vetsoapfan

Upton was also horrible, and another writer who was shipped from soap to soap. Today, fans complain about hacks like Josh Griffin, Ron Carlivati, Charles Pratt, Jean Passanante, etc., stinking up one show after another, but the practice of recycling hack scribes has always been a problem on daytime TV.

Probably the Best Show vote for Days was residual appreciation of the soap under Pat Falken Smith, who wrote into 1977 before Marcus took over. To be fair to Ann Marcus, while I thought her Days was a disaster, she performed very well on Mary Hartman and Search for Tomorrow. Even her Love of Live was an improvement over some of the boring writers who had preceded her. Her Knots Landing was not the worst, either. But...UGH, her Days was atrocious. I wrote an angry letter to TPTB in 1977, condemning how she had slaughtered a once-great show.

Their work on both shows was outstanding. I firmly believe that if they had been with WTHI from the start, the show would have been a success. Unfortunately, the show was launched by the dread Margaret DePriest, one of those daytime scribes who kept getting recycled from soap to soap, no matter how tepid her material was. I firmly believe her initial writing was what doomed WTHI to failure. DePriest also followed the excellent Pat Falken Smith on Days, the wonderful Rick Edelstein on How to Survive a Marriage, and even Labine and Mayer on Love of live, all to negative results. But when she was not involved, all those soaps were mesmerizing.

Um...Ann Marcus certainly did not "whip Days of our Lives" into a "top-rated show it now is." It instantly and noticeably collapsed under her tenure. Speaking of soaps turning around quickly, I must say that when Claire Labine and Paul Avila Mayer assumed the reigns of Love of Life, the show almost instantly started to soar. Its total rebirth (from a drab and turgid, lethargic oldtimer to a fresh, entertaining and more modern drama) was astonishing. Everyone always praises Douglas Marland for saving a dying General Hospital in the late 1970s, but to me, Labine and Mayer worked similar miracles with Love of Life.

I no longer have access to episodes of Emmerdale, alas, so I have not been able to watch it in years, but even way back then, the overexposure of the vile Dingle-berries turned me off, big time. TPTB killed off and otherwise eliminated a huge number of the core Sugden family, and THIS was their idea of a new principle clan? More like an infection. Yuck.

I think both those stories worked well, but for very specific reasons. Primarily, the writing was exquisitely beautiful and heavily predicated on character development and relationships. Few, if any writers available to daytime TV today would be able to pull sagas like that off. Plus, both stories mixed hope and heroism in with the tragedy. BJ died but her death resulted in saving her cousin's life. Stone also passed away, but he regained his sight at the last moment and was able to see Robin one last time; Robin, who was also HIV positive but who survived, and who then championed the fight for HIV causes. Along with the pain, there was a ray of light. In the short term, yes, but then the hopelessly grim plot would be over, and the show would be left without the only decades-long matriarch left on its canvas; a character who had been a hub of the wheel since almost the beginning. The show could never, ever replace a character like that. I've always felt that cutting off the vets is like hacking away at a plant: if a soap tears out the last remaining roots, the entire plant will suffer for it. Right. At least nowadays, the prognosis for HIV+ patients is more optimistic. When TPTB don't even understand the degeneracy of what they are presenting, you know soaps have taken quite a tumble.

Real-life illnesses can work on soaps if they are maladies from which folks can possibly recover. The the audience can have hope, and there's some "suspense" as to whether or not the afflicted characters will pull through. Devastating illnesses that cause unending agony and still lead to certain death? That's not my idea of entertainment. I don't want to see explicit, cruel violence or pain directed at children, animals or the elderly. I realize that strong drama can be gripping in many cases, but there's a limit. There's a difference between strong, mature drama and gratuitous ugliness for its own sake. I find GH's glorification of violent, criminal degenerates and murderers to be morally repugnant. Talk about elements I do NOT want to see on soaps. Hold back my hair, I'm going to hurl.🤮

I know, it was a shameful and idiotic move on DAYS' part. (But, then again, that show has been in the toilet since 1983, LOL!)

