The show did have huge success in the middle and late 1970s with new character-siblings Jenny (Katherine Glass, Brynn Thayer) and Karen Wolek (Kathryn Breech, Julia Duffy, Judith Light), distant cousins of the original Wolek family.
Also appearing for the first time in 1978 was Viki's teenage ward Tina Clayton (Andrea Evans), introduced as the orphaned daughter of Viki's college friend Irene Manning Clayton (Kate McKeown) who asked Viki to be Tina's guardian before she died.