The Doctors Discussion Thread

[JarrodMFiresofLove]

I've been reading the Soap Opera Digest synopses for the end of 75 and I am looking forward to Tom's exit around Christmas. I think that will be very poignant and give Martha some good stuff to do.

 

I think the Pollocks were probably going to bring Dawn the nurse from Hong Kong to town at some point. Like after Toni and Mike reconciled then she would show up with a baby belonging to Mike, which would put Alan back in the running. There's a reason the Pollocks spent months on Mike & Dawn in Asia. But Cenedella seemed to want to go in another direction and give Toni an unwanted pregnancy. But that was still plot driven, because the point was that Toni would only have a child with Mike not with Alan, because if she hadn't miscarried she would have aborted it.

 

I think Marie Thomas who played Lauri was a casualty of Jeff Young taking over as producer. It seems too coincidental that the other producer leaves and the Pollocks are on their way out, when she suddenly gets axed without any explanation. She should have had a farewell scene with Hank and one with Carolee. It was a shoddy way to break up one of the more solid couples viewers had invested in.

 

Andy would have worked better in my opinion if they had remembered his early friendship with Matt. He should have been invited to the Powers home for dinners, maybe become an older friend of Greta's that she developed a harmless schoolgirl crush on. Like there was more they could have done with him besides just having him sing at Pete's.

 

Someone on the Daytime Royalty board thought Joe's past in Vietnam should have been explored, and having him connect as friends with Alan who was also in Nam could have been a way to do it. But I just don't think Young or Cenedella wanted to be bothered with several of these characters and so they were given rushed, mostly uneventful exits.

Edited April 18, 2018 by JarrodMFiresofLove

[MichaelGL]

I think we can all agree there's been a ton of missed opportunities with the transition between the Pollocks and Cenedella. 

I'm %99.99 sure they had more planned for Stacey/Andy/Penny/Rico, but minus Penny, I could've done without the rest. 

[JarrodMFiresofLove]

Michael, I know I am new here so I shouldn't be suggesting things. But every time I see the word "cancelled" it saddens me. It would be nice(r) if these boards could be labeled "Retro Soaps,' 'Classic Soaps of Yesteryear'...I dunno, anything but "Cancelled Soaps."

[vetsoapfan]

 

Personally, I think the show's writing quality is weak from now until the until the end of the series. Douglas Marland and Harding Lemay both did the best they could, but IMHO The Doctors was not their finest work. 

[JarrodMFiresofLove]

I've been reading through some of the pages in the thread. Does the guy who knew Geraldine Court still post here? I have enjoyed his comments.

[amybrickwallace]

 

I've heard good things about the writing under Linda Grover and Elizabeth Levin/David Cherrill, but I don't think any one writing regime lasted long enough to make any difference. Same goes for the parade of executive producers.

[Franko]

Was NBC or Colgate-Palmolive responsible for the creative merry-go-round? Six executive producers ... eleven writing teams in seven years!

[amybrickwallace]

NBC bought the show in 1980, when CP closed its entertainment division, Channelex (which distributed TD). However, CP remained the show's primary sponsor to the very end.

[vetsoapfan]

 

I thought Linda Grover was awful. To each his own, of course. While I preferred William J. Bell's and Pat Falken Smith's work on DAYS, there are people who swear James Reilly was their favorite writer for that series. (Eeeeek! LOL!)

[robbwolff]

I believe Cenedella exits around February 1976 and is replaced by DePriest, who is in turn replaced by Marland a few months later.

 

Personally, I think the Pollocks were overrated. I liked their first few years of TD but tuned out when Retro got to the late 1973 episodes. Their constant use of flashbacks (which we didn't see until they arrived) and recapping was irritating. So much of their time was spent on a lackluster character like Ann Larimer. They resorted over and over to stories of Hope Memorial staff having medical crises. Worst of all was they drastically altered the personalities of some of the show's characters. Carolee became an ordinary soap heroine, mostly devoid of the humor and charm she had in her early years. Cathy Ryker went from a sexually free conniver to an obsessed psycho. That said, there are some good moments yet to come, but mostly a lot of uneven dreck, especially in the last few years.

[JarrodMFiresofLove]

 

I guess that means Cenedella was headwriter for about six months. On the Daytime Royalty board someone said Pete's disappears and a more upscale restaurant takes it place, which undergoes a name change and eventually becomes a place called The Medicine Man. So not only do the successive scribes change the families, they change the local hangout.

 

Personally I love the use of flashbacks on American soaps. I watch three British soaps and they never use flashbacks. Whenever they reference a huge event from the past, I have to find classic clips on YouTube so I can see what they're talking about.

[robbwolff]

I believe Luke Dancy has something to do with the restaurant that appears soon. Marland alters the show by centering it on the Powers, Aldrich, and Dancy families as opposed to Hope Memorial. Lots of changes are coming up. One central character has a career change. Jason Aldrich returns as a lawyer as opposed to the doctor he was under the Pollocks. MJ goes from being the granddaughter of Emma Simpson's husband Andrew to being Carolee's cousin. I've read that when Ethel and Mel Brez take over writing that character continuity gets even worse.

 

I like flashbacks, but I felt that the Pollocks overused them. They got better with it after some time but I recall times when they'd have flashbacks that lasted upwards of four or five minutes.

[JarrodMFiresofLove]

 

Not making excuses for the Pollocks, but I think sometimes they used extensive flashbacks to keep off-screen characters "alive" when they were between recasts. I noticed this when Toni had memories of Mike before he turned up alive in Singapore. And after Gerald Gordon left, they seemed to give Althea and Ann occasional flashbacks of Nick so we could see him again on screen, probably hoping Gordon would return to the role.

 

Sometimes the excessive flashbacks were a necessary device, like when John died, and we were seeing pieces of how he was killed. I do agree that some of the other flashbacks were overdone, basically functioning as filler because the Pollocks were too lazy to create new scenes that moved the plots forward.

 

I am looking forward to Marland's material, but it seems like were about nine months' worth of episodes away from his episodes on Retro if he didn't start until mid-76.

[Soaplovers]

I'm dreading the Marland era especially if it's true he alters the DNA of the show by focusing on the Aldrichs, Dancys, and Powers.. instead of the actual hospital.  I prefer the hospital element and the majority of character being doctors, nurses, or work at the hospital.  On the other hand, The Doctors is his first head-writing stint so maybe he realizes after this show that he can't alter the DNA of the show.. or write off a lot of the characters (his stint involved writing off a lot of the characters on now.. and introducing a slew of characters that had nothing to do with the hospital).  Time will tell.   I'm also not a big fan of Marland's writing anyway so I'll make sure not to look at the credits by mid 1976

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Edited April 21, 2018 by Soaplovers

[jam6242]

The flashbacks and endless recaps seemed to lessen after James Lipton left the writing staff.