chrisml

Tidbits from (re)watching some of the Locher interviews and this is probably old hat for most of you: Maeve Kinkead obviously preferred Wendy Moniz as Dinah. While she was gracious about her, she did not seem to care for Gina Tognoni's Dinah. She made a comment that they changed the writing of Dinah to suit Tognoni. I wonder if Elizabeth Dennehy were fired because she didn't enjoy playing Blake. She couldn't think of one storyline she had fun with. She particularly disliked the masked Roger nonsense. She said she could not make sense of most of what she was given because it changed constantly but she tried her best to make it work. During the Zaslow tribute episode, Dennehy was the only one to call out Fiona Hutchison for being extremely annoying (not her fault but still..) with her tech issues which I appreciated. James Harmon Brown claims he wanted to tell the ALS story but was not allowed. Millee Taggart told him he should have just slipped the storyline in anyway. JHB says Rauch was in support of telling the ALS for Roger but then the women at the Zaslow tribute episode bristle at his name. They mention Rauch saying "we know how this storyline will end" comment which indicates he didn't support the storyline. Fiona Hutchison was first person to notice something was wrong with MZ. Watching the women (Simms, Dennehy, Garrett, Keifer) and his daughter watch his Emmy win was incredibly moving.

The Georgie/Caspian thing reminded me of making Eden's rapist her gynaecologist on Santa Barbara. The one who examined her after the rape. Who okayed that? A bunch of idiots. Same thing here. I think what happened is that they saw that the rape storyline got Sela Ward the emmy. Instead of focusing on Ward's talent, the producers and/or NBC focused on the sexual violence aspect and decided to use that for another character to get attention. I think it's as crass and as sexist as that. Having watched how they handled stories on QAF, it wouldn't surprise me if that was the producers' thinking. Speaking of molestation, I just looked into the last season and discovered what happens with Teddy's character. UGH. Of all actors.....

I think AW still worked up until Carmen Duncan got fired and that to me was really the beginning of the end. It signalled that the network and P&G did not want to save the show. Michael Logan consistently said in his columns that AW was the hidden gem of the soap world through 1993. He even chose AW as the best soap of 1992 despite GL being the P&G show to get all the attention. 1994 was when it started to fall off in quality. From what I've researched, 1994 was a terrible year for all of the P&G soaps.

I would also say in relation to John and Georgie that it's just icky to tell a molestation story and then lead into the Caspian story. What kind of message does that send? Yeesh. Inevitably, viewers are going to focus on Georgie's obsession with Caspian and the destruction of her marriage, so the viewers are going to be angry with her and forget about the molestation/Caspian's actions. The only thing I can think of is that perhaps they were trying to give Kalember an award worthy story a la Ward and it backfired spectacularly. The flashbacks were always hit or miss for me. I just want to know what went so wrong with the penultimate season. From what I remember, it felt like the quality of the fifth season dropped immensely. Is my memory so wrong? Was the fourth season not as good as I remember?

I thought Tina Sloan was underapprciated. She got the criticism for the affair, but she did excellent work during her cancer storyline but it was overlooked because of what happened with Maureen. I wish she had more to do overall. She had so much more to offer. I didn't see Judi Evans as Beth, so for me Beth Chamberlain is Beth. I've seen a few scenes with Judi Evans as Beth and it's usually when she's around Michael Wilding's Jackson. The scenes don't do either actor much credit.

Thanks @Khanfor the information. I wish my memory of the show were stronger post. I just remember feeling that the quality of the show dropped so significantly the season after Ward won her Emmy. It was so bizarre how a show could become unwatchable (at least for me). I'm the kind of viewer who rarely sticks around when I feel there's a point where you have made a decision that I can not accept and that fifth season started off badly and I was out. Why mess with a formula that obviously works? That Caspian story was gross on so many levels. It's ridiculous that nearly ever soap thread is full of discussions about female characters being assaulted, victimized, abused, and/or stalked, etc. Depressing.

Ah ok. Thanks for the explanation. I stopped watching with the whole sleeping with the skeezy therapist storyline. Hated that season. Not even sure I finished. I just remember John Wesley Shipp as a boxer (think it was that season but I might be confused).

I'm so shocked by Rebecca Staab and Lisby Larsen mentions because I've seen them in other things and they were wonderful. I've been so impressed by Larsen in the Texas clips I've seen. Staab was excellent on Port Charles. I never saw the Jessie/Simon/Calla storyline so it's disappointing it did not go well as I like all three performers (have a soft spot for Thompson as a Hairspray fan). Thank you @Soaplovers and @DRW50

I assume Gregory Harrison was in the last year? Does this mean he was in the last year of Sisters and Falcon Crest?

Thanks for that. There are so many Locher room interviews to get through. So it was a bit of a Clint Ritchie type situation (another person Zimmer defended). Am I mistaken or wasn't Malloy involved in some sort of drunken behavior at an event? I may be misremembering but I recall some scandal a la Ritchie. I don't want to speak out of turn if it was not Malloy or if I have the details wrong.

