Jean Passanante celebrates six years at ATWT

[Soapsuds]

What a sad occasion.

[EricMontreal22]

I was SOO shocked when I saw her promotiona fter what she did to AMC>..

[Cheap21]

I didnt even know she's been with the show that long

[Chris B]

Right now the show is painful to watch, including the overrated and poorly written Nuke story. At this moment I have nothing to watch for except the potential for Dusty/Lily which probably won't happen. I'm also looking forward to seeing if they continue destroying Emily when she returns. Look at Carly...

[MichaelGL]

At this moment I have nothing to watch for except the potential for Dusty/Lily which probably won't happen.

Now you know they would just love to pair Dusty with one of the characters from the younger set.

[DevotedToAMC]

Happy six years Jean...away from AMC!

I was so glad when that hack was let go...she pretty much destroyed AMC (I said 1998 and 2006 were AMC's worst years. I meant to say 1998, 2001 under hack Jean, and 2006 were the worst)

[EricMontreal22]

Yeha I foudn a bunch of tapes I made of AMC during her era and have been watching them. UGH

[Chris B]

Jean is so bad at ATWT, I can't even imagine how she was at AMC. I think it'll be difficult for the show to recover, if they ever fire her (which I doubt).

[DevotedToAMC]

I feel sorry for you ...while I hate that she killed off Gillian, the material was powerful and CM actually did a good job with it. Now if she had known ahead of time that Ryan would be hacked up by the other hack, McT, and turned into a totally different character then she should have killed him instead of Gillian

[DevotedToAMC]

I can't even imagine how she was at AMC.

Oh I can tell you what her major story arcs were like. Here you go:

1. Libidozone-So basically Dr. Jake Martin has returned from Chechnya and has been impotent and cannot make love to his beloved Princess Gillian. So David creates this drug called "libidozone" which ups the ante so to say and gets one to have some hot and heavy nights and basically erase the impotence. It was at a yacht party hosted by his holiness, Ryan Lavery, that David was right by the punch bowl and going to slip some libidozone into Tad's drink so he would get drunk and lose inhibitions (those were side effects of libidozone). However, Arlene, Hayley Vaughn's mother, rushed in a hurry to not be discovered and knocked into David and he poured the libidozone into the punch bowl....everyone got horny and it even got to the point where his holiness, Ryan Lavery, yelled "let's get naked!" Mind you, if I ever saw that freak naked, I would have to check myself to Nurse Ratched and befriend Randall McMurphy. Everyone starts humping like rabbits and Mateo Santos cheats on wife Hayley with Arlene. Hayley finds this out and strangles Arlene to "death" and leaves her on the outside of the boat. Adam comes along and whisks her into the ocean like a blow up doll and everyone assumes Arlene is history and all sing "Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead" but alas she is alive and well (I will get on to that in a moment). At the party, Leslie Coulson, who has become obsessed with Tad Martin, sleeps with him while he is libidozoned but I do not believe David gave into his desires with his obsession, Dixie Cooney Martin. The final aspect of the party came at the end when Alex Devane, former lover of Edmund Gray and wife to Dimitri Marick, was confronted by a mystery person and he whisked her off to Canada to be with her back from the dead sister, Anna Devane.

2. David/Dixie/Tad/Leslie-This became pretty much the quad from hell with the only entertaining part to me being Leslie as a psychopath. Tad/Leslie and David/Dixie had absolutely no chemistry with each other and it showed from the dissent from fans. David/Dixie had an affair at the Crystal Ball and yet she gets mad at Tad for sleeping with Leslie but yet he was under the influence of David's wonder drug. Meanwhile, Leslie kidnaps Dixie's son, JR, and gets Dixie to come along to a rooftop where she plans to kill Dixie. David has been stabbed at this time and Leslie, instead of Dixie, loses her balance and David holds on to her but with his stabbed arm. He can't hold on to her and he lets her fall (although some claim he did it on purpose). Leslie manages to survive and recuperates at Pine Valley Hospital and escapes from there after using a fire extinguisher to cause a fire. She would show up under Richard Culliton, Piss' successor.

3. Ryan/Gillian/Jake-Shortly after the yacht party, Gillian came clean to good doctor Jake that she had falled back in love with his holiness and that was that....Ryan/Gillian reunited and had a secret turret at Wildwind where they shared in their glory and love and what not. Ryan/Gillian were a great couple and the epitome of a supercouple romance, not the dreaded Ryan/Greenlee farce (not under Piss..that was the other hack, McT).

