GL: Thursday's "Special" Episode...

[Actor87]

Sorry, my train of thought went a little something like this..

Agnes...Irna's friend....Irna created ATWT...Gah, I miss John Dixon.....Agnes what?.....Crap, I forgot!.....Dixon

I'm a dork.

Oh, and at you posting the same link that James and I did. Oh well. We still luv ya, Scott-myester!

[Scotty]

I didn't notice you guys had already posted that link.

Awww.....that's nice. Thanks Dusty!

[SpiritualJunkie]

After the focus on the Jammy tragedy the last few days, I didn't think I could get into a show that seemed to "break the flow". But I was completely hooked from beginning to end.

I watched ATWT's 50th anniversary and enjoyed it but GL kicked their ass hands down with their radio show's 70th anniversary. The writing, the direction, the acting, and so on were all great!

I take back what I said before about Beth Ehlers not being a good lead. I guess it's just Harley and the writing for her character that just grate on my nerves. I knew Ehlers was good but I didn't know that she could be this good. I was really impressed! She played a completely different character. Irna Philips sounded like a "It's my way or the high way" type of woman but with a creative vision like no other. Ehlers did a great job capturing that.

Crystal Chappell was awesome. Nicely done accent by Justin Deas. at the Save-All commercials. Whoever thought soap commercials could be so entertaining? Michael O'Leary is hilarious with his voices. Even Beth Chamberlin sounded different. Ricky Paull Goldin running around as the servant was amusing to watch.

I loved how they showed how they did all the music and special effects and just the overall theatre look.

And what impressed me about this show as well is that it didn't completely break the flow of the current storylines. I really liked how they related Kathy's death and the fan outrage which resulted to Tammy's death. The colour to black and white technique they were using near the end of the show was really interesting. And WHY couldn't they have used Robert Newman's version of that speech on the 70th anniversary opening instead of all those bad sounding clumped voices??? The way Newman said those words did had such a solemness to it. I thought the ending was beautifully done.

Definitely felt it was too short and when it was done, I was thinking, "That's it?" But in a very good way. The story was only really beginning...the beginning of "The Guiding Light"...it was very well done.

Kreizman and Wheeler aren't perfect but they have done a phenomenal job with the show in the past couple of weeks.

[jfung79]

I'm so glad I post more on this board and not Soap Opera Central. I think there are a lot of posters there who are younger, or don't care about the behind-the-scenes history, or are just couples-fanbase fans. The thread there about the show is about evenly split between people who hated the episode and those who loved it. I'm very sad. Most sad of all to me is the people who were like, and I'm paraphrasing, they should only have given 5 minutes to radio ... I want to see the Spauldings from the 80s! Some people even thought the episode was worse than the Marvel Comics one. Jeez, history is only important to them when it's from an era that they were watching.

[SpiritualJunkie]

Yeah, I used to go on other soap boards but many of the comments people make there are so...empty. I get sick of the fanbase wars and the excessive actor/character bashing.

I just like good acting and storytelling. GL today (and the last few days) had it in SPADES.

[Im-n-a-whirl]

I just checked my copy of Guiding Light: The Complete Family Album, and according to the book, Kathy was indeed Robin's real mother. Robin's father was Bob Lang. Meta was Kathy's stepmother and they did not get along for quite some time. According to the book, Kathy, who was in a wheelchair, met a gruesome death: Some children accidently knocked her wheelchair over and she fell into the street into oncoming traffic and was killed.

This episode was AWESOME!! I loved seeing the stories that are in the above-mentioned book being recreated and every single actor had the characters nailed perfectly. To hell with the brats that could not fully appreciate what they were watching: A true national treasure.

[Gray Bunny]

I fricken loved the episode! What a keeper! That was the first time in a long time that I was disappointed to see the episode end! I wanted MORE! Great job, GL!!!!

[SteveFrame]

I don't know what happened to her, but she did have a full name and was a friend & assistant to Irna for many years. I have read about her before. Supposedly the character Rose Kransky on the radio version of GL was named in honor of her.

