vetsoapfan

TPTB must have erroneously believed that endlessly ramming Kim Zimmer down the audience's throats was the key to ratings' success...but actually, the last time TGL was respected and GOOD was when she was NOT part of the cast. Daytime's insane and baffling determination to showcase science-fiction crap year after year boggles the mind. It has crippled many once-fine shows. After the "reality bubble" is broken, thanks to clones, devil possession, time travelling, going to heaven on space ships, brain implants, mad scientists freezing the world, etc., the mature, adult audience members never again immerse themselves completely into the shows, and are more likely to drift away. Kids do tend to be attracted to the Saturday-morning-cartoonish material, but they are not a reliable audience; if they are only watching for the latest outrageous gimmick, they too will drift away from the soaps when the writers cannot continue providing them with over-the-top stories to their liking. When has a "gimmick" soap EVER been a verifiable success? As for the folly of allowing overbearing actors any input in their storylines, THAT is a recipe for disaster. Exhibit A: Tony Geary. Those of you who discovered TGL in 1989 and watched it for the next three years were quite fortunate to stumble across the show at that time. It was the soap's last, great hurrah. TGL had been quite dreadful for several years before that, and it fell apart again shortly afterwards, but....ahhh, that brief period was memorable!

And NONE of them enjoyed the higher ratings that RTPP had. Alas. TPTB never fail to live DOWN to my expectations. Their abject lack of understanding about the soap opera medium and its viewers is beyond belief.

Actually, at the time of its cancellation, RTPP was ranked 11th out of 16 soaps. Just counting the shows on NBC, Somerset had weaker ratings than RTPP, so RTPP was not even the lowest-ranked drama on the network. It was not performing that poorly. I think Bolen just wanted HTSAM to benefit from the cushy post-AW timeslot, so she axed it instead of the more logical Somerset..

I was being kind and kept the list short, LOL. UGH. Sooooooooooo many putrid Reva stories. And a harping on campy (i.e. STOOPID) stories ended up getting Passions axed too.

Right. MEB decimated the soaps she "produced," whereas at least Lemay did have one major hit in his earlier AW days. MEB is mainly known for axing beloved veterans and dumbing down the once-great shows she worked on. I'm team Lemay in this battle. The writer may have been arrogant and condescending, and he admittedly derided the soaps, but his writing on AW between 1972 and 1975, in particular, speaks for itself.

The networks are always impulsive and make dumb, rash decisions. Way back in 1974, Return to Peyton Place had a rating of 7.2 and had developed into a fine show, but NBC wasn't satisfied, and they axed the soap in favor of How to Survive a Marriage, which ultimately became great after an atrocious start, but which had a significantly lower rating than RTPP.

GH needs to be put out of its misery. Exactly. Sometimes great acting can salvage poorly-written storylines, but unfortunately, we don't see enough of that. Most actors cannot overcome days, weeks, months, years of atrocious scripts and plots. There are those who adored Kim Zimmer as Reva (I am not one of them), but even she could not make silk out a sow's ear with the putrid stories TGL gave her in its last few decades. Reva the Ghost! Reva the Amish Amnesiac! Reva the San Cristocrapian Queen! Reva the Blind! Reva the Illegal-Alien Savoir! Reva the Clone! Reva the Time Traveller! VOMIT! RETCH! BARF!

Very possibly Marland wanted to keep the Morgan/Kelly/Nola triangle going for as long as possible, and have Kelly become reinvolved with Nola at some point, but since Marland stated so many times that Morgan and Kelly were his couple, unless I see it in his own words, LOL, I'll never believe he meant for Kelly to be with Nola "in the end." On AW, Steven Frame kept getting retangled with that bitch Rachel, but Steve and Alice were endgame. On Days, Laura Horton stayed married to Uncle Mickey for TEN YEARS (closer to 20 in storyline time), but Laura and Bill were the ultimate endgame. A year's story projection from Marland indicating Kelly would rescue Nola and start having feelings for her does not necessarily mean that 10 years down the road, Kelly and Morgan would not be the ones to get the fairy-tale ending. (Not trying to argue, just air my POV.) I've also heard that Quint was originally meant to be short-term, but he and Nola were a fun couple for a while, so I don't mind that he stuck around longer than originally expected. He would not have been my ultimate choice for Nola, however. I always thought that once she grew up, matured, and became stronger, she would outgrow him. She would no longer need a larger-than-life "fantasy figure" akin to the heroes of all the classic films she used to immerse herself in. I agree. Other PTB never seem to see their own mistakes, and repeat them endlessly. ITA! I think the main reason GH's ratings did not collapse during those bad years was because the competing shows were just as bad or worse at the time. The 1980s were a grim period for both AW and TGL. When all the available choices in a time period are awful, I tend to stick with the show I'm already watching, because at least I KNOW it and have a history with it. Why leave one bad soap to watch an unfamiliar-AND-awful soap?

