Edge of Night (EON) (No spoilers please)

[MichaelGL]

Oh wow, I hadn't thought about the writers strike. I wondered why a few of the recently episodes were recapping(using flashbacks) stuff that had already been revealed.

[Sapounopera]

Why was the cult story so bad? No episodes of that era are available online, I have only watched episodes with Elliot running a club and getting involved with Nola and April's mother. 

[Broderick]

I think the "flashback episodes" were a literary necessity.  Without them, a good bit of suspense in earlier episodes would've been lost.  

Ever since Gavin Wylie arrived in Monticello, we'd been wondering why he didn't dance, and why his relationship with Martine Duval was so strained and awkward.  Revealing via flashback that Gavin's leg had been broken in NYC by guys dressed in Halloween costumes solved that mystery, which had been running throughout the entire Gavin/Jody/Kelly storyline.   

As for the "Nancy Flashbacks", I don't believe the information contained in those flashbacks had been relayed to us until the flashback sequences aired in March of 1981.  All we knew is that Nancy had vanished in San Francisco (presumably), but was now somehow languishing in the Rexford Clinic near Monticello.  I don't believe any of that information had been fed to us sequentially.  We didn't understand the chain of events until the flashbacks of Ira Gideon and the month-versus-10-day-building-of-the-electric-fence aired in March.  (And I never DID know it, because I missed the flashbacks in 1981 when I watched!)  If we'd known earlier on (sequentially) how Nancy ended up in the Rexford Clinic, there wouldn't have been any suspense when Mike Karr and Calvin Stoner were visiting those morgues in San Francisco and when the San Francisco Bay was being dredged for a dead body. 

I do agree that the show went off the rails during the writers strike of 1981 and never fully recovered.    I believe Henry Slesar lost a LOT of his motivation when Draper and April left the show.  He'd pretty carefully cultivated them as the Young Mike and the Young Nancy, with their own unique personalities.  It was through Draper and April that most of the other characters on the show were connected.  Once those two left, Slesar was really left with a rather disjointed canvas, and his central hero and heroine were gone.  He was required to quickly re-tool the show into a format that I don't believe he honestly cared for as much. 

I've always thought the "mistake" in the Schuyler and Raven storyline was its continuation with the Real Schuyler.  Henry Slesar admitted that he'd always planned for that character to be dead.  In his original projection, it would be revealed during the Switzerland sequences that Jefferson Brown had murdered Schuyler Whitney years ago, then stole his wallet and hauled ass to the Rexford Clinic.  The popularity of Larkin Malloy necessitated deleting the murder of Schuyler Whitney, so that Larkin could reappear later as the Real Schuyler.  I've always felt Slesar was wise in his original plan to have the character gone after Jefferson Brown's death, despite the actor's popularity.

Right now in the storyline, THREE big pieces of Henry Slesar's heart are missing --- Deborah, Logan, and Nicole.  Calvin Stoner doesn't have a Steve Guthrie to play opposite, and he doesn't have a Deborah Saxon.  Slesar works his way through this time period excellently, but when Draper and April vamoose, you can tell he's pretty heartbroken with what's left.  (Hence, the overreliance on Raven Swift and Schuyler Whitney, which is a storyline he clearly wanted to tell, but not necessarily in the context in which it occurred on-screen). 

Also, we're about to enter that bizarre period where everyone has an alias.  Nora Fulton is also Roxanne Walker.  Collier Welles is also Carlo Crowne.  Jim Dedrickson is really Jim Dedrickson, but Valerie Bryson thinks he's Jefferson Brown, because Jefferson Brown masqueraded as Jim Dedrickson in the Rexford Clinic.  It gets to be WAY too many aliases all at one time. 

Sorry for long post.       

  

I didn't think the cult story was "bad".  It was actually fairly interesting (from the tattoo aspect), and the uncertainty of who was taking orders from whom.  But we obviously never saw Henry Slesar's "master plan" for the storyline realized, as unfortunate real-life events involving Americans in Guyana brought the entire storyline to a grinding halt, and Eliot Dorn was pulled-out and moved into an entirely different sphere.  

