The Doctors

[All My Shadows]

I had NO CLUE Margaret DePriest wrote for Sunset Beach. She had to be pushing 70 by then, and look, if a person can write, they can write, but she had no business trying to get the pot boiling on Beach.

[vetsoapfan]

 

Erica Kane at the circus storyline? Eeek! And DePriest work on Days was such a HUGE COMEDOWN compared to Pat Falken Smith's (who she replaced) writing.  How to Survive a Marriage was divine as written by Rick Edelstein, but when MD took over, I knew the show was doomed. From Tennessee Williams to Charles Pratt!

[Soaplovers]

 

I actually think that story played better then it sounded.. from watching online.  She was looking for her father (it made sense she would after becoming a parent and finally seeing things from Mona's point of view).. and seeing him working at a circus was interesting to say the least.  He had dreams of stardom hence why he abandoned the family to try his luck in Hollywood.. and seeing him in a circus should have given Erica a rude awakening.   But she had other good stories that played better.  I tend to look beneath the surface and see the possible motivations for a plot point.   I am curious... are there any interviews with Depriest around?  I know she's in her 80s now.. but I'd wish someone had interviewed her to find out her thought process for certain stories.  

 

I think she was hired on the Doctors because of the action aspect... @Khan  That's my theory anyway and based on summaries I've read.. the action is ramped up during her brief stint.

 

 

[Khan]

 

Agree -- and to tell you the truth, I'm not even 100% sure it was DePriest who instigated that story.  (We tend to forget that Lorraine Broderick and Victor Miller were still on staff, even if they had been demoted to associate head writers.)  Regardless, though, as bizarre as it was to learn that Eric had been reduced to working as a clown for a circus troupe, I, too, feel like it was a good way to show Erica that he was NOT the man she had built him up to be in her mind; that, as Susan Lucci once said in regards to the storyline, he very much had feet of clay.

 

 

Agree here as well.  Now that Erica had become a mother, the time was right for her to mature emotionally; and reuniting her with her father was the key.  Unfortunately, the problems with Eric Kane and his storyline came afterward, when DePriest and her team tried making him a permanent part of his daughter and granddaughter's lives.  (I, myself, would have been fine with him living outside of Pine Valley, but visiting occasionally, like w/ Nick Davis.)  Bringing some resolution to Erica's "daddy issues" was one thing, but having him back in town full-time, and Erica giving him Enchantment stock?  Unless Eric is played by a "lovable curmudgeon" like Barnard Hughes, there's nowhere to go with that kind of character.  

 

Thankfully, when Agnes Nixon returned as HW, she sent Eric packing, lol.

Edited June 13, 2018 by Khan

[Khan]

 

For better or worse, DePriest was there for the start of the whole "Supercouples to the rescue!" era at DAYS.  However, unlike the other architects of that vision -- Pat Falken Smith, Sheri Anderson, Thom Racina and Leah Laiman -- DePriest wasn't employed already at another soap OR out of the business entirely.  Ergo, from a certain standpoint, hiring her to head-write another NBC soap being targeted to younger audiences made sense.  It's just unfortunate that, in SUNSET BEACH's case, they weren't blessed with a good enough cast to overcome some abysmal writing.

[Khan]

So, bringing it back to THE DOCTORS...

 

Given her fan following from THE SECRET STORM, I'm not surprised TPTB would ultimately snag Jada Rowland to succeed Carolee Campbell as Carolee.  However, I AM surprised that Rowland herself joined the show at a time when several others -- AMC, Y&R, etc. -- were beginning to eclipse TD both in ratings and in acclaim.

 

Does anyone know specifically how or why JD came to work on TD?  Did any other shows attempt to court her?  If so, what made TD the more attractive opportunity?

 

(I, myself, have wondered how JD might have fit in on AMC.)

Edited June 13, 2018 by Khan

[Soaplovers]

My theory for Jada picking the Doctors might of had to do with the 30 minute format, it was the reason why Katherine Glass joined The Doctors later when the ratings were even lower than they were in 1976... the half hour format allowed for shorter work days, more flexibility and maybe the money was better.

[All My Shadows]

Most soaps were still half-hour in 1976. AW, DAYS, and ATWT were the only three that had expanded by then (and of course GH and OLTL to 45 minutes that summer).

 

I could see JR as Christina on AMC. Didn’t Robin Strasser leave the role because she was bored with it (especially after making her name as Rachel). I don’t think I’ve ever seen JR play a role with much fire but then again I’ve only seen her as Carolee in later episodes of The Doctors, and she’s no Carolee Campbell. Have we ever been gifted with any of her work on TSS? It sucks that what was probably her most meaningful work there is from the era that has all but been erased from history.

