OLTL: Michael Malone question

[Vee]

No; I firmly believe it was Malone who was more into it, not Griffith. The Jaba City thing in 1992 was soapy, but I don't think it was really campy; it was handled very well, IMO, very soberly and intelligently. One hint to Malone's mystical and poetic-narrative leanings though, is how Andrew lost his "wargame for freedom" with General Gazi in that story. They're moving toy soldiers on a board, and Andrew refuses to take the killing move against Gazi's toy troops because he knows if he did so, Gazi would wipe all his (Andrew's) men out in the process of Andrew's victory. "I can't do it," Andrew says. "All those men!" And Gazi gloats and talks about the pious impotent man of the cloth, etc etc. While it's a beautifully done scene which really demonstrates Andrew's amazing character (Andrew, I think, was Malone's personal identification role), on another level, it's just totally hilarious; he's ceding a chance to get himself and Jake out of a Middle Eastern death gulag because his toy soldiers might "die." So that was the dilemma. Back in Malone I, he got away with such flights of fancy because the staff of writers and the production and co-writer backed it up and made it real to the audience. In 2003 and 2004, he just flew by the seat of his pants and nobody could take his latest quasi-mystical/philosophical angles on his stories seriously, particularly when applied to such dynamite stories and pairings as the Santis, Tico vs. Antonio ('The Shark vs. The Lion,' as Malone put it), the McBain ancestor in love with the Lord ancestor, the Bahdra diamond, Jessica and Antonio, and Joey and Jen.

And AFAIK, neither of them wrote the hypnotized Viki story that Erika Slezak absolutely despised. That, I believe, was Leah Laiman, who I think was part of the team who took over when Malone was fired so RH would return.

Linda Gottlieb may have been difficult, and both JDP and Erika Slezak have openly admitted they disliked both her and her work. I respect Erika and love her onscreen but I totally disagree with her about Gottlieb and JFP. I think Gottlieb had some arrogance in relation to how she handled the Clint/Viki/Sloan triangle ("We're going to give Viki what she's never had," she said in print. "An orgasm.") but I think she was an absolutely brilliant producer and storyteller who made the show more cinematic, professional and above the boundary of daytime - it was film, it was art.