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2009: The Directors and Writers Thread


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Of course you did.

Brilliant post/analysis, DeliaIrisFan. :) ITA with that Patrick doesn't have the characters on B&B to show his talent. That's why I want him to move to another show.

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If Mulcahey does leave B&B, for some strange reason, since he loves it there and loves Brad Bell, I think the only other place he'd go to is GH. He's apparently still friends with Guza, and he loves Val Jean, Korte, and Phelps, as well as Nancy Lee Grahn.

But then again, didn't he leave GH after they told him to dumb down the dialogue somewhere in the late 90's?

B&B is probably the safest place for a writer in daytime, without the constant network interference and mandates. I do agree with that.

I often think Brad should send him to Y&R, where the characters are more grand and more complicated (not presently, since the show and its HW's suck right now). I think Y&R would be the better fit for him. Since he said he would possibly be open to a Co-HW spot, my dream is for someone at Bell Productions to come to their senses and have him pick a Co-HW to write that show with him. It will probably never happen, but it's a dream.

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If someone is a soap god, the way he is presented to people, every show should fit.

All I'm saying. Turns out - some of Mulcahey's B&B scripts will enter the annals of dreck in daytime. They were so bad. A sentence like "Patrick doesn't have the characters on B&B to show his talent" will not correct that and won't justify it.

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I disagree. There's a reason why he's considered one of the best SWs in daytime for the past 30 years. If Patrick Mulcahey can't make B&B's dialogue better, nobody can. If you take of the best from other soaps like Courtney Simon, Michele Val Jean, Richard Culliton and placed them at B&B, their dialgoue would be horrible too.

I wouldn't mind seeing Patrick back at GH either. At least he would get the chance to write good dialgoue there, even though the stories are crap. And it's too bad the Cassadines and Quartermaines are off the show too - characters that Patrick could sink his teeth into.

I believe so. Network meddling caused him to quit which is why he's probably content at B&B. Well, with Rick Hearst now at B&B, I'm hoping to hear some of that old school PM dialgoue.

Anyway, PM's work on B&B will never tarnish him in my eyes. PM is like Michael Jordan to me - one of the best, if not the best, but I'm really not going to remember Jordan playing for the Washington Wizards.

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Thanks for the kind words. As for B&B vs. GH, I'd probably be no more likely to watch GH at all regularly than I would B&B, honestly, even if it had vintage Mulcahey dialogue once a week. I had stopped watching long before he left in the first place. At this point in his life/career, maybe job security is more important to Mulcahey than choosing the lesser of two evils in terms of creative license. Although I know he once said that he made/saved so much money at GH last time that he didn't have to work, and would have been totally content doing volunteer work indefinitely before B&B recruited him. Not to mention, unlike at just about every other soap, GH's writing team is practically a time capsule from about 1998, except for Mulcahey's absence, and it sounds like the consensus is that it will be the last ABC soap to go, so maybe it's not the worse place to be in terms of job security either. Maybe he just genuinely likes his co-workers at B&B? I don't know. But I think that's a good analogy about Michael Jordan, knowing next to nothing about basketball. lol

On another note, I have a couple of questions about Santa Barbara, for anyone who has thoughts...

I followed that link to the YouTube clips of his iambic pentameter episode, and I was surprised that I didn't recognize the character who was having the dream sequence at all. When I looked him up it appeared he was with the show for two years or less, and I never even knew Meg Bennett was on SB let alone played a character who had a son with CC. Whereas Mulcahey's famous Election Day episode on GL was built around Ross, one of the longest-running vets (maybe he even was the longest running at that point?) and was part of the Blake/Ross/Holly story that had repercussions for years. The Meg Bennett story also sounds very similar to Marj Dusay coming on as Mason's long-lost mother and causing problems for CC and Sophia. It looks like the actor playing Greg(?) went on to many things and he certainly seemed capable in this episode (though the dialogue written in verse seemed lost on him, at least at that age) but like a lot of people who came and went on that show, he apparently didn't stick around for long. It seemed, from just the one episode, like this was one of the examples of stories/writing regimes that weren't the most creative and that Mulcahey knew that he would outlast, so he just had some fun with it and wrote something that transcended the plot, which was almost secondary.

Also, I'm dying to know who were some of the victims of the serial killer who killed off all the blonde dead weight from the original cast? Obviously not Robin Wright or Marcy Walker, and I know the original Santana was replaced - but not kiled by a serial killer, I don't think. Was he talking about Melissa Reeves? Ouch, if it was anyone like her that went on to work in the industry whom he was so candid about having been killed off because they couldn't act. How many blondes were there, anyway?

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No, Melissa Reeves was written out in the middle of 1985 for pretty much a lack of family since her brother and father were killed off.

Peter Flint (the carnation killer) killed Gina DeMott's sister Summer Blake, the secretary Veronica Gayley, some random waitress, and then tried to kill both Kelly (Robin Wright) and Eden (Marcy Walker) various times.

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I thought I read on this board somewhere (or maybe it was someplace else) that Michelle was no longer with AMC. At any rate, I'm pretty sure (from somewhere... did I dream it?) that Michelle is, unfortunately, gone.

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I was wondering when DC would spill that news. I took "ATWT: Josh Griffith IN" out of the "Not happened in credits yet" days ago. ;)

I'm sure DC will spill who the new SE is soon too. Oh well, less leasers for this thread. :mellow:

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