Jump to content

Soap Opera Digest Best and Worst 1999


Recommended Posts

  • Members

The timeline was:

- arrested in 1997, although I don't think this was for drugs, but I can't remember. At this time Dimitri became a very dark character and there was some speculation the show was going to write him out. Then Megan McTavish, who created Dimitri, returned as headwriter in late 1997 and worked hard to redeem the character.

- fired in 1999, and, in typical brilliant network executive fashion, right before the arrival of Finola Hughes, which led to a whole round of "He was fired for her!" fan outcry, and which along with bad writing, made it difficult for a lot of viewers to warm to her

- rehired around 2000 or so, as viewers learned Dimitri wasn't dead and was being treated somewhere

- fired for good in 2001 after the drug arrest

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 62
  • Created
  • Last Reply
  • Members

The set up was a confusing mess. Granted. But the reveal was masterful. Carly had been blackmailed into marrying Brad (who needed her money to save Camille from a baddie--played by Michael Sabatino) from his man-whore past. Brad (being a schmutz) started falling for Carly, natch, while Jack was off chasing pre-psychoJuliaI who was being manipulated by Ravid (David Stenbeck/Reid Hamiliton).

Ravid got Julia hooked on pills, and she started catching on to the fact he'd kidnapped Faith and substituted "Melinda" (Andy's baby with Duh-nice). Jack tried to get her back, Julia dumped him after finding out Carly had flown him out to her family home in Marin County. They got back home, and while Carly tried to back off and be Jack's friend, the spark reunited when they got locked in the Lakeview wine cellar. (They were famously interrupted, naked as jaybirds, by Hal and Babs, who were planning their nuptials, but I digress.) Carly and Jack had a fight; Carly ended up consumating her marriage to Brad. Jack of course, apologized the next morning. Carly decided she wanted Jack, and Jack figured something was "off" in the Carly/Brad marriage. Carly couldn't tell Jack Brad knew Parker's true paternity, lest she risk losing Parker (to Hal) and the money. (Carly didn't change the paternity results herself, nor did she know about it right away...Molly did it and told Brad when the tech she sweet talked wanted to be paid more money)

Carly was set to leave town with Parker, without Jack. However, she stopped at "their place" and Jack convinced her to stay, and they made love. She then promised Jack she'd get an annulment, and she ran to try and buy Brad off. Brad pretended to agree---Carly didn't know she and Jack had been spotted by Camille, who'd told Brad--and then started to plot his revenge.

Brad teamed up with Rosanna, and the night of Hal and Babs' engagement party, presented Hal with his son. Carly lost everything---Hal took custody of Parker, Rosanna declared the trust null and void and Jack left, overwhelmed by her lies.

With the exception of Katie's exposure at the Endicott Awards, it was one of the last true soapy comeuppances ATWT had. I hated it---and still admired the denouement. Lorraine Broderick doesn't get a lot of credit for her time at ATWT, but IMO she was the last ATWT HW who truly understood how audiences relish the fallout of stories.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

Worst Triangle - Becca/Scott/Greenlee, AMC

Yeah, a storyline of Agnes Nixon's that really didn't work... I'm someone who at her best loves Greenlee (which means when she's away from Ryan, sigh) and loved her back then, but Becka was just so bland, and Scott wasn't much better. I think it was an example of Agnes trying to do a 1970 style soap storyline that simply didn't work anymore. (In many ways Becka was like a new Tara and Greenlee a new Erica...)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

I kind of wonder if that comeuppance would have happened if she and FMB hadn't been going. At the time I felt like, although I was not a regular viewer, they were going to pair Carly and Brad as a real couple, with Jack going back to Julia.

I think Donna Hanover Guiliani played Brad's ex, during that strange time she made random appearances on all the NYC-based soaps (I guess she was smart to do it while they were still around!).

Loprieno was so miscast as Brad.

I always remember that random thing where Carly tried to say she couldn't have sex with Brad because of back pain, and then he caught her doing ab crunches. The image of her doing her ab exercises, I think in red silk pajamas, was kind of funny.

This was also the last appearance, I believe, of Yvonne Perry as the Wicked Witch Rosanna who dressed in bizarre prints, or she did in my mind anyway. I always felt like Yvonne enjoyed that a lot more than playing Rosanna the heroine.

I do agree that it had a better ending than many ATWT stories since then, and probably one of the stronger endings of any ATWT story since 1995 or so. Remember things like Who Killed Diego?

I think they modeled it on Jenny and Liza. I swear I remember someone from AMC even saying that to the soap magazines.

Looking back I admire her effort to try to bring back her AMC, things like this and also a return to class divisions. At the time I was not as fair to her work. I think because I was being hit by a giant candy cane.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

PJ and Carl, great recaps from the "Carly Loses Everything" Storyline. I recently watched the conclusion of that plot on the tube site we can't mention. It was GREAT! All the big reveals happened at Hal and Barbara's engagement party. First thing I noticed was how lavish the sets were back then. The party was gorgeous, and well attended (unlike ATWT at the end, when six people showed up for Holden's "funeral"). The acting was great, with Maura West having to face Hal's shock, Barbara's fury, Rosanna's vengeance and Joh Dixon's despair. I heartily recommend viewing this episode before all the clips disappear.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

I dunno, Becka feels a lot more like Tara than Jenny to me, though I geuss we never saw her parents. Greenlee felt like a poor little rich girl take on Erica. But I could see that too--definetly AMC had a history of such youth triangles and Agnes was prob trying to bring that back (and who can blame her).