[RavenWhitney]

I watched daily during this period too and agree with all you said above.  Henry had lost steam in the end but in hindsight his worst days can't touch the crap that ensued on the other shows up to this day.  I think he tried to over populate the show with 12-14 characters a day to fit in with GH and the other hour long shows. Seems to me the EON budget got some cash for a while to expand the recurring list of actors. They should have toned that down and invested in sets.  While Slesar may have wanted Brown dead, I have to believe he was motivated to find a way to keep Larkin who towered over all the other male leads and was so refreshing after dreary Tony Scott (who I liked as Draper but Tony was not a dynamic actor IMO).  Terry Davis loss was awful for the show; they never recovered that. The Frank Gorshin plot was not great. I did love Buffy Revere. Henry should have made her Geraldine's long lost sister.  But the guy who played Jim was terrible.  Valerie Bryson never caught on although I thought Henry may have thought she'd fill the void left by Terry's departure.  

[Broderick]

Yes, and there was a certain redundancy in Mitzie and Poppy (one was enough), and too much inane foolishness in Cliff Nelson's dialogue with Mitzie.  There were too many loose ends with the Maskers, and the whole Sid's Tavern meeting ground wasn't the best idea.  Smiley was kind of a bust, and the "reinvented" Gunther, who'd become a playful buffoon instead of a henchman, didn't work (especially with the Cliff/Mitzie antics).  About the only extremely positive thing to emerge from that period was Nora Fulton's Reign of Terror.  (And yes, Larkin Malloy was an appealing leading man, but was far better suited to play Jeff Brown, the evil guy, than Schuyler Whitney, the lovesick fool.)   

[j swift]

It is a hat trick of pseudonyms because they had Jefferson Brown pretending to be Jim Dedrickson so that he could get plastic surgery in order to pretend to be Schulyer Whitney. 

And don't forget his ally Bruno masquerading as his twin brother Gunther.

I sympathize with Sleasar not only having to write a way that Sky survived an avalanche, but also how his trusted man-servant had an identical twin, that takes a lot of creative license, gambling with audience trust, and trying to limit exposition so that everyone in Monticello doesn't need to explain the details to each other.

I certainly agree that Chris and Jody were insufficient replacements for Deborah and Nicole.  But, I also think it is emblematic of his style that the retcon of Jody as Nicole's semi-sibling is not given a lot of explanation.  She shows up and Miles and Nicole instantly take on a parental role.  There's no need to do the math about her age versus when Nicole's father died.  The story just goes on until the Eden debacle when we finally learn a bit more about Jody's mother.

I also think from a casting perspective Lee Goddard makes a better gigolo/disco owner than a cult leader.

Edited October 31, 2022 by j swift

[Broderick]

No question -- Eliot Dorn ended-up in exactly the role he was best-suited for.  (But again, it was Henry Slesar who realized it and made it happen.  He could've easily dumped Eliot Dorn at the abrupt conclusion of Children of the Earth.)  

[j swift]

One more thought, I believe that after Jefferson Brown died Raven still needed a connection to Geraldine.  To me, the Raven/Geraldine relationship is what motivated Raven to pursue both Sky and Logan.   Nadine was such a terrible mother and Keith was such a disappointment as a son, that Geraldine and Raven fulfilled each other's need for a family.

Neither Jefferson Brown nor Logan Swift were particularly nice to Raven, they didn't put her on a pedestal, and she had compete with other women for their attention.  She had easy access to richer men who might adore her.  But, I maintain that she wanted to be close to Geraldine because she represented the type of mother that Nadine could never be.

In turn, Geraldine was frequently looking a replacement son in both Logan and Sky, but they were really just men who could fulfill her desires for power that were unattainable given her gender.  A women her age and wealth would rarely have sought a place in congress or local government, so she used Logan and Sky as pawns in order to follow through on her own agenda.  On the other hand, Raven really needed her maternal instincts and she enjoyed her dependency because the men in the Whitney family were always so selfish.

That's why I think of Raven and Geraldine as endgame, as opposed to any other pairing on EON, and why there needed to be some male character would tie them together in plots after Jefferson Brown's death.  One could argue that it didn't need to be Sky, but it had to be someone that they shared in common.

