Is anyone watching the resurrected PC "Fate" on Soapnet. I was only half watching when that story arc was happening and really enjoyed it today. It just made me realize how much magic Kevin and Lucy had together. Ian was always an asshat, but Eve had some spunk back then. I forgot that Livvie was once a sweet girl who thought of other people.

But Jon Lindstrom rocks with his performance of the tortured Kevin. Oh how I miss seeing him! Lucy was so good in that pairing too. Ah, the fond PC memories come back to me!

Does anyone know when they're going to start rerunning "Time in a Bottle?" Because that was my favorite of the books, I don't have any of it on tape, but I'd really like to see Cookie, Granya and her chessboard, and the wonderful performances from Denise Galik, Marie Wilson, and Jay Pickett again.

WoST has an episode of "Torn" up.

Any word on Nolan North getting a job since PC ended? I looked in past posts, but didn't see any mentions (sorry if it was mentioned and I missed, though).

I was totally enjoying reliving the "Fate" book, and then they busted out the ickiness that was the Lucy/Jack encounter. I'm almost still afraid to turn it on again.

I started watching Port Charles just 3 months before it got cancelled and now that Soap Net is playing the older episodes again, I've been trying to catch up on all the stuff I missed the first time around.

Can anyone tell me who is Livvie's mother? They keep mentioning her, but I have no idea who she is.

Also, does anyone know when Caleb comes on the show and people start turning into vampires?? They're playing the "Time in a Bottle" arc right now and I'm just wondering if this is the storyline where everything starts to get interesting!

Livvie's mom is a thorny issue. Her biological mother is named Grace who was an old flame of Kevin's. IIRC she drowned on the island that Kevin-Victor used to visit when Kevin was a child & was also where she met Kevin. Grace's sister Rachel then became/acted as Livvie's mother and is the only real mother Livvie ever knew. Rachel was a pistol and set about making a good portion of the citizen's in PC's lives hell on Earth until she was finally stopped. Kimberlin Brown played her with reckless abandon (Kimberlin does *unhinged* like almost nobody else IMO)

"Time In A Bottle" is all about Frank/Karen/Scotty/Rhonda (and it's Karen/Frank's last chance at any real significant storylines/screentime). It's directly followed by "Tainted Love" which is the advent of Caleb and the vampire storylines. "Tainted Love" plays sort of jumbled and slow at the beginning but then smooths out and plays very well from about the middle into the end of the 3 month arc.

Thanks for clearing that up about Livvie's mom, DeeeDee!! Now it all makes sense why I could never figure out who she was...I just didn't start watching this show soon enough!

I'm so excited that the next story arc is the one I've been waiting for...although now I've gotten interested in the whole Frank & Karen situation. They keep showing commercials where Frank is holding a cup of what looks like coffee, but then he starts spinning into some sort of time portal, so I'm looking forward to seeing what that's all about. Is this going to be where Livvie is Tess and/or vice versa...or did that already happen in another storyline??

Tess doesn't show up for a long long time. Livvie doesn't even get involved with Caleb until "Tainted Love".

"Time In A Bottle" is mostly Scotty/Rhonda/Karen/Frank with a dash of Ian/Ariana thrown in (although that whole storyline with her brother was really in bad taste IMO). Frank and that old computer is stupid too (but ultimately romantic) and it's always nice to see he & Karen (both really underused & underappreciated in later years) get some real quality screentime and frontburner story.

"Tainted Love" highlights pretty much the entire cast and everybody has a part to play. It was a very good use of the majority of the characters on the canvas and was an interesting storyline until the writers ran the whole vampire thing into the ground.

Hee. It's funny how just seeing Ian's name in passing in DeeeDee's post started the rage bubbling up in me again.

(Funny sad, not funny Ha Ha.)

Oh my Ian-hate is still strong. He broke up Kevin & Lucy and then ruined Lucy. Granted Thorsten looks good shirtless but I've always wanted a large & awkwardly shaped Acme anvil to fall on his head....repeatedly.

And he mourned Eve - his supposed 'soulmate' of several incarnations - for, what, five minutes? And by ending up with Lucy not only wrecked Kevin/Lucy [enough reason to hate him] but could be said to have spat on Eve's grave, if we thought he actually cared enough to visit it.

Deeedee, actually you will see more of Jamal, Alison, Jack, Livvie, Lucy and Kevin in "Time In A Bottle" than you will Scotty and Rhonda/ While Frank and Karen have the main A story the other characters get the B and C storylines. The bike shop gang for example will get into trouble when one of Jamal's old "friends" show up in town again and causes trouble. It will play itself out in a very important way that will lead directly to the start of tainted Love.

Also in Time In A Bottle Caleb's twin brother Michael (who is a priest) will befriend Eve.