I totally agree with you. As has been pointed out, fairly, on here, her last era, aprticularly near the end when Passanante got involved, was far far from golden. Yet you could really see her trying to restructure the show, bring it back to its smaller town, community feel, the class stuff, lotsa the subtle character stuff was really there--maybe it was the big stories (aside from Bianca coming out which I know some felt was too much but I think was still largely well done) that let it down. But, unlike many writers, she really did try to fix the show starting at the core.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

The trend of whitewashing...do I even have to ask what's that's about?

This is so true--especially when there were days in the summer of '99 when went days with nothing but new characters on the screen. That was a bizarre summer for GL. The San Cristoebl story started out promising with those location shoots in Puerto Rico and Reva's missing years mystery was intriguing but quickly turned sour. Inter-spaced between that and the never ending Santos snoozefest there was a really bizarre story in which Holly and Annie Dutton(who for no particular reason was still on the show being played by Signey Coleman) both fell in love with a farmer played by Tom Wiggin. Even more bizarrely was after Annie's kidnapping of Lizzie went up in smoke she simply packed up and fled town with this farmer. I guess that's why I enjoyed Jessie&Drew and Max family story so much. Newbies yes, but that story was so full of heart it felt like traditional GL in the midst of all that madness.

Good story of the week--until Abby got the power of Superman with the church bomb.

Oh boy I remember between this and SOW declaring it Worst Story of the Year was enough for Corday to declare "war" on the soap press in 2000. Gag.

Carl and P.J. did a great job of recapping it so I'll just add I was pleasantly surprised when it was revealed Andy Dixon was the father, his first real story since the days of crazy Janice besides his affair with Nikki Munson. It was also odd how after Denise was revealed to be the mother the baby Holden and Lily suddenly turned black too.

Oh yeah and we saw Carly cleaning toilets too after her comeuppance. I know she had it coming but I didn't much care it was driven by Brad who kidnapped and forced to her marry her or by Rosanna, who was at that point a bitter gambling addict who caused Carly's miscarriage. The bet story between Jack and Carly was great and fun though. Unfortunately, with West's pregnancy in early 2000 we saw Carly kidnapped and off the screen for like what, six months?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

I had forgotten that Annie was also in love with Tom Wiggin's character, or that she left town with him. Can you imagine a new viewer stumbling onto clips of Annie during Watros's big reign of hysteria and then learning about what went on with Signy? I actually liked her attempt in the role but it was way too soon and just not well written. Remember when she showed up and Reva and Josh's wedding and there was a pop or a bang <gasp> and it turned out to be her opening a champagne bottle as a gift or something.

Yes, yet another bad rewrite of Carly's history, with Winston Lowe. This was what the show used to rush Jack/Julia back together and started one of the, IMO, most overrated and trashy stories on ATWT -- "crazy Julia."

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

Had Kokotakis (Brad #1) stayed, I think they would have gone back to Brad/Camille. I think they pulled the trigger on Loprieno so early, there was plan for Brad/Carly. Goutman was hired as EP somewhere during the revolving Brad door, and it was one of his first acts to fire Loprieno.

Yes, thank God. The prints were probably about minimizing her enormous rack.

From Feb to mid June anyway. Then the monster named Craig Montgomery blighted the town of Oakdale for 5 years.

LOVED the bet story with Carjack. I'll never forget Emma's chagrin when Jack asked if Carly could stay at the farm with her.

Well, that was Hogan in a nutshell. I gotta admit though, I floved Julia going BSC, it made Carly the "good" girl. :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

What's really telling is just two years before SOD had named GL as Best Show and it was well deserved and yet here GL gets a Most Disappointing Show. While there were worse shows on '99, the downhill of GL was just ugly and could have been easily avoided instead they dug themselves in deeper into a hole. 1999 already started out on a low note with Holly turning out to be the Nursery Rhyme Stalker and then kidnapping the children of Springfield (how she convinced a suspicious teenage Susan Lemay aka Daisy to come along too I'll never know). We also saw Dinah shoot Hart, but Hart didn't instantly die instead he lingered for weeks with that nurse who turned out to be an angel. The returns of Alex, Fletcher, and India went no where and all three were quickly written out.

Love Signy Coleman and she seem to interact well with the rest of the cast but she was just wrong for the part in my opinion. The latter Annie stories were just weird. That friendship between her and Holly had potential to but it was glossed over to have Annie get drunk and act psycho which didn't work either. I did think that Coleman was great in 2003 guest appearances as an Annie who had finally snapped and slipped into her own little fantasy world.

Thanks, so many of ATWT's lead actresses (West, Kay, Dolan, Stewart, and I think Bryne too) were out that year on materity leave overlapping each other and it felt like West's was the longest. Of course they always wrote horribly insulting or shaming exit stories for Carly, with her 2000, 2007, and 2009 leaves as examples. At least her '09 wasn't as bad as the '07 one. I don't know if her 2003 maternity leave counts or not since we were supposed to think Carly was dead having been murdered by Rosanna :wacko:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

Nick K left to take care of his disabled daughter---at least that was the official explanation.

I think there was a two-three year stretch where EVERYONE was having babies. West, Kay and Dolan all had babies in early 2000. I think KMH had had her first child at the end of '99 (when Em was kidnapped by David) and Byrne had been pregnant at the beginning of '98 (the first MB/JH Lilden wedding). West and KMH then got pregnant again and had their early '02 maternity leaves covered by the Spa From Hell story. Byrne got pregnant at the beginning of '02, and went on leave that summer, after the terrible Avanya story.

Carly was off longer than Kay and Dolan in '00---Molly was in a coma and I think Margo went to take care of Lyla---but part of that was due to the HW switch when HS arrived and to coincide with Craig's arrival.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.



×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy