RavenWhitney

They can't hire someone who can act?

Exceedingly bad and the crossover won't work. Especially bringing Dollar Bill I mean Brad Carleton to Genoa City. SAD.

racist. Maybe she's related to Missy Reeves.

So let me get this straight: for the last several months Ron has been running to identical plots: the bastard, previously unknown child out for revenge (Charlie and Gwen). I see.

I didn't have high expectations but Y&R has actually been worse since Susan Dansby joined as story consultant. Sharon's cancer story was wrapped up to be replaced by Chelsea's brain tumor story. Who thought Lily/Billy would be interesting? Do you care that Abby has too much scar tissue? I'm longing for Lynn Latham's reliquary!

Which head writer created the character? Which one brought her back?

OMG all the crazy Trump supportin' Days viewers are on Jason47s Facebook page talking about how they're going to watch Hallmark movies all day since their Republican soap is cancelled. LOL.

Denise Alexander ROCKS. Miss her so much. She made this average storyline so much better at least for an episode.

Billy Flynn's acting isn't the best but he's been poorly written under each head writer. But Ron, in particular, hasn't known how to write for the character. Ron writes plot, not character and Corday wouldn't recognize a good character based long story if it knocked him on the head. He was corrupted by James E. Reilly and there's no going back. Ken has green lighted so many terrible plots and overseen the ruination of so many legacy and promising characters. He allowed Griffith to ruin Hope with the Stefano murder. Charlie and the actor were very promising but of course Ron went for the short term plot cliff hangers and ruined a young fresh face who can act.

She and Cady could be related. I hope Ron gives Jaimie some meaty scenes. Love her.

This will likely be but a shadow of the Pine Valley. I wouldn't get my hopes up.

GL: Maureen/Lujack EON: Margo SFT: Suzie Days: The entire cast

Sheldon was a disaster. Casting of Beth and Chris were huge misses. Totally wasted opportunity with Shelly and Alicia who should have been related and connected to a big Sky/Raven story. The final episode was an insult to the show's long history with that mad hatter B.S. Finally, whomever decided and green lighted the revised opening and closing credits and music changes should have been fired immediately.

amazing woman, great scoops from her tenures on the different shows.

Henry and Erwin never played Monticello like a nameless midwest city; while the opening credits for years was a Cincinnati skyline, the show was so New York feeling. That darker noir, street wise, set of characters with stark humor and NYC accents. Loved it. Great atmosphere for so many years that the basic sets never mattered. Until Lee Sheldon train wreck came in and they changed the opening and closing credits (and hired a series of bad actors for precious few contract roles i.e. Sany Faison and Jennifer Taylor).

Wrong. Those towns were deliberately named because it was a nod to sister P&G shows. EON and ATWT started on CBS back to back in April way back. Draper and April''s house was supposed to be outside of Monticello. And Jody was to have come from Springfield in the same state. I thought it was cool that they named those towns in a nod to sister soaps. Especially since EON was on ABC at that point and the other two on CBS but all three owned by P&G.

King left AW a few months before the show went off the air. When I was in college in NYC I met Joe LeSeur who lived in the East Village. He was at that time an embittered gay man who drank a lot but he gave me several hot off the presses scripts he wrote. He wrote the same day each week. I had several scripts at the time that hadn't yet aired. I'd record them on my VCR! and follow the dialog. The scripts were seriously altered. Joe's dialog was not played as written. A few years later I took a soap writing course taught by Barbara Seiger who had been a script writer during the Tom King / Soderberg years along with Joe. She taught the first class around an excerpt of a breakdown Tom King had written which was the day Rachel was convicted while on trial. Barbara trashed Tom and said the breakdowns were full of errors and un researched ideas. In the breakdown she handed out, there's a hand written note for her to look up what kind of crime Rachel should be convicted of and how many years she would get. I still have the breakdown in the attic I think (along with Joe's scripts). Barbara said that NBC and P&G regularly dictated story turns to Tom and Robert. I don't believe they did the same with Harding. Tom was well liked by the execs because he was more compliant even if not a brilliant writer. When I look back on Tom's 1980 he maintained a lot of Harding stories but improved on some things. To me the last truly watchable period that also had lasting impact was the brief Soderberg/Purser years 82-83. Their creations and stories resonated till the end. The casting was first rate, the show looked gorgeous. But NBC had to install nobodies Culliton and Tomlin from Texas because why? Because they had also installed Long at GL. I think all of these writers probably got their start during the 81 writers' strike and the execs always swung between new/untested blood and veterans and tried and true hacks.