Time In the Bottle, while boring at times, was the last arc of PC that I actually cared for. One reason is because in the first two arcs the show ddi not come to a halt for the sake of one main storyline. While Frank and Karen were going through their little adventure many of the other characters had their own storylins going on that had nothing to do with Cookie and the Magic Computer. This would change with Tainted Love in which every character had to serve one main storyline albeit at times in different but related story arcs. This would hurt the show down the road and keep a lot of characters in the background because their roles in the main storyline wasn't nearly as important as others'. TL also was during the time in which the show tried its best to outdo the campiness of Passions.

Despite all of the spin by ABC and PC's producers the fact remains that the ratings with PC dropped overall during this time with the addition of Caleb and vampires and dropped even further with the overkill Rafe-Alison relationship. And yet Soap net refuses to show old PC eps that came BEFORE the arcs. They want to pretend as if the show only began during the arcs and want to quickly get to all of the Caleb /Rafe stuff. Too bad. Before the arcs the show was about real people with interesting problems instead of the angels, vamps, demons and werewolves that would eevntually dominate the canvass...and spell the show's doom.

What's worse is that before that he was partially responsible for the breakup of Kevin and Eve's marriage (I liked Kevin with Eve better). So basically Ian always coveted what Kevin had.

The story was that Grace and Kevin had had a very volatile relationship. During one of their "off" phases she'd had Livvie but didn't tell him even when they were on again. At that time they were in a car (not sure where) arguing and Grace was driving. She swerved the car off the road into a lake trying to kill the both of them. Kevin managed to escape from the car but she didn't. Kevin had been traumatized by the whole thing and I think used his painting to help work it out. When Grace's sister Rachel came to PC, she believed that Kevin was responsible for murdering her sister and was looking to make him pay. Livvie was never supposed to come to PC but she wanted to be with her mother. And she ended up seeing Kevin as a shrink, not knowing he was her father, to work out her fear of the water which may have come from overhearing Rachel and her grandmother talking about Grace's death by drowning. Anyway, it turned out that both Grace, Rachel, and their mother had some brain disease that made them crazy.

How far along are we in Time in a Bottle? And is this the first we see of Michael Easton?

I just watched yesterday's episodes and Eve was in the woods and Michael Easton's character was there chopping wood. He was wearing glasses and he introduced himself to Eve as "Michael". I don't know if this is the first time he's ever been on PC, but I thought he always played Caleb. Is he pretending to be someone else right now?

I haven't seen today's episodes yet, but as of yesterday, Frank went back to 1973 and he saw Karen's aunt, who looks exactly like Karen. He was giving her the creeps because he kept asking about her 16 year old sister, who is Karen's present-day mother. Then she went outside and got hit by a car.

It seems to me that no matter what he does now or in the past, Frank just keeps messing with Karen's entire family!

At the beginning of Michael Easton's time on the show, we were lead to believe that he was playing two characters Michael (the priest who Eve and later Ian befriends) and Caleb. About midway through as Caleb was introduced to more and more characters in town, Eve had a big showdown with Caleb (who wanted Danny, who Eve was still pregnant with at the time) and it was revealed that Caleb and Michael were the same person. Hope that helps.

I've never seen the first two arcs and am still pissed that I don't have SoapNet. It was around the first few days of Tainted Love that I was able to begin watching PC again. So very jealous of all of you that still get to watch the show.

That's so cool...now I have goose bumps!! I thought he had a sinister look in his eye when he was talking to Eve.

I basically missed almost the entire run of this show. I first started watching PC just a few months before it got cancelled and I've always wanted to know how it went from a fairly normal soap opera to vampire city. I only just started watching it again recently when I found out they were playing the older episodes on SoapNet, so I'm finally starting to get all my questions answered!

I love seeing these later Eve episodes. I stopped watching back in '99 so it was nice to see her again. I thought she looked a lot like Lisa Rinna with that short 'do, though.

The scene where all is revealed to Eve is actually one of my favorites. I thought Michael Easton did a tremendous job, especially while switching back and forth between Caleb and Michael during that episode.

I've always been a fan of ME and now watching him on OLTL makes me truly appreciate how good of an actor he really is.

Also, about a month ago, I was watching a movie that I had taped off TV a few years back and afterwards were a couple of episodes from the early, early years of PC. I caught Original Joe and Karen (I wish she would turn up somewhere), Scotty, and Serena, Eve, Matt, and even Jake and Danielle. I was half-expecting Sigmund to make an appearance, which would have truly made my day. I loved that little guy.

I saw Original Karen in a Cinemax porno. It was her "movie debut."

I was shocked to find "And Introducing Jennifer Hammon" on the screen, followed by her doing a cowboy in the back of a pickup.

