JarrodMFiresofLove

I just finished watching the latest episodes. Myra Sofronski is a new scriptwriter under Marland for the episode that aired on the 27th of September 1976. Sofronski's only credit on the IMDb is for 'Another World' in 1982. Marland is the only credited writer for the 28th, so I assume that means he wrote his own dialogue for it. This was the one where Toni learned her mother had been in a car accident. So far we have these new scriptwriters: Nancy Franklin, Kathy Callaway, Robert Cessna and Myra Sofronski. Basically Marland came in with his own team, though Anne Howard Bailey is still around having scripted a recent episode. As for the actors, George L. Smith is now credited as Detective Cadman, not Detective Ernie Cadman like he had been in prior episodes. Keith Blanchard is merely credited as Erich, not Erich Aldrich. Has he ever been credited with the character's last name? The little girl who played Stephanie in a recent episode had a few lines but she is not listed in the credits. No idea who she might be. Why is Anna Stuart still credited as Toni Ferra, instead of Toni Powers? Sally Gracie is only ever credited as Martha, no last name included. David Michael Elliott is only credited as Billy, no last name.

I noticed Anne Howard Bailey's name appeared on the 22nd of September episode as scriptwriter. Wonder how long she continues under Marland. The 23rd of September is the first episode of another new scriptwriter, Robert Cessna. He is a former actor and playwright who had a long career. His wiki page can be found by typing "Bob Cessna."

The main problem I had with DePriest was that she wasn't into telling medical stories. Her focus was psychological stories. Even when she attempted a medical story, like Althea's brain injury, it ended up becoming more psychological. If this was a show set in a mental hospital, yes that would have been fine, but Hope Memorial is not a mental hospital. Endless scenes of Stacy in therapy, of Eleanor in therapy, of Steve undergoing counseling after Carolee vanished, it was extremely tedious in my opinion. None of what DePriest did seemed quick. The Dancy plot dragged from the end of '75 until mid-sumer '76 before Joanie was taken off life support. I watch a New Zealand soap and just this past week, a guy was threatened by some thugs, thrown over a balcony, was rushed to the E.R, was declared brain dead, and then his heart was given to his girlfriend who was in need of transplant. The surgery only lasted two scenes. And shortly afterward it was ten hours later and the girl woke up from surgery and learned her boyfriend had died and she now had his heart. All of that played out in three consecutive episodes. DePriest would have taken months, and the surgery itself would have been dragged out a whole week! Of course DePriest, Marland and their peers were a product of the times. And soaps in the 70s, all soaps, moved at a glacial pace. I don't mind the slowness of a plot if we get to learn more about the characters and relationships, as long as it's not repetitive or the writers are not transparently just stalling an outcome because they have nothing else lined up after the climax or major turning point. Another problem I had with DePriest is how she wrote Matt, which seemed incredibly out of character. The male menopause story was a bust. I also think she ruined Mike, though I agree with posters on another site that Assante is miscast and so some of the problems with Mike are because of the false acting just as much as the false writing. One thing I like about Marland's first episodes is that we have some interesting intercutting going on between Steve in Madison with a hospitalized Carolee who's miles away. I feel this is something the Pollocks would have done. Where we have these star-crossed lovers, and one is eventually going to find her way to the other. The emphasis seems like it is now back on romance, back on medicine and back on family connections. I am looking forward to how Marland writes Eleanor, as I think we will see great improvement with her. Where it becomes less psychological, less cerebral and more on Eleanor's physical needs. And I love Lew/Luke...and I'm a fan of the Penny/Jerry stuff. I really loved the scene where Jerry found out his brother's ideas about keeping lonely women company. Two brothers, so different, in the same family. It reminds me of the Reardans and the Snyders, Marland's later creations.

I was relieved to see Marland's name finally show up in the end credits. I wasn't too enamored with DePriest's writing, which I didn't dislike but didn't exactly connect with either. For people keeping track of such things, Marland's first episode credited as head writer was Monday the 20th of September 1976. It was the episode where Matt decided not to take a leave of absence but to resign. It felt like Marland had edited the week before. The other main woman on the hospital board was suddenly given a name. It's Beatrice Lansing, and as most Marland followers know, his mother's name was Beatrice and he used that name on all the soaps he wrote. So even though Mona started referring to that woman as Beatrice during those last episodes where DePriest was still credited, I am sure Marland edited those scripts. The dialogue writers who assisted DePreist seem to have been replaced by Marland's dialogue writers. One new writer now being credited with Marland is Nancy Franklin. Franklin's a former actress who previously played Barbara Ferra on The Doctors back in 1972. She also was a dialogue writer under Marland at Guiding Light in 1980 and 1981. Another dialogue writer being credited with Marland is Kathy Callaway. She previously wrote scripts at Another World, where Marland also wrote scripts under Harding Lemay.