4. The entrance of Gabriel Devane-It was soon revealed that Gabriel Devane was Anna and Alex Devane's brother (see below) since they share the same father. He is into the teen scene and is mocked as "dogboy" since Anna and Alex's aunt, Charlotte Devane, kept him in a cage at Bryn Wydd, a hospital. He eventually develops a fling for Rosa Santos but later on decides to go to Europe to be with Dimitri and Alex (see "Gillian's death" for more).

5. Anna/Alex-Alex returns (Finola Hughes went on maternity leave when Alex disappeared from the yacht party) with Anna in tow and Anna has amnesia after being in the boat explosion with Robert Scorpio and Cesar Faison (this was on GH). Apparently, Anna starts to get her memory back and is even reunited with her daughter, Robin (one of the few parts that Piss did right). Robin informs her that she is HIV positive and living in Paris and invites mom to join her. Anna chooses to stay in Pine Valley and bids Robin farewell. Meanwhile, there is an assassin named Ilene Pringle posing as a reporter or news director who has been hired to shoot and kill Anna Devane. She never succeeds BUT....

6. Gillian's death and "Ghost Gillian"-Ilene manages to kidnap and tie up Gabriel and asks him to reveal the whereabouts of Anna. He refuses so she decides that since she can't tell the twins apart, she will have to kill both Alex and Anna. Gabriel manages to get free and searches for Anna but to no avail. Meanwhile, Gillian goes to where Gabriel was being held and looks out the window. Ilene comes in with the gun saying, "Say goodbye Anna," aims and fires at Gillian's head. Ryan finds his beloved sleeping but when he rubs her head, his hand is full of blood. Gillian, a very popular character and heroine, dies and is removed from life support so her heart can be transplanted to Laura English (Brooke's daughter. She had heart trouble after taking ecstasy). Dimitri and Alex also get a phone call that was supposed to change his holiness Ryan's life forever but we never find out what it is. They depart for Europe (Budapest, Hungary to be exact). Meanwhile, Gillian is still around as a ghost and is confronted by Jesse Hubbard, former AMC character, and he attempts to get her to join the other side and into Heaven. He gets assistance from other AMC characters-Natalie Dillon, Harold the dog, Jeremy Hunter, Travis Montgomery, and Cindy Chandler (mind you, none of these characters had interacted with Princess Gillian). Gillian even gets to the point where she possesses Opal's body and Opal "becomes" Gillian and Ryan/Opallian share a kiss. The story wraps up when Culliton comes aboard and he basically just has Ryan and Ghost Gillian share a final dance, which was romantic. Jesse, on the other hand, stuck around with banter to Tad The Cad Martin (this was Culliton's work and actually good. The hack Piss had nothing to do with this).

7. The fallout of libidozone and JR-Well it looks like David is arrested for drugging the people at the yacht party when Tad gets proof that he was behind it and he is arrested when Dixie gives him an award (remember that David/Dixie were not popular with fans). Well it turns out that JR, Adam and Dixie's son, has been taking drugs from the drug lord in Pine Valley and happens to break into David's room. David gets incriminating evidence on JR with a videotape and tells Adam that if he does not get David's charged dropped, he will submit the tape and have JR arrested for breaking and enterting. So Adam sleeps with judge Kay Campobello, who he had known prior to this, and she lets David free and of course everyone is pissed. In the meanwhile, Liza, Adam's wife, overhears Adam confessing his adultery to Kay and flees to Ryan, who has escaped the burning turret (Ghost Gillian warns him to leave).

8. Ryan/Liza-They have sex outside of Wildwind and it even gets serious that she winds up being impregnanted with his holiness being the father. Eventually Liza does lose the baby and his holiness goes ballistic on Adam since I believe he had something to do with it.

9. Leo/Laura/Brooke-Brooke pays Leo to woo Laura as she is recovering in the hospital and even to the point where Leo proposes marriage to her to give her more of a zest for life (this was just one month after a broken engagement from Leo's true love, Greenlee). Of course Laura is saved when the beloved Gillian dies and donates her heart to Laura.