It's nice to see that my intense hatred of Ian Thornhart is shared by others. I was taking a break from my work when I saw his name in someone's post and I was suddenly filled with this rage. I'm so glad TFIC didn't cross over his character on to GH. Having Sonny and Ian on the same show would have required me to buy a new TV every other day. Now I have to think happy Kevin, Lucy, and Sigmund thoughts so I can be civil to my co-workers.

Now there's a frightening thought! Who would one hate more: Asshat!Ian Thornheart or Scummy Corinthos? I think that my blood pressure would've skyrocketed and I would've had a stroke at the first scene of Asshat!Ian and FauxLucy bumping into Scummy and his latest choice of a lying, betraying, whoresluttramp of a paramour. I can just picture it too. Asshat and Faux would walk in on the midget mobster wannabe throwing barware at his current slut. Asshat would vamp out at the violence and so FauxLucy the Vampire Fucker would immediately start moaning and undressing to get his attention. Scummy would watch those two waste of carbon going at it and would be turned on. And would start humping the closest human next him(probably Carly, Sam, or Jason). At the precise moment of glimpsing this horror, my brain would literally explode.

After seeing Karen's aunt die from a hit and run, doesn't it just compound the fact at how shitty and cheap Karen's exit was written. Doesn't it? I'm still going to go with my VOTS and have her living happily with Scott, Serena and Christina in a nice tropical paradise to be rid of all of the stupid ingrates on both sides of Port Chuckles.

Sarah Aldrich (Courtney Kanelos) guest stars on The D.A. tonight.

From tvguide.com:

Oh, I never liked Courtney. I thought she was scum. But then again, I'm from the ol' PC skool of thought. I thought Karen should have been with Joe forever.

I'm even of an older school try Karen & Jagger forever. Hee!

Oh, true, true. :)

I mean, I was all about the Karen and the Joe as well as the Frank and the Julie. But being a crazy does kinda get in the way of a good relationship.

I wished they put Chris and Eve together. I mean, didn't they put Scott with Eve and even Kevin with Eve? I remember they put Scott with Eve because Lucy tried to discredit her by siphoning gas out of Eve's car, so she'd be late and miss picking up Serena from dance recital. Then Lucy could save the day. Then it ended with Serena being blind for a while. I don't know what happened in between. I think Eve ended up having enough gas but ran out near a cliff or something. She left Serena sleeping in the car and went for help, but Serena kicked the gear and the car went off the cliff? This just doesn't sound right. Please tell me I'm not making any of this up.

Nah, unfortunately, you're not. Lucy was jealous at how close Eve was getting to Serena and Scott. So she decide to pull the ol' fix the gas tank trick. I do believe that Eve and Lucy had been pulling some pretty childish pranks on one another(if memory is correct) at the time. Serena ended up being accidentally blinded by the incident.

I think that Eve ended up destroying Kevin and Lucy's wedding(well, actually it was supposed to be a double wedding with best pals Mac and Felicia getting married too) by announcing Lucy's part in the accident. I'm pretty sure that was the lie Eve exposed to ruin Lucy's happy day(Kevin walked out on Lucy after Eve's announcement).

And yeah, Karen and Jagger 4 eva! Like Jagger would've ever cheated on Karen. I'd have preferred it if they had just 'killed' Jagger off to explain his absence from Karen.

Yeah, I remember the double wedding, and that was the secret. Eve got the still camera pictures from the gas station (or garage?) where Lucy siphoned the gas.

In the beginning, wasn't Eve's big secret that she had once been a prostitute and that Bennett Devlin was one of her johns? Or am I making that up, too?

Yup, Eve put herself through med school by becoming a call girl. And Julie's daddy was one of her clients. Plus she gave birth to a baby boy, who supposedly died. I think that Scott's real biological father, the evil DV(?), ended up blackmailing her(for some reason) and made her believe that her son was still alive. I can't remember why though. Maybe for his revenge against Scott(whom DV didn't know was his bio son---neither did Scott) and his bio parents---whom DV believed betrayed him, or some nonsense like that.

At that time, Scott and Eve were about to be romantically paired. It would have made sense.

I really miss Port Charles. I don’t mean The Revenge of the Bride of the Son-in-Law of Dracula; I mean Port Freakin’ Charles, which had doctors and interns, Frank and Julie, Matt and Ellen, Victor and his accordion, Chris and his DL-56, Lark Madison, the adorable Michael Dietz as Joe Scanlon (his replacement was a big mistake), the delightfully psychotic Greg Cooper… oh, God, those were the days! When Alison and her entourage took over the bulk of the screen time it wasn’t my show anymore, and when the vampires turned up I stopped watching. No disrespect intended to those who enjoyed the new twists and characters, but I liked it the way it was and I couldn’t deal with all the changes; I wish ABC had made the gothic tableau an entirely separate show instead of reinventing PC. By the time it went off the air it should have been listed in TV Guide as “(This Is Not) Port Charles”.

