GL: Lights Out?-TV Guide Article

[juppiter]

I mean, I agree. I did not like Cassie basically after Hart died, no big loss. I did not like Harley once the Gus relationship started, no big loss. I did not like Michelle once Nancy St. Alban took over from Joie Lenz (who I loved.) I always liked Edmund. I liked Jonathan. I liked Lizzie. I liked Danny. Together, though, it was a big loss all at once. GL let go of every interesting character all at once. That hurt. I would prefer to lose Reva and get those people back.

[Dan]

I do agree. I don't see it happening. But at the very least it is WAY past time to scuttle Spaulding Enterprises. Not only is it absurd that an international conglomerate would operate in East Bumfuck, but the corporate intrigue stories have worn very thin. Have the entire company collapse in the poor economy and have them try to transition to life as an lower-to-middle class family.

[Mitch]

CBS should give GL a bit more of a chance, as they (i.e. Bloomie) is part of the reason they are in the state they are in. I have heard that Bloom is actually more to blame for the current state of the show then Wheelie is.

As for the characters, Cassie ran her course a long time ago. Reva isnt the sexy spitfire as the woman is way into middle age. Zimmer can get on my last nerve but I like that she "looks," how Reva should look now. The woman has had a rough time of it, lived hard and has big appetites..it shows on her and Reva looks like a real person unlike Lucci, who looks like a scary vodoo doll and Dee Hall, who looks like she never met a botox injection she didnt like. I think that Zimmer has wisely brought her acting down a notch to match the new production style and it works. (though I hate her giggly school girl act with rapists JEffie) I hated NSA as Michelle, as they aged her too fast and made her into a prissy, boring soccer mom married to a mobster. Chele should have edges and be in roughly the same situation Phillip is in(though in reverse), battleing her father's genetics, ( an alcholic man who has has a dark side ) with her mother's nuturing. JL hit that note, while NSA became the annoying mom next door. The biggest blow is as others said, they didnt bring in any Bauers to fill that void. Edmund is coming back but agree, I dont know who Brad Cole is blowing to stay in that job..Jeffie wore out his welcome the first moment he came on the canvas.

Wheeler did screw up in the sets she choose to create, agree with that. Instead of the cop shop why not create a Beacon Lobby, which looks like people would actually gather there? Expand Cedars as a community center, like in the old days..I know it makes no sense that everyone would come to a hospital to hang out but it is preferable to the cold, drab police station.

She also screwed up in chaseing off the actors and core families that would make this format work. The Bauer and the Marlers were always the most "normal," families on the show, and by normal I mean they have their fare share of demons that cause them problems. With the addition of Phillip, the Buaers need to be rebuilt pronto. I disagree about the Spauldings. They could work, we just need to see them become the neurotic, aristocratic family they were, and the writers could use the economy to explain that they had to divest themselves of their west coast and european operations and transiiton into being one of the top companies in the state (as opposed to the world,) and we quit refering to Alan as a billionaire.

I think the new format is one of the most interesting things that soaps have tried. I don't understand why they can't use interiors in Peapack and the surrounding hood around the studio to open the show up a little more...but I dont know union regulatons and the economics of production process. It seem s that they do use a real bar once in a while. However, if Wheeler would focus more on using real interiors, and get the characters away from walking in parks constantly, it could work.

[juppiter]

I think that transitioning away from the Spauldings is a horrible idea. Yes, I wish the Bauers were still around but they've been a minor family since Rick and Abby broke up and he fell off the face of the planet. The Spauldings are kind of the only link left to the old Guiding Light. Beth, Lizzie, and Alan I at least recognize. They should work on getting some people back (I remember it was tough to get Peter Simon back then they let him go a year later... idiots) but the Spauldings are super important and should remain so.

People I would keep: Shayne, Marina(recast), Olivia, Billy, Bill, Buzz, Frank, Rick, Alan, Lizzie, Beth, Lillian, Alexandra

People I'd dump: Cyrus, Mallet, JEFFREY, Christina, Natalia (unless she and Olivia become a lesbian couple), Josh, Remy, Dinah, Ashlee, Reva

People I would want back: Michelle, Ed, Danny, Coop, Edmund, Harley, Phillip, Mel (on contract)

I realize they don't have a huge budget, and they made examples of people to show that they would fire anybody. But whereas ATWT did this with one person (Martha Byrne), GL did it with like half their cast and now it's unwatchable. And why can't GL have some of ATWT's budget? ATWT doesn't need to hire any more recasts. I swear, they need to start making their characters wear nametags.

