Was Gloria Monty or Wendy Riche the better GH EP?

[JONNYSBRO]

The thing is I feel that there are two women that are the hugest part of GH's 45 year history. One of them is Gloria Monty, this woman took a show on the brink of cancellation and turned it into the number 1 show on television. She changed the face of daytime and the medium and was an absolute genius for GH. She is a huge part of GH. Her second tenure on GH was not so good, the times had changed. She brought all the Eckerts on and the show just was not very good. Monty was a complete utter visionary. Then when Monty was let go after tenure number 2, they hired unknown Wendy Riche which turned into a glorious 9 year run at GH. Her first year and half was good but it was not until Claire Labine came on. Everyone touts Labine as the savior when IMO it was the team. Labine has gone on to OLTL/GL and bombed both soaps. She was a big success on GH because of Riche's exeuction of the Labines vision. She alos had very strong producers to work with Shelley Curtis, Carol Scott, Francesca James, Julie Carruthers and many others. She brought on so many popular characters. By the end of Riche's tenure she was at odds with Bob Guza. Guza hated Riche's guts because she hated Bob's arrogance and his vision for GH. It was a nasty WARZONE between the two which ended in Guza resigning and Riche being fired. Riche never put up with Guza's crap and hated his writing and that it was insulting to women. Now Guza has his female counterpart JFP who loves Guzavision and supports it. I would give everything for Riche to return to GH, she is so needed. She won so many emmys, gave the show so much accliam and was a total visionary.

[aMLCproduction]

Great topic. I cant wait to see these reponses. I know both these ladies were well regarded.

[LoyaltoAMC]

Monty, by far. GH of the late 70 through 86, when Monty left for the first time, was ALL Monty. It was her vision, and the writers merely executed that vision. For most of her run, GH was absolutely electric, and that was Monty. Her second tenure had promise, but she tried to overhaul the show too quickly and it just didn't click. Riche IMO was only as strong as her writers. I thought the show was terrible when she came on as EP. Don't recall who the writers were at that time. This was probably around the time that Karen and Jagger were going strong and Alan's dalliance with Karen's mother Ronda. The writing just wasn't there. Same with the post-Labine era that Riche produced. I've watched some of the episodes on youtube from this era, and the show was just stale. The Labine stuff was good.

[quartermainefan]

I don't think this is even close. Monty. GH up til 1985 or rewrote everything and became this pop culture show. Wendy Riche? She presided over declining ratings and had no response to Y&R ever. Her tenure had a few well regarded stories, but those same stories helped drive people away who didn't want to commit suicide after watching a show. And somehow some brain surgeon decided that the soap that had its own niche with action/comedy/romance really needed to be about depression and Tiffany Hill trying to commit suicide and BJ Jones dying. I think the ratings back me up on this, that the depressing vision of the 1990s was the wrong one.

[LoyaltoAMC]

Totally agree with you, quartermainefan. I was going to add something similar to my post, but didn't want to get flamed To tell you the truth, I wasn't a huge fan of the Labine era. Yeah, it was well written, but it WASN'T GH, at least the version that Monty produced and which I'd come to love. The Riche/Labine era was boring and often pretentious, neither of which Monty's GH ever was. It was one depressing story after another, and I stopped watching.

[Y&RWorldTurner]

I'm not the biggest Gloria Monty fan. She single-handedly pioneered the supercouple formula that's ruined a good amount of soaps and created those rabid fanbases that think they can dictate what's wrong or right on a particular show. Not to mention the numerous spy stories that got tiring after a while, and those cartoon super villians that wore out their welcome by the late 80's. Monty wanted to make GH a popular show, and she succeeded. However, she used an endless stream of different writers to carry out her vision, which sometimes led to a very inconsistent show. Even though GH was popular and #1 for most of the 80's, there were a few years in there in which the show was HATED by soap critics for and laughed at, and of course very inconsistent.

While its partly true that Riche was sometimes as good as her writers, I always got the feeling that she wanted to make GH a real show again, and make Port Charles a real community again - which, let's face it, it wasn't with Monty. By the early 90's, traditional soap stories were coming back in style, hence Y&R and AMC dominating that era. GH needed to shift to a more relatable and grounded approach. Riche tried to do that, and yes, Labine's medical stories might have chased a lot of people away, but at least for the first time in YEARS, GH was a lot closer to its medical roots than before. Riche was also very hands-on with her writers, Patrick Mulcahey said that if she didn't like your work, she'd tell you do. While social issue storylines aren't everyone's cup of tea, Riche produced the hell out of stories like that, and for the first time in years, GH was considered a serious show again that had artistic credibility, which, let's face it, it didn't really have in the 80's and early 90's.

Overall, I prefer Riche, her vision of what a soap should be was more traditional, which I liked. I'm not a big fan of supercouples, super villains, spy stories, and on the run stories. Riche grounded GH and made it relatable to a lot of people, which I liked. It may not have been for everyone and might have been the complete opposite of Monty's vision, but I prefered it.

[quartermainefan]

In hindsight the 1990s were a disaster. It gave GH Sonny, Carly and Jason. End of story. And they sucked under Claire Labine too. Carly was only good when she was stealing Tony from Bobbie. If I were the new EP of GH, I would get rid of every character that debuted in the 1990s and beyond, bring back everyone that actually was a part of GH when it was successful, and just have it all a bad dream. Then if you want you can reintroduce Liz or Helena or whoever and do it right.

[Y&RWorldTurner]

Carly was a Guza/Karen Harris creation, with input from Patrick Mulcahey. If I remember correctly, GH's ratings actually went up with the Labine to Guza transition in 1996 and stayed steady throughout the rest of the 90's.

