Mitch64

Guiding Light, any of the Bauers killed...Bill, Hillary and of course, Maureen. I disliked the Coopers but felt that killing Nadine was unnecessary and mean spirited...now if it was Buzz I would have gone with it! Maeve Reade should have never been killed off, just have her and Fletcher leave town together....two birds one stone!

Reva-GL wins this. The only writer who got her was Long (and perhaps Curlee) and she came back as a self-righteous plot point...things happened to her instead of her making things happen as in the past, and she was well past her expiration date of the love goddess no man can resist.

She might have been pandering to LW's ego..as I am sure LW sees herself just like that....(and God help anyone who doesn't agree.)

I have just started reading "Unscripted" which is about Sumner Redstone and the fight for the business empire...(oh...if only GL writers would have done a bit of simple research on how international conglomerates were run, maybe the constant, "Who runs Spaulding" would have been more interesting, as it was, they ran that place like a family run hardware store...) A player in the early chapters is our own J. No Dot George Pilgrim...he was the first actor to play J Chamberlin and was much reviled for his obnoxious character and acting. The writers must have been basing J on the actor as it turns out he is a scam artist who spent time in jail. Interesting to see him pop up in this as I haven't thought of him in years.

The ATWT disco was hilarious as the scenes I saw had Nancy and Chris on their back porch late afternoon or early evening after he got home from work,(and Nancy was sweeping leaves off of the porch like good old ATWT slice of life normality) while over at the disco things were going on like its 1 a.m. and the whole party was just hitting the height of the evening. Apparently Oakdale liked their early bird disco time! GL at that time was less clunky at embracing fads.

Thanks..I really love this oddball era of ATWT...the writers were getting back to the Hughes family...but it seemed more GL...goofy, lighthearted, a bit campy...(love Nancy Hughes dealing with Jay Conners street tough hootchie...) but much, much more warm hearted then Marland's sterile ATWT...I love that Ellen seems to think its a kick out of it, and the scene with Betsy sleeping on her shoulder and her spontaneous telling David she loved him...Penny telling the gossip columnist to wait in line, and then Lucinda's comment "Does your wagging tounge know what time it is..." the follow up episode is a hoot with the kidnapper trying to shut Lisa's "yap" by stuffing a gag in her but even that doesn't work. The writers were having fun with the characters without making them the butt of the joke.

No..this is just from memory of watching it. Could be out there somewhere.

No..I liked funny Cecile and being the Queen of whatever she was. NF and the rest of the actors had great comic timing. A light hearted fun soap would have been good competition for ATWT which was about to becoming depressed under Marland's full control.

95/96...when Nola came back...Marj was playing Alex.

Great scene...(and I could care less about SB) makes me wonder if he wrote one of my fave GL Spaulding scenes...Alex is having a dinner party with Roger, Blake Alan Michael, Phillip and Beth and of course it all goes to hell... Beth keeps shyly trying to ask for salt to break the tension and everyone ignores her...it does on for several scenes accusations and threats, insults and lies thrown about until BevAlex just ends it with before storming out of the dining room, "And would someone PLEASE pass Beth the damn SALT!" Great time on GL.

This was around the time they rescued Cecile from some kidnapping, in a house where a masked ball was going on, so Cecile puts a lampshade on her head for a disquise..and she mutters.."of all the things that I have done and have happened to me...this is the LOWEST!" Then a few months later I tuned in and it was a boring straight soap. Sorry, off topic.

Yea, it was weird as I felt Long wrote the Reardons better than Marland did..(besides Nola) other writers brought Bea back but then Long got rid of her..so it seems to be all on Long. I think Bea forming a friendship with Hawk would have been fun and then Sarah comes back (I would have made Sarah harder and trasheir then they made her....a "hiya doll" kind of woman.) Speaking of Hawk and Nola, during McTavish's time the one of the only time they wrote Nola fun was when she was conspiring to get the Spaulding greenhouse for Van and Matt's wedding. Hawk was suing Alex for some goofy reason and Nola tells Alex if she agrees to let them use the space, she will get Hawk to drop the law suit so she trips Hawk so he dumps something on Alex's expensive coat...so they call it even...goofy little scene but fun use of Hawk and Nola and what could have been if they kept people around to add color and even if they were not in BIG storylines.