[watson71]

 

Someone at NBC must have liked her- she was head writer on The Doctors (76), Days of our Lives (82-84), Another World (86-88 and 96), and Sunset Beach- while she had stints on other shows, she worked on NBC soaps for 20 years.  

 

I agree she is a mixed bag- she was the writer who killed both Sally Frame and Frankie Frame on AW.  And practically every show she wrote on NBC there was a serial killer storyline.

[robbwolff]

Also, sometime in the mid-1980s, Variety reported that DePriest was creating a soap for NBC titled Deadline. It was to be set in the newspaper industry.

[JarrodMFiresofLove]

Almost all of them were a mixed bag. Even Bill Bell had stories that didn't work. So did Doug Marland. It's just that when they got it right, they REALLY got it right and gave the genre some of its most defining moments.

 

The headwriter that I think was the most consistent was probably Agnes Nixon, and that's because Viki Lord and Erika Kane were extensions of her own troubled relationship with her father. So every story she did for those women and the other characters which mirrored the struggles of those women came from an ongoing source of conflict she still had with her father years after his death. You have to suffer like Agnes Nixon to be that consistently good in this genre. Plus being Catholic with a healthy dose of Catholic guilt like Agnes had, doesn't hurt. She used the genre to exorcise her demons. The other writers did not get that personal with the format, like she did.

[vetsoapfan]

 

I think that overall, Bill Bell and Irna Phillips were extraordinary, although over the years they did present the audience with storyline clunkers. Ditto Claire Labine. Pat Falken Smith was consistently excellent except on Ryan's Hope. God knows what happened there. Loving did not really gel, but aside from that, Agnes Nixon was extraordinary most of the time too. And Henrey Slesar gave us YEARS of high-quality material.

 

She created Where the Heart Is, and that show was a hot, tedious mess until she left, LOL. It became great under subsequent writers, but never really found a huge audience after its awful start.

[JarrodMFiresofLove]

The problem with Loving is they tried to combine Agnes' style of storytelling with Doug Marland's out of the gate. And they were just too different. Both subsequently left. Loving ran too long, I don't think it ever had any strong years in terms of awards or ratings.

 

Slesar was a little too campy for my tastes and I think he was getting incredibly lazy at the end of his run on Edge. Too much death, too many new characters introduced for one storyline who would inevitably get killed off. It became predictable and too formulaic. I do think he did an excellent job when he wrote Capitol from 1985 to 1986. He seemed inspired by the traditional families on that show and he gave them suspenseful melodrama, not campy murder mysteries.

 

Bill Bell was obviously inspired by classic movies. He lifted a lot of plots from gangster pictures, medical dramas and film noir and grafted them on to his shows. But he was very skilled at doing this and knew how to write to the strengths of his actors. His son Bradley also does a lot of creative plagiarism but it works. One thing Bill Bell really contributed to the genre was his inclusion of legal characters, since he had been a lawyer before turning to writing for television. So his trial scenes were always much more realistic than what we'd see on other programs. When he retired that was one of the first noticeable declines in quality on Y&R-- the succeeding writers seem unable to craft logical legal dramas the way Bill Bell did. The courtroom scenes are mostly laughable now on Y&R.

 

But I still think Agnes Nixon was the genre's best writer. And I would also rate Pam Long quite highly. She brought all of her southern background on to Texas and Guiding Light. She created some of GL's most memorable and long lasting characters (way more than just Reva, though Reva was her crowning achievement); and as a feminist she believed in showing women as strong and capable in business. She stayed away from psycho chick stories which almost every male scribe has done, including Bill Bell; and made the women achievers. Her stories had heart and they made us laugh too.

Edited June 14, 2018 by JarrodMFiresofLove

[Soaplovers]

I have to say I actually like Depriest's stint thus far for one very good reason... there is stuff actually happening.  There have been more cliffhangers in the short time she's been head-writing than during the time that Cenedella was head-writing.

 

Today's episodes showed Althea crashing through the window, it was short and brief.. but still very surprising how it came about.

[Paul Raven]

Just watched the 'Althea  falls through the window' stunt and must say it was very clumsily staged.

 

I know we are talking about something from years ago that was constrained by time and budget, but it was a fail for me.

 

Firstly Althea was at most a couple of feet of the ground.

 

Then Eleanor clumsily spills coffee on her hand (Lois Smith just randomly jerks her arm) and falls back into Althea,causing her to lose her balance and smash through a large window.

 

It was not a clear sheet of glass but rather wooden framed panes,making up the window.

 

No way would a knock into that cause the whole thing to shatter.

 

It would have been more believable for Althea to lose her balance,fall forward and knock her head into a table corner.

 

Rant over...am I being too harsh? What did others think?