vetsoapfan

You didn't think the show was better with Sheffer and Culliton, than it was with Sheffer and jean P? I felt that for a soap novice, Sheffer's earliest material showed promise...until he dumbed down the show, ignored the vets, and went the camp route

I would hold to them if I were you. Not all the material has been uploaded to youtube, and among the bits that have, some remain and others have disappeared. In years past, I've gotten rid of videos from my personal collection, figuring I could just watch them on youtube...only to discover later on, that they had disappeared completely from the internet. And of course, as soon as certain eps are not available anywhere, you really, really, really want to watch ithem again!

And as soon as the Pissy One came aboard, the quality of the writing collapsed noticeably. I am racking my brain, trying to remember the specifics, but I really can't be sure. With several decades' worth of soap history clogging up my mental hard drive, certain facts are bound to get fuzzy...if not erased altogether, alas. Browne and Palumbo were not bad (particularly compared to some of the "writers" the show hired later), but they were not great, either. I would rate them "acceptable." When even first-hand accounts by those involved are skewered and riddled with misinformation, tracking down the actual facts can be a chore!

I think it was a combination of Long growing as a writer and a good, solid team around her. Look at Hogan Sheffer's tenure at ATWT, which was good during his first year and lousy thereafter. A good co-headwriter does wonders.

As far as I know, Falken Smith did not comment publicly about her dismissal from TGL; she had been a lot more vocal about getting fired from DAYS and GH! I wonder if TPTB just thought she was not going to be a good fit. She was writing the show as it should have been written, but considering the sweeping and crippling changes soon to come, perhaps the higher-ups wanted to bring in less stong-willed writers, who would not balk at dismantling the show. PFS knew what worked and what did not work on daytime TV; I doubt she would have willingly gone the dumbed-down sci-fi route. She railed against the stupid writing on GH (i.e. the Ice Princess garbage). Pamela Long did have a lot of heart, but she needed a strong story editor to keep her dumber material in check, and a producer to reign her in. The Four Musketeers proved popular, but I will never believe that nonsense like Jonathan Brooks and his talking computer, the ghost in the attic, the Dreaming Death, etc., were what ardent fans of this particular show wanted to see. Years later, Long admitted that fantasy was not the best way to go, that if in doubt, on the soaps it was better to get real. I never cared for Beth Raines in the first place, but once she went to San Cristobel and inexplicably turned into an intolerable shrew, without any motivation, I wanted them to kill of the character. I knew she would never be redeemable. The ONLY possible justification for bringing back that icky Bradley Cole would be...to kill him off a second time, LOL. As for DAM's ass...I had not noticed, but I will take your word for it. My memory is hazy now. I don't remember for sure if they said or implied on-screen that Paul Kinkaid was Bill's biological son. Did you read that he was a Bauer in Christopher Schemering's book? That one struck me as quite accurate. Some of the other soap-related books made a lot of boo-boos. Technically, soaps may indeed be about families, but on THE DOCTORS, the family was the staff at Hope Memorial. Marland did not seem to have trouble understanding the importance of the hospital staff as a family unit when he wrote for GH, at least.

I never saw that particular interview. I know writers are human like everybody else, but it's always better to be restrained when talking to the press, I believe.

I thought the video was all in good fun, and I'm glad you did not find it TOO risque. Personally, I find that it's much hotter when a man leaves a little something to the imagination, rather than letting it all hang out so to speak, and the fit of this uniform was perfectly delicious!!!

Yep, some folks initially criticized Y&R for being too focused on youth, but a few years into its run, when the show was focusing on the likes of Bill and Liz Foster, Stuart and Jennifer Brooks, and Katherine Chancellor, it was criticized for showcasing the "old folks," LOL. People will always find something to kvetch about!

Yes, Trudy's branch of the family tree could have been explored and it would have played into established history. There were a few different ways the show could have reestablished the Bauer family, had they delved into the past.

You are right: no one really cared about the newbie, "fake" Bauers suddenly retconned into existence. If Papa Bauer had had a brother Otto, nephew Jack, etc., we would have known about it decades earlier. As a viewer, I was annpyed at being presented with these characters instead of seeing the REAL Bauers back on my screen. I did not know that Jeff Ryder had discussed bringing back Hope before he was replaced as headwriter. I remember his comments in the press about how the fans kept demanding a return of the family, but that only Mike and Hope remained. He did not (in that interview) indicate he had any intention of bringing them back. I did not like Ryder's work, but I would have been appreciative of his efforts, if he had actually had Hope return. Mary Ryan Munisteri...yikes! The show went through so many dreadful writers during the 1980s and '90s. They should have stuck with pat falken Smith, who had showed great promise when she briefly replaced Douglas Marland. Her scripts were great and I felt she "got" the characters and the tone/style/feeling of the show.

