For me, it was the Dobson era. I didn't see all of it; I watched sporadically from late 1976 (I was in high school and we didn't have a VCR yet), becoming a regular viewer in early 1979 during the Roger/Holly rape story. Unfortunately, except for 1979, not much is available from this time period now.
While I complain about it a lot, I mostly enjoyed the Marland tenure, and also the early Ryder/Long era.
The Dobsons created the Spauldings, they turned Roger and Holly into one of the greatest toxic couplings on soaps, they wrote all the characters, but especially the women, as very layered and nuanced. Not everything they did was great (they are the reason Sara McIntyre went from major heroine to side character) but overall to me that era of GL was the most engrossing and best written.
1985-1986 was an awful period. As mentioned, they gutted the cast and many new characters flopped. There were frequent HW changes. Long returning to the show in 1987 improved it, but she inherited some weird stuff (i.e. the Sonni storyline) and this is when Reva started eating up a lot of the show.
Then Zaslow and Garrett returned. It was a shot in the arm for the show. 1989 was not a great year (the wild contortions they did to write Roger back in and write Alan out were the major problem). Then there was a regime change and Zimmer left. That period is considered one of their best, at least creatively.
By the mid 90s, I had dropped off as a regular viewer (this was for all the soaps I had been watching; this was the start of the genre's major decline). If they had done a decent Alan recast and had not let the returned Zimmer take over the show, I might have stuck with it.
I moved in with my mom during the late 90s when she was ill. She still watched the show. So I got treated to the clone and San Christohell stories and other delights of their declining era, LOL.
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DeeVee ·
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