I still get notifications and still read some of the threads. I stopped contributing in any significant way because I didn't feel my style meshed with others on this site, I didn't feel very welcome and I didn't like what seemed like a lot of negativity. I wanted to have more meaningful conversations with others on the site, and I value the community for how it keeps information about soaps "alive" and going forward. But I made the decision to pull away and not be actively involved. It wasn't an easy decision but I think it was the right decision. There would have been too many fights which I have now avoided. I enjoy using my posting time more productively in other areas. I will keep reading the threads when I feel compelled to visit this site. I especially love it when people talk about soap writers. Best regards.

No. What I am saying is I'm not here to bitch, bash and bellyache. Before this degenerates, I am just going to look for another site where I can talk about GL with others in more positive terms. I am not interested in reading mean words about producers, and writers, then follow-up comments where someone tries to excuse being mean by saying that's what a fan does. No, not for me. It feels like bad manners. I said I didn't care for Ellen Parker but I didn't really go into why I strongly dislike her acting. Like I could have been very, very cruel about her and said ugly things about her, because I dislike her so much, it would have been easy to do. But it wouldn't have been constructive. Instead I focused my comments on the way her character (Maureen) didn't resonate for me. I tried not to make it personal and not to use the website to spew venom. I feel I was successful in mostly sticking to the high road, not the low road. So it does distress me when I see comments where it appears others are using this great website to trash people when they could also exercise caution and try to focus on more positive aspects of the show. Anyway I don't want to go round and round about this. I had about 250 posts on this site and that's enough. I want to be done with this. Take care everyone.

You're right, it probably won't. I am here to talk positively about soaps I love. So I guess it's unfortunate. I did like the history related to soaps I find on this site. But I don't like the negativity, it's a deal breaker for me. Regards.

I'm not pretending anything. But I don't consider it a constructive conversation when Person X says "I liked this story" and then three people immediately jump on and say "oh god that was awful, the show was in decline, that producer and those head writers deserved to be fired." Even in things I don't like, such as the Carruthers mystery, I try to point to some value in it. Otherwise I'm just here to bitch, when I'd rather be positive on what was good (to me) about the show. I can waste time being negative elsewhere. I'm not going to do that here. Anyway your posts are starting to annoy me because I can see we approach an appreciation of the show differently so I'm going to have to refrain from directly posting with you unless by some miracle we can find a positive common ground on something we both like about that show. Regards.

Maybe on this site. But people talked about it on SoapNet's message boards. Reva's fantastic adventures were legendary and many people do not forget them. Also it's easy to recall details from these episodes, and I haven't seen them since they were first broadcast...probably because they were so outlandish/memorable. But if the goal here is to trash producers and trash head writers instead of celebrate a show, then I should stop and let you get to it.

You're not factoring in entertainment value. A woman gaining weight on camera and questioning her attractiveness might not seem as fantastic or entertaining as the same woman stepping through a painting. Plus all producers and head writers feel the need to do stories that make people talk. We're still talking about the clone and the paintings all these years later. Personally the story I disliked most was the Maryanne Carruthers mystery. It felt like a replay of the Susan Piper tale from the mid-80s (with the same actress Carrie Nye which also gave it a "we've been here done that before" feel). But despite Weston's dreadful writing, the story was still watchable thanks to Zimmer. Psychic Reva was completely absurd. And her conveniently losing her psychic abilities when Carruthers was brought down and the plot ended, was just as far-fetched. But Zimmer gave a great performance in that big climactic episode where Reva has those visions of how Maryanne's niece Carolyn died. I honestly thought Zimmer was having a nervous breakdown on camera, she went all the way in that episode. She totally took Reva to the brink. It was riveting. I don't know how she did it. She had to have been emotionally and mentally drained when it was over and the director yelled "cut." So even in a hokey storyline that stretched the limits of credibility we'd still get these great on-camera moments. Is this episode on YouTube? I'd love to see that scene where psychic Reva has her huge breakthrough again, just to check whether it was as good as I remember.

I don't see the value in bashing Rauch. Some of us liked him. But we can disagree about that and get along. We don't need to go off on a tangent and say Holly could have gone through paintings or Vanessa could have been cloned. We're talking about Reva and her high-concept storylines and how they were tailored for her. Primarily because it generated a lot of publicity to put Kim Zimmer front and center in something sensational and possibly controversial. If they had done another clone story later, probably people would be saying how great Reva's clone story was compared to the ripoff that came later. In fact I don't think a show like GL should ever back away from trying something different. I think part of it was Reva felt played out and they wanted to do a Nu Reva, but instead of a twin or impostor, they decided to be a bit creative about it. Did it succeed? Not entirely but at least they tried and stretched the limits of the genre. Now I do like your idea about Michelle marrying Bill. I do think that should have happened, sort of as a rebound from Danny, or in between one of Michelle's many marriages to Danny. In fact the whole thing about Michelle and Danny marrying all the time is the main gripe I have with the show from 2000 to 2007 (before the new production model becomes my main gripe). It felt too repetitive that they'd always split up, divorce, then reconcile and remarry. I think when Kreizman and Wheeler wrote them out in late 2005 they were on their fifth marriage, to each other! "Jeva" only married each other three times I think. And yet the much younger "Manny" were already on marriage #5. What's even more unrealistic is that if they had this terrible habit of divorce and remarriage, then logically, they should have had two more divorces and two more remarriages and been on marriage #7 when they reappeared in the summer of 2009. The show acted like while they were off-camera nothing happened to them, and the "Manny" we all knew and loved had constant drama wherever they went.

I think a story about a fairy tale kingdom works best if it's an exit story. Like if the plan was for someone like Cassie, after years of heartbreak, to finally get her happy ever after fairy tale ending. It could have slowly built to the engagement, a broken engagement, then a reconciliation then finally a marriage to Richard. And then we could have known she had this new life with her new husband on that island, phasing it out and writing her off the show. Of course she still could have been mentioned, and people still could have been shown going to visit her (off camera). But the way the writers after Esensten & Harmon-Brown did it, they kept the island a major setting on the show, but then had Richard lose his throne which was silly. It was entirely unbelievable that he and Cassie would spend their married life on her farm in Springfield U.S.A. The character of Richard really suffered after he lost his power. I think that's why they ultimately killed him off because they had written themselves into a corner. And the only way to go forward was to free Cassie from this marriage, by death, and make it so Cassie would always stay in Springfield. But if this had originally been Cassie's exit story then the whole fairy tale ending could have been preserved off-camera. Another way out of this mess, which Lucky Gold tried, was to have San Christobel devastated by a natural disaster (he chose an earthquake). And that worked, but then why rebuild the island after that? The story was basically over at that point. Why did they still need to include Alonso and Will? It should have had a better resolution. Either with Cassie and Richard exiting the show and living in their off-screen paradise. Or with San Christobel decimated forever by a disaster and everyone rebuilding their lives back in Springfield. In that case, Richard could easily have died in the earthquake and that could have been how Cassie's fairy tale marriage ended and she went back to her former life of raising her kids on her farm again. What ended up happening was Esensten & Harmon-Brown introduced everything then Labine and Gold continued things but had nowhere to go with it, so it just never really had the kind of resolution it should have had. They dragged it out then ended up killing off Richard in a Cedars hospital room, then turned it into a drama about the two sisters (since Reva had pulled the plug on Cassie's husband). If I recall correctly San Christobel might have still been mentioned, especially during the stuff with Edmond and Will at Cassie's farm, but the island was never shown again on camera.

I think your ideas about Carmen are good. She should have been trying to gain social acceptance and doing that through Michelle and Michelle's family. Her relationship with Michelle was always volatile, but her needing Michelle in that way, would have made things more tense and interesting. I always kind of saw Carmen as a dark/gothic version of Vanessa. That's why I loved the story with Ben Warren's death so much because it was a story that connected them. There was one episode where Carmen tried to tell Vanessa they were both alike, since they were both covering up their having visited Ben the night he was killed...and Vanessa said "I'm different from you." Instead of "I'm different than you." So that told me they were different but the same. Esensten & Harmon-Brown were good at putting double meanings into the dialogue.

