ghfan89

What is the tea with Rebecca Budig and Paulo Benedeti?

On 7/4/2020 at 10:25 AM, Faulkner said:

What happened with Rachel saddens me. EB’s Rachel was such a composed, intelligent, principled woman, and then, after the first recast, they stripped all that away and made her a stereotypical drug addict and criminal. An addiction story could have still worked for her, but I was uncomfortable with how they handled her stories (but that’s more about OLTL’s mid-‘90s decline than anything else). I thought Daphnée Duplaix’s version did a lot to rehabilitate the character, and while I probably wouldn’t want to have seen her with Todd, I didn’t want to see her shunted off to the corner with overacting Terrell Tilford.

Yup. Jill Farren Phelps really decimated the Gannons when she took over in the late 90s. I think she was also the producer who put the kaboosh on the interracial pairings of Alan-Michael/Gilly and David/Bridget on Guiding Light too.

TC Warner interviews Lorraine Broderick

Yeah, I think this was when Adam had some get rich scheme (I think? I don't remember the motivation really) where he faked his death. He somehow got kidnapped and held hostage by Billy Clyde and Christina Baranski, while Adam's wife, Erica was sexing up Mike Roy in the Chandler Mansion.

15 hours ago, Jonathan said:

 

I am all for people getting a second chance and for repentance but I could not accept the fact that Trevor would marry Janet.  Forgive, ok.  Marry her?  No way.

I agree. They should have continued with the Pierce and Janet story instead.

4 hours ago, titan1978 said:

There were lots of times they dipped below other shows, but they still had high enough numbers for the year to be number  one.  Challengers didn’t dethrone them for the season until Y&R later in the 80’s.

There were plenty of great characters still doing interesting things- especially the Quartermaines.  It’s just interesting to me that the show’s success survived such an awful year story wise and great characters being replaced by bland ones.  Laura Templeton was no Laura Spencer.

True. I think in 1982 it was really close between GH and AMC though it was the closest GH came to losing the #1 spot until Y&R in the late 80's.

3 hours ago, titan1978 said:

I was watching a bunch of 1982 eps on YouTube, and I started thinking about the show at that moment.  How did they stay at number 1 for the year, and how did their ratings not completely collapse that year? I don’t mean the logical settling after the wedding of Luke and Laura.  Their ratings stayed really high anyway, and other soaps had good stuff going on, it’s not like now when they are all bad.

 

Between 1981 and 1982, they lost so many characters that drove major story- Diana, Jeff and Laura to name a few. The major plot of David Grey is also incredibly stupid, and there  are a lot of bland new characters all of a sudden.  People must have really loved Luke and Robert.

GH dropped to #2 the summer of 1982 and was overtaken by AMC, IIRC.

Maybe the best episode of all of 1995 of AMC was when Hayley walked in on Alec pouring alcohol down Arlene's throat. I felt physically sick for Hayley, that was great writing and drama.

Apparently David Lynch was a fan of The Edge of Night

Lynch always planned Twin Peaks to be the soap to end them all; a show so twisted that even its own soap-within-a-soap, Invitation To Love, was eventually phased out because it exhausted the writers. “I really like soap operas,” he explains. “I got hooked when I was printing engravings at art school. This lady I was printing with was so completely addicted to two particular soaps – Another World and The Edge Of Night – that I got hooked as well. I dug them. But the frustrating thing about them is that they draw the smallest torments out forever. It works, but it’s frustrating.”

https://www.wonderlandmagazine.com/2009/04/23/david-lynch/

Florencia Lozano said when Jill Farren Phelps took over One Life to Live, she told her to dye her hair blonde and wanted Tea to stop speaking Spanish... even though the character was hispanic.

JFP also dismantled the Gannons (Hank/RJ/Rachel) on the same show.

JFP also put a stop to the Gilly and Alan-Michael romance on Guiding Light years earlier,

Then she put a stop to the Taggert as Sonny's step-brother and Gia as his sister story on GH. Gives Sonny a blonde, blue eyed sister instead.

I'm just saying. There's a pattern.

33 minutes ago, Paul Raven said:

Whatever happened to Wisner Washam. When did he depart? Did he fall or was he pushed?

He was upfront about it in his WLS interview. He said it was because Megan McTavish got promoted, and she drove him away in the early 90's. He went and took a writing job on GL for a bit along with Lorraine Broderick.

Wasn't Ryan Kit accused of rape? I think it happened around Halloween of that year. McTavish seemed to have a thing for women calling fake rape. She had done it years early with SMG Kendall trying to say Dimitri raped her.

Broderick had some out there stories too -- the hypnotist Dr Lazzare in the late 80's then that Voodoo stuff in Jamacia in the 90's -- but she did balance it with more real stuff like Michael Delaney and the Cindy AIDS story. I do think she wrote with more depth than McTavish. Mctavish was a bit more of a gimmick writer, but the show wasn't as depressing as it was under Broderick at times. A lot of times under McTavish I didn't understand character motivation, she had a gimmick or idea and would fit the characters to it, it seemed like, where as Lorraine was more of a character writer, go into their fears and desires, and wrote from that. Overall I preferred Broderick, but both had their good points and bad points. 

8 hours ago, cassistan said:

they posted it a hour ago 
https://www.instagram.com/tv/CA01_V4pJo7/?igshid=1epcxjd3i6z9m

Thanks so much for bringing that over 

7 hours ago, Vee said:

Wow, Kasi Lemmons lost the part of Angie to Debbi.