Yes, that story unfolded under Edelstein. You're right: it was riveting and brilliant. I sobbed like I had known Fran Bachman for decades, LOL. I'm glad that the actress who played the role, Fran Brill, won the Best Actress in a Single Sequence that year at the Afternoon TV awards. She deserved it. I agree that Rita Lakin was better than Edelstein on The Doctors; she was that soap's best scribe during its run, IMHO, but then again, some writers just end up being better suited for certain shows. Ann Marcus was very good on Search for Tomorrow. Under her pen, the ratings took a huge and sudden swing upwards. She was also perfect for Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman. Unfortunately, when she followed Pat Falken Smith on Days of Our Lives, she was DREADFUL. To me, her work on DAYS was the worst of her entire career. It was so terrible that I wrote a furious letter to Betty Corday, the first and last time I have ever written to the producer of a show.

ITA about the state of GH in the mid-to-late 1980s. I thought it was poorly written and sophomoric. So many of the sci-fi/fantasy/adventure plots that the show did was painfully bad. The Ice Princess story initially attracted the interest of kids, but they are not the target audience of soaps, and tend not to stick around after their initial curiosity dissipates. Trying harder and harder to present more outlandish stories just to keep a fly-by-night audience around has never worked. Even Dark Shadows, which was very well done its first few years, burned itself out and lost its once-eager audience. Soaps were created and meant to be primarily about human relationships, family conflict, social problems and romance. When the shows stray too far from that foundation, they falter. "Gimmick soaps" NEVER last too long. I watched OLTL all through Russell's reign. I found him to be weaker on his own, but excellent when paired with other writers like Sam Hall. Wallace and Monty might have been an interesting pair. Nancy Curleee following Labine would have been the best-available choice, IMHO. It's too bad we got stuck with Guza again. The relentless focus on mobsters, brain-damaged killers, and violent degenerates in general really destroyed the show.

Well, no toddler can decipher all the complex nuances of adult conversation, and I daresay that 3-year-olds would find even universally-acknowledged classics like Little Women, Pride and Prejudice or Hamlet to be largely incomprehensible and/or tedious. At that young age, I found Irna Phillip's and Agnes Nixon's shows dull too. All the people did was talk! It's unfortunate that you cannot sample HTSAM (particularly Edelstein's reign as headwriter) now.

He always looked great in a T-shirt and jeans. 😜 Chris Robinson complained in an interview once that RDA would go into his own dressing room and smoke cigarettes, as if that were uncommon or a crime back then. Robinson just came across as unpleasant. RDA came across as affable, gregarious and adorable. I know whom I would have chosen.

It had originally been written that Greg and Monica had had an affair, but I think the show later said Greg had raped her, in an attempt to redeem Monica.

The first Rick, Michael Gregory, was a hunk and a half. He did not look special in still photographs, but he had a spark, a charisma, a certain something on screen that was quite appealing. Chris Robinson, on the other hand, always struck me as cold, aloof, unfeeling. I never warmed up to him. But Richard Dean Anderson's Jeff? WOOF! Total babe. His virtue would not have been safe around me! Thanks for posting this. Gotta love the brutally honest PFS!

