Deep in the Pits of

[jfung79]

Sweetness, I think it might be Chuck Pratt to blame, more than Guza. Or maybe both of them.

I haven't watched GH in years, but I think I heard somewhere that Pratt was the one who kept pushing the mob. There seems to be more satisfaction with GH now, than there was when it was co-written by Pratt.

On the other hand, both Pratt and Guza were associated with Santa Barbara, which everyone praises.

[bellcurve]

LOVED Psycho Marley! I thought Ellen Wheeler pulled it off really well.

And LOL at the rest of the stuff...yeah, maybe you do have a point!

[JER Soaps Fan]

Whatever happened to Taylor anyway? [!@#$%^&*] just disappeared! And what was that about her being a born again Christian and a virgin? lol. I don't know if anyone remembers this but it was there.

[KLN]

Oh, I remember it. I also remember her inviting Eric to a prayer circle, and one of the members of that prayer circle was none other than a longhaired brunette McKenzie Westmore pre-PSNS.

[JER Soaps Fan]

You're kidding me!

No, WHAT THE [!@#$%^&*]!!!

You're kidding me!!!

What?!!!

WHAT?!!!

That is the single most AMAZING piece of trivia I have read all week, easily.

I had no idea.

And how did YOU?!!

How did you POSSIBLY remember Mac in a bit part like that?!!! Dear GOD, somebody post a clip or screencap!! I MUST see Mac pre-PASSIONS!!!!!

[JER Soaps Fan]

Of course, she never got Eric, did she? No, he had to slut it up with Nicole. FORNICATOR!! FORNICATOR!!! FORNICATOR!!!!

Hey, didn't Taylor catch them screwing on the floor during a photo shoot or something? I wonder if her reaction was the same thing -- I can't remember.

[KLN]

Taylor didn't catch them during that photo shoot.

But that photo shoot was HOT.

Eric was shooting Nicole, and she just started taking off her clothes. Eventually, she was naked and he kept snapping away the photos. It became too much for him to handle and he just started kissing all over her naked body, and without him realizing it, Nicole took the picture button and started pressing it... snapping picture after picture of herself and Eric naked on the floor.

She then developed the photos and sent them to Greta.

[PhoenixRising05]

SSM"s Nicole sucked.

One thing Langan did was he threw Nicole in with Victor, Kate, etc and that is when she came alive.

I would put SSM on there too. Days was convoluted and confusing so much of her time as HW. She did the sami execution story and that was probably the only thing she did right from beginning to end. The rest was hit or miss or just plain all over the place. She made Days way too sci-fi. It wasn't gothic like JER's Days and I hated how the show felt during her tenure. The feel of the show was just so rough and ragged.

I remember MW on Days in that part. That whole Eric/Taylor/Nicole crap sucked. Thank God it didn't last long. Nicole and Eric's photo shoot was hot though.

[KLN]

Yeah, SSM not only introduced DULL ASS Nicole and Taylor Walker, wrote the JOPE Subsex/Princess Gina story and tossed Marlena to the backburner, she also turned Vivian Alamain into a cartoon with the mind controlling tooth chip. Not to mention the mind controlling chip in Hope's brain and the mind controlling chip in John's neck. All HORRIBLE stories. The only thing she did right was Franco's murder/Sami's execution (which DRAGGED forever) and crazy Nurse Ali McIntyre.

And something else she did that I'm not sure most people realize... she introduced the Salem High gang. SORAS-ed Belle, Shawn, Phillip, then Jan/Jason/Mimi. The only teen character that Tom Langan introduced was Chloe Lane when he came on in late 1999, following Lorraine Broderick's month long stint as HW. Of course, Langan took the teen characters and shoved them to the frontburner, but it's SSM who SORAS-ed them all and introduced Salem High.

Sally Sussman Morina definitely belongs on that list.

[PhoenixRising05]

Oh yeah. I had forgotten her role in the Salem High stuff. Langan takes the blame for shoving vets to the backburner and putting the teens on daily but SSM started it all. Ugh

The Vivian tooth story was awful. If Louise Sorel didn't get fired, she would've been justified in quitting after that. How stupid that was. She performed it all well like the class act she is though.

It just got way to sci-fi with all the brain chips, tooth implants, etc. She also made Stefano a regular citizen and bogged him down big time. Sub-sex was hot but it was pissing on two fanbases, a big no no in Days land. The Gina story that JER had set had the potential to be great and the Gina story we ended up with was draggy and confusing. It didn't get good for me until the real Gina showed up and went psycho. I still remember how she tortured Marlena during their therapy sessions with thoughts of her and John having sex. KA was wearing the short hair wig and looked hot. We then had the drama of Bo and Gina's wedding and the search for Hope so it got good with all that. Before that, it was a mess with the exception of the Hope turning into Gina montage which was great.

The Ali story was good. As was her introducing Craig and Nancy. The only problem is I didn't care for Mike and Carrie so that ruined the story a bit for me.

[R Sinclair]

Jean Passanante

Megan McTavish

Richard Culliton

I've experienced more pain than pleasure while watching All My Children under their pens.