I turned it on again one time while I was on vacation just to see if anybody I liked was still there, and my old fave Chris Ramsey was once again trying to make a fortune, this time by isolating the element of vampire blood that makes one live eternally. I smiled at some fond memories of Chris and his fellow interns, wondered if he’d ever heard from Julie again, wished him luck, and turned off PC forever. What a talented group the original cast proved to be; I hope they all go on to bigger and better things.

WoST is putting up a PC episode from 1998, it looks like. I'm watching it and I remember it; this was around the time I started watching. Yep, I remember how much of a whiny, harpy bitch Lark was. I don't know if this was before or after she tried to jump off General Hospital's roof. And wasn't Frank her English teacher? Why did he adopt her again? WTF?

Yep, DL-56. Stupid shit.

Am I the only one saddened by knowing that Tainted Love will soon be over?

You're not the only one, under the el...I've been enjoying every minute of Tainted Love. Lucy has been cracking me up! I never liked her when I first started watching the show, but she's grown on me. It just ended the other day and now Tempted has started. So far I haven't been able to get into the new arc as much as the last one, but I'm still watching. Does Ian ever get less irritating??

My answer? No. The Asshat only becomes more of a wife stealing, jackass, arrogant, selfish, self important, asstastic Asshat.

Why yes, Ian Thornheart is the soap character that I hate most in the world. Even more than his poetry spouting ass of a brother, Patrick. And most shockingly, I actually hated the asshole more than I hate GH's Sonny. Which is quite an acomplishment. At least at one time, Sonny was an interesting and layered character. Ian, interesting or layered? Never.

Which book is next, after Tempted, now? Miracles Happen? Is that the book when Rafe first appears? God, I hated Rafe.

Rafe was in a few of the last episodes of Tainted Love. He first appeared when Lucy went to Transylvania to trace her family history and found out she's a vampire slayer.

I should start watching them again, you know, when I get SoapNet back. Will I hate him on-sight?

I watched one of the episodes of Tempted yesterday. I liked Livvie and Jack together. I wish the love triangle between Livvie and Jack and Caleb would have been explored more. The whole book Superstition (sp?) was the absolute worst IMO. It made no sense to have the whole candle thing. The only good thing to come of it was that back then I loved me some Allison and Rafe. *sigh* I miss Port Charles.

Frank's drug high from DL-56 was so funny, especially when he attacked Lark, ransacked Julie's apartment, spray-painted "KILLER" on the walls, and then told her that Lark did it. What happened to Lark after that?

Hey guys,
I know last year Karen supposedly died. How did that happen? She came back and wasn't really dead right? Do you know if they ever had Scott or Sonny find out she was really alive? Also, who did Livvie end up with? Thanks!

Sorry to report that Karen really did die - running in the path of a car trying to elude Frank, who had become a vampire and wanted to make her one, too. A sad end to a core character and what had been a decent romance.

Livvie ended up marrying Caleb in a kind of black Mass ceremony at the same time that Rafe married Alison, but right after the ceremony Caleb told Livvie that, because of the wish she'd made on the magic ring -- that Caleb have the best sex of his life and a baby come from it -- Alison is pregnant with his child.

Thanks for the reply,
So Karen really died? That stinks. That's how the show ended? With Caleb telling Livvie Alison was pregnant? Was there more to it? So it ende with her married to Caleb and him telling her Alison was pregnant? I thought Michael and Kelly had mucho chemistry. Thanks!

Well, technically, it ended with Caleb telling Livvie, her devastated expression, then a cut to a blissful Allison and Rafe in their honeymoon room. Fade out.

I wish they would stop showing these dumb books (there was only one good one IMO "Time In a Bottle") and start showing the series from the very beginning. Are they afraid to let newcomers see how better off the show was pre-vampires and supernatural storylines? The less of one note Caleb and one note Rafe the better.

Does anyone remember when Livvie puts a stake through Caleb's heart? Does that happen during the Tempted arc? I remember after the series ended, Soap Net ran a special with clips from the show and I've always wanted to see how that whole thing came about and also, how Livvie ended up with Caleb in the end after doing that to him. So far, I've been pretty bored with Tempted, so I'm hoping it picks up the pace soon.

Yeah, its going to happen this week on SoapNet.

Thanks for the heads up, under the el...the last episode of Tempted aired the other day and in my opinion, it was the best episode of PC that I've seen so far!! Wow! They're playing Miracles Happen now and I suddenly want Caleb to come back.

ETA: Does anyone know if Lucy is Christina's biological mother? I could've sworn I heard her say a few months ago that she couldn't have children of her own. How did that woman Janet (?) end up getting Christina away from Lucy in the first place? Also, Frank said the other day that he's Christina's biological father...did he ever get together with Lucy? I'm confused about this whole storyline!!