chrisml

Sounds about right. I remember something dramatic would happen on Monday and then it wouldn't be talked about until Thursday of that week. Swajeski was not great at breaking the stories down for the week. Some critics (might even be in the article you're referencing) complaining about this very thing in relation to the Sam/Amanda/Evan storyline as the momentum in that was so bizarre.

I liked Cheryl Marie. She was quite charming and I enjoyed her romance with Scott until they saddled him with Dawn. I also liked Sally Spencer, but my word she got stuck with terrible writing as MJ. Hank Cheyne was such an untapped resource on AW. IT still annoys me that execs did not see his potential. I don't know if Harding Lemay could have saved the show as headwriter, but he could have worked as a story consultant. Swajeski had some wonderful ideas, but her follow through (especially her endings) was not always the best. Her pacing was often off as well. The destruction of Nicole really irked me as the Cass/Nicole was the main storyline for a while. I was invested in that. I even liked the Rex/Cass storyline and then it was all over and Nicole was shipped off. It's this kind of stuff that alienates viewers because the audience gets invested in a storyline or characters and then a new EP comes in, scraps it, and tells the audience that their time was not worth investing.

The Sin Stalker storyline was icky and creepy (not in a good way). I like murder storylines, but the reasons for the killings and Lisa's involvement was just sexist. @DRW50and I both agree about the Fax Newman stuff. Brutalizing Courteney and then murdering her shortly after is sick sick sick. Frankie's death has taken center stage but that storyline was just so misogynistic. Red Swan: I adore Cali Timmins. I also enjoyed Ken Jordan. The Red Swan just needed to be planned out better and have a better ending. I also don't think Paulina needed to be Mac's daughter but that's a discussion for another day. She could have been tied to the Cory family in a different way. Reginald/Mary: Another story I like in theory, but they wanted to make Reginald too much of a villain. Mary should have been his one weakness and Mary should have been in love with him so that there was an actual triangle. Also don't write off MJ and Cheryl as the story gets going.

Michael must have known JFP was heavily involved with the writing so I'm shocked he didn't bring that up while writing about GL being unwatchable. The woman acted as if the problems had nothing to do with any of her decisions. I am still amazed that Logan actively called for her to be fired. Did the soap press ever call for Rauch or Conboy to be fired from GL? Or had the soap press become glorified PR machines by that point? Did they call for MADD's removal after the ZAslow debacle as well?

Thank you @Paul Ravenfor the info on Douglas Anderson. I appreciate it. So interesting how JFP promoted him so much and then he disappeared shortly after. @j swiftI find it fascinating that GL went out of its way to be as cruel as possible to JFP after she left. One of the reasons I have posted a lot of Logan's columns/other news items at the time of JFP's tenure is I wanted to show what was being said about her tenure without others rewriting what was being said/felt.

I think if the Red Swan had gone somewhere emotional or important that it would have been redeemed, but it just fizzled out. I give them some grace, but they could have at least come up with a better long-term answer to the mystery. The Fax Newman murder storyline was one of the worst--not just for Frankie's death, but for how they brutalized Courtney in such a horrific way. It's rather sick. I would also put Mj as prostitute and the Sin Stalker as contender. Again, for the sexism and for destroying/killing off good characters.

What has always struck me is that this was commented on in the press. They didn't keep it an inside joke. As we've discussed, quite a few of us wouldn't have known just by looking at Marian that she was meant to look like JFP. I asked this before, but why did Douglas Anderson last such a short time as HW? JFP made such a huge deal about him in Michael Logan's column, but he doesn't seem to have lasted more than a few months.

Sometimes, you have to cut your losses when something is not working out. When you lose two thirds of a story, it's time to tell a different story. It was not that compelling a story anyway and it was already annoying viewers. Did viewers care about Eve? I don't remember viewers caring even though Edson got an Emmy nomination. Then JFP and the writers saddled Crampton with that ridiculous triangle with Lando where everyone knew how it would turn out so it was just killing time. I don't understand the need to have a controlling Alex wanting to be obsessed with Nick. What was the need to have that storyline?? I really don't understand so much of what happened on GL from 1993 onwards.

I would agree with this. I remember a lot of viewers were perplexed by her firing if they didn't read the gossip columns. Did a lot of people remember Laurie Heineman by the time Anna Holbrook came on? I've seen some soap articles that claim Holbrook originated the role of Sharlene. While Carmen Duncan was always my Iris, I was aware of McKinsey playing Iris even though I never saw her until recently.

I don't see why they bothered with the character of Mindy post-Simms because they never had any real plans for her. All that drama about casting, firing, casting, quitting, and for what? So much of JFP's tenure just seemed full of desperate moves that never panned out.

Thank you Contessa for the Emmy clips. It's amazing how much of a bust Crampton was as Mindy. I also wonder what convinced Peter Simon to submit the following year.

I still have no idea why Robert Tyler did not go on to a bigger career. He was so sexy and charismatic. He should have been snapped up by another soap.

When Eileen Fulton's Lisa was spun off into Our Private World

Speaking of false information, I came across a book that claimed the Matt/Donna relationship was a copy of the relationship in Northern Exposure. I don't remember much about that show, but this does not ring true in the slightest. From another book where the author is upset with P&G's hypocrisy:

It would be an interesting storyline, but I wouldn't trust Ron Carlivati to tell it. Which OLTL writer would be able to?

I never could make sense of the Capwell family history. IT seemed to change when it suited the writers. CC and Sophia's relationship also came and went depending on which new story was being told.

I tend not to even bother with the last season of MSW. I'm not even sure I've seen all of them because they are so poorly written and acted. It's as if they know they are ending and they just don't care any longer.

I did. Thank you so much for this. I had no idea this character even existed until two weeks ago

Thank you for providing more details. I also remember the writer commented on the color "red" being important to directorial choices in GL's submissions but I don't remember specifically what that referred to as I had not seen the episodes. It's so aggravating to me how it's impossible to find so much of soap opera news and history. I can request issues of TVGUIDE from my library, and I can find Soap Opera Digest occasionally, but it's so difficult to find anything from SOW or the other soap opera publications. Even when mainstream publications wrote about the soaps, you can barely find them because they're behind a paywall and you can't request them even through the library. It's maddening. I've been trying to find info on Margogate and it's been such a struggle.

I wish we knew or I could find the issue that talked about the submissions. This makes me think of OLTL. When OLTL did the gang rape storyline, the main participants of the story were nominated: Haskell, Howarth, Smith, and the writers won for their work. Yet OLTL was not nominated for best show. Getting back to ATWT at the time. It could be that voters simply chose to nominate ATWT for best show and had no idea about the Angel storyline because they didn't watch the show. That's also a possibility. Daytime emmy voters were not known for always nominating the best performances/shows of a given year because they simply did not watch the other shows.

The columnist who watched all submissions said GL had the best submission. He said the overall material on ATWT's reel was not as strong as GL's (but he praised Haining) but if ATWT won, it was because voters would be swayed by the topic of the storyline. The other writer pretty much said it was the rape/abuse storyline that voters chose for the win and he/she pretty much said that voters were just rubber stamping the storyline rather than watching it. I think there's some truth to voting for the subject matter because we see that in the Oscars with the documentary category where voters will select the winners based on the subject matter rather than the quality of the film. This year's winner did not even have a distributor and was hard to even locate for voters, but somehow won. Many pundits said it was because of the subject matter. In regards to ATWT v. GL, I think it's an understandable situation. If you're making a decision, you're going to feel bad if you don't put a rape/abuse storyline as number one in your rankings.