For many years, soaps had the habit of transforming characters pretty quickly from romantic leads to supporting parental units, aging them rapidly. Think of poor Ellen Stewart (ATWT), Doug and Julie (DAYS), etc., along with Audrey Hardy. Nowadays, some performers are kept in the romantic-lead category loooooong after they should have graduated from that position. Casting really does influence character interaction and story decisions. I did not want to see the Mac-dementia story on ATWT at all, but as you say: at least he was not a long-time favorite character and essential to the show. If they had given Nancy, Bob, Kim, Lisa or Ellen dementia, I would have gone nuclear. Fans would have revolted en masse, I'm sure. I agree that ending the plot quickly was the right decision.

I've always felt that soap fans love a good cry, but there's a difference between crying over a doomed romance, for example (which you know in your heart will work out in the end) and the torture of a beloved character that will surely lead to an agonizing finale. If a story is brilliantly written and acted (like BJ's death and Stone's death), viewers will get caught up in it and stay for the ride, but there are certain plots that the audience just does not want to see, particularly after enduring other heavy tragedies on the show. The painful, inescapable decline of a vet headed towards death is a turn off. If anything, viewers are protective of the vets and do not them written out at all unless there is no alternative (i.e. if the actor passes away). Save the vets, save the soaps!!!

There were DEFINITELY a few (and only a few, thank goodness) on-air scenes of Audrey being confused and disoriented. I remember them vividly because I was horrified. It was clear that the show was starting to foreshadow a grim dementia story for her. Then the unsettling scenes just stopped and Audrey's potential issues were never witnessed or mentioned again. I was so relieved. With Jessie Brewer gone, Audrey had become the show's matriarch, and destroying her with such a depressing storyline would have been unspeakably cruel. And unwatchable. I would have dropped the show over it.

He has recently joined a vintage soap opera board on Facebook. Now that he is a member, I wonder if folks there will refrain from giving their honest opinions of his "interviewing" style, just out of courtesy. I don't want his feelings slaughtered, of course, but it will be unfortunate if other members can no longer say what they truly think, and must stifle themselves.

The published reference books I have say 1960, but heaven knows, even history books can be laden with errors. Right.

On the other hand, Patti mentions a new physician, Dr. Walton, to Ted, and that character is listed as debuting in 1960. Tracking down exact dates for vintage soaps can be challenging, but I am so glad to see a "new" episode like this pop up, even if its timeframe is murky. Thanks for bringing it to our attention.

To be fair to historians, the few years before Marland and Monty came aboard GH were...ahem...not worth much attention. The show was a mess in the mid 1970s.

Spot on!

Genie Francis left, Pat Falken Smith was replaced by dreadful hack writers, and science fiction garbage was the name of the game. The show was cringeworthy. IMHO. GH was lucky that AW was too weak at the time to offer solid competition and steal viewers away, but TGL was great!

It was amazing how quickly ATWT plummeted into the toilet with the combination of Sheffer and Passanante. The old gal never recovered, alas.

TPTB don't need my suggestions to make horrid and baffling decisions, unfortunately.😉 Going back decades: General Hospital, Search for Tomorrow, The Edge of Night, The Doctors, Dark Shadows, Another World, Love of Life, All My Children and The Young and the Restless. Those are the ones I can think of off-hand, from the top of my head. There were also those awful Soaps & Serials novelizations of many other soaps. I've read many of them, and the Kate Lowe Kerrigan Another World books were the most satisfying to me as someone who had watched the TV versions of the shows. The S&S books were poorly researched and often inaccurate and hard to tolerate, IMHO.