Passanante is a horrible writer. She lacks the ability to tell a fluid, long term story. She will write in spurts, and then fizzle out. On AMC, continuity was one of her biggest issues. It also got to the point where sooooo many new recurring characters were brought on that it seemed like the contract characters were the day players. It was Bianca... then Mindy, Shannon, Heather, Marcus, Ken and Sweeney. Bianca was just there, while the rest of these characters, who had zero history with the show, were getting all of the heavy storylines. Ken overdoses on drugs (did we care?). Shannon's getting beaten by Marcus (again, do we care? Both Shannon and Marcus made Bianca's life hell.). Sweeney gets killed in the boathouse (okay... did we care?). I won't even go there about how she created Anna Devane's black half brother Gabriel who was locked in a cage and hidden for years -- and proceeded to have Marcus call him "Dog Boy."

Megan McTavish is a horrible writer. She's constantly re-writing history -- even her own. She lacks the ability to tell real, human, believable stories. She's proned to assassinate characters left and right so they can fit the plot, and we do not need to go into her need to make all the females blonde, whores and how she uses rape as a ploy. Her obsession with WTD stories as well as DNA stories is just insane. She props characters and shoves her pets down our throats.

Culliton is another student of revisionist history. Most of his stories during his time at AMC were brought about from re-writing history that was already established. Plus, while his ideas were good in theory, they very rarely played out well during the finished product. His stories seemed unbalanced and pushed strongly by his agenda: "Make Greenlee the Next Erica Kane at All Costs!" It became the Greenlee Show, and everyone else on the canvas had to kiss her feet.

[psychofan]

I think people are too hard on writers sometimes. There are a few writers that I don't think belong in headwriter hell---

JER-

As King said in an earlier post, he gave us much more good work than bad work.

Tom Langan-

One of my favorite DAYS writers. He created Jan, my favorite character, he created Shelle, he set the ball rolling with all of the Belle, Mimi, Shawn, and Phil stories we're watching now, he wrote much of the Gina story, and some other great stuff.

Dena Higley-

As much as I hate her, I can't put her in headwriter hell. She was my favorite headwriter until she killed off Margaret six months ago...but...well, that one thing does it. SEND HER TO HELL!!!

Megan McTavish-

People are way too hard on her. I think that for the most part, her stories are good. I've loved the Janet story, The Serial Killer story, the Mardi Gras ball, Greg's story (for the most part), Jonathon's crazy story...the only thing that she's done really wrong is re-writing the abortion. I'm willing to forgive her for that.

[Sweetness]

I do mean Guza. I stopped watching before Chuck Pratt joined...it had already been destroyed and characters

"deconstructed" to death long before Pratt joined. Guza has always had his 5 favorites and everyone

else was expendable...He was easily "distracted" away from telling stories for anyone who was not in

his 5 favorite "circle". He completely killed the potential of most of the storylines he told...

Not to mention what he did to the integrity of all of my favorite characters (killed it).

Families, the rich history of the show, the vets...were never included in the fabric of the show.

And forget the hospital. They should have called it General Sopranos-wannabe.

He's probably the most misogynistic writer I have ever seen too...

I am so glad I don't have to tune in to that mess anymore.

From what I remember, Guza's time on SB was during some of its worst years...

[Sweetness]

I couldn't disagree more with that opinion. I hold the ruination of NBC daytime squarely on his shoulders.

(he shares responsibility with Langan and Corday and all the IIC who let him have that power for so long).

His daytime was based on the laziest writing I have ever seen: Any 10 year old could have come up with his

plots....Any half asleep writer could have executed them in the same fashion he did...

His daytime is one based on sensationalistic gimmicks, dragged out (for eternity) and trite and redundant

storylines--you could watch one week and tune in 3 years later for the same conversation, superficial

relationships and conversations, characters talking to themselves in full conversation, the evil crutch of the Dimeras

were constantly a standby, we had endless triangles, flat and hokey dialogue (no one spoke like real people)...It was not relatable in the least. Days under Reilly was a completely plot driven mess: characters and their motivation and history did not matter in the least. They were used to move along the always silly and over the top plot (everything and

anyone was expendable toward that end...no matter how stupid the plot). There was no complexity at all,

in any story or any character. We had underwear models in

place of actors...but that was just fine, because it's not like you needed to act on Reilly's Days.

He destroyed the intregrity and "realness" of the show and its characters...the show lost its heart, soul...and characters lost their minds. I no longer recognized or felt anything for characters I had once loved and adored. They became completely mindless plot devices...complete imitations, skeletons and shells of their former selves.

Days (along with Passions) became the joke of the industry under Reilly.

If Hogan had 5 years (and he doesn't) to fix this show, he might still be having to repair the mess Reilly left behind.

[billyjill]

Thank you, Sweetness.

While JER may have executed better on his first run nothing he wrote was character driven or really faithful to the heart of the show. I understand a lot of viewers came to the show under his first tenure but I can't help but have the opinion that his success on the show did more harm than good in the long run, artistically speaking.