Loved that time on AW, the only time I watched it..Felicia, Cass, Wallingford and the Jackee characters made this weird little oddball family, bouncing off of Cecile..I loved that episode with the truck and the gorilla (thought they shouldn't have brought her back for the finale but...) Felicia was fun and kooky and up for any kind of Lucy caper...then I watched years later and Felicia was a drunk (and not a fun one) ruined it all..then later she was in a boring romance with a guy that was played for drama not laughs and...where did my Felicia go? Reva Shayne...high points the Slut of Springfield and married to that old coot H.B....I also liked her without Josh, when she got a job and was trying to make ends meet and was hanging out with Fletcher..Reva at that time was more real, she had friends (sure, most of them guys) family a job, she could do it all, comedy, drama, sexiness, camp, and still be down to earth. Low point..post resurrection and Rauch years, she no longer drove story, things happened to her, she was plot point, and had no purpose besides "Always" ..(her kids, anyone else took a back seat to Always...) she actually came back more to her original incarnation during the Wheeler/Peapack years..(despite the stupid miracle baby when she was well past 50)

Agree on the first...but Miss Sally? GL had enough problems keeping older actors around, Bea Reardon with her multitude of children and grandchildren and anchoring a longstanding SF touchstone, the Boardinghouse would make more sense...(especially as they could have used her as the intro to many new younger characters who would live in the Boardinghouse when they first came to town.) I do agree with them butchering Alex (was Pam Long on vacation when they wrote that...) as standing by while Sally kicks it, they also threw in Alan who suggested that Alex actually physically did something to killl her and was happy about it. I think Miss Sally could have been one of those characters who flowed in and out of town when the plot needs her or there is a family event. I always found it so weird when close friends and family members would leave town never to be seen or hear from again. Having characters jump back for short arcs would make things seem more realistic and also entertaining fro the audience,.,

Lucy Johnson wasn't around for most of MADD...and that is what I am referring to. MADD was brought on and guaranteed a golden parachute if she would slowly get them out of the business...death by small cuts. P & G post MADD never looked like a company that cared about their product and keeping it going (look at your beloved AW's final episode, the charge was no flashbacks, no going to the past...so they had a gorilla.) If PG wanted to grow that particular arm of the business they were totally inept at it. I loved how Zaz made Roger a feral man who tamed himself somewhat and had a good man deep..deep..deep down inside. One of my fave scenes..and I think this was all Zaz...McTavish totally made tough girl Bridget into a pathetic looser, chasing after a man who didn't love her (with the clear implication she wants hot enough for him...) and jealous of skinny Dinah..who McTavish always let get the upper hand. So much so they had Bridget actually pondering plastic surgery...(poor actress..) and I thought they were going to go into a storyline about body dismorphia but no, this is McTrash. So Roger and Bridget are talking on a park bench for some reason and she has a magazine and is talking about getting work done, and the writing has Roger saying "Oh, you don't need that" as he was trying to get her to ally with him against Dart, but Zaz just had this fatherly read to the line where Roger was really saying "Really Bridget, don't ever let anyone make you feel like crap about yourself," you could just read it in his face and his tone. Small little thing but someone like RR would have played what was written on the page but Zaz gave it that twist.

That makes no sense..PG wanted to get out of soaps for years...why would they say, "Don't cancel us" when they wanted to [!@#$%^&*] can the shows, AND they could blame CBS. Regardless, I wish they would have just said, "Give us a year and we will wrap both up" and did so with class and respect. I think trading the shows cancellation for Peacock is a no brainer..except for those people who would loose their jobs. Also, since they mentioned Marj just taking over..she was much better at the beginning..maybe they were still writing for Bev...and she had a different energy but she was good..for a while.