The handling of the Bill and Laura situation was very adult, very complicated. They had been in love first, and desperately wanted to be together, but when Bill disappeared and Laura married Mickey, that set off a dreadful chain of events. Laura was still madly in love with Bill upon his return (she had only married Mickey for security and to forget her doomed romance with Bill). Bill was still in love with her too, and crushed that she had married his brother. They physically longed for each other, we saw this day after day, but Laura denied herself because of her marriage vows and her sense of morality. When Bill got drunk and cornered her in the hospital, Laura physically and emotionally wanted to be with him but intellectually knew it was wrong. Bill forced himself upon her, yes, no question...but viewers saw and understood that in her heart, Laura really had wanted to consummate her love for Bill. It was rape, but the circumstances were ambiguous and gray, rather than black and white. (I am NOT justifying sexual assault, just pointing out how complicated this situation was, which is why the story captivated the audience so much. It pulled at your emotions, heartstrings, and understanding of right and wrong. Brilliant, brilliant writing by William J. Bell and Pat Falken Smith. DAMN. I miss the days of adult, nuanced, complicated material on soaps!) I've always contended that soap writers must be careful about what they allow their characters to do. Once characters go beyond a certain point, and commit rape, murder, and other heinous acts, they should be punished and certainly not turned into the towns' heroes, saints and saviors. Daytime TV executives and writers understood and adhered to this rule once upon a time, but since Luke The Rapist captured screaming fangurls' lust, anything goes. Repugnant slugs like Sonny, Jason, Franko and their ilk should have been dispatched long ago. Exactly. And frankly, Michael Zaslow's talent went a long way to humanize Roger, and let us see the broken man behind the monster. Geary often settled for belligerent camp. Luke was a degenerate. Yep. Without his chemistry with Genie Francis, Geary's Luke Spencer never would have become a phenomenon. ABC's acquiescing to his enormous ego was infuriating. An actor is there to act, not dictate personal story preferences. I'm glad he's gone, to be honest. Now we need to axe Sonny, Jason, Franko, and 25 other GH characters! In the interviews I've read, Marland said that he never intended for Luke to become a major character at all; he was there as Bobbie's sidekick and henchman in crime. he was supposed to be killed off. Laura and Scotty were Marland's endgame, the way Kelly and Morgan on TGL and Lily and Holden on ATWT were. I can't see Marland allowing Kelly to ultimately end up with Nola, or Lily to end up with, say, Craig Montgomery, or laura to break up with Scotty and leave him for Luke. PFS did develop the Luke and Laura saga, but said that she wrote the rape as a rape. It was Gloria Monty (seeing the obvious chemistry between Geary and Francis) who wanted them to become a romantic duo. That's why Monty started to pontificate in the press (and have characters saying on-screen) that Luke had only "seduced" Laura. For a female executive to foist that sort of sick message onto teenage girls in the audience is deplorable, I think the overheated and frenzied fangurls in the audience focused their attention and lust on the ((ahem)) "beautiful rapist" and pictured themselves in Laura's shoes. It's not uncommon for teenagers to fantasize about older lovers. But many more mature and rational members of the audience and the press condemned the immorality behind this ill-advised plot

Yes! The writing and acting really saved the day for the Roger and Holly saga. We always understood and felt mesmerized by their (admittedly twisted at times) feelings for each other, which we did not have to feel guilty about because Roger's crimes were never forgotten about, dismissed or ignored. Right. I was mollified somewhat by the fact that years later, Luke finally admitted he had raped (and not just "seduced") Laura, but it was still hard to swallow that they had been happily together and married for so many years without this MAJOR ISSUE surfacing loooong before it did. The show made a huge blunder by glossing over Luke's degenerate, vile crime and Laura's passive acceptance of it. The entire fiasco was so immoral, so socially irresponsible. I don't care if Geary and Francis had significant chemistry. It does not justify turning a violent crime into romance.

In any case, both DM and PFS gave us extraordinary material to enjoy. They both wrote GH in a way that appealed to the mass audience AND was highly intelligent. Not many writers have been able to accomplish that in the last 20 years. GH would be dead right now without the contribution of these great scribes. We were so lucky to have them. Those were golden years. Yes, she stopped wotking during that writers' strike, which is when the scabs and Monty destroyed the show with the Ice Princess garbage. PFS was furious. She acknowledged that she did not like material that went beyond the realm of possibility. The sci-fi sh*t was not her idea or her doing. She made that very clear in the press. Later writers sometimes continued on with the Lesley/Monica antagonism, sometimes not. Certain writers (probably those too lazy to investigate the show's history or understand the characters' relationship) had Lesley and Monica more friendly; had them go to lunch together (as IF!!!). But the scenes in which Lesley helped Monica give birth were during PFS's tenure. I always saw Monica (during her early years) to be more insecure and desperate than a total bitch. Growing up an orphan (well, until Gail adopted her later in life, which the show and the writers then forgot about) and unloved, she was determined to do anything necessary to find love and financial/emotional security. Her atrocious behavior towards Jeff, Lesley, and Alan stemmed from the fact that she was so madly and genuinely in love with Rick that ethics and morality went out the window. The bigger problem was, her relationship with Rick was toxic and unhealthy. He brought out the worst, rather than any good qualities, in her. Once the "Rick fever" was out of her system, and Monica settled into a marriage with Alan, she became healthier, more secure, less desperate, and her better qualities emerged. Certainly Alan and Monica had their battles and their conflict, but there was an underlying understanding between them; they really were meant to end up together. Damn the incompetent writers for callously killing off Alan (and all the Qs), and for ultimately turning Rick into a degenerate sleazeball who pretty much deserved his ultimate fate. (That final Rick story was EGREGIOUS; a real stain on the show's history.) Well said. No matter how much power, money and sex he had, Roger Thorpe always suffered for his raping Holly (as he should have). He was guilt-ridden and seen as a pariah for decades. It disgusts me that people like Luke, Sonny, Jason and their ilk commit the vilest, most despicable actions (not just rape), and then become celebrated members of the community and/or have their crimes forgiven and dismissed. On the latest anniversary show, I gagged watching Laura sing Sonny's praises. True, although in order to justify the Luke and Laura relationship, true-blue and noble Scotty Baldwin (who was a sweet, supportive hero back then), got thrown under the bus. He was ultimately painted as a villain for "daring" to feel resentful that his wife abandoned him and ran off with a criminal rapist. That infuriated me. I have always loathed Luke.