 

I'm skimming but there are some cringeworthy errors here - the host says she went back to AMC in '93 and pretty much stayed to the end. OTOH, Debbi herself says she left the first time to follow Charles S. Dutton to L.A. and do "Port Charles", which, no.

In an old trivia book I have, Tonya Pinkins says she auditioned for Angie before getting Livia a decade later.

1 hour ago, cassistan said:

it happened 

Okay, thanks. I hope it gets uploaded then 

1 hour ago, EricMontreal22 said:

*waits impatiently for the Debbi video*

I was also looking for the Debbi video, but then I saw a comment on instagram that the chat never happened or showed up. Is this true?

I am watching the Vincent interview, and I never heard this before, but he mentioned that it was Frons idea to force out Lorraine in favor of a younger writing staff in 2010. He says they lost 34% viewership after that, which led to the decision of cancellation, and Vincent says he attributes that to Frons getting rid of Lorraine. He said "the exec" head of ABCD micromanaged the show, making one bad decision after the next for 9 years.

Jensen Ackles was also in the running for Lucky back then

9 hours ago, OzFrog said:

Sometimes I wonder back when Bobby Warner was reintroduced in the mid-late 90s, how would things have panned out if somehow Peter Bergman had come back as Cliff at that point (yes yes I know he was well and truly at Y&R by that stage, but one can dream)? That would have been an interesting dynamic to explore especially with Nina coming back for a little bit as well (and the soap geek in me reckons Peter Bergman and Brian Gaskill had enough physical resemblance at least to pull it off).

I remember an interview with Rebecca Budig when they brought back Bobby Warner in the 2000's as a sort of love interest for Greenlee and her talking about what a trip it was because she grew up watching AMC and Cliff and Nina were her favorite couple.

16 hours ago, All My Shadows said:

It was the same for Cliff and Nina - their September 1980 wedding was huge and ushered in the era of location shoot weddings for supercouples, and they'd been on for maybe a year and a month or two? I think the Cortlandts first arrived the previous summer.

I'm entering April 1989, and I have some comments and questions.

 

- Walt Willey deserves credit. The energy he had in the Jack/Erica romance 30+ years ago was still there later, even as they were on rehash number-whatever in the early 2000s. Regardless of the stories between the two, the chemistry was always there between the two, and they just felt believable.

 

- Bye, Julie girl! They kinda rushed her exit, though, right? We went from lovey-dovey Julie and Nico couple scenes to him being an [!@#$%^&*] to justify her deciding to leave.

- Do people generally prefer this earnest, homespun, country boy version of Will as played by LQ or the more villainous version as played JPS? Was the change in characterization gradual or quick?

- I can't help it. I love David and Melanie. Maybe not LOVE, but I'm falling for TPTB's manipulations to make me like them. The lingering looks, the wispy music in the background that plays every single time, the dorky cute motif of them enjoying classical music, etc. It's all so sugary sweet, and I'm eating it up.

 

- I know that this is definitely a big transition period for the show (maybe it's biggest?), but it's so weird to see Donna pop up as barely a supporting character. I know she gets more to do when Chuck comes back later in the year, but you can already see they were unsure of what to do with people like her and Benny.

Cliff and Nina's wedding did have the twist of Cliff find out Sybil was pregnant right before it, and Cliff flashing back to it during the wedding vows. That added some drama for sure.

Will was actually off screen for about 6 months and had left town between LQ and JPS. You could tell they were going in a different direction when JPS showed up, though I suppose to the seeds were already planted that they could go there with LQ because Palmer wanted to leave him the business before he took off.

Yes, around this time there was a change in both EP and writers. They didn't know what to do with Donna during a lot of the late 80s aside from being Natalie's talk-to. They do bring back and aged teenaged Emily Ann into the David, Melanie etc group later that year that gets her some more play, then of course the return of Billy Clyde and Chuck. Although the Billy Clyde story sort of ended up becoming more about Dixie in the end.

Cecily kind of reminded me an upbeat Greenlee, though Rosa Nevin had a more a joie de vivre quality than Budig. She also looked a lot like the late Brittany Murphy.

Richard Culliton got punched by Tony Geary, and that was the end of his stint on GH as headwriter back in 1997.

The text message killer was meant to be Johnny, IIRC.

Another one that got changed was the original Valentin Cassadine story, which got replaced with James Franco as Franco. Matt Borlenghi was to play him. He was suppose to have a female relative of some sort come with him who had this past with Lucky during the year Lucky was presumed "dead". Someone else might remember more of the details better.

On 3/31/2020 at 7:07 PM, KMan101 said:

 

I don't think I ever cared to learn her daughter's name and I'm sure I knew that but totally forgot. Explains everything. Wasn't Pratt all gungho for her but Guza wasn't? Am I remembering that correctly?

You are remembering correctly. Courtney was created when Guza took a break from the show (for about a year). Liz's sister Sarah was also brought back at this time and Alexis's sister Kristina was created. Guza got rid of both of them almost as soon as he came back. He didn't care about Courtney either, but was outnumbered by JFP, Frons and Pratt. Basically as soon as Pratt was gone he got rid of her.

4 hours ago, John said:

GH: Was Oscar's Mom Supposed to be Brenda but VM wouldnt retturn so they created Kim

 

GH: Wasnt Rebecca Herbst originally to be Alexis Daughter leading to a Cassadine/Sppencer love story but they made Becky, Sarah's sister, Elizabeth

I heard the Elizabeth and Alexis's daughter thing. It was suppose to happen back in 1997-ish. I think Guza might have nixed it when he came back, but I'm not sure. Alexis did get some mysterious old letters from a daugther or something back in the 90's on camera, but it was dropped.