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Emma1420

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Posts posted by Emma1420

  1. On 5/6/2019 at 5:03 PM, Vee said:

    The EPs at the ABC soaps were little more than a glorified go-between for Brian Frons and the HWs during FV and RC's run at OLTL. At GH, with Frons gone, FV still facilitated for Ron owing to their long run together, but his preferences for big hires, etc. became more and more apparent. With Ron gone FV is now basically ghostwriting the show - allegedly.

     

    I think the EP's probably had more power than we think they did on the ABC soaps.  Frons clearly had favorite actors, but then so did Angela Shaprio the previous head of ABC Daytime.  Afterall, she's the one that thought it was a fantastic idea to hire Linda Dano and have Rae infect AMC, OLTL, and GH.  

     

    I hated a lot of JFP's tenure on GH.   But, I think she was an EP,  like many, that is really only as good as the HW.   Which is probably why I enjoyed her run, for the most part, on GL.  Who shot Roger was one of the best storylines of the 90's.

     

    Although I do think Guza as HW with JFP was a particularly bad combination.   JFP has always skewed towards violence.  She had Eden violently raped on SB, she killed off Maureen on GL, she had Frankie murdered on AW, etc., but typically those things were considered so violent because they weren't the norm.  On GH, there were constant shootings, the panic room stuff, the killing off the Q's, a serial killer every twelve minutes.   There was so much violence during JFP & Guza's run that you became almost immune to it.

     

    In terms of GH now, and FV.  Well my biggest gripe about FV is he's more interested in hiring names rather than hiring actors to play characters.  That and I do tend to think that FV has storyline ideas, but is unable to execute them.  So the show is full of poorly written stories full of characters that half the audience barely knows.   However, I think that is pretty much like most EP's with their own agenda.

     

     

  2. Recasts I loved:

     

    Rick Hearst as Alan-Michael on GL.   

    Wendy Moniz as Dinah on GL.  

    Genie Francis as Laura on GH.

     

    With all three of them, they took established characters and took them into adulthood.   And they took characters that from my point of view were fine, if not a little bland to complex and interesting.

     

    Recasts I hated:

     

    Jacob Young as Lucky Spencer on GH...my eardrums took years to recover.  The fact he won an emmy for his work there is disturbing.

    Pretty much any recast on ATWT after about 2000.  Basically because every "recast" was really a new character with the old character's name and history.  Hunt Block wasn't playing Craig, he was playing some guy with the same name.  The same was true of Grayson McCouch's Dusty.  I'm not opposed to characters changing and/or evolving or devolving, but they should at least have the same core.  They shouldn't seem like a complete stranger.

     

     

    Most recasts fall more in the middle for me.  And I think for some recasts their success is largely dependent on if the writer of the show or the EP thinks they are worth writing for.  

     

     

  3. On 4/19/2019 at 4:41 PM, chrisml said:

    On a personal level, I have to say JFP because she alienated me from three soaps: GL, AW, and OLTL. JFP's love of violence towards women was disturbing on so many levels. Frankie's death in particular was like a gut punch and I still remember what I was doing the day it happened. UGH.

     

    I enjoyed some of Conboy's tenure and I liked the idea of his GL opening. I think the last time I watched GL on a regular basis was during the whole Tony/Danny/Michelle mainly because I lusted after both men and I adore triangles where either option is fine. Ellen Wheeler's tenure was just a turn off for me. I couldn't stand Tom Pelphrey and I also didn't care for Tognoni. I stopped watching GL and never went back so I only saw Tina Sloan's monologue and Beth Chamberlain's emmy reel (and she should have won).

     

    JFP had some issues.  The biggest issue with her is that she's overly focused on the men.  The women are expendable if they facilitated a story for the men.  So storylines are built around the men's point of view too often than not, unless there is a strong HW who is female friendly.   However, I'll always give her credit for hiring Michael Zaslow on OLTL after GL fired him.  

     

    However, I tend to think a lot of EP's see women as expendable.  Gloria Monty always valued characters (and the actors who played them) like Luke and Robert far more than Laura, Holly, or Anna.   And/or EP's see women as only one of two archetypes.  The angel or the bad girl.  Versus men who could be many shades of gray.  I think that has been an issue across the board with a lot of EP's and writers.

     

     

  4. 2 hours ago, Mitch said:

    Actually Rauch didn't want to do the Clone..it was a network exec's idea, I think that woman who became a writer and then wrote the dumb vampires on PC....Fishbaum or something.  The fairy tale prince stuff was MADD's idea, etc.  I think he had bad taste in lighting, clothes (pastel biz suits on EVERY woman) a love for the two women fighting over a man triangle..making Reva the Vicki of GL...but I think he knew what made GL tick and how to do a soap...he just wanted to get his money, get his ego stroked, and didn't care that much in fighting other people.