Emily McLaughlin's daughter, Mary Ann Cooper, wrote a book about her mother once. It was a soft-cover trade paperback called Portrait of a Soap Star. It only remained in print a short while. When I ordered it, the book was about $15.00. A few years later, I saw it on sale on the internet for over $700.00. Surreal! Most people seem to agree. The choice to cast Borgenson in the role is as baffling as the decision to cast Susan Batten as Connor Walsh on ATWT, Charity Rahmer as Belle Black on DAYS, Jayne Bentzen as Nicole Drake on TEON and Jason Kinkaid as Tom Hughes on ATWT. It's like someone deciding that Danny DeVito would be a good choice to take over the role of Rhett Butler in a remake or sequel to Gone With the Wind. Egads!!!

When the Whitney family was first introduced to TEON, Colin was the first member of the clan we saw. He was in a television studio preparing for a broadcast, with his pushy wife Tiffany giving orders. As we got to know the other members of the Whitney family, the skeleton in their closet was that Colin's murderous brother Keith was hiding out in the disguise of a a hippy type named Jonah Lockwood. The sociopathic Jonah Lockwood terrorized Monticello for many months but eventually fell to his death while he was trying to murder Laurie Ann Karr in a deserted area out in the country. The Whitney left town to escape the bad memories, but matriarch Geraldine Whitney and Colin's wife Tiffany later returned after both their husbands died tragically. To me, the Jonah Lockwood/Whitney family saga was a masterpiece; the most suspenseful and terrifying story ever told on daytime TV. Kudos to writer Henry Slesar for weaving a long, deliciously complex and mesmerizing tale.

If any advertisement about the books falsely claimed that Kerrigan was "the author of the serial," that would have been egregious and Lemay's ire would have been totally understandable. She did not write for the TV serial. BUT! The ads I have seen made it very clear that the party was to launch the Ballantine books. They referred to Kerrigan as the "author of AW I and II." Those were obviously the novels, not the broadcast program itself. Besides clearly stating that KLK was the author of Another World I and II, the Ballantine novelizations, what else could P&G, Ballantine, or the creators of the advertisements do? Perhaps add a note that the books were based on the TV serial which was written by Agnes Nixon, Robert Cenedella and Harding Lemay. But even without that, I don't believe most reasonable people would jump to the conclusion that KLK had been the headwriter for the show. That had not been claimed anywhere. I think the prickly and easily-vexed Lemay jumped to annoyance for little cause. That is a great find; thank you. I have seen a couple of advertisements about the novelizations, and this is one of them. There is no doubt that they are talking about two books and their author, not the material as seen on TV broadcasts.

Actually, I do remember Dan flirting with Ruby. I just wish that viewers had actually SEEN Jessie and Dan drifting apart, as opposed to only hearing about it after the fact. Just like, if Dan and Ruby eventually became exclusive and Jessie accepted it, I'd want to see that unfold as well, and not have to put the pieces together in my own mind to explain the relationships. But GH didn't invest much time or interest in the "old people" by then.

I believe you are correct on all counts. To be fair to the show, if the audience was not warming up to Vana Tribbey, and TPTB wanted a major story to play out with Rachel, Mac and Alice, it kind of makes sense that the producers would try out another actress and keep their fingers crossed that viewers would accept her. How they bungled the casting process and hired such an awful performer remains the principle mystery here.

Yes, there was a party scheduled for launch of the novels, and Kate Lowe Kerrigan was being credited as the author of the adaptations. Lemay became vexed because he had been the headwriter of the actual show for years by then, and had created the story and situations dealt with in Kerrigan's novels (well, particularly Book Two, since a lot of what took place in her Book One had been based on the work of Agnes Nixon). I never heard about Agnes Nixon getting vexed about any of this. (Just sayin'.😉) Isn't it common practice for the novelizations/adaptations of TV series and movies to be penned by different people other than those who wrote the original TV and film scripts? It happens...all the time. The copyright owners can do whatever they please, and hire anyone they want, to write the novelizations based on their property. That being said, it would have been courteous and diplomatic for P&G to have a notice printed on the copyright pages of Kerrigan's books (or perhaps on the back covers), along the lines of, "Based on television stories and scripts written by Agnes Nixon, Robert Cenedella and Harding Lemay." Then Lemay would only have had his third-place billing in the credits to grumble about. LOL! (I jest, I jest!)