[DRW50]

One of the reasons I got hooked on GL was the Spaulding family, specifically, Alexandra (the Beverlee McKinsey version...nothing against Marj Dusay, she's done well with years of bad writing). I think little by little, recasts and recycled writing have sapped away at the point of the family. Ron Raines has grown on me over the years, but I just find Alan boring now. His stories are played out. Beth, I have never been overly fond of Beth Chamberlin as an actress, and all the personality changes Beth has gone through have made her stories increasingly difficult to invest in. In just the last few years, she was married to Rick, sleeping with Alan on the side, now she's married to Alan, sleeping with Cooper on the side, and she's a lawyer?

I think of the current Spaulding clan, Beth should be deemphasized, as should Alan. Just focus on Phillip, Lizzie, move away from the money and business stories. Possibly give Lillian a story to unite Beth and Lizzie around her. How about another breast cancer scare?

[Phoenix11]

At the risk of the off chance of you catching a bad episode, I'd definitely say check it out. I've enjoyed GL more in the last few days than I have in a LONG time. And I think they're definitely improving with the production values. If they could lose the Mallet/Marina and Grady/Daisy pairings, it would be a lot better. Of those, Mallet is the only character who needs to stay in town, then they could build on a Mallet/Dinah/Shayne triangle. Nat/Liv definitely have potential (but then CC could have chemistry with a wooden board!), but there is potential there for a great love story. Bill/Lizzie story will finally move forward with Phillip's return. They just need to cut their losses with certain characters and bring back members of core families.

[DeliaIrisFan]

Closeups are production values (i.e. camera work); use of sets is production values (i.e. set design). The point I was making is that most non-soap viewers would consider the production values on any soap - Y&R included - to be subpar, for the reasons I mentioned (including the use of videotape, which is antiquated and to my understanding at least one sacred cow that GL is right in questioning - it's not even the cheapest format anymore, which I am sure is why it was chosen in the first place all those decades ago). Soaps couldn't afford to have primetime or movie-like production values - even when they had their highest ratings ever, they couldn't. For that reason, to say that GL should be canceled because of production values, but not other shows which have slightly better production values, is arbitrary. Whereas good writing and good acting don't have to cost any more money than bad, and I think that over the years GL has given us plenty of things in those (IMO more important) categories that would make the non-soap viewer think twice about their preconceived notions about the genre. For that reason, it merits every last chance as far as I'm concerned. It still has a base audience that is more than any new soap would be able to count on from day one, and we all know it would not be replaced with another soap. The end of GL would mean one less soap on the air, and as was already said would make the next lowest-rated show more vulnerable (and othe shows more vulnerable, indirectly).

Well, that's what it was created to be and what it has always been. But many non-soap viewers would still, by and large, not be impressed, I would venture to guess. GL has never even had Y&R's budget, and it dates back to the dawn of tv when soaps had no money and nobody knew what they were doing in this medium and they were flying by the seat of their pants. If it had been canceled then, instead of paving the way for soaps that came after, there are probably at least half a dozen reasons why Y&R would have never existed. I don't see the harm in allowing it to experiment with newer production methods that could save money - who knows, it could work out the kinks and come up with a model that would once again enable the daytime drama transition to a new format. In the mean time it can't do any worse in terms of production gaffes than some of what must have aired in the 50s.

What soaps are, in terms of production values, is a direct result of what they can afford to be - or what they could afford to be at the point in time when production values became standardized. I am not even watching GL right now, and the last time I saw it it was far from perfect - for a lot of reasons that went much deeper than how it looked. Soap conventions like multigenerational storytelling, dramatic pacing, etc. cannot be thrown out and GL has shot itself in the foot, at least in the past, by trying, but if GL can buy more time by flouting traditions as superficial as production values then I say more power to them.

Well, there was a time when I thought GL had the best cast in daytime, and Y&R had pretty people who overacted, but I never considered Y&R to be a "cancer" that needed to be eradicated because it was an embarrassment to the genre. That's what I take objection to - losing GL is not going to gain other shows more respect, it is however going to put other soaps in more jeopardy (especially Y&R, since I would venture to guess that there are at least a few viewers left who would be less likely to watch the CBS lineup if GL were not on, which could hurt the ratings just enough to make Y&R's situation a little more precarious, which in the current climate in network TV would not take very much at all).