     

    As for the last days of GL..the writing improved slightly but come on, it wasnt that great. Again, GL could have worked with decent smaller sets with good lighting in addition to the Peakpack stuff. It was its chance to get back to the basics of having people having exaggerated family issues and talking about them, but yet, we still had that ugly assasin guy in love with Bonnie, secret agents and jewel thieves running around SF...Alex as unrepentant Evil Queen being jealous of stupid Marina???

     

    I agree with this.   

     

    Marina....ugh.   I will never get past the fact that the writers thought it was a good idea to have two of her former Uncles (one of which could have been her daddy and at the time wanted to be her father) romantically involved with her.   Which I'll also blame Ellen Wheeler for.

     

     

     

     

  5. 1 hour ago, John said:

    The last good EP GL had was Rauch. He could be an ass but he was good at his job. Ellen tried but had zero skill set

     

    I didn't care for Paul Rauch.  But, that is mostly because I didn't care for his vision of GL.   He was responsible for the clone storyline, the mob, the San Cristobel stuff.  But, I'll give him credit for at least having a vision and for creating storyline that at least some viewers liked.  And, for me the show was salvageable after his tenure.  Which is always a sign to me that the EP has a different vision than I do versus being a horrible EP.

     

    I think the biggest problem with GL is that it probably needed to go off the air about 2-3 years before it actually did.  At least shows like AW, AMC, etc., went off the air with some dignity.  What makes me sad about GL, in particular, is that when it went off the air it was a shadow of its former self.   And I have to say, I'm relieved that the Peapack era was a total disaster in the ratings, because at least there was little to no danger of any soap following in GL's footsteps.

     

     

  6. 16 hours ago, pdm1974 said:

    The last couple of years of GL...oh, man. Those who also watched...what did you think was the final nail in the coffin: the writing or the production values? Because at this point I think the production values were actually better than was DAYS has now!

     

    It was a combination of both of them.   The production values were terrible.  But, that alone wasn't enough to kill the show.  If the writing had been good and the acting had been solid then I think that the show could have overcome the horrible production.  

     

    But, the writing wasn't good.  And the last 5 years were particularly terrible.  The show seemed to be grasping at straws desperately trying to make things work.  And I don't think many of the younger more inexperienced actors on the show could cope with the lack of rehearsal and the bad writing.  So their performances were pretty terrible. 

     

    I tried to watch in 2005 and I simply couldn't.  Too many of the characters that I knew had been twisted into pretzels that they didn't make any sense.  And that was before the disaster that was the Peapack era.  When it didn't look like the actors had done their own make-up.

     

  7. 23 hours ago, j swift said:

    I would theorize that there are categories of worstness:

     

    Producers like Jill Ferren Phelps, Chuck Pratt, and Gary Tomlin have often been a poor fit for the shows that they produced because they want to change the tones of their shows.  General Hospital became a story about the impact of organized crime in a small northeastern port town, and One Life to Live became an annual singing/dancing extravaganza.  However, I would still be willing to watch an original story from any of those producers because they are obviously full of ideas that they want to tell in soap form.

     

    There are producers like Paul Ruach and John Conboy who have a distinct style of production regardless of story.  I don't think their lavish style fits with modern storytelling in HD.  I have not enjoyed the pace or plot of B&B since its premiere.  I would put Brad Bell and Ken Corday into this category because they seem benign, their signature on their shows is just that they keep trying to keep it going for their families.  

     

    However, then there are those that are just incompetent. Allan Potter and Joseph Stuart openly argued with actors, both had affairs with actresses, and both engaged in unfair hiring/firing practices that reduced diversity in their cast.  When Maureen Garrett complained about Holly forgiving Roger for raping her, GL producer Robert Calhoun was quoted as saying that the rape wasn't "entirely unprovoked."  I recognize the idolization of Irna Phillips as a founder of the genre, but killing a character because you don't like the play in which the actor is performing off-screen is not great producing.  In 1991 Bridget Dobson and Gloria Monty returned to GH and SB respectively after admitting that they never watched the show during their time off and completely scrapped the award-winning stories of prior regimes upon their arrival (both lost their leading actress without a plan b and were fired by the end of 92).  Al Rabin's inability to work with writers on DAYS in the post-supercouple-early-90s led to a mass cast exodus of over 15 characters between 1990-1991 and a drop in ratings.  Those guys have left receipts of how they were the worst.

     

    I agree with a lot of this.  I think a lot of EP's are just not a great fit for the show that they are producing.   Or at least their vision of the show simply doesn't mesh with mine as a viewer.   

     

    But, I do think that there are some EP's who are simply incompetent.  I think Ellen Wheeler fits in that category.   