10. Leo/Greenlee/Jake-Meanwhile, Leo/Greenlee go back and forth with breaking up and reuniting but they do wind up becoming engaged and about to marry but at their engagement party comes Katerina. Who is Katerina you ask? Why she is Leo's first wife! And she reveals that Leo only married her for money and not for love. Leo then confesses that his intention to marry Greenlee was for her money (he still did love her but the main purpose was money). Greenlee breaks it off with him and leaps into Jake's bed and they begin a whirlwind affair and sizzle about as much as Leo/Greenlee.

11. Hayley becomes "Arlene"-Remember that Hayley strangled Arlene at the yacht party and Adam threw her overboard. Well Hayley comes to the realization that she did indeed kill her mother and starts to "become" her mother by impersonating her and committing some crimes like ransacking Hayley/Mateo apartment and doing other misdeeds. Arlene, in the meantime, took off with Vanessa Cortlandt's necklace and Vanessa sees "Arlene" at the yacht but it turns out to be Hayley. A gunshot is fired and I believe Vanessa is hit (not sure). But Hayley or "Arlene" is still in that state and pretty much the only thing that can bring her out of it is love from her husband Mateo Santos. Meanwhile, Mateo goes to the Carribean and finds a very much alive Arlene. He informs her that Hayley has been charged with her murder and is about to go to prison so they need to thwart it by showing Arlene is alive and not dead. So Arlene comes back to Pine Valley and shows herself in the courtroom and Hayley is free.

***Throughout Piss' run, important characters like Erica, Bianca, Stuart, Palmer, Opal, Myrtle, and Dr. Joe are all backburnered. So as you can see, many storylines from the hack and very few worked (the only one I liked was the fallout from Gillian's death since it was gripping material but not the Ghost stuff. Gillian should have also never died, and the other I liked was Leo/Greenlee/Jake, and the yacht party was fun but the overall storyline of libidozone was dumb).***

[Chris B]

That sounds so bizarre! My biggest problem with her at ATWT is how out of left field her stories are. I see the same with her AMC stuff. I really don't understand what this woman's vision is. She's a difficult headwriter to understand.

[JackPeyton]

i LOVED Jake & Greens lil brief affair on AMC! that was the only thing i liked that she did tho

[MichaelGL]

Thanks for refreshing my memory AMC. Those were some really trying times for me as a viewer.

[Shawn]

That sounds so bizarre! My biggest problem with her at ATWT is how out of left field her stories are. I see the same with her AMC stuff. I really don't understand what this woman's vision is. She's a difficult headwriter to understand.

Well said. ICAM.

[EricMontreal22]

Besides the sheer silliness of her plot the actual writing was just so cartoony/black and white. I wonder if Agnes Nixon actually picke dher as her successor (Nixon had returned to AMC in 1999 to clean up the show after McT's mess eventually HW with EWlizabeth Page. Then in Fall 99 soon you saw three names as HW--with Jean added and then soon just two--with Elizabeth gone. While Agnes was wrapping up some great stories like Bianca coming out Jean--I assume anyway--was starting some of the insanely cartoony ones like libidizone at the same time).

Devoted you did a great job of smuarising the stories--a few things... There was also the mess of a story that was incredibledreams.com (Ryan's internet company) which I thinkw as supposed ot be all trendy and cutting edge but just made no sense. As well, Passanante introduced THE worse teen scene I think I've ever seen ona soap. Under P Pine Valley became the world capitol of Ecstacy addicted teenagers... (Eventually Culliton tied this all into his MASSIVE, way confusing but still better than Passanante cumbrella Proteus story that seemed to go on for years) And we had the most obnoxious one dimensional teens I can remember with Mindy, Markus (who I believe last we saw was in a coma) etc... Sigh what a mess. Also in a fairly misogynistic plot twist (along with a huge example of character assassination)she had Laura--after being the character to get much more popular character Gillian's heart--go absolutely psychoi on Leo and do anything in her power to trick him into staying in her life before being carted off to the looney bin.

One thing though--by that Summer (my Ghost Gillian tape has a July the 4th ep on it) there were rumours Jean was abotu t be fired. She left, Ibelieve to go work at ATWT as she had friends there, by August, breaking her contract probably due to these rumours leaving AMC kinda surprised and with no repalcement writer. So until, I believe, November or so there was no head w2riter writing for AMC and we were left with some of the fall out (I always thought that it was during this era the Ghost Gillian story was wrapped up but maybe you're right and it was under Culliton)

(Passanante is pulling the ghost thing out again now with ATWT)

E