EONus 3. A fantastic
Edge period with music by
Elliot Lawrence Productions (1976-84) and fresh new characters with lives that looked a lot like "our own sans the murder" kept us diehards rooting for "
The Edge of Night" and long ago established characters of
Mike (FORREST COMPTON) and
Nancy Karr (
ANN FLOOD) whose newspaper crime reporting nearly got our Nancy raped by a young drug dealing thug (BENNET COOPERMAN) with an attraction for older women. For many of us, there was no other soap opera save "
Edge of Night" by
Henry Slesar, which had been ingrained in our brains since childhood and haven't left forty-three years later.
Geraldine (LOIS KIBBEE) shared compelling and humorous scenes with spoiled
Raven (SHARON GABET). An imagined triangle between
Miles (JOEL CROTHERS) and
Nicole (JAYNE BENTZEN) and
Derek (DENNIS PARKER) became a perfect storm under drug influence Miles by
Nola (
KIM HUNTER) who had drugged Miles office water cooler.
Newlyweds Draper (
TONY CRAIG) and April (TERRY DAVIS) were like our generation's (the tail end of the baby boomers) version of Mike and Nancy who found little
peace in marriage with domineering
Margo (ANN WILLIAMS), self-centered Raven always butting in and then
Emily (MARGO McKENNA) who fell in love with Draper as
Kirk MIchaels, Emily's husband, and even got pregnant. A shocker of a plot for
EON fans as this kind of thing never happened on Edge of Night and only in "real life" or
As the World Turns. Thank goodness the baby really wasn't Draper's and was fathered by a disturbed orderly named
Sharky.
For a time after Draper was declared dead following a train derailment while Draper was en route to prison for the murder of mother-in-law Margo which Draper didn't commit, a romance seemed feasible between April and
Logan (
JOE LAMBIE) who had finally gotten over his lust for Raven.
The popular romance of young
Jody Travis (LORI LOUGHLIN) and Gavin
Wylie (MARK ARNOLD) kept us on the edge of our seats with the murder of
Gunther/
Bruno (
DAVID FROMAN) and the couple on the run while
Deborah "Red"
Saxon (FRANCES FISHER) and handsome
Steve Guthrie (DENNY ALBEE) protected and kept
Monticello safe, the two detectives managed to fall in love but never married just as Jody Travis never got married.
Meanwhile,
Detective Calvin Stoner (IRVING ALLEN
LEE) married former cult member
Star (YAHEE) who had been mixed up with former cult leader and giggolo Eliot
Dorn (LEE GODART) who married Margo and fooled around with Raven, Nola
Madison and
Sara Albright (JENNY LYONS), Margo's maid; later, Stoner and Star divorced and Stoner married
Didi Bannister (MARIANN AALDA), a new lawyer in town trying to make a name for herself.
Derek's romance to actress
Jinx Avery (
KATE CAPSHAW) was a tearjerker when Jinx who had been suffering from an incurable disease under the medical care of Dr. Miles Cavanaugh died in Derek's arms shortly after Derek and Jinx married.
Attorney Cliff Nelson (
ERNIE TOWNSEND) finally found true love with someone who resembled himself:
Mitzi Martin (LELA
IVY), a waitress and actress and Didi's roommate, who accepted Cliff as Cliff and didn't reject silly
Clifford like a Raven, a Deborah and an April.
Finally 1981, we were introduced to one of Edge's best over-the-top villans: Sky
Whitney/
Jefferson Brown (LARKIN MALLOY), the first man to almost succeed taming Raven who radiated an attraction for Det.
Damian Tyler (CHRISTOPHER JARRETT) that never developed.
- published: 04 Jul 2011
- views: 1592