chrisml

I think Alan Locher is a decent and lovely man, but his natural instinct is to protect his guests from any potential unpleasantness or negativity. This can be annoying to the watcher/listener. The best interviews are the ones where he doesn't know the potential dangers (the guests are not from GL or ATWT) and/or the interviewees don't allow him to protect them.

I can imagine it would be hard for anyone to come in to the role of Iris and do it justice especially at the end of such a storyline. She may have been directed to act in that way. As someone who grew up with Carmen Duncan as *the* Iris, it took me some adjustments getting used to Beverlee McKinsey clips as Iris. I was like, "Who is this woman?" at first.

It's hard to find a lot of sources about the soaps because many of the magazines are no longer in print or do not have archives. For instance, I find several mentions of a TV guide column by Michael Logan where he praises Laibson for saving AW and then claims Laibson is going to save GL from cancellation after the "disastrous" (Logan's supposed term not mine) end to JFP's term as EP. However, I can't find the article.

I was looking for information about Michael Laibson's time on GL, but I came across this interview he gave about his time on AW and why he never told a "gay" storyline on the show. I thought it might be of interest.

With all this talk about The Red Swan, I have to admit I would go back and watch the story all over again. I'm feeling very sentimental lately for AW. IT reminds me of my grandmother who I miss so much.

I remember JFP boasting about improving the demos. She should get credit for raising the demos if it's on a consistent basis. However, I also remember that she came under a lot of criticism for how much money she spent on the new opening credits AND the new hospital set (the set which was pretty much ignored once Savitz took over). In looking at the demos and the ratings, I'm not sure all that money was worth the investment despite the increases in the demos. And if the demos were all P&G cared about, JFP would have lasted longer. Was JFP responsible for the rise in demos? Partly, but I don't think any one person or one thing was solely responsible. It could also be that DAYS was doing so well. ( AW should have been doing much better in the ratings and demos with DAYS as the lead-in before JFP, during JFP and after.) It could be that other soaps in the same time slots were telling boring stories and sampled AW. Are we going to say her early winter material was awful because the demos were so low? Or were there other factors at work? I'm not going to blame her for the low demos here because again so many things could be at play. What do I think JFP did? I think she did what she normally did. She used violence against women. When she went to OLTL, she got the demos up by killing off Georgie. She got immense criticism then for the violence and for the racism in the storyline. She moved to GH and that was non-stop violence against women (where network had step in and demand rewrites/edits). She moved to YR and she was going to EP a storyline so disgusting (Avery lying about being raped) that the network had to step in and force rewrites).

Thanks Kalbir. From what I see of the ratings, there's only one week that AW beat ratings based solely on the material on the screen (September 9-13) as the ratings report indicates that the July 29/August 2 bump was due to the Olympics as the next week there was a significant drop. September 9-13 seems like it had less to do with AW and more with just weird ratings bumps/drops (The City also had a huge bump and then a subsequent drop). I don't know when JFP's material ended.

In all the ratings data I have seen, GL was above AW during Phelps' tenure on AW. Can you link to a source?

I don't think Jake was needed after a certain point regardless of the rape, but the rape clinched it for me. I think sometimes shows cling onto specific characters/actors and it harms the show because there's no room for growth or other possibilities. I don't know what the backstage drama was in relation to Eplin but I just never felt Jake was worth the money or the time investment. I feel the same way about GH and the character of Sonny. To keep it P&G related, I have similar thoughts about Kim Zimmer's Reva especially during Calhoun's tenure where GL was allowed to thrive once she was no longer there.

My heart goes out to anyone who lost a home. MY recollection is that there was some bad blood/displeasure surrounding Tom Eplin's departure from ATWT. I have no idea what that entailed though. Once Jake raped Marley, I had no interest in the character, and he should have been written off the show. I don't think Eplin was important enough to the show to romanticise another rapist. At the time of his switch to ATWT, I imagine a lot of ATWT fans were extremely confused that his character suddenly showed up on their show and hogged up air time. Jake's death on ATWT was a decade too late in my book.

Julianne Moore is very good in her new movie, The Room Next Door. I saw it last night. I'd recommend it for her ATWT fans. It's nice to see someone respect her soap roots when many of them try to distance themselves. As for Drew Barrymore, I've never been able to sit through any of her interviews (or her awful introductions she did on Turner Classic Movies yrs ago with Robert Osborne). Plus, she was just awful during the writers' strike but that's not a subject for the ATWT forum.

It's also hard to enjoy someone who's a perpetual victim and Lisa's backstory was so icky and a majority of her storylines were about her being a victim. When she was strong and stood up for herself, Going was so interesting. Those moments didn't happen too often.

I have not seen much of Marland's work, but I've always heard he's such a fantastic writer. However when I do see some of his shows or scenes, I'm always so bored. Am I missing something? I find him incredibly overrated but I'm willing to accept I might not be old enough to have seen his best material.