This is what I meant when I said loyal fans would stick with the show no matter what. Reva was expected to have high concept dramas. Just like we knew Ed would always perform surgery and Alan would always be scheming about the next business deal at Spaulding, Reva would always have some bigger than life drama. It became more pronounced after her return in 1995 under McTavish. We had Amish Reva, then clone Reva, then time traveler Reva, then mercy killer Reva, then psychic Reva, then menopause Reva, then cancer patient Reva, then miracle pregnancy Reva. A lot of her stories were things ripped from the headlines and then dramatized in grandiose fashion. We came to expect that with her. Zimmer managed to pull it off, mostly...any other actress, and all that would have been laughable.

I was a fan who stuck with the show from the 70s all the way through to the end. I think long-time fans, and I am only speaking for myself and people I know who watched the show, continued to be loyal because of the main families. Yes the Bauers had changed, the Reardans had changed, the Spauldings had changed, the Lewises had changed-- but they were still represented on screen till the final episode and most of the actors, bar a few exceptions, were quite good. I really loved the Esensten-Harmon Brown era (from 97 to 00) and I remember watching videotaped episodes when I got home from work. Then on Saturday I'd have an afternoon marathon and re-watch all 5 episodes back to back. So during that period and into the Labine and Gold eras, I watched each episode twice. Sometimes if I loved a scene I'd rewind it and watch it three or four times. There was one episode where Alan and Buzz had a brawl inside Company, with Frank pulling them off each other. I just thought the writing and acting was so great I saved that episode for a long time. I also loved Vanessa shooting at Ross' brother Ben then lapsing into a coma. And how Carmen and her daughter Pilar were involved. Another highlight was Richard & Cassie's elaborate wedding. These were memorable storylines in my opinion and must-see episodes for me. I didn't compare it to what I loved about GL in the 70s, 80s or early 90s. I guess because I knew the show could not be expected to stay the same. I did have problems with the Conboy-Weston era. I thought Weston misunderstood most of the characters. It surprised me when I found out she'd once been an actress on the show, in the 60s I think-- but she really didn't seem to get what the show was about or how it should be written. Then there was the Wheeler-Kreizman era, which I didn't mind at first since it seemed a step up from Conboy & Weston (or WesCon as the SoapNet message board posters used to call them). But when Wheeler switched to the new production model in early 2007 it was a real struggle to stay with it. I think I managed to keep watching, again out of loyalty-- and also because I knew the show wasn't going to last and I wanted to witness its last days. From 1978 to 2009 I devoted over 30 years of my life to one show. That's an incredible thing when you think about it. Once when I was 11 (this would have been the summer of 1983), my family was vacationing in Florida. I remember at ten minutes before 2 p.m. I jumped out of the pool and told my grandmother "I need to go back to the room. My favorite show is coming on in ten minutes." She asked me which show, and I said Guiding Light. She'd listened to it back in the early 40s on radio when my grandfather was away in WWII. She said "is that show still on the air?" And I said yes. After my grandmother died I would think of her when I still watched GL. To me the light was never a character, it was the town. Springfield was the place where people found the light. But I didn't over-read the symbolism of it, especially when one of the main sets was called The Beacon. It was more a philosophy and though the show went through different regimes like all soaps do, there was still a consistent tone to it, even when they tried more outlandish plots. I tuned in just like my grandmother had done decades earlier because it gave us something no other show ever gave us.

Thanks for letting us know!

I try not to disparage Marj too much..she's a long-time vet of TV shows, quite numerous to list. Sometimes she's fabulous and other times her acting choices seem all wrong. I've watched episodes of Capitol on YouTube and she is wonderful in those. But maybe it's because she was balanced out by a strong, tough presence like Richard Egan who played her husband on that series.

I loved all the Santos stuff, as well as Richard & Cassie's courtship and wedding. At first I wasn't a fan of Selena and Drew, but I even grew to like them. Early Olivia and Edmond were well written. Both characters changed significantly over the next decade. One thing I really loved was how Esensten wrote Marah, where it was like Reva being confronted with her own past repeated by her daughter.

I think you can stop using the word assertion. It's clear you don't respect a differing opinion. A message board is not meant to be a place where everyone sees things the same way. And this is not a thread created to necessarily appreciate certain performers or characters. This one didn't work for me and I was glad she didn't last. We can share different opinions on this and we can also stop a discussion where you seem to be cross-examining a person whose opinion you don't like. I won't be replying directly to you anymore. Take care. Thanks. I love the Esensten-Harmon Brown years. This was all must-see for me.