Yes, as others mentioned, he wanted Bridget and David to be together...but they shot it down. Which is weird, McTavish wrote a scene where David told Bridget he loved her (recast David so it doesn't count) and Bridget just blew it off because McTavish regressed her into chasing after Hart and being intimidated by Dinah...Bridget, even if she didn't return the feelings would never blow off David's feelings like that. It is sad as at that time they brought back Nola (who he originally wrote for under Marland) and he was great with Bridget and of course the Coopers, and got Ed and Ross and Holly and Roger. If only they brought him back post JFP. Anderson was brought on with great fanfare by JFP and was supposed to be a "GL historian" which may be but he never got to write that as JFP was in control of the writers room and must have brought him on as she could control him. I would love to see an interview with him.

Ha..thanks! I still like the idea someone up thread came up with, "What are the Marlena clones up to?" and would love for them to do a very special episode once in a while to check in on them..is it too meta to ask to have one clone be an "actress of a certain age" on a online soap..seeing her reading a script and screaming "WHAT...I'M the killer..who writes this CRAP"

Hmmm, you really wanted Alice Horton choked to death on a donut..and felt that the original cast member matrairch was.."not essential?" (Though I heard Doug and at least Alice was "killed" after he had to change the storyline.) Everyone talks about what a genius the guy was but I thought his Days (at that time) was a piece of cr@p and watched it like an Ed Wood movie (though I will never regret watching it when Marlena fell off the terrace and bounced off of an awning and landed on a SCREAMING Sammi..if only it had killed her. So I would love to see what the original story was and how it would end. (his pet, Marlena a serial killer..I don't think so..) Sorry, went a bit off topic..."how bout those Marlena clones??"

GL was going through a ROUGH time at that time..coming off being nearly perfect soap (IMO) Curlee left and JFP was rumored to say "NOW we can do it MY way!" So, I think she of course had a LOT of time spent in the writers room. I also heard he didn't want to or like being head writer so this is surprising.

Agreed...hopefully it is like Marland and Long's runs...I new instantely when Long was back and when Marland took over ATWT I knew that something had suddenly changed. It will be interesting to see someone with an individual "good" style back.

I think there is the rub...people jump in to watch a car crash..uh, out of the ordinary storyline, and then jump ship..meanwhile, the audience that has been there for years leaves as they feel the storyline has compromised the show (hence they grafted the mob and dumb island storyline and they couldn't get out of them...a lot of loyal viewers left, and they were stuck with the Mob/San Crud/Kimmer is the best actress EVER and I will write in if she is off two days in a row.." crowd. I know..I jumped in to see what all the fuss was with the Salem Stalker on Days, and I stayed to watch the car wreck play out as I had no vested interest, and then they got to Melaswen and the reveal didn't make any sense..I left.

Okay..teacher..: ) As a GL viewer who never really watched GH...(I always knew what was going on but really lost track of it when that mumbling mob guy took over...) I am going to tune in to check out what Mulcahey does...he is the last of the old P & G writers still around and the times he was working on GL (Marland/Nola, etc and Curlee era...) was great. I know his head writing stint there wasn't that great but his scripts were great...its kind of like finding out Marland was going to write ATWT and Long was coming back to GL..hopefully you will immediately see his influence on the show.

To each their own, (hey, no shame....I loved Brent/Marion and Nursery Rhyme Stalker and everyone seems to HATE those..) but did you stick around?

Didn't Zimmer in her book say there was an actress with "big balls" who became a dark cloud...and alluded to it being Ehlers? The funny thing is, you could see it on screen, Harley went from the feisty everywoman to acting like a brittle shrew on screen, even as the head writer tried to make her the woman everyman on earth would fall in love with. I hope she got over whatever it was she was going through at the time.