Zimmer spoke highly of Malloy in her book. She also thanked him years after he left in her Emmy speech when she won her third emmy. I have read about bad blood but I would imagine it was probably with the producer or headwriter unless it was a Clint Ritchie type situation where other cast members were tired of him.

I said it before, but I have never seen an actress (Crampton) so clueless about her character in all my life. She didn't seem to know anything about what she was doing. It's one thing to be confused about a storyline but Crampton just seemed completely out of it. So bizarre. Crampton is a good actress, so I have to blame the people at GL and the execs. Besides Walker and Crampton, have there been other examples of actors/actresses on GL who just floundered in a role and could not make it work?

I will never understand how the execs hit the jackpot twice with Mindy (Tesrau and Simms) and then failed so miserably afterwards that they just didn't even bother after that. It was obvious from her Locher interview that Crampton had no clue what she was doing at GL and who Mindy was. Her confusion seems to have played out in her performance based on the little I've seen (which is not much) and from others have said. Hamilton got slaughtered in the soap press, but I don't think it's her fault. She didn't have a character to play; how do you make something work when there's nothing on the page?

And it's so interesting how often interracial relationships in t.v. shows and films use the "perfect partner" trope to prevent those complaints but it never works because racists don't care. I don't recall Martinez speaking too much about this, and I'm sure he didn't want to make a deal about it at the time because it might encourage the bigots to get louder (as well as for other reasons).

How was this soap received versus DePriest's later work? It's title makes it hard to find specific information on it since so many other results come up.

Simms would have been great in so many roles. I can't keep track of bts romances, but were Simms and VI broken up by the time she left? I also know that she spoke out about not liking the way her character was written in the last few months of her time on the show. I'm kind of Locher Roomed out at the moment as I've gone back and listened to some of the GL interviews, but I may go back and listen to her portions to see what she says about her departure. I do remember she was very kind towards and appreciative of Krista Tesreau's portrayal of Mindy.

I'm not suggesting Buchanan be fired during or right after maternity leave. That would be appalling. I just would have fired her long before that when it was obvious she could not handle the roles. In essence, Judi Evans started playing Vicky and Buchanan was playing a combination of Paulina and Marley with a touch of Vicky. Or some weird combo as I've never gone back and watched Buchanan so I don't know what she was doing but it wasn't either character and her Vicky was not Vicky.

A. Martinez was meant to go to OLTL when JFP was on there so it wouldn't surprise me if she wanted him on AW. I can't imagine how she would have mucked that up since his time on GH was a disaster as was Buchanan's. As for Jensen Buchanan, she couldn't play Marley and Vicky. She was awful when she did. When Ellen Wheeler returned as Marley, she wiped Buchanan off the screen. Why they gave into her demands on AW and GH I'll never understand. I never liked her as an actress and that was before her real-life dramas became public.

A recent A. Martinez interview. Insane how much racist b.s. Martinez had to endure because of his character's romance with Eden. It would probably be worse today.

I always found it troubling when shows wanted to deal with characters from "the other side of the tracks" they always saw those those stories/neighborhoods in terms of non-white characters as if only black and hispanic Americans are poor/lower class. I don't have a firm grasp on OLTL history, but I am of the understanding that OLTL used to have a wide mix of classes/races at one time, and then that was dismantled at some point. A shame. I think it's worse now when it comes to rape/romance. I don't think magazines would call out rapists as love interests these days. They would be too scared for many reasons some of which have nothing to do with soaps and their execs.

They really didn't know how to write for Victoria Wyndham. Her big storylines were a bust save for her romance with Carl. The Red Swan went nowhere and the Justine storyline was just....don't know what to say. Like Dustin Hoffman and his Rainman character, Wyndham was never able to shake Justine for the rest of the AW run.

That's daytime in a nutshell: "How dare you not want us to romanticise a rapist!" Logan himself would lose so much power as well. When she joined YR, he would suck up to JFP and say all of her critics were just sexist. Conveniently, he forgot the years he went after her work on GL, OLTL and AW and in all three cases publicly called for her dismissal. All to get the interview.

Yes, the Peluso recipe does sound rather naughty. 🙂 I wish Victoria Wyndham had given more in-depth interviews. Oh the Justine of it all.

Honest question: were there any non self-righteous men on GL? I thought Derwin was charming and he tried his best to work against the character especially as time went on. I always thought he had more chemistry with Kimberley Simms than Beth Ehlers--at least on camera. Something that always struck me is that I think JFP's team started to write Mindy as if Tesreau were playing her. She lost her intelligence and maturity (not that Tesreau could not play those things but her Mindy was in princess mode as DRW50 points out). I know Tesreau returned at some point but I don't know how they wrote for the character or if they even bothered to give her anything to do.