I like this post. I don't think Lillian was ever considered as a replacement. The character actually had more connection to the Spauldings because of Beth than to the Bauers. She and Ed were coworkers who crossed the line. Lillian had enjoyed Mike's company several years earlier. But she was never going to become a Bauer wife. We don't know if JFP didn't design the Ed-Lillian affair with Maureen's demise in mind. Where else could the plot have gone? Even if Maureen had lived, chances are she and Ed would have reconciled until the next crisis drove them apart. And Ed would have gone back to being platonic with Lillian.

I appreciate how others might have been fans of Ellen Parker and who/what Maureen had become at the end of her run. The character was finite and not meant to last to the end of the series the way other legacy characters would. She did reappear as a ghost in the late 90s, visiting Michelle. But her death was never undone the way some soap deaths are undone.

Well at any rate, it was one character I wanted gone and was glad Phelps had the guts to swing the axe. I'm sure Phelps used the focus groups to justify it, and it wouldn't surprise me if it was probably something she wanted to do when she first arrived and waited for the right moment to do it. Phelps actually used the viewers (the ones in the focus group) to help her fire this actress which I thought was very clever. So she was carrying out what the viewers supposedly wanted. The character had been quite dull and repetitive for the last year or two she was on the air. She was definitely not up in the ranks of the Revas, Rogers, Harleys, Vanessas, Hollys and Nadines. She was basically a supporting character that was assigned "B" and sometimes "C" plots. Ed's affair with Lillian was a B+ plot that was more Lillian's story than it was Maureen's story, until the end when it was used as the excuse to kill Maureen off. As for Maureen being the show's light, she wasn't on the canvas long enough to be that. Plus there were other lights. The real problem with assigning Maureen the status of a "light" is that she was designed not to be this. If you look at the history of the Bauers, all the Bauer men had multiple failed marriages. This includes Mike, Ed and Rick. It started with Bill's failed marriage to Bert. That was the pattern for this family. None of them ever kept their wives. So any woman Ed married could not be a light, his light, or his family's light, because the very parameters of the drama meant she had to leave at some point, either by divorce or death. The only way Maureen could have had any real longevity, regardless of who played her, would have been if the Bauers had been totally phased out and Ed had been assimilated into the Reardons with Maureen taking over her mother Bea's role. Maureen was not meant to take over Bert's role. Bert was irreplaceable.

Or it could have been Parker over-inflating her importance on the show. When she won the Emmy she said she was still alive, or that she was still there, something to that effect, like she was hoping she could be brought back from the dead. She really had a hard time letting go of the character. I think viewers were affected by her last episode because the actress was having a hard time letting go and dealing with the fact she'd been fired, and she put that into her last performance. So in a way the viewers were mourning the actress' loss of job instead of the character. I do agree that Pam Long wrote the character in an interesting way, as she did most of the leading women in the 80s. But Maureen was a Doug Marland creation and she was meant to be spunky and full of life the way the Reardons were. She was not meant to ever become a stay-at-home mom raising someone else's child. The reason Dolan succeeded on ATWT was because she made Margo a cop first, above being a woman who sought domestic harmony. She excelled at playing career-driven women, and that's how Maureen was in those early years. Parker threw most of that out and turned Maureen into something she was not designed to be.

I'm not a fan of Ellen Parker's, and I agree Ellen Dolan was much more spirited in the role. I also think fans overrate the Parker version, which is quite matronly, because they probably saw her as the heir apparent to Bert as the lead matriach of the Bauer clan. But as we know, she was originally a Reardon and not even Marland, who had created her, saw her as a mini-Bert. I know some people don't like her but I am actually a fan of Jill Phelps. I love how she would make key decisions she felt had to be made without letting the fans dictate how to do her job. I was glad she axed Parker and I agree with the decision to kill Maureen off. The character had become incredibly boring and ironically did not get interesting until those last two or three months leading to her exit. Parker was over the top in some of her final episodes and I was surprised her yelling in the episode where Mo rails at Lillian actually won her an Emmy. As we know Phelps would move Ed into a relationship with Eve Guthrie (Hilary Edson) and since she was a bit younger, it was a different sort of coupling. As for whether or not Maureen was needed when Michelle married into the Santos clan, we have to remember Esensten & Harmon Brown brought Claire Ramsey back during that period. And I think having feisty Claire and Carmen as the two strong-willed mothers-in-law was just perfect. Maureen was not needed. Besides, they had Meta (Mary Stuart) in there dispensing advice which is what Bert or Maureen would have done.

Thanks. I remember the episode where Dixie was swimming and found the body. The show was very good and must-see during that time.