It was not praised for its writing at what time? Everyone seemed to be singing its praises during Douglas Marland's stint and then when Pat Falken Smith FIRST took over. Until the sci-fi dreck began, the quality writing was referred to in the press and in commentary by the viewers as a fundamental reason why the show soared in the ratings and stayed at the top. Then, of course, once the campy science fiction plots began, GH started attracting a different kind of viewer (kids and teens), who kept the show popular even though, through most of the 1980s, the scripts were far inferior to what Marland and Smith had given us before that.

Humanity shines through the work of some writers (like Claire Labine and Pamela Long), and I would put Edelstein in that category, particularly for his sublime work on HTSAM. I was sorry to see him leave daytime (he would have been a good fit at Another World--much better than Tom King--upon Harding Lemay's departure from that program. Still, daytime's loss was primetime's gain. Edelstein even managed to bring humanity to scripts for Starky and Hutch (!!!), which was remarkable to witness.

You are too kind. Thank you, my dear!

ABC did seem to be pushing both GH and OLTL more in the late 1970s, with advertisements in mainstream magazines like TV Guide, as well as on-air promos. Once Monty and Douglas Marland joined forces, the show almost instantly SOARED in the ratings. The daytime press took notice immediately and talked about GH's miraculous turnaround, particularly because as GH climbed so high in the ratings, its once-formidable competition Another World was drifting downwards. Marland's endgame was Luke and Scotty, he was not responsible for the Luke and Laura phenomenon, although he did create the character of Luke. In multiple interviews at the time of his firing, Marland said he and Monty argued about the future of Laura and Scotty, not Laura and Luke. After they married, the writer wanted to give Laura and Scotty a rest and let them be happy for awhile, but Monty insisted that the couple instantly be thrown into more conflict. (Monty would usually get her way. Pat Falken Smith described her as a "genius who ran a gestapo operation.") PFS developed the Luke and Laura relationship on air and wrote the rape storyline. When Monty/the network backtracked and claimed that the horrific assault we HAD SEEN ON AIR was supposedly a "seduction," there was considerable backlash. Genie Francis openly said that she had played a victim of rape, and the re-imagining of the attack as a seduction "made my blood run cold." On the Phil Donahue show, Leslie Charleson vehemently denounced the story twist and announced that she was aghast at how irresponsible it was. (I was sure she'd get fired after that, LOL!) Afternoon TV magazine wrote a review of the show with the title, "General Hospital is Degenerate!" Horny and delusional fangurls would mob Tony Geary at public appearances and scream, "RAPE ME LUKE!!!" but more rational minds saw the turning of a rapist into a desirable romantic figure as morally offensive. ("Hey girls, if a man attacks you, rapes you, and sends you to the hospital, it means that he LOVES you! Go out and try to get raped TODAY!" Um...no.) PFS's forte was character motivation and it was always at the forefront in her writing, except perhaps when Monty and the network(s) exerted their authority. She once acknowledged that she did not like outlandish stories that went beyond the realm of possibility. Under PFS's pen, the daily scripts always added nuance and depth to Alan. He was portrayed as a deeply passionate but insecure man, driven around the bend by his manipulative, cheating wife's lies and infidelity. I was kind of rooting for that roof to crash down on Monica's and Rick's heads, although at the last minute, Alan jumped in and saved them. He would have saved Lesley years of unnecessary grief if he had just let the roof do its job and flatten Rick and Monica, LOL. Well, Pat Falken Smith sued Days because after they had fired her, the show went ahead and used the storyline bible SHE had created and written. That would piss me off too. I understand that as an employee, what she created while on the job belonged to NBC/DAYS, however.

