The Doctors

[amybrickwallace]

 

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

[Paul Raven]

 

 

Edited March 20, 2019 by Paul Raven

[jam6242]

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

[Paul Raven]

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?

 

[vetsoapfan]

Oh God, Mel and Ethel Brez.

 

Legendarily awful.

[Khan]

 

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).

[Franko]

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

[Soaplovers]

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.

[vetsoapfan]

 

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

[Khan]

 

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, 2019 by Khan

[Paul Raven]

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.

[Khan]

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

[amybrickwallace]

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.

Please register in order to view this content

[Paul Raven]

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.

 

 

[amybrickwallace]

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.