Marland was usually so affable and gracious in the press. I was shocked when he referred to Hulswit as a "dodo" in an interview. At various times, TPTB paid lip service to the idea of Mike and Hope returning, but there could not have been serious interest in carrying through with it, because the show had many opportunities to bring those characters back but consistently failed to do so. In the early 1980s, Pamela Long said that she was interested in having Meta Bauer return, because "so much happened to her," but that did not pan out until 1996.

This video is both cute and hot, in a good-natured sort of way.

I SUPPOSE I could have handled having just those three characters on the canvas of TGL, as long as they were not crammed down viewers' throats 24/7, and as long as there were no stupid, campy, and/or offensive stories about clones, time travel, fictitious islands, and shoot-outs in the Bauer kitchen. To me, having Hulswit return as Ed would have sufficed too, but ideally, I would have wanted both him and Stewart back on screen as tentpole characters. It was just so misguided to fire Hulswit in the first place. Marland claimed they wanted a younger, sexier Ed to play romantic stories, but...look at the lead on daytime's top-rated GENERAL HOSPITAL during the early 1980s: Tony Geary. Hardly the epitome of male beauty! TPTB didn't, and don't, understand that the audience responds to actors for many different reasons, and we are not all obsessed with six-packs and chiseled cheek bones. Hulswit was a cuddly teddy bear; quite adorable in his own way. Patriarchs, in particular, do not need to be sex-gods. The audience just wants them to be...endearing and comforting. On the show, to explain Charita Bauer's absence after she passed away, it was said that Bert was out of town visiting Meta in Florida because Meta had had a stroke. After the character of Bert also died, it would have made perfect sense for Aunt Meta to return to Springfield to be with her family. Months later, Jeff Ryder, who was writing TGL when it dealt with Bert's death, acknowledged that the audience kept clamoring for the Bauers to return, but claimed there weren't even many of them to bring back. Only Mike and Hope. He had already forgotten about poor Meta, LOL. In any case, he had no interest in reinvesting in that family.

If TPTB at the time had wanted to repair the damage to the show, they should have at least tried to lure Mart Hulswit back as Ed Bauer. The idea of foisting a "younger, sexier" Ed onto the audience was a complete disaster; Hulswit was a comforting, familiar face and a good, solid actor. The audience would have been at least partially mollified to have him back as the patriarch of the Bauer family. If Elvera Roussel did not agree to return, I would have accepted Robin Mattson as a newly-matured, stronger Hope Bauer. Mattson had grown a lot as an actress since her portrayal of Hope years before, and the show could have capitalized on her popularity from the ABC soaps. Alan-Michael should NOT have been SORASed so quickly. In an ideal world, I'd try to get Don Stewart back on contract as well, even though rumors were that he was difficult to work with. And I would have put out feelers to Ellen Demming, to see if she was still interested in acting and would like to reappear, even on a nominal, recurring basis, as Aunt Meta. Just having Hulswit, Roussel or Mattson, and perhaps Demming on-screen would have helped the show feel like TGL again. Allowing the Bauers to remain gutted year after year was so disrespectful to the show's history and its loyal fans. It's like if the producers of The Waltons wanted us to watch the show with only a replacement actor in the role of Jim-Bob to carry on the family's legacy. It amazes me how TPTB at all the soaps have been allowed to make such inept, stupid and REPEATED mistakes for so long.

If I had be generous, I would have allowed the characters to live, but ONLY if they had immediately been from Springfield and spun off into their own cartoon-adventure series which I would never have had to watch. The Misguided Blight. Never say I don't do anything for you. I agree that the Annie storyline was the most successful material involving Reva after her return from the dead, but to be honest, I think it worked largely thanks to Cynthia Watros.

Reva was slightly less loathsome when written by Pamela K. Long, because at least Long understood the character and tried to give her some depth. No other writer ever managed to write effectively for Reva, however, and the jaw-droppingly idiotic stories they foisted upon her were just painful to endure. Reva the Ghost! Reva the Amish Amnesiac! Reva the San Cristocrapian Queen! Reva the Clone! Reva the Blind! Reva the Illegal-Immigrant Savior! Reva the Time Traveler! Reva the Portly Object of Every Man's Desire! Egads!!!!! I hated, hated, hated, hated, hated all the characters you mentioned. Even the great Claire Labine could not make me stop retching my way through seeing them on-screen. If I had been writing the show, all traces of the Shaymes, Santoses, and Winslows would have been purged from Springfield in MY VERY FIRST EPISODE! I used to dream about how I would kill them all off in deliciously satisfying ways, LOL!

