If you had the power, what would you reset?

[supersage]

Let's see -

• Beth never would have kidnapped Gus....or had sex with Coop...and Coop wouldn't have died....
• Cyrus would not have been made Jenna's long lost son at the last minute of the show production....
• Phillip would not have tossed Grady from Mt. Peapack, making him a murderer
• Jeffrey O' Neill would never have appeared in town - I despised him
• Ava Peralta would never have existed....I despised her
• Gus would have been Rita and Alan's child....not Alan and the Nun....
• Holly not the Nursery Rhyme Stalker...it was SO wrong to do that to her....
• Lucy Cooper would never have existed.....I despised her.....
• Annie Dutton actually WOULD have been Reva's long-lost sister
• Sandy Foster would not have been Jonathan OR Sandy Foster...he'd have been Josh and Sonni's long lost child....
• Billy Lewis would not have been Roger Thorpe's shooter
• Hart would not have died

This covers back to about thirty years ago - I'm sure I can come up with more....

I would also add….

*Roger Thorpe would still be alive, and so would Alan.
*Cassie and Josh would never have hooked up.
*Ross wouldn’t have died and he wouldn’t have had an affair
*The last 6 years would not have happened.
*Phillip wouldn’t have gone crazy.



I miss the REAL GL like crazy. Peapack wasn’t GL to me.

[GuidingLite]

I think Michael Zaslow's death made it fitting to kill off the character of Roger. I just wish the story had been better than Sebastian Hulce showing up in town as another long-lost child of Roger and then kidnapping Holly. I would have much preferred Amanda Spaulding, who had married Roger, were the one to bring the news back and carry out Roger's last wishes before his death. It could have been a far better story than what they told. She certainly had no love-loss for Alexandra, having discovered that Alex knew she was Brandon's daughter, not Alan's, all along and kept that from her...she could have come to believe that Alan really did try to ruin Roger's life over the years...and wanted to help Roger get 'revenge' on Alan...she could have carried a secret from Holly's past that Holly definitely didn't want to be reminded of (that she'd left Springfield in the 70s pregnant with Ed Bauer's child and gave it away in Europe....) it really could have been the springboard for a lot of stories for characters, rather than the drivel we saw....

[supersage]

That sounds good. Too many times they stopped far short of telling good stories. I loved the actor who played Sebastian, but the character was just terrible. Ugh. I enjoyed Roger's ashes going in Alan's eyes, though. LOL

[GuidingLite]

Oh the actor was fine, but the character....I could have lived without.

Roger Thorpe had so many enemies by the time he left town (and then died).....the character's death could have impacted a lot of Springfield...Alan, Alexandra, Philip, Billy, Josh, Ross, Blake, Holly, Ed....had the writers really thought about HOW to kill the character and the ripple effect it would have created if Roger had left Amanda armed with a TON of secrets to take back to Springfield with her against his enemies there...information he'd gathered since he'd left town and even before. It was a very missed opportunity.

The show had several opportunities to start with one story that then rippled out and impact many other characters, but they just seemingly overlooked the chances they had - the rich history they could work with....

[supersage]

Agree, GuidingLite! So many missed opportunities!

[Friz4ever]

Rusty would have rejected rose and stayed faithful to mindy. Beth would have gotten tired of being controlled by Phillip and gotten with edmond. Billy would put Vanessa first instead of reva. Edmond would turn out to be Alan's son. Jenna and buzz would be happily married. Nadine would have never returned.

[ABeth]

I would have made Cassie end up not being Reva’s biological 1/2 sister after all after Laura Wright left. I would have let Jonathan and Tammy ride off into the sunset instead of killing Tammy off.

I would not have killed off Maureen.

[Bronson]

I love the choices here. I have a few I would like to add:

The pairings be undone: I did not like Alan/Beth, or nuCassie/Josh, Tony/Michelle, or Harley/Cyrus Foley.

Alan and Beth had a father/daughter like relationship. There is no way they would have instantly have sexually attraction to each other.

it was bad enough that they recast Tony but to have him take advantage of Michelle who had amnesia at this point was awful. I like him and Marah Lewis and hated to see that come to an end.

I get that they recast Cassie but to have her paired with Josh was a bad idea.

Harley betraying Marina, her niece who she was a surrogate mother to by having sex with her then boyfriend was awful. (Even the actress hated it so much that she left the show)

I liked Marina and Cyrus Foley. It was like a Stockholm Syndrome type story.

Not only do I wish they had left Amanda Spaulding as Alan's daughter, but I would have liked to have had her go after those who did her harm. I hated seeing her as the town doormat.

[CouchCruisin']

I would definitely reset...
The decision to end Gus and Harley. I know that RPG eventually left for AMC,
but if I'd had things my way, he and Harley would still be together because he would be alive.

I absolutely HATED Cassie and Hart.
I absolutely HATED Cassie and Josh
I double loathed Tammy and Johnathan OMGoodness, they made me ill.

[CouchCruisin']

I would definitely reset...
The decision to end Gus and Harley. I know that RPG eventually left for AMC,
but if I'd had things my way, he and Harley would still be together because he would be alive.

I absolutely HATED Cassie and Hart.
I absolutely HATED Cassie and Josh
I double loathed Tammy and Johnathan OMGoodness, they made me ill.

I would also rest the decision to end the longest running Soap in history (at that time).
Followed by ATWT, then AMC, which I started watching after we lost the first two.

[SoapsRules]

I stopped watching Guiding Light in 1997 after Michael Zaslow was pushed out so I wasn't around for the show's more egregious storylines. As a big Roger and Holly fan, I had a hard time when they paired up Holly with Fletcher. I knew Roger and Holly were going to implode eventually, since the characters were too dysfunctional to successfully achieve a long-term romantic relationship together, so I wasn't surprised that they ended up going their separate ways. It felt forced though when Holly went back to hating Roger. I think the characters had made too much progress by that point for that to be the driving emotion from Holly. I would have preferred she had just told Roger that while she would always love him, it wasn't going to work between them because he couldn't be what she needed in a partner and she couldn't accept him for the man he is. I know, where's the drama in that?

I was shocked when Maureen was killed, and while those scenes were unbelievably done, that character's death was a big loss.

[jward1108]

I stopped watching Guiding Light in 1997 after Michael Zaslow was pushed out so I wasn't around for the show's more egregious storylines. As a big Roger and Holly fan, I had a hard time when they paired up Holly with Fletcher. I knew Roger and Holly were going to implode eventually, since the characters were too dysfunctional to successfully achieve a long-term romantic relationship together, so I wasn't surprised that they ended up going their separate ways. It felt forced though when Holly went back to hating Roger. I think the characters had made too much progress by that point for that to be the driving emotion from Holly. I would have preferred she had just told Roger that while she would always love him, it wasn't going to work between them because he couldn't be what she needed in a partner and she couldn't accept him for the man he is. I know, where's the drama in that?

I was shocked when Maureen was killed, and while those scenes were unbelievably done, that character's death was a big loss.

I agree that they could have handled the Holly/Roger relationship better. At the time, I was working full time and watching sporadically, so I didn't realize what happened to Roger. When I came back and Dennis Parlato was playing Roger, I was highly annoyed! I never did warm up to him. Rewatching those years currently on YT, I don't hate his portrayal of Roger as much as I did back then, but I still think they handled the whole situation wrong.