Sadly, I think Denise Alexander was better served than Sharon Gabet. From what little I've seen of Gabet's time on the show, Gabet really got terrible material. I think the Marissa/Mary stuff could have worked with tweaks, but there did not seem to be any long-term plan. If Mary was Reginald's one weakness and Mary stayed with him, that one change would have been more interesting than what we got. That's even before the ickiness with Sally Spencer's storyline, and the wasting of Hank Cheyne or Cheryl Marie. To this day, I will never understand how you have someone as sexy as Hank Cheyne who has chemistry with everyone and you saddle him with a tangential character. He should have been a leading man on AW for years to come.

Thanks Kalbir for the info. So odd to me that GL did so poorly in the series category. You would think she would have have identified the perfect formula during her time at SB. That's why I wondered if there was a bias against P&G soaps or just GL in general as it took from 1982 to 2007 for GL to win their next emmy. ATWT did win three times so who knows?

SB's first emmy win is something to behold. Bridget Dobson was not a fan of JFP but I'm sure that had more to do with the network politicking than anything else. I find it interesting she never won as EP on GL. I wonder if that had more to do with P&G or the submissions.

Yes with the caveat that it is again a story about rape/violence against women. Frank Beaty is exceptional and should have won the Emmy over Jerry ver Dorn.

In the Marcy Walker interview above, Logan openly talks about JFP's misuse and mistreatment of her (which was publicly known), but then when he would interview JFP later on, he would claim she got a bad reputation because she's a woman. LOL. I think she got the same treatment as the men. She was allowed to go from show to show and cause havoc (on and off screen) and then get fired. During his time on YR, Rauch was still being asked about decisions he made on AW--the same way JFP was asked about GL and AW.

Thank you! This is what I was remembering. Thank you for linking to it. I'm glad the interview also goes into what I've been referencing in terms of JFP using Marcy Walker to keep her job.

I liked Mary on the show, but she had long-lasting potential that was squandered. She could have been on the show for years to come. Instead, she was given so little to after a certain point. Alexander and Mary deserved better.

I think the problem started with Reginald. They should have made you understand why Mary was in love with Reginald so that there was a legitimate triangle. Vince was such a sadsack and they gave up on Mary/Reginald to focus on Reginald terrorizing Donna. Mary should never have been saddled with Vince. The battle for Mary's affections should have gone on longer and it should have involved the children. It could have also brought the Loves and the McKinnons into conflict. Instead, they threw away all of that. Introducing Dawn into the Cheryl/Scott relationship was another mistake.

One of the biggest mistakes was how AW never took advantage of Denise Alexander's Mary. Thy failed to tie her into stories, and they wrote off characters (Cheryl, MJ, Scott) and left her isolated. She was such a likeable and enjoyable presence. I wanted more of her. I could take or leave Vince, but Mary I really liked. She had such chemistry with Hank Cheyne and it's so annoying they never capitalised on it to further the mother/son bond.

I always try to stick to published sources or interviews when I discuss JFP because it can get heated referencing a lot of what she did or said. She tends to tell different versions of the same story depending on her audience. Even those on the show during that time will be contradictory because they don't want the heat from the fans so their recollections are often "clouded." I know that there are many people in the industry who adore her. Erika Slezak adored her while a significant number of her castmates on OLTL did not according to ES. Robin Strasser famously loathed her and we know what happened with Laura Bonarrigo (and then would be repeated with Kari Wuhrer on GH. I couldn't find what happened with KW's lawsuit. I have been trying to find the Michael Logan article where a GL actress talks about how they felt bad for Marcy Walker because they couldn't understand why she was being so misused on the show. Still looking. Was it Liz Keifer??? Not sure. I wish TVGUIDE or Logan had archived his columns.

Even on SB, my favorite storyline during JFP's tenure as sole EP was foisted on her by the network (the Cruz/Robert/Eden triangle). If you looked at the other stories during that time, they were an absolute storytelling mess even if the dialogue were often first rate. I think she's overrated in terms of storytelling and plotting. As someone said earlier in this thread said, she got a lot of credit for what Robert Calhoun had already set in motion at GL. I think JFP worked best as a director and editor. Pamela Long is just as odd and slippery when it comes to answering questions about her time on GL and SB. I was not there for most of her pre-1988 GL tenure, but even I know that some of her comments are ridiculous (particular about the Bauers). She also has the same selective amnesia that JFP suffers from. It would be nice if these producers/headwriters would admit mistakes and explain why they made the mistakes. Instead, they just double down or pretend they have no idea what the interviewer is asking.

DRW50, I think you're right that JFP wanted to be in the nighttime realm. She gutted AW so it could be the next ER. She even turned its opening into a ridiculous copy of ER. JFP will never take responsibility for anything in any of the retrospective interviews, and at this point, it doesn't matter, but my word, the amount of sexism and misogyny that followed her from soap to soap. I also didn't expect Locher or anyone else for that matter to really address what McKinsey has claimed in her interview witj Logan after her departure. I do wonder what the "friends of Jill" thought of the label especially the ones that suffered because of it. I know Marcy Walker loathed JFP after the GL experience as she felt used to keep JFP's job on the show.