Who was the first actor to play Sharkey before Chris Goutman?

If there had been Twitter in 1988 I think all of this would have been public very quickly. You just have to look at the credits in the few months following the conclusion of each strike to see all the former soap actors, production assistants and unfamiliar names who were hired onto the writing teams. Everyone in the biz (I'm sure) knew that Swajeski had been writing the show during the strike. I think Zazlow and Hufford along with Radell were added once Swajeski started or shortly before. Lemay's breakdown writing team was his son, Chris Whitesell and Barbara Hagstrom. For instance: Lois Kibbee: I met Ernie Townsend once in NYC; he played Cliff. I asked him who wrote Edge during the 1981 strike and he told me that Lois and Laurie Durbrow were the writers. He said Henry was so impressed he fired Steve Lehrman and hired Lois as his script writer.

Many have reported that AW strike team of writers included: Donna Swajeski, Michael Zazlow (Roger from GL), his wife Susan Hufford, Nerissa Radell, Janet Iacubuzio, Mimi Leahey and Janet Stampfl. I imagine that Swajeski and the Zazlows worked off some of Lemay's story ideas but that EP/Michael Laibson supervised the storylines. Lemay was not a good fit for any show as a head writer by the late 1980s. His ten weeks after the strike ended were boring and uninspired. I thought the strike period other than the ghost story was pretty watchable. When Lemay's scripts starting airing I could barely get through an episode.

This news will not save GH from oblivion. No one cares about an actress who played an 1980s character on a cancelled soap. When GH stops revolving around murderous thugs it might gain a few more viewers. Writer Courtney Simon summed it up best why she never felt comfortable writing under Guza and left after a short stint. The show was built around criminals. Check out Alan Locher's interview with her and Peter Simon. It was brief and refreshing to hear the truth from a writer.

I agree with you. I loved him.

Sandra could never act her way out of a paper bag. RKK was okay as long as he was half naked and mouth shut. Charles Flohe was inconsistent. Had some good scenes on Edge where he played tender emotions nicely but he never cut it on AW and the character had potential being Janice's son. I've always been amazed over the years that TPTB on many shows seem to have difficulty finding outstanding performers to fill the role of the adult/aged children of the show's vets. Some get it right. Grant Alexander and Mike O'Leary were fantastic for years as Phil and Rick. Y&R has failed with Josh and Amelia as Victor and Nikki's kids. They can't get the right actor for Ashley's daughter or Nick's kids, Noah and Summer. All these actors are terrible. On AW, they couldn't keep actors in the Jamie role for very long. Bekins was the best fit. After him, none of the others worked. Look what they did with Lorna. Alicia was awesome then we got Sky Chandler. Terrible

Exactly, remember they were competing with Gloria Monty's GH at the time. The interesting thing is that Luke/AG was never hot and aged a lot. Gloria and AG made it work. The Dobson's had played Ed/Mike/Rita/Holly for years. It needed a bit of a rest anyway. I never liked PS as Ed even though I like the actor. He was a sourpuss as my Granny used to say. I think he always resented playing Ed and it came through.

The 1981 writer's strike happened in summer 81. Bunim hired actor Don Chastain to write the show and she fired Upton after the strike ended. Chastain briefly held the head writer role and ruined things with some crappy boxing story. I think he was still appearing as Max. Upton's real life son was named Garth. He died in 2004 of lung cancer at age 60. Gabrielle was still alive, having been born in 1922. Never found an obituary so she still may be alive! Amazing that she wrote the show solo. IMDB doesn't list that she was also head writer for Love of Life, an unwatchable period where she focused on a former prostitute. But I really liked this episode. Classy, Directing, music, pacing was all so classic soap. Dignified. Sheri was sensational. Rod never knew his lines. he was no Tony Geary! You have to give P&G credit for giving Bunim an EP title when she was so young (she had been an associate producer). She must have been really talented and wowed the execs. I loved most of her EP stint on ATWT too. Sad when you think of the crap on tv today.