BetterForgotten

Well, apparently it wasn’t unusual for JER to tell his breakdown writers to “make things up as long as you stretch one day worth of material out for weeks.” That would often be the only direction he gave those breakdown writers from what I’ve heard. Still that writing team was very loyal to him, so I guess he treated them well overall.

His notorious contracts with NBC and DAYS must have helped soften the blow. His estate must still be getting paid rather handsomely, lol

Most likely Jim Reilly was making this sh!t up as he went along and just gave up somewhere along the way when he realized it was never going to taken as more than a joke, and all NBC cared about was that 12-17 demo (which ultimately wasn't enough by the time they cancelled the show).

Madonna Achieves Ninth No. 1 Album on Billboard 200 Chart With 'Madame X' Madonna continues to have the second-most No. 1 albums among female artists, trailing only Barbra Streisand, who has 11. Among all acts, The Beatles have the most No. 1s, with 19. They are followed by Jay-Z (14), Streisand and Bruce Springsteen (both with 11), Elvis Presley (10), Eminem, Garth Brooks, Madonna and The Rolling Stones (all with nine). Madonna is a frequent visitor to the top 10 of the Billboard 200, having notched at least four top 10 albums in each of the last four decades (‘80s, ‘90s, ‘00s and ‘10s). Madame X marks her 22nd top 10, and fourth of the ‘10s. Earlier in the decade, she reached the region with her last studio effort, Rebel Heart (No. 2 in 2015), MDNA (No. 1, 2012) and the live album Sticky & Sweet Tour (No. 10, 2010). Madonna’s first top 10 came nearly 35 years ago, when her self-titled debut album climbed 12-10 on the Oct. 6, 1984-dated chart. It eventually peaked at No. 8 two weeks later (Oct. 20). The diva would place five top 10s in the ‘80s, seven in the ‘90s, six in the ‘00s and now four in the ‘10s.

This is a great article from Vice: The Guide to Getting Into Madonna, Holy Mother of Modern Pop

He seems to be a big fan of ‘This Is Us’ based on his Twitter. That’s probably the type of series he’d love to write (Nancy Curlee, too, for that matter).

How sad that Jamey fuckin’ Giddens has a series with OWN and some of our actual greats have never been offered anything outside of the current daytime factory?

On B&B, you can always tell what episodes are written by him and Michele Val Jean because everyone else is not up to par...

Not only this show, but GL and GH too.

Bernau and McKinsey were irreplaceable. Can anyone imagine those scenes with Raines and Dusay? Talk about a hot blubbering mess.

I haven’t listened to the album in full yet, but the reviews are very strong so far. Probably her best reviews since Confessions on a Dancefloor (2005).

All I remembered was how much I missed Heather Rattray during that time when I saw that...

MAB forced Jess Walton off the show and quietly let her contract expire. It was JFP who convinced Jess to come back (if only on a recurring capacity). MAB stupidly thought she could use Genie Francis to phase out BOTH Jess Walton and Melody Thomas Scott and it backfired. Jess talks about her love for JFP here, and yeah, she was not a MAB supporter, lol.

Man, Patrick Mulcahey does not hide his dislike for Jackie Smith and John Conboy, lol.

Natalie was way better actress than Susan Lucci's daughter... Travis is better on some of the primetime stuff I've seen him in, but no one watched Passions for the acting anyway.

Marlenphan - breathe in, breathe out.

There was an interview with JER posted by Paul Raven a few years back where he talked about learning a lot from working with people like Gloria Monty, Pat Falken Smith, Bill Bell, and Jill Farren Phelps.

I gave up after a month, but did check in occasionally. I appreciated it for what it was, but I never felt this was actually what JER had in mind when he created it and when it launched in 1999. I always felt he could never get what he wanted off the ground and gave up after a certain point when he realized it was a losing situation. That's when they started to sell the show as a "parody of soaps" something that it was never promoted as when it debuted. As I mentioned, I do think the premise of the show can work in more creative hands.

NBC owns the show, unless they want to license it to someone else (which they did with DirectTV), there will not be a revival. I don't know if they care much about the show to offer it via streaming. Though, it would actually be interesting if they rebooted it with a brand new cast, a writer who specialized in gothic storytelling, and a stronger and more creative producer who could bring that to life. There was nothing wrong with premise of the show - it was the execution that left a lot of be desired.

Sure

Marlenaphan posted here years ago under RionPassions and had the same JER obsession. It's nice to see some things haven't changed...

It’s not Lisa’s fault the show ended up the way it was. She’s actually quite well-liked in the industry. She was merely stuck on a show where she had absolutely no creative control and was simply an executor of JER’s supposed ‘vision.’ But, hey, she got paid very well for 8 years, so it worked in her favor.

Somewhere along the way the narrative NBC and JER were portraying for this show changed. It was never initially sold as a “parody of soaps.” The supernatural element was talked about, so we knew it wasn’t a traditional soap but we were lead to believe it would be more in the vein of a Dark Shadows mixed with JER’s DOOL. After a while, JER just gave up on that when he realized that was NEVER going to be the case and people were laughing unintentionally at his creation. That whole “parody” element was then the selling point long after the show launched. Say what you want about him and for all his own issues, Tom Lagan strangely knew how to interpret Reilly’s DOOL material. At his own creation, JER didn’t have someone like that who could check his material and somewhat execute it in a believable way. He had all the power and Lisa de Cazotte was his workerbee producer.

Passion was a poorly plotted mess, stretching things out for the sake of of doing it with absolutely no long-term goal (this was very evident past the first two years or so).

Passions was never as tightly run of a ship on JER's end as some would want to believe. There have been numerous stories of JER giving his breakdown writers only enough information for one episode, with the direction to "stretch it out for a week or more" and nothing else. With that kind of lazy management, is it any wonder why this show was the way it was? There were talented people on that writing team (many of whom wrote for JER/Curlee/Demorest on GL's early 90's team), but they were given piss poor direction, and JER clearly had no idea what he wanted to do with his own creation after a while.