Khan

Actually, @carolineg, if you'll recall, University Hospital was a major focus for DAYS in the early years, with Tom, Bill, Laura, Tommy, Greg and Neil all working there. If anything, returning the focus to the hospital - with characters like that new psychiatrist/love interest for Sarah - would be returning the show to its' roots. And isn't Sarah supposed to be a doctor? But but BUT...I would have the new shrink come from a family where everyone - mother, father, siblings, everyone - has suffered from one form of mental illness or another; a background which explains why he became a psychiatrist/psychologist in the first place. It would be a major stumbling block in his and Sarah's relationship. She wants to have children, but he's afraid he'll pass on whatever mental illness exists within his own family.

"Bloated" doesn't begin to describe the size of GH's cast. I think there were less characters in "War and Remembrance."

And a (male) character who isn't a raging psycho or related to everybody else.

See, this is where I would introduce a new character, a young, male colleague of Marlena's, who succeeds in de-programming Sarenee, or at least assists Marlena in doing so. That way, you set up a potential, new love interest for Sarah who would serve as spoiler for her and Xander.

I can't recall anyone specifically. Again, it's only stuff I've heard or read over the years. If I've heard or read wrong, I'll gladly be the first to apologize.

I've no idea. I presume she was your typical, behind-the-scenes diva, but I *know* that I've read over the years how several actors - both at DAYS, and at AW - disliked working with her.

The only thing Billy Miller should have been was the security guard who allowed GH actors onto and off the lot.

Oh, where do I begin, lol? Instead of making Josh Madden (AMC) the Unabortion, I would have made him Kendall Hart's fraternal twin. Erica, we learn, had two children by Richard Fields. However, nobody (even Erica) knew about Josh, because he was born after Kendall, when Mona was presumably out of the room (and Erica was just plain out of it). That way, you still have the novelty of Erica Kane having a son, but not in a way that defies logic (well, not defy it TOO much) or medical science. I also would have left Kelly, Kevin and everyone else on OLTL out of the Babe/Bianca baby switch. The story was convoluted enough without dragging another show into it, lol.

During the Maryanne Caruthers storyline, rumors surfaced that Jeffrey would be revealed as Ed and Maryanne's illegitimate son, but GL fans raised a stink (and rightly so!), so the plot twist was abandoned.

And with good reason. PS was hated by so many on the show that they worked hard to ensure she was forgotten as quickly as possible. But, since we're not supposed to talk ill of the dead....

I can only imagine how it would look if GH and Frank Valentini were to follow GL/Ellen Wheeler's example and tape everything on location in Mendocino.

And that's unusual for the DiMeras because...? Amen! Come on, would YOU call Marlena at this point, lol? I still believe the only way to salvage this story is to reveal that Renee is still alive or that she carried a secret for years that could still impact Salem today.

Is Demetria McKinney or Denise Boutte available? Or are they still shillin' for Tyler Perry?

That's what I'm saying! GET THAT DEGREE, SYDNEY! YOU GOT THIS!

Wouldn't it have been easier just to have Tony and Anna, who've never had any children together, take in a homeless teen instead? I mean, if you want to give them a story, why not something more meaningful than this Sarenee [!@#$%^&*]?

If you look at early "Big Brother" or "Survivor" today, it seems almost quaint; but, back then, it was mind-blowing. "Touched by an Angel" is another, quality show that gets an unfair reputation as a show only "oldsters" would like.

A daily, 90-minute soap was never going to work. You'd either have scenes with too much padding, or a cast with so many characters that audiences wouldn't be able to know who was who.

Christopher being tempted by Melissa was good, but my money would still be on a Melissa/Lance/Cole triangle (with Pilar added later to make it a quadrangle). Instead, I would have introduced someone from Christopher's past to tell a very romantic, "Thorn Birds"-esque story, with Angela as the Mary Carson, doing everything she can to keep her newly found illegitimate grandson from leaving the priesthood (and joining Falcon Crest).