[Broderick]

Very well articulated.  And I believe that's why Henry Slesar created that scene in which Raven whined and complained ("No one would've even missed me, if that Molly Sherwood had shot me dead!") as the motivation for Geraldine to invite Raven to become her roommate.  Raven could have EASILY run into Schuyler/Jeff somewhere else in town, but Slesar wanted Raven to be Geraldine's "daughter", so that was an essential roommate situation.  And it was very clever of Slesar to create that little gathering in Geraldine's hotel suite, where Raven thought it would just be herself, Geraldine, and Schuyler -- but instead Deborah Saxon, whom she hated, was also invited.  lol.  

[Soaplovers]

And it explains why Raven had a dislike of Shelley Franklin in the final year of the show...because Geraldine took on the motherly role to Shelley 

[danfling]

The use of aliases has been mentioned:  Collier Welles/Carlo Crown (an actor that I liked and wished that he had appeared longer on the show); Roxanne Walker/Nora Fulton; Schyler Whitney/Jefferson Brown.

One that was not mentioned was that Damian Tyler was Damian Tyler Wilcox, and that there was a connection to Geraldine.

I also think (and it has not been mentioned) that Geraldine's need for a daughter (Raven and later Pamela) came after the departure of Deborah, who was the step-daughter of Geraldine.

I had never thought of Valerie as a replacement choaracter for April, but, now thinking about it, I guess that she was.

One thing that I have never understood (and I have been meaning to ask) is why Roxanne changed her name to Nora.   I has never made sense to me.

[Broderick]

The abrupt ending of Edge's "Children of the Earth" storyline: 

The Coincidence of "Edge's" Cult by John-Michael Reed

Memphis Commercial Appeal

December 1978

If the tragedy of the People's Temple in Guyana hadn't occurred, a storyline on ABC's "The Edge of Night" involving a group of people called the Children of the Earth would undoubtedly have been ignored by the non-serial public.  Instead, "Edge" finds itself in the center of a sensitive controversy.  

The fictional Children of the Earth is a pseudo-religious cult devoted to the greening of the land.  The sect is led by the messianic Rev. Eliot Dorn.  In the "Edge of Night" storyline, there have been intimations of fraudulent activities within the cult, scenes of initiation rites, and a half dozen drowned bodies surfaced and have been assumed to be suicidal former Children members.  

There have been clues hinting at a process termed "a killing prayer ritual" when avowed Children leave the fold. 

And naturally there have been outraged accusations to ABC that Edge is capitalizing on the headlines about the late Rev. Jim Jones and his cult.  

Edge's headwriter Henry Slesar explains:  "We conceived our serialized story more than eight months ago.  I'm naturally curious about contemporary phenomena. Admittedly, I have a vague uneasiness about cults that influence people.  But my reasons for writing a story involving a group called Children of the Earth weren't derived from any specific organization. Like most people, I'd never heard of Jim Jones. Since Edge is a crime-based serial, I was interested in exploring what would happen if there was a crime involved in such a group.  We were all shocked by the events in Guyana, but in fact we began airing our story six or seven weeks before the tragedy transpired there.  We're not trying to expose anybody or anything, but unfortunately it may appear to some that we're treading on toes because of current real-life revelations.  Because of the suddenly sensitive nature of the subject, it's no secret we've had to expedite the story, and yes, there are ramifications that I originally intended to tell which we won't be able to explore now."  

There was a press conference at the Edge set to introduce David Prowse (who appeared as Darth Vader in the film "Star Wars) as a special guest who will portray a mentally-deficient giant who comes in contact with the Children. While revealing that he auditioned for the lead role in the film "Superman", but ended up as star Chris Reeve's bodybuilder trainer, Prowse acknowledged that the serial is "toning down" the similarities to Guyana. 

"There are bound to be certain resemblances among groups like the Children," says Slesar, "but we're not trading in on anything except telling a story that originated many months ago." 

Edge won't be able to unravel its original story given the current events, and that's unfortunate.  It's an example that soaps don't always imitate life; the reverse is sometimes true. 

 

[bboy875]

Thanks for this. I was only 7 in 79 and I vaguely remember it. I was sure I remembered Elliott being the cult leader, but was surprised when he didn't get arrested and ended up staying for a few yrs. I searched the web looking for info and this post is the most I've found lol

[Sapounopera]

Thank you so much! I tried looking for episodes involving this story with no luck. 

[victoria foxton]

Poppy's ditzy persona was an act. But i forgot why she was acting that way.