vetsoapfan

I think he has been overrated on certain shows, but deserved his acclaim on others. His LOVING was tepid asnd his work on THE DOCTORS was off-kilter, but his material on GENERAL HOSPITAL was first-rate and his ATWT was also (mostly) very good. Some writers just "get" certain shows better than others, I guess. On the other hand, there are writers like Jean P and Charles Pratt, who are uniformly horrible no matter what soap they inherit.

Nola's friend Gracie left Springfield to work for Joan Bennett (!!!) as her stylist. It's a shame you did not see more of PFS's work. I followed her from soap to soap. She was always great...except for her peculiar, stilted material on RYAN'S HOPE. It just did not work. Everything felt unnatural and forced, and although there were some good scenes, some good moments, during her tenure, most of what she work was not effective for that particular show. Her DAYS was brilliant, however.

Yes, and...ugh. Marilyn Chris was one of a kind and could not be replaced.

But I have always felt Jed Allan would have been a good Mike. Attractive, affable, strong, a good actor, and popular within the daytime community. He was a weird choice for Edward Quartermaine, but he would have been a good for for Mike Bauer, IMHO. She continued the story with Amanda and Mark Evans as well, and added pathos to it. She had Nola experience one of her movie fantasies, this time based on Mata Hari. She had warm, touching scenes between the characters (Bert and Hillary talked about Bill and their interpersonal relationships, Sara and Mike discussed the value of enduring friendships, Vanessa confessed to Henry about her longstanding insecurities in life). It was all so great, character-driven, and very TGL-y. I do not think Long wrote well for Vanessa or Nola overall. She gave them a few cute scenes now and again but did not seem to know how to handle them in the long run. The actresses said as much in later interviews. But of course, everyone has his own take on what he sees on screen, and what I dislike other viewers may adore. To each his own.

I never said Costner was replaced, but he was let go from the show. Not having your contract renewed is a form of dismissal. In 1983, ABC declined to renew Jacquie Courtney's contract on OLTL, despite her enormous popularity and importance to the program, which iwas a similar situation.

The Julia material was disgusting, and Hunt Block's entire run as Craig was a disaster, IMHO. Scott Bryce simply was Craig. The attempts at replacing him failed. Yes, PFS was excellent at TGL, and immediately hit the ground running with good, literate scripts, a keen understanding of the characters and their relationships, and an obvious knowledge of the show's history. Firing her was a MAJOR gaffe on the part of TPTB, but...we came to expect stupidity from the executives. I remember the Paul Kinkaid business the way that you do, but in all honesty, regardless of whom his father was originally supposed to be, it would not be too much of a stretch for the audience to accept that he was finally proven to be Bill Bauer's son. It would have provided the show's core family with a great deal of solid material to play out.

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))