I'd go one better and bring back Cole for a Lance/Melissa/Cole/Pilar quadrangle. Something tells me William R. Moses and Kristian Alfonso would have had chemistry, too. At first, the show seemed to be setting up Julia as their answer to DALLAS' Sue Ellen - which would have been great to see, except, I don't think Abby Dalton had enough gravitas as an actor to pull off an alcoholism storyline. Another big mistake: not doing what they could to hold onto Ken Olin (Father Christopher). I know he felt he was "slumming it" after working on a show like "Hill Street Blues"; and I know, too, if he had stayed, he'd never have been available to play Michael Steadman on "thirtysomething." But, dammit, I thought he fit in well with the FC cast; he was certainly easy on the eyes; and I thought his character had a lot of potential, too. Yup, lol. I could understand killing off Maggie - although, I think I would have had her just leave town with the kids in order to get away from Richard - but the manner in which they killed her off was just too ridic for words. I mean, was Richard's ring really so important that she couldn't have just slipped her finger out of it? It isn't as if the bastard couldn't have bought her another one! Plus, it'd have made so much more sense to have her murdered by one of the Thirteen or their associates. We all know cartels like that are never truly gone forever; they just go further underground. ETA: If I had written it: the Thirteen, or what was left of the Thirteen, murders Maggie and abducts the kids. Richard goes on a season-long quest to track down Maggie's killers and the children's whereabouts. He might cross paths at one point with the very-much-alive Chase. Together, the two continue their search. At the end, it turns out that Michael Sharpe was responsible. Sharpe is killed; Richard and Chase make amends; Chase returns to the life he had built for himself during the years he was presumed dead; and Richard returns to Falcon Crest to run the winery with Angela and Lance. Really? She did? God, that show, lol. She was smart to get two contracts...but that show, lol.

I'm gonna go way, way out on a limb here and suggest that KA could have joined FC as a Melissa recast. Not that I didn't (and still don't) love Ana-Alicia! I do! But, if FC let Alicia go in order to save money, as I suspect they did, then it would have been easy to have Melissa disfigured in the fire and bring her back with a new face (and played by a new actress). Of course, if you did that, you'd have to soften Melissa, because there's no way KA could have played crazy, bitchy Melissa at that point in her career. On the other hand, Melissa returning as a more conventional heroine would have been easier to take than Pilar, who was really just a Melissa substitute anyway.

I think Ann Marcus had a target on her back the moment she walked onto the FC set. Earl Hamner liked her and trusted her and wanted her to have a more active role BTS, but Robert L. McCullough was out to remove her and anyone else he felt threatened his security on the show. That's what Marcus meant when she referred to a producer who had Jane Wyman's ear or whatever. Moreover, according to Marcus' autobiography, "Whistling Girl," she knew she was in trouble after she defended an actor (I suspect Mel Ferrer) whom Wyman had made disparaging comments about. After that incident, things cooled between producer and actor. Ergo, I suspect Wyman herself played a hand in having Marcus removed from the show as well. And then there are the rumors that Stephen Black and Henry Stern were fired after S3 because someone (Wyman again?) found out they were gay and living together. (Although, if the rumors are true, then how did they get back onto for S8? Unless it was McCullough or (...gulp...) Hamner who found them disgusting?) Between DYNASTY and FC, it's truly a contest to see which primetime soap's backstage life was messier, lol. I tend to believe the OTHER story that I've heard/read over the years: that Ana-Alicia was fired (and Melissa was written out) before her contract was officially over; and that they brought her back as Samantha rather than pay her for episodes she wouldn't have been in.