     

     

     

     

  8. 40 minutes ago, dio said:

     

    OK, wow... this is a huge get. I think she'll actually be able to make the character "happen" in a way MS just could not. I wonder if we'll get a Carly/Nina rivalry, now? LOL 

     

    I agree.   She's a great actress, and to me she was always believable as both a romantic heroine and as someone off her rocker.   However, the writing is a mess on GH, and Nina is a mess of a character.  So it will be interesting to see if CW can overcome those huge issues.  Although I think if anyone can make that character work, CW is one of the few actresses that could.

  9. 11 minutes ago, Khan said:

     

    Agree.  The brief Rauch/Taggart/Culliton era at GL was nowhere near as good as its glory days, but it still felt like GL.  Conboy and his budget-busting ways simply killed the momentum and left the show vulnerable to the axe.

     

    I was not a fan of Rauch as EP of GL at all.   Primarily because of the whole clone and Holly kidnapping kids mess.  Well that and my two least favorite characters were Phillip and Harley and I felt like that area was completely dominated by the two of them.

     

    However, I do think that those were probably personal preference things for me, versus show killing moves.   The same way I thought Claire Labine's version of GH was horrible.

     

    Joseph Hardy is someone I had never heard of, but after looking him up, he makes complete sense.

     

     

     

     

     

     

  10. 12 minutes ago, KMan101 said:

     

    I can agree with all of this.

     

    It's hilarious to see the constant recycled producers and writers. Usually they left their other soap because it was a disaster, yet, here they are, getting the same jobs over and over and over again. But also, to be fair, many writers and former producers refuse to return or accept the job ... the lack of new talent behind the scenes has really hurt these shows.

     

    It's why I really enjoyed the OLTL and AMC reboots on Hulu. It felt familiar but also more modern and fresh. It was a good start. Just the wrong people leading the charge and lots of BTS politics (ABC wanted to see them fail and Prospect Park bit off far more than they could chew)

     

    Personally I'd love all the soaps to be half hours again ... but with just four, an hour for three of them is good. If we had all the other soaps still, I'd certainly advocate going to a half hour and doing a hard reboot on them.

     

    Peapack on GL was a disaster. I wanted to appreciate it because I like the looks of the UK soaps that use outdoor settings regularly. It just looks more 'real' ... but it was a bootleg version, lol. I can't even really give Wheeler credit for 'trying' this ... and I think it would have gone over better had GL moved online and they had a real producer, not a former actress who supposedly can now produce. Direct? Sure, she can direct all she wants ...

     

    It's a shame the Hulu reboots didn't work.   I agree that PP bit off more than they could chew.  I think if PP had picked one show, had a smaller cast, and had started more conservatively (say 2-3, 30 minute episodes a week) it might have worked.  Unfortunately, I don't know that any other production company will ever take a similar risk because of that experiment.   I actually wonder if the way to go isn't to try the audio format again.  Podcasts are so popular, that perhaps moving back to the "radio" format using that method might work.  The Archers is still crazy popular, and they've always been radio only.

     

    The Peapack stuff on GL was horrific.  I don't give Wheeler any credit at all.  It wasn't just that the show suddenly looked like it was being recorded on her iphone, it was also that so many other corners were being cut (the lack of rehearsal for the actors being the most blatant).  And I tried to watch the last week of that show, and I couldn't.  To me it wasn't even recognizable as GL.  

     

     

     

     

     

     

  11.  

    I didn't hate Chris Goutman during the first half of his tenure at ATWT.  To me he was like any other EP.  He brought on new characters, had his pets, and recast and redefine older characters.   However, I also like Sheffer's ATWT, or at least I liked a lot of the stories he created.  Although I could have done without the endless Cabot crap.  I think the last 4-5 years weren't that good, and I think the description of them being aimless and kind of soulless is pretty accurate.  However, I give him a lot of credit for not taking ATWT down the same road as GL with horrendous production values.  

     

    I didn't realize that Ellen Wheeler had been Chris Goutman's protege.  That explains a lot about her love affair with recasting, deSORASing, and completely gutting characters.  

     

    I can see the comparison to Valenti to Goutman.  The production values on GH have remained okay, but the show, with a few exceptions, seems pretty bland and soulless.   

     

    One of the problems I think that every soap has/had is that It's the same 10-15 EP's and HW's who have been writing and running these shows for the last 40 years, and I don't know that they grasped how the audience was changing.  I realize that Mal Young was a disaster on Y&R, but I at least give Y&R some credit for trying something new and not just hiring an EP from another show.   

  12. So I've been thinking for the soaps that were cancelled who the worst executive producers ended up being?

     

    For years, I blamed the demise of shows like OLTL and GL on JFP.  However, recently I've changed my mind.  She made some mistakes (killing Maureen, etc.), but I don't think she was the most destructive force on those shows.  For me the worst EP on any soap is and always has been Ellen Wheeler.   Ellen Wheeler destroyed any production values that GL ever had.  She took a struggling show and ground it into dust.

     

    So I was wondering what other EP's have I missed as being destructive and show destroying? 

     

     

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