Pat Falken Smith has always been one of my favorite soap writers. Where The Heart Is was a short-lived soap on CBS which ran from 1969 to 1973. When it premiered, it was written by Lou Scofield and Margaret DePriest, and to put it bluntly, it was quite tedious. DePriest has never struck me as anything other than colorless and bland. Her work on WTHI did not attract a significant audience, and I think viewers, after sampling the new-but-mediocre soap, never gave it another chance. This is a major shame because once Scofield and DePriest were axed, Pat Falken Smith took over the reigns, and the quality of the writing soared. The show became must-see daytime TV. (After PFL departed, we were treated to another great: Claire Labine, who was also at the height of her game.) Viewers may not have wanted to sample WTHI a second time after witnessing S&D's yawn-inducing material, but Falken Smith and Labine were both memorable on WTHI. Labine would later move on to Love of Life where she turned THAT series around completely. With Pat Falken Smith and Claire Labine providing us with first-rate entertainment, WTHI deserved a better fate and a much-longer life. I wish more fans had been able to see it. When Bill Bell negotiated out of his contract with Days of our Lives (to work on Y&R), he was contractually obliged to work on the yearly storyline bible for DAYS, but in an interview conducted in 1976 (when she was the writer responsible for the daily running of the show), PFS acknowledged that she did have the power to make changes and tweak anything (with network approval, of course). She spoke about being paid a huge amount of money every year, just for "thinking creatively." (I want to say it was $375,000, but I'll have to check.) To me, 1976 was the very best-written year in the history of DAYS. The show disintegrated into a painful mess the moment she was fired. (Ann Marcus, so good on Search for Tomorrow and even Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, was not the right fit for Salem.) I knew that PFS would be a writer I'd follow around the network dial from soap to soap. She never disappointed me. She was excellent on WTHI, DAYS, GH and even TGL (for she short time she was there.) The only time I felt that her material did not really gel was when she took over Ryan's Hope, but then again, that entire show just felt "off" during those years. I think network interference tied her hands. I'd describe her forte as sophisticated, adult and poignant psycho-sexual drama. For the record, she loathed the Cassadines-Freeze-the-World/Ice Princess crap on General Hospital as much as I did. It was inflicted on the audience by scab writers. When she returned to GH, she bluntly announced in the press, "That crappy writing all summer wasn't mine!" The world of soaps would greatly benefit from talents like Smith's today.

When referencing a character named "Dick," Danfling was actually referring to the show's original patriarch Ben Grant, played by actor Ed Kemmer. Heaven knows, we all have "senior moments" and forget names and storyline details from time to time. Just for historical accuracy and clarification purposes: The writer referred to as "Roy Winson" is Roy Winsor, a legendary figure in the golden era of soaps. Actress "Mary Waronok" is Mary Woronov. Actress "Bibi Beesch" is, of course, Bibi Besch.

Nursery school? So you must have been born in 1971-ish, and watched HTSAM when you were 3-4 years old? I agree that being a toddler, or just slightly older than one, will affect how any very young child will perceive and react to a TV show or film. I felt HTSAM was schizophrenic, mainly due to its huge shifts in storytelling quality. When it premiered, it was written by Anne Howard Bailey and featured several strident "talking heads," pontificating on women's liberation and wives' need to have lives separate from her husbands'. The principle problem was: the characters were flat, cardboard, and not particularly interesting or likeable. As a viewer, I did not want to be lectured to, LOL. The third and final writer before the show's cancellation was Margaret DePriest, who presented us with her usual tepid, functional-but-generally bland material. I had trouble sitting through both Bailey's and DePriest's reign as headwriter. The middle third of the series, however, was written by Rick Edelstein, who was wonderful. He was never better than when he was writing this series, IMHO. He predicated his scripts on intense interpersonal-relationship conflict, with multi-dimensional characters whom the audience could relate to and care about, even if we did not always agree with their choices or behavior; characters who were nuanced in shades of gray rather rather painted in black-and-white terms. The tone and presentation of HTSAM under Edelstein's pen was very much like Harding Lemay's handling of Another World in the early 1970s: thoughtful, adult drawing-room drama. Unfortunately, from past experience, I knew that if a new soap premiered and proved itself to be dreadful right from the get-go, the initially-interested audience may be turned off and never have any incentive to give the show a second look later on. Anne Howard Bailey and NBC executive Lin Bolin crippled HTSAM from the start just by giving us subpar material. I think if it had been kept in a comfortable time-slot, Edelstein's writing and the excellent performances by several members of the cast could have given HTSAM a fighting chance, but when the network shifted the series to air against ATWT, that was the fatal blow. ATWT was a Nielsen powerhouse back then, with a rating of 10.8 and a 37 share. Poor HTSAM, even when it was brilliantly written, never stood a chance. But when this program was good, it was great, and I am grateful to have been there to see it.

I loved the daytime press way back then. They had very long, in-depth and well-written articles, interviews and biographies of the stars and their characters. Nowadays, SOD is just filled with vapid, pointless, filler material.