21 hours ago, Paul Raven said:

Very rare for a character on any soap to have all these relatives. if anything they may get one sibling or a parent.

Where was Darren?

Marland only has a few months left on the show.

 

Supposedly, someone mentioned that Darren was unable to get away from the hospital he was working at.

 

 

Edited March 20, 20196 yr by Paul Raven

Love the ad @Paul Raven.  I wish we could see that time period.  

Not sure exact date the Retro eps are up to (late Oct 77?) but Marland is out and Mel and Ethel Brez are the new headwriters.

I think Marland's last story was having newlyweds Tom and MJ take on supervision of her nephew Ricky.

I wonder how the switch to GH worked?

Was Marland dropped by TD and then available to move to GH? Or did he get an offer from ABC and quit TD?

 

Oh God, Mel and Ethel Brez.

 

Legendarily awful.

10 hours ago, Paul Raven said:

Was Marland dropped by TD and then available to move to GH? Or did he get an offer from ABC and quit TD?

 

According to one article I've read, Marland was lured away from TD, because the daughter of ABC's then-VP of daytime, Jackie Smith, preferred watching TD over GH.  When Smith asked her daughter why, she said it was because TD featured younger characters and had faster-moving storylines (compared to GH's).

Which begs the questions, was Smith's daughter the least-engaged viewer known to man or was GH really that dull?

Smith's daughter obviously didn't realize that Marland and faster-moving storylines didn't mix.  Brez's are worse than Marland???. If so, that's pretty bad sicne Marland was lackluster on this stint and I fell asleep watching the episodes he was head-writer of.

 

Pollack's and Depriest were a better fit for the show..imho.

54 minutes ago, Franko said:

Which begs the questions, was Smith's daughter the least-engaged viewer known to man or was GH really that dull?

 

GH was excruciatingly bad and tedious for a few years leading up to the arrival of Marland and Gloria Monty.

4 hours ago, vetsoapfan said:

GH was excruciatingly bad and tedious for a few years leading up to the arrival of Marland and Gloria Monty.

 

I know I've read somewhere that ABC was still using (I think) the last ten HW'ing teams' story projections for GH; that Marland read through them himself and realized immediately that they were godawful and had to be thrown out; and that he would've needed to start fresh if he ever hoped to improve the show.

Edited March 21, 20196 yr by Khan

For whatever reason Marland jumped into GH and things improved immediately.

 

Probably having Gloria Monty go to bat for him and having the 1 hour format to play with.

 

He also learnt from TD not to continue with stories he didn't like eg Joan Dancy / Carolee stashed away.

 

He wrapped up the Jeff/Lana split personality story quickly when he came to GH.

Could someone tell me more about the Lana story?  I haven't heard or read much about that one.

I think Marland was a much better fit for the hour-long soap. He could stretch his grand (grandiose?) stories out more.

 

Today, we got the debut of Billy #4 - Shawn Campbell, who passed in 1993 at age 34. He was the last Billy before Alec Baldwin.

Amy, it seems you are still able to watch on Retro.

What date was Marland's last episode?

 

March 20 1978.Fire breaks out at Andre's. Two characters are killed off.

 

 

As far as I can tell, the last episode he wrote for TD aired 9/30/1977. Mel and Ethel Brez's material just started airing.