Dan

Ugh Noah. Yeah let's put the larger-than-life Reva Shayne with the most boring slab of beef known to man. Great idea. But at least it was better than the Buzzard.

The actors loved them because they were basically full length Emmy reels. Some of them were decent but they wrecked absolute havoc on the show's pacing because they burned through so much story at once. Reva's cancer story suffered because all the good parts ended after a week.

I think because of WSPR/The Journal because apparently there was such a dearth of news in Springfield that they were covering the royal intrigue of SC. :Shrug: I still can't get over the cheap water slide they built for Beth's "death" in Mexico a few months later. Hilarious. She was even more danger-prone in 2001 than she normally is.

That was Robert Kochman, who was the show's senior producer since 1992. He was fired, I believe, just a couple weeks into the Wheeler regime in 2004. I believe he tried to send the cast a farewell letter and PGP/Wheeler confiscated them or something.

I thought that it was Beth hanging from the rope in the castle tower or am I mixing up my stories? I believe that was the end of the Beth/Edmund-- I dont even want to call it romance frankly--relationship. What was up with the show pairing Beth with abusive men? According to Toups' wonderful archive in the SON files, Barry's last episode was August 16th, 2004. Nah. That was John Conboy blowing most of the show's budget on stupid[!@#$%^&*] like a full baseball field for his boy toy Marty West.

I think it depends. The main issue with San Cristobal was that juggling two locations fractured the show. If the focus of the show wasn't on that damn island, it was on Danny and his merry band of mobsters. If the characters were from the island but we didn't spend alot of time there, I don't know if it would have been as frowned upon. And of course you have the lunacy of Reva washing up on the island with a second consecutive case of amnesia in 5 years that cemented that reputation. As for wheeler, I do blame her for the hubris of trying to reinvent GL in Peapack and then basically canning most of the people who had actually been through Filmmaking 101, leaving people who thought it would be a good idea to film from the top of a tree. Can you imagine Bruce Barry freed from the typical soap set? I think everyone would have benefitted from that experiment with better people in the roles and the ability to have something of a control room where they could have checked the lighting and such. Instead the colors were washed out. The worst part was the elevator muzak they had scoring every scene.

At the very least, the Who Shot Roger? Stuff is entertaining enough to watch through plus the resolution of the David story and Julie/Dylan's wedding. 1994 is really when it all goes downhill.

I was barely watching at the time, but I am still unsure of which was more disgusting. Marina with her godfather Mallet or Marina with the man who could have been her father, Alan-Michael? Both were creepy on a level the show rarely got to.

I was going to link that exact scene with Nadine and David. This is one of my favorites. I know 1993 was not as good as the two years before it in general, but the scripts were truly brilliant stuff. Another favorite is the conversation between Ross and Ed from fall of 92.

Gotta love the 80s.

I may have laughed a bit too hard at that one. Thank you for that.

Maureen's death was such a long-term tragedy and I wish that more story would have come out of it so it didn't seem like such a waste, but damn was that week of shows brilliant. Knowing what came after this, maybe it was better for Maureen to go out this way. Ghost Maureen propping up Danny and Michelle was bad enough. Also, I don't think Victor Miller and Michael Conforti get enough credit for the uptick in quality in 1997. Besides the whole Amanda reveal, early 1997 was really quite good. Shame it didn't last very long.

God, could Jerry verDorn nail a speech or what? 1993 had its ups and downs, but it certainly had some of the best scriptwriting of the entire run of the show. I'd say that soaps have outsourced all of its good writing period to primetime and cable TV and that is certainly the main problem. Who would want to watch the current shows when Game of Thrones (or insert your favorite drama) is far better written and has more intriguing drama? Even if you have to be a masochist to watch GOT. (I'm stuck on the 3rd season. I may not make it longer.) Also, I would not have wanted Bridget and David together. I agree with the above post that said the chemistry between the actors was more brother/sister. Gilly and A-M? That's more like it.

I can't wait until this channel gets further into 1991. I have heard about the Jean Weatheril whodunit, but have never seen anything except the ending and Daniel holding Holly hostage.

Wasn't it rumored that Jenna was killed off because Fiona Hutchinson spoke out about the poor handling of Michael Zaslow? I remember hearing about that.

Very intriguing episode. It was great to have a companion that doesn't have some odd mystery attached to her. Bill reminds me alot of the more grounded Davies years. And I have generally liked the Moffat years, but I can admit that he can get too convoluted. And what could be in the vault under the school? The door looked suspiciously Gallifrean.

I don't know if I was just desperate for Holly to be featured, but I was really glad that she was a Red herring in the stalker story. And it all led to Ed and Holly being a couple again. The story of Reva's stalker was the odd Reva's story that began quite well but ended terribly (what reason would Alex have to stalk Reva's in the first place?). Usually it was the other way around. I think my biggest disappointment with GL was that the end of 2002/beginning of 2003 didn't lead to bigger and better things. 2002 wasn't perfect, but Millee Taggart had started to position the show into a stronger direction. And early 2003 was really quite good. And then... Ellen Weston happened and squandered all the good will. I don't think my GL viewing ever really recovered from that.

David Kriezman. Never mind. I couldn't even get through those two words without laughing to myself. I think the best overall writing team was the Curlee-led staff of the early 90s. The plots were decent and the scripts crackled with wit and intelligent banter, particularly with a Mulchahey script. In terms of the best actual headwriters, probably Agnes Nixon or the Dobsons.

I really don't understand the BBC's plan to Class. It was handled badly from the start. What were they expecting from a web series in the first place?

I feel like this story was a victim of the writer transition between interim writers Michael Conforti and Victor Miller and E&B, not to mention the behind the scene issues with Zas. It really seemed like they were trying to go in another direction at the start of the story when Roger visited Vanessa in Switzerland.

That's exactly how I felt about Kreizman's writing. There were some good ideas. Even brilliant ones that could have turned the ship around, but absolutely zilch in the way of execution. Some of it wasn't their fault (Laura Wright leaving) and some of it was (Not securing Peter Simon BEFORE writing a story arc on Roger's death and then being gobsmacked when he turned them down and then writing a really poor tribute to Zaz). Talking about Laura Wright in the later years of GL, I've always wondered how much better the Reva/Cassie/Josh triangle would have been with her in the role. I never really liked Cassie, but LW was the actor with the history and the rapport with Reva. NF was not only a different character, but lacked any of the context that would have made the story work.

Yep. That one tried to be too much like HOTL. It was never going to be as good and the visuals look too much like Life-savers.

Was watching this earlier today. I think this might be Cynthia Watros' best performance on GL. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSp4oi1qhes

It did not, as far as I know. That theme was probably the best of the last five years (probably even better than the Life-saver open), but even that isn't saying much.

If you want to explore more GL, here is a good place to start. The script of this scene should be framed and hung at in a museum. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-a7NwMRR3Cc