One thing you have to remember, @Paul Raven, is that a lot of those titles - Supervising Producer, Producer, Executive Story Editor/Consultant, Story Editor, etc. - are just that. With the exception of non-writing producers, such as Lee Rich and Philip Capice (DALLAS), Michael Filerman (KL and FC) and, to a certain extent, Aaron Spelling (DYNASTY), all producers are writers. On DALLAS, Leonard Katzman pretty much controlled all the storylines for each season he worked there (save, of course, for the "dream season," when he was listed nominally as "Creative Consultant"). He would sit with the other writers - Arthur Bernard Lewis, Camille Marchetta, David Paulsen - and write out the "bible" for that year, which the others would then divvy up and turn into individual episodes. KNOTS and, I suspect, FC used a similar method. In KNOTS' earliest years, David Jacobs was definitely the showrunner, with Diana Gould his right-hand man (or woman) as Executive Story Consultant. When Peter Dunne joined as Producer in '82, he became, in essence, the head writer, working alongside Gould, Richard Gollance, Joel J. Feigenbaum and others. (Many who have worked on the show, and many who have watched it, say those years w/ Dunne - when the show achieved its' highest ratings - were also its' best). Once Dunne exited, David Paulsen moved over from DALLAS (and Dunne moved over *to* DALLAS) and became showrunner/head writer; but, as Jacobs himself has said, each KNOTS script still passed through his typewriter (meaning, he provided the final polish/rewrite). When Lynn Marie Latham and Bernard Lechowick were named producers in '88, Jacobs, and Mike Filerman, adopted a hands-off approach. From what I understand, the two would still sit in at conferences and such, but otherwise, the Lechowicks were in charge. And that approach continued after the Lechowicks (and Jim and Dianne Messina Stanley) left to work on "Homefront," until things became so bad under new Co-EP/HW/Showrunner John Romano that Jacobs had to step in, halt production and ask Ann Marcus, who hadn't worked on the show since S3, to return and fix things. (In her Television Academy interview, Marcus laughs about being given the title "Senior Producer" at the tail end of S13, because it was a title that made no sense to her.) Lawrence Kasha and Joe Hardy also worked on KNOTS - hired, I suspect, because of Filerman's ties to the theater community (and, in Hardy's case, to daytime TV) - but I think they worked more on the production side of things than on the writing. Similarly, Earl Hamner was FC's de facto showrunner/HW for its' first five years. However, because Hamner himself was never comfortable writing or producing a melodrama like FC - his original vision was more homespun, for lack of a better word - I think the bulk of the plotting and writing was handed off to others: Greg Strangis, Bob McCullough, E.F. Wallengren, Ann Marcus (during the latter part of S3, before backstage skulduggery forced her out of the show) and especially, Rod Peterson and Claire Whitaker, who had also worked closely with Hamner on "The Waltons." Then, at the start of S6, Hamner retired from FC and Jeff Freilich took over as EP/Showrunner. By all the accounts that I've read, Freilich was very hands-on, revamping virtually aspect of FC's production, including lighting, music and sets; and providing a detailed story bible for each of the two seasons he worked on the show. I *think* McCullough and Strangis stayed on for awhile to help with the transition, but it was otherwise Freilich working with his own squad of writers (James Fritzhand, Richard Gollance, Howard Lakin, Lisa Seidman). FC was critically acclaimed during Freilich's years as showrunner and head writer - even Jane Wyman said the show had never been better! lost viewers during Freilich's tenure and - but it was also becoming very expensive to produce, so Freilich was basically shown the door before S8. Michael Filerman, who had had an EP credit on FC from the beginning, but who hadn't been directly involved with the show since the second or third season, exerted more day-to-day control over the series, along with new EP (and DALLAS/DYNASTY vet) Camille Marchetta. (Stephen Black and Henry Stern, who had been staff writers during S3, returned as Co-Producers.) Of course, as we all know, FC's eighth season was a disaster. Ratings plummeted even further. Filerman later admitted he'd made a mistake in returning full-time to FC and attempting to fill the void left by Hamner and Freilich. So, in a last-ditch effort to save the show, Lorimar brought in a new production team, including director Jerry Thorpe ("Kung Fu") as EP; Joel Surnow ("24") as Co-EP and head writer; former DAYS/GH writer Sheri Anderson as Co-Producer; and Cyrus Nowrasteh and Bob Cochran as Story Editors. Filerman retained his EP credit, but I don't think he had any hand in its' doomed, final season. As for DYNASTY...sigh, lol. For better, and most definitely for worse, Richard and Esther Shapiro were in control of their show. They, along with Edward De Blasio and Eileen and Robert Mason Pollock, were DYNASTY's brain trust. Even when they had proven soap and non-soap writers writing for them - Dennis Turner, Susan Baskin, Camille Marchetta (who took the show to number one with the idea for the Moldavian Massacre), Diana Gould, Scott Hamner, Laurence Heath, Jeff Ryder - it was still the Shapiros and Pollocks' story, through and through (with Aaron Spelling on hand, of course, to provide his customary meddling). In fact, the *only* time when the Shapiros or the Pollocks took an active step back from the storytelling was during its' final season, when DALLAS/KL vet David Paulsen was brought in, as Executive Supervising Producer (another way of saying Showrunner and Head Writer), to save the show (and bring it in under budget). The Shapiros stayed on as EP's, but neither the Pollocks nor De Blasio would return until the reunion miniseries two years later. Aside from the Shapiros, the only holdovers from the previous season, I think, were James Harmon Brown and Barbara Esensten, who'd been promoted to Executive Story Editors under Paulsen. I know the Shapiros, and particularly Dame Joan Collins, maintain that David Paulsen was the final nail in DYNASTY's coffin - and if you watch the reunion, too, you can see it's basically the Shapiros, along with De Blasio and the Pollocks, reclaiming the narrative (again, for better...and for worse, lol). But, if you ask me, I think Paulsen's only problem was that he arrived about three seasons too late. He and the writers who joined the show under his watch - Tita Bell, Robert Wolfe, Ron Renauld, Roberto Loiederman - freshened up the series in many ways and proved how (much more) entertaining the past seven years could have been had they contained a modicum of substance.

This is almost like that episode of "Silver Spoons" where Ricky tries to settle a labor dispute at a restaurant that his grandfather owns. Ricky (Stratton) had no business getting involved in that mess, and Ricky (Schroder) has no business getting involved in this mess either. Oh, he knows how it feels to be oppressed. Remember that episode where Edward grounded him for staying out too late with his friends?

You know what? Probably not, lol.