[SteveFrame]

Thanks for correcting me on Robin. For some reason I had in my mind that Robin was only Kathy's step-daughter. But she was actually born to Kathy in May of 1953 while the show was on both radio and television. Her husband Bob Lang had been killed in an auto accident in 1952 not too long after he and Kathy married.

People talk about the SORASing that goes on today, Irna had 3 very bad examples of SORASing in her shows: Michael Bauer & Robin Lang from GL and Dan Stewart from ATWT.

She aged them way too rapidly.

Kathy & Michael were born in 52 and 53, and by 1958 were teenagers. In July of 1960 they were married but still underage so it was annulled.

[Matt P.]

I agree with everyone. This episode was well crafted. The only thing I caught onto was that GL wasn't the first soap opera to make the transition from radio to TV. Didn't that belong to Search For Tomorrow in 1951?

Well the whole cast did an amazing job and I think it was great to see the transition to the Jammy storyline. Especially since we didn't see them as any cast members.

I do want to point out that Ricky G. was in it as a servant, I'm thinking that maybe he was playing a young Bill Bell. Beth Ehlers did an amazing job and I'm curious to see the ratings for this episode!

[Actor87]

Well look at Sage Snyder. She was born in 2003 and now, she's ten!

[SteveFrame]

The first soap that basically moved from radio to television was These Are My Children which Irna Phillips adapted from her radio soap Today Is Ours. It was not successful and did not last long. Then later One Man's Family became a primetime soap opera / series which ran from 49 to 52. It wasn't very highly successful and went back to radio. Later NBC would move it back from radio to daytime after the success of The Guiding Light, but it would not survive as TV soap. The First Hundred Years which debuted in 1950 was based on a short-lived radio soap. It would run from Dec 1950 to July 1952. It was CBS's first daytime soap opera and Procter & Gambles first soap opera. It was not successful either.

The Guiding Light became the first soap opera to successfully move from radio to TV and ultimately even though others tried none were successful. I will have to check my math, but I think Young Doctor Malone was the only other one that had a significant run after it moved to TV.

As to Search For Tomorrow, it and Love of Life which debuted the same year and created by Roy Winsor - both were brand new creations. They were TV's first successful soap operas. Both debuted in 1951 - SFT on Sept 3rd & LOL on Sept 24th. LOL would run until 1980 and SFT until 1986.

Guiding Light would join them in 1952. Many new soaps would debut in 1953 and 1954 but none of them were truly successful except for another Roy Winsor creation, The Secret Storm. And then there were not anymore truly successful soaps until 1952 when on April 1st both The Edge of Night and As The World Turns would debut.

Valiant Lady, The Brighter Day, Young Doctor Malone, and From These Roots would all debut in the years between 1953 and 1960, and would have respectable runs but all of them were gone by 1963 - the year that both The Doctors and General Hospital debuted. They were the first 2 soaps created since 1963 that would have long runs.

[Josh]

BRAVA!!! I loved this episode...and I agree that Ehlers was beyond wonderful as Irna!!! I love it!! Such a beautiful episode that honored the history!!

[All My Shadows]

Oh my God, you just gave me an amazing idea. All of the planned "Inside the Light" episodes for the next several weeks should be nixed and they should continue the story of GL in their place. Think of how great it'd be when they'd progress and get into the 80s and start having the cast members play younger versions of themselves! I could SO imagine modern day Zimmer jumping in that fountain and calling herself the Slut!

[Josh]

I would love for them to carry this on....

Blake as Holly

Coop as Josh

Lizzie as Reva

That would be great!!!

The episode was really good and it was better than I originally thought it would be...so I'll have a little side of crow for dinner tonight!! Beth Ehlers was amazing as Irna, and yes it is the Harley that I find so blah and annoying at times, she is amazing in other roles...Olivia as Meta was just out of this world! Buzz as Papa Bauer...Kim Zimmer as Bert...awe the episode was very good!!

I wish they would have given Alexandra more to do and included Holly in some capacity! And I also wished that the actress next to Coop had been Marcy Rylan and not Ava! And was there a reason Nicole Forester was not in the "special" or was it just simply because of the bookends, Jammy/Cassie stuff!

And lastly, I think it would have been SO SO much better if it had been Reva who came to Cassie in the end while Robert Newman's words were heard. But that is just me!