[juppiter]

People just don't like "different," as much as they it's what they want. Passions got similiar treatment as being a "cancer." What people didn't realize is that Passions was never trying to be like the other soaps. It was trying to fill a specific niche, which it did very well. GL, too, is trying to be different, but unlike Passions I don't think it's succeeding. It reeks of desperation.

[marceline]

This is true. Passions also had the benefit of not having to fight 40 years worth of memories. I think GL is doomed because of the (sorry it's my clarion call) nostalgia.

[dragonflies]

So basically shows are doomed because of the nostalgia? I guess I'll have to disagree. Passions was doomed from the start IMO, because of the fact that it was different

[brimike]

^^^ I agree. I think people can adjust to "different" when nostalgia isn't involved. If the new GL was a brand new show with brand new characters, people would watch or they wouldn't watch - but at the end of the day, it wouldn't feel like a slap in the face.

I think if GL had slowly moved over to the new model, there's a slight chance people would have been more accepting of it. ATWT has gradually included location shoots, and I think if they continued to do it over the next year, and were forced to eventually move over entirely to it due to their shrinking budget, the fans would be a little more accepting (if the writing was solid). But GL's overnight change, and the bizarre perceived arrogance that went with it in every interview about it ("This is where soaps are heading/the soap look is outdated/we are pioneers/etc") just turned a lot of people off.

I tend to agree with Marceline that nostalgia can be a hindrance many times, but I do think there's a nice middle ground between honoring your history, while still moving into the future.

[All My Shadows]

ITA. I remember somebody told me that the first couple of years of AMC were great (which they were, based on some episodes I've seen and all the summaries I've read) and one of the reasons why was because Agnes honored the show's history. And I'm like...how much history could the show exactly have to honor only three, four, five years into its run? Having 10-20 years of history to deal with is different from having 30-50 years of history to deal with. That's why I don't get it when people get all googly eyed when it's rumored that a primetime writer is coming to daytime.

[marceline]

I don't think Passions was "doomed" because I don't see Passions as a failure. The went for a niche, served it well and had a decent run.

[Mitch]

If GL is doomed its not because of nostalgia (that is what Wheeler and Bloom would LOVE everyone to believe those old demographically undesireable viewers just wont let go of the past) it is because of mismanagment and bad writing. And the mismanagment dates back to Rauch and MADD, as Wheeler has said, they were spending money they didnt have, and it just got worse with Conboy.

I loved GL during its heyday but I like the "idea," behind the new production model..they just didnt go far enough with it. Someone should have invested the money to be able to use more of Peapack then the town park, a shack, a port a potty and that dumpy house they use for all of the characters. If they couldnt do that they should have used the money to invest in a bit more space to create better indoor sets. The format could work and Wheeler had a great idea, CBS and PG need to step up to the plate and invest more money in the filming, but they aint going to do that until the ratings go up and that would take good writing. And the writing is the part of the process I will blame Wheeler on. However, things are turning around with Hurst and I think if she was left to her own devices she could do it.

I an old time GL fan really liked Passions! It was what it was and you either got the joke or you didnt...the show didnt care it stuck to its guns and turned every soap cliche on its head with the bad acting and tounge in cheek writing. Any show that can get a half man/half woman pregnant by his own father is so over the top and tasteless that I gotta love it!

[bellcurve]

I liked the idea behind the new production model as well. Part of it's bumpy road has to do with the amount of money PGP invested in the new model, but alot of it has to do with Wheeler's slapstick way of producing the show.

I completely understand having to complete something in a deadline, but there is no excuse for poor planning and shooting on the fly, especially if it's a network television series. I said this on another board, but if the PGP/TeleNext PR department knew to research blogs and invite bloggers to Peapack, why couldn't they check the Weather Channel online? Why don't they have liaisons in Peapack who can let them know whether there's still snow on the ground, so they can plan accordingly? Why can't they have multiple plans for their shoots, in case something fails?

And if they did buy crappy, student film cameras, why not buy the ones that are in HD? What's $500 extra? I mean, GL wants to tout about soaps are stuck in the past. SD, to many in the industry, is stuck in the past. Why not shoot in HD?