I must say, I did not like the Coopers (except possibly for Frank), but I absolutely hated the Shaynes. I loathed them even more than the Dingles. In fact, Reva's grating clan goes down in my personal hall of shame (or hall of...Shayme, LOL) as the soap opera family that I despised most in all my decades of watching daytime TV. (The Santos and Winslow families also rank on that list, by the way.)

Personally, I loathed Roxie. I hated all things Reva: Reva herself, Roxie, Cassie, Rusty, Hawk, Minnie Pearl. To me, the Shaynes were to TGL what the Dingles are to EMMERDALE. Of course, to each his own.

Where are all these men in real life? ((Sigh))

Ahh, that all-time fan-favorite, Lacey Bauer, LOL. And yes, in reference to Slick Jone's comment, Frank D. said that he was originally considered to be cast as Todd Bauer, but Pamela Long did not want to expand the Bauer family so she brought him on as Frank Cooper instead. Dumping more Coopers on the audience did not endear the show to longtime fans who were annoyed at losing the show's signature family, but to be fair, I doubt adding a few "fake" Bauers, retconned into existence, would have satisfied us either. I never cared for Jack, Lainie, or Lacey Bauer in the least. It's been several decades, but I believe it was in Soap Opera Digest.

I agree that B&C were a decent fit for this show, and it was a mistake to let them go...particularly since Corday and TPTB keep inflicting the likes of Higley onto Salem. Recycling hacks who have failed at every show they've been on is a gross, inexplicable mistake that daytime keeps making over and over and over again. Higley should not ever be allowed near a soap again. LOL!

I don't recall reading about why Simon decided to leave TGL at that period, although it was well known he was not thrilled with soaps in general. Journalist Mimi Torchin has quoted Kobe as proclaiming that story is more important than characters, so it doesn't surprise me that she would cavalierly butcher the show's cast to tell her atrocious, lead-nowhere stories, but...UGH. Losing Charita Bauer around this same time meant nearly the entire Bauer clan, except for Frederick, was hacked away in a relatively short period. I think it's fair to say that the audience never really warmed up to RvF as Ed. Everyone I know kept saying, "There's Chuck Tyler playing a fake Ed Bauer on TGL!" The show never recovered from this gutting of its core, IMHO, but then killing off Maureen Bauer too, for NO reason (I don't consider paying for Justin Deas to be a valid excuse) was the final nail in the coffin. I think the old-guard, die-hard veteran viewers gave up on the show for good, after that.

Are you denying Reilly and Corday would have tried any of those plots twists, if it meant even a temporary surge in the ratings, LOL?

As someone who watched DOOL during the Bell/Falken-Smith years, when it was a well-written, nuanced, adult drama, watching it turned into such atrocious, embarrassing crap was just painful. I have no problem with this sort of material being presented on shows which were created and designed for it, but DOOL was NOT one of them. It's like watching the Great Gazoo descending upon Downton Abbey, impregnating Mary with semen from an alien race, turning Matthew into a serial-killing transvestite, and having Maggie Smith masturbating dwarves for extra cash in the barn. UGH!

The mainstream media thumbed its nose at (and usually ignored completely) the daytime soaps until primetime TV started to have enormous success with continuing sagas like DALLAS and DYNASTY. Then the media decided soaps were hip. Mainstream journalists, with a total lack of understanding about why soaps had been so hugely popular to begin with, focused on the outrageous camp elements of both daytime and primetime soaps. The absurd, lowbrow storylines of certain shows attracted a newbie audiences, and that's whom the mainstream media wanted to attract. They didn't care about the 40-75 year-old viewers who watched soaps for engrossing interpersonal relationships, well-drawn characters, and family conflict. Mainstream media and its advertisers wanted to pander to the kids. Y&R was widely covered in the daytime press during the 1970s. Jacquie Courtney and George Reinholt of AW were the Luke and Laura of their day and also received a lot of press coverage, as did DOOL which had a rabid and vocal following as a steamy, intelligent adult drama, long before it deteriorated into painful camp. Wanting to appeal to younger readers and viewers, mainstream print and television media focused on the soaps that would bring in revenue, rather than on the merits of the soaps themselves.