet]

I can't believe I haven't done any Old OLTL for over a year! Life events distracted me. Anyway, I watched the episode that aired in 34 years ago yesterday. Nothing too explosive happened.

• Viki's running for mayor. Clint wakes her up with breakfast in bed. Viki is cranky - she overslept for two hours b/c Clint turned off her alarm and doesn't have any appointments that morning. She suspects (so did I) that he canceled her meetings but he insists he did not. Anyway, he wants to talk and she doesn't. They argue about Roger Gordon - he accuses her more than once of wanting Roger, she's mad b/c the two of them teamed up to lie to her about something. I like this fight, it feels real. Clint's accusations feel like deflection and insecurity more than justified jealousy (although I do think the show was going for a triangle here) and Viki admits that this (whatever it is) isn't "the worst thing that ever happened to me" (Oh, Vikster, you have no idea what the worst thing is) and she might be overreacting, but she's still angry and not pretending otherwise. Viki does run into Roger Gordon (Clint calls him by both names and now I feel the urge to do so as well) and I see no heat whatsoever.
• Debra (Gabrielle's boring French-braided sister) and Brunette Andy are friends! It took me a while to realize who Brunette Andy was. Anyway, they bond over being into men who are still into other ladies.
• Cord was supposed to go on a picnic with Debra but he's all distracted b/c of Tina. Who is in San Diego with CJ. I get the feeling Tina was not actually on canvas at this point, but I'm not sure. Cord is bothered b/c he hasn't been able to get a hold of her on the phone. Debra is Understanding. I can't tell if the actress is trying to play it as swallowing her irritation or is genuinely supposed to be nothing but blandly pleasant. Anyway, Cord and Debra decide to track Tina down and burst in into some random lady's...hotel room? Tiny room for rent? Does she live here? Anyway, they come in asking for directions (weird) and don't notice her guest, whose face is covered in bandages. I thought this guy was supposed to be mysterious but Random Lady calls him Max, so no. I don't much care about Head Transplant Max, but will note for @UYI's sake that he reacts to a glamour shot of Gabrielle in the newspaper.
• Gabrielle is busy conspiring to break up Cord and Debra. She has a phone conversation about this with who I assume is Tina, and ends it in classic self-satisfied soap vixen fashion, cackling to herself and stretching out on her couch like a cat. I'm not sure what Gabrielle gets out of this. I know she and Tina are friends of a sort, but I doubt Gabrielle would care about this without some personal benefit. Does she hate her sister? Debra seems too boring to hate.
• Speaking of boring, poor Brunette Andy. She meets Dan Wolek for breakfast, taking a call for him before he shows up from Brenda, who insists she's moving out of Michael Grande's place. Brunette Andy dutifully relays this message to Dan, who starts to rush out, but catches himself and insists to Brunette Andy that he is no longer involved in Brenda's life. Unlike Debra, Brunette Andy goes for Skeptical, not Understanding.
• Whatever about this dud of a relationship. (Yes, I'll call it a dud after seeing like two scenes of them together.) My takeaway here is that Brunette Andy is totally miscast as a blue-collar woman. I keep mentally casting her as a socialite or like a flapper/uppercrust jewel thief in some Agatha Christie-type murder mystery. ALSO, she bears a strong rememblance to Elaine Princi's Dorian.
• Speaking of, Dorian and Viki have a slight, well I wouldn't even call it a tiff, since neither loses her temper, but they jab at each other over Roger Gordon (who is, I gather, working for Herb's mayoral campaign).
• Anyway, Brenda has the most dramatic storyline going on. Drugging! Gaslighting! An evil housekeeper! Brenda wants to move out of Michael Grande's place, and he is just as insistent that she and her son Steven stay. He wants to marry Brenda and adopt Steven. (This must be after the baby-switch was discovered, which makes me wonder why Gabrielle isn't in jail.) He and his evil housekeeper (Mrs. Byrd? I couldn't catch her name even though Grande said it several times) plot to drug Brenda into compliance with patches behind her ear, which Mrs. Byrd applies while brushing her hair. Michael Grande then easily convinces Brenda that she changed her mind about moving out. 

 

Not a very exciting episode, but interesting in it's own way. Just think of how cell phones would have changed multiple plots! Michael Grande is quite the silky, frightening-without-raising-his-voice, scheming villain. Going from the melodrama of Brenda Caught in Grande's Web to the down-to-earth drama of Clint and Viki's marital troubles, seeing how Cord will always be obsessed with Tina, to even poor Brunette Andy and Dan Wolek having a real conversation where they seem like real (if dull) people.

It reminds me that for all the mockery soaps get, this genre is character-driven. It's about people and their relationships, which helps anchor even the most outlandish plots. When soap writers forget about their characters and start thinking that plot is what matters, things fall apart so quickly. We saw that happen with this very show in it's last network years.

Edited April 19 by Melgaypet

[UYI]

This would've been after Andrea Evans left the show and right before Karen Witter joined the show, it seems.

Sadly, Bronwen Booth (Brunette Andy) died of ampullary cancer last year. When Fiona Hutchison was interviewed by Alan Locher last year, it was shortly after both Bronwen and Andrea's deaths, and she talked about how she and Bronwen became close friends again after running into each other by chance two decades ago--Fiona introduced Bronwen to her husband!

Thank you, @Melgaypet, for the shoutout regarding Gabrielle! I haven't even really been here regularly in quite a long time (not even to talk about the Conners, which just came back recently and I had been actively talking about that show on its forum here from the beginning), and it's always nice to be remembered! 🙂

Edited April 19 by UYI

[Melgaypet]

You're quite welcome, @UYI! I'm not sure I'd be able to see anything Max/Gabrielle-related without thinking of you.

I'm sorry to hear about Bronwen Booth's death. She's not as well-remembered as some (or at least not by me) but last year was brutal for soap deaths.

(Is it weird that even her name seems to fit this imaginary Roaring Twenties murder mystery I had started writing and casting in my head while watching Dan Wolek try and fail to convince Brunette Andy that he was done with Brenda? Bronwen Booth! Although maybe that's less the name of a flapper/jewel thief than a flapper/sleuth, who cheerfully solves murders in between listening to jazz and drinking cocktails and avoiding marriage to whatever wealthy and respectable man her wealthy and respectable family is pushing on her. I...don't understand my brain. Possibly it's telling me to start writing again.)

Poor Andy. Blonde or brunette, she was perpetually unlucky in love. There was her abusive husband, then she always seemed to be the back-up or rebound to guys who were much more into someone else. Dan Wolek, Dylan Moody, Kevin Buchanan. Never had a pairing take off until Antonio (I loved them). Then her character got turned into a cheater off-screen and that's the last we heard of her.