titan1978

Did Melissa have a sibling, and Bobbie was fostering both of them? I had completely forgotten Melissa until these comments.

One of my soap what if’s- Sunset Beach doesn’t get picked up, so Guza never leaves, and we see how those first stories he plotted with Karen Harris end up. Lesley’s return, Nikolas’ true paternity, how far Luke would have gone with his vendetta against the Cassadines, Bobbie and Stefan, the Cassadines hostile takeover of the hospital…so many threads that were intriguing and had a lot of promise that just didn’t go far enough under Culliton.

I read an interview with her once, where the men working on Secret Storm didn’t think two women could work in production because they wouldn’t be able to tell them apart on the headsets. Ridiculous. I think she even said something to that effect- but we can tell all of you apart so…

Did Shelly Curtis also direct episodes while at GH? Because Francesca James did, and they overlapped during the Labine/Riche era. Marlena Laird was there in the last half for Monty’s tenure, and Monty was very hands on and considered an excellent director.

It’s hard to judge, because they had such a wonderful run at first, then it turned into a hybrid of Rauch’s late 1980’s OLTL and the kind of outlandish and triangle based stories Reilly was doing (much better) at DAYS.

She really starts to soften in scenes I have seen after Roy’s death, and she and Laura have a kind of truce once Luke & Laura are fully together (although Bobbie still gets annoyed by Laura many times over the years.) Somebody else might have more specific info. I know she moves on from wanting Scotty and that takes some of the edge out of her. What I loved about Bobbie as a character is that she could always be bitchy, all the way to Labine’s era. Her insecurities were still there. But she also recognized that behavior and worked hard to not let those insecurities get the best of her. And even back then, she wanted Scotty and to do that had to face off with Laura. But she wasn’t just a vixen. She wasn’t just a bitch. She had layers, and even back then her schemes were not as awful as someone like Heather or even as outright villainous as Tracy was in her original run. She even often had scenes where she recognized Laura was very troubled. Laura was layered too! Which brings me to one of my most hated things about Luke & Laura- just because they called each other Angel and Hero doesn’t mean they were angelic or heroic by nature- she was his Angel, he was her hero. Trying to force them to be that for their entire character personalities really kind of ruined them both at times.

Totally agree. Lois was a character Guza just did not get on a fundamental level. I think he struggled with Lucy and Felicia as well.

One thing Marland did not do well was sexy. And Y&R, especially when Bell was there and the show was at its peak was very sexy. I don’t think Marland would have been as successful with the heightened melodrama and style of Y&R. I’m talking 1980’s- Alden’s first couple of years.

I would have loved to see what Curlee would have done with GH- even though GH was not traditionally a family based show like GL, it always had a community feeling until Guza got there for his second round and started breaking the characters up. During Labine, Luke & Laura had connections to the entire canvas, and you had Luke’s as a kind of hub everyone went to. Monty’s GH had those friendships and umbrella storylines that often touched all parts of the show at one point or another. Kay Alden on AMC would have been fun to see too. I think a pre-possession James Reilly would have been interesting as HW on GH- I know he spent some time there on various writing teams in the past. I think his plot oriented writing would work well on that show. Or at the height of the action era of GH, what would someone like Henry Slesar have done to make those stories more thrilling, more dangerous. He would have loved writing a character like Anna Devane.

Gail’s voice- I just always loved her.

I also loved Skye and RC on GH. The memories in this thread! I forgot all about Brenda’s money issues, and then that clip really brought it all back.

That Brenda return had its issues- she agreed to come back if they paired her with Sonny again. Guza tried to use her for his latest prop, which at that time was Dante. She actively fought against having any kind of reciprocated feelings or past relationship with Dante, which I personally agreed with. Brenda sleeping with Sonny’s kid was just a bad idea, let alone if he had been the father of her child. Plus they gave her a kid that wasn’t tied to Sonny or Jax. Just poorly planned and executed. The infamous cackle- she had been doing that in the last couple years of her original run too. She just did it too much on her last return. And she could have Tony Geary’s schedule and it would all work out- I believe Tony worked 6 or 7 months a year, and had the rest of the time off. They pre-taped sometimes, and other times he just wasn’t focused in story for a month or so. He even stopped asking for raises and just asked to keep his time off. If the show is in good shape and balanced this is completely possible and I would love to see her again.

I hate this mindset. We absolutely should have had Lucky or Brenda or both back instead of 4 characters for Easton and 3 for Howarth, not to even mention two Ninas. I feel the same way about Lulu. At this point I would even love different OLTL actors being cast, because what has happened with Easton and Howarth is beyond rediculous. Petty or spoiled? Absolutely. But never stupid. I miss Brenda.

It was wrapped up in that period of time when Guza was there but not in the credits yet. Luke telling Alexis all about her mother and Helena was also part of this transition as well. It was all these little pieces that were just put into place that were clearly Guza’s style, leading to his official first episode when Luke’s first line was something like everything around here is going to be different, Nikolas was shot, Carly told Tony Jason was her baby’s father and Brenda had a laughable breakdown at a photo shoot. Except for Brenda, it was a pretty excellent week as I recall.

Yeah, after the total focus on Stone, and then kind of meandering for a bit after he died, Labine’s team really set things up with nothing but potential. They created Carly, Bobbie having memories of her abandoned baby, Jason’s accident and personality changes, and created Jax. Guza inherited a really strong show. Yeah that was me- I do think we could have gotten a Luke that was pretty true to what Geary wanted but with the darker complications he wanted and she did so well with Roger, without going as far as Guza did. I agree also that we would have had an infinitely stronger story for Carly and Bobbie.

I really wish if they wanted to bring on this character that they had given the role to anyone else. Because now I no longer see Todd, or Franco, I just see Roger Howarth playing another character, with diminishing returns. I can’t believe how stupid this is.

I can’t count the number of soap recasts leaning towards a sexier version over the years. When it ends up working, it’s great. But I can only think of a few that truly worked for me. They did it all the time. It’s like the first time around for some characters they look for charisma and talent, and then when they leave they look for pretty first, and sometimes get lucky with talent. Especially when they were younger characters being recast. GH was almost all misery all the time by the time JJ returned. Any sense of balance had pretty much gone away, and it was bleak even for Guza.

I also would call it more like trying too hard instead of phoning it in. He just got more and more over the top when it was a big scene. The funny thing is that he got quite hammy when Genie left in the early 1980’s too. She does have a tendency to make him ground Luke. I thought he hammed it up quite a bit with Jane.

I know Geary did not like Riche, but I rarely recall thinking he was hamming it up when she was there. Once JFP gets there his performances often just got bigger, especially as the writing was doing him few favors.

Yep. And truthfully, I don’t blame her. I absolutely hated the renovation and colors done by Riche before PC launched. That version of the nurses station always just looked like a giant empty room to me, and the colors were too dark. I get they wanted to make it easier to film, which is why the iconic rounded column was removed, and IIRC the nurses station was built on hydraulics so they could move it around the set to look like other floors, etc by where it was placed and changing the magnetic elevator numbers. I didn’t love Jill’s green tiles all that much either when she slowly got to revamp the sets. But her big renovation that Valentini has tweaked since he got there is a pretty great set. Correct on all points as I recall, the hospital blowing up was the big finale. Angel. What a terrible character. And Jacob was awful as Lucky back then. And not just because Jonathan Jackson had been so good- he was just awful. Loved him on AMC though. Yes, there was money involved he was trying to get his hands on for Nikolas. And the ridiculous mock trial held by Luke. There were some real clunkers during the Guza/Pratt era of the show.

Truthfully, I don’t see him with either Gia either. And reading about Lydia, it’s another period of the show I have mostly blocked from my memory. I had completely forgotten most of the mess that ended Stefan’s time on the show.

Oh miles worse. Because that was only Felicia centric. This was the culmination of years of story, and involved Luke, Laura, Bobbie, Scotty, Roy, Nikolas, Gia, Lucky, Helena, Alexis, Stefan, Stavros, a secret lab under GH, the Ice Princess, and for some reason Jax was there. And it was awful on so many levels, with laughable production and incredibly awful background music, especially during the fight scenes. And the level of bad is written across almost all the key actor’s faces, especially Tony and Genie. This is just the ending of the story, which originally involved blowing up the hospital so JFP could redo the sets, except that real world events caused them to make several changes. Tony and his writing partner had developed a story document called Endgame with the Cassadines, and ABC bought it and ABC, McTavish and JFP changed it so much he started telling everyone in interviews that this wasn’t his story and it was awful.

All Britt has to do now is sleep with Sonny, then she, Carly, and Brenda can all share the same storylines. Which is not an orbit I would ever have imagined her in the last time she was on the show. I am enjoying her and Jason together. But Jax? Puke.

Courtney always screamed Chuck Pratt and Frons to me, not as much Guza.

I just rewatched the final part of Endgame thanks to a YouTube recommendation. Haven’t seen it since it aired. That was awful in almost every way. I had kind of blacked out just how bad it was. I would love to know what Tony Geary’s actual story idea was that they bought and turned into this. I know he wanted to end the Cassadines, so it was probably more ambitious than the mess we got. Even the background music was over the top and ridiculous. So much promise was held by these characters initially.