However, to be fair, Monty's vision for soaps would not have worked well in the 90's. Everything about it was so 80's, and when she back in 1990, she proceeded in making the show a huge mess, even hiring her inexperienced sister to HW the show for a period of time. GH needed some type of transition, ABC was very wise, IMO, for firing her. By 1992, those very 80's stories were no longer working for soaps or in touch with the times.

[DaytimeFan]

Gloria Monty wins...which I hate. Gloria was a pioneer. She made action/adventure stories accessible in daytime, she made super couples and their rabid fan bases go wild, she nurtured and pushed the talents of Jackie Zeman, Stuart Damon, Leslie Charleson, Genie Francis and Tony Geary among many others and she made GH the 'must see' show of the late 70s and throughout the 80s. It was THE show for a decade.

In my opinion, Wendy Riche was not an innovator or pioneer. I feel Riche was a dedicated, hard working, terrific producer who did have a vision, a traditional vision. I feel Riche mirrored the success that other shows had with the traditional soap style. GH really seemed to take a lot of its tone from AMC and to a lesser extent GL and ATWT. GH was a great show in the 90s, I prefer Riche's run to Monty's...everything clicked under Riche's run and since I like the traditional soap style, that's the era of GH I loved.

Although what she did is, I feel, at the core of what is destroying daytime as it exists, Monty wins without hesitation.

[Paul Raven]

How do GH fans feel about Wes Kenney's stint?

[rangethatrover]

I LOVED Wes Kenney's stint.

I loved the stories, the actors, and the show looked great when he was at the helm.

Duke and Anna were featured heavily--- and all that FBI (FSB lol) stuff....

Loved GH back then. It was a combination of good traditional soap and the action adventure stuff Gloria brought on.

[Cat]

Most people nailed it here. Gloria Monty may have hated the idea of soaps, tried to make GH a non-soap soap (an affliction it currently suffers to its detriment), set up a star system at GH, abused her stars, including working an underage Genie Francis to the bone and turning a blind eye to her (and other stars') excessive coke use.

However, she revamped the show completely and saved it. Not only did she save it, she took it to #1. She made it exciting, Must-See TV.

Wendy Riche was a great EP in the sense that she translated the writer's vision perfectly on screen. That writer was Claire Labine (and Robert Guza's first run). However, she didn't turn the show around. Sonny & Brenda did that -- and from there, the Cult of Sonny was born.

OT but: I still say that Monty's legacy could still work today. OK, the sub-James Bond stuff is just too dated and spoofy, unless you have the writers and budget of an Alias, Fringe or 24. A balanced take on the lives and loves of law enforcement combating the toxic mob, however? Could be compelling viewing. Of course, you would need to build up the law enforcers -- Lucky, Mac, Alexis, etc. You would also need a character like Jason defect to the Feds and become an agent combatting the mafia. I assume Sonny would remain that shadowy figure flitting between the good and bad guys. And, of course, Monty DID feature the hospital heavily, via Bobbie, various young and sexy doctors, the Webbers and the Qs.

[DRW50]

Monty made some painful breaks from GH's core (she reduced Jessie Brewer to a minimal part, she deemphasized Audrey and Steve), although there's probably debate about whether she had to make that break. I don't think Monty's headwriters get enough credit for GH's recovery. Douglas Marland and Pat Falken Smith both built a foundation which propelled GH into becoming an 80s juggernaut. Monty did make many of the key decisions, and the show's biggest era of success was after they were both gone, but I think she also coasted on that success for a long time. the show moved away from having a foundation to being about huge characters (Frisco, Anna, Robert, among others). When those characters started to leave, there was nothing to fall back on.

Riche rebuilt the foundation of the show. A hospital, a community. Yes, the end of Claire Labine's tenure is depressing, but I love that sense of community.

Where I fault Wendy Riche is she was not able to stop Guza from destroying the show. Everything which has eaten GH alive, like the marginalization of the Quartermaines, the destruction of the Spencer family, the glorification of the "good mob", all began under her tenure. I still can't watch episodes from the late 90s because everything Guza delighted in is all over the screen. At the time when GH won yet another undeserved Best Show Emmy, around the time of Columbine, Wendy Riche gave a speech which decried gun violence and basically said there was a responsibility in the industry to counter those images. The saddest thing for me was I think she truly didn't understand just how much GH was glorifying gun violence by that time. Countless scenes of gun porn, as Jason or Sonny glided across a warehouse in slow motion, bullets flying.

Both producers helped revive the show and both left the show in a state of disrepair. Monty was lucky enough to be replaced by a producer who cared about the show. Riche was replaced by a producer who is a purveyor of bile and refuse, all prettied up with loving montages and arty camera angles. Jill Farren Phelps is the antithesis of everything soap production should be and a terrible trio like JFP, Frons, and Guza are more than any program could bear.

[Ann_SS]

I am really enjoying the insightful comments. If forced to choose, I'd pick Monty's first run at GH. Her second stint was a debacle. I cannot forgive Riche for Sonny and Jason and mob takeover which I believe has sent GH down the road to ruination.

[quartermainefan]

I just don't see how in the age of 24, LOST, and a revived James Bond franchise her genre stuff is out of date or out of style. Yes the budget is not there but that's another topic. You could still do compelling whodunits with the limited budget. Unfortunately, GH has no characters to assume the Scorpios and Felicia roles. Lucky and Mac are imbeciles for the most part, and Alexis is far from a law enforcer. She is a member in good standing of the mob set.

If anything, it is the mob stuff which is outdated, not the spy and action genre many soap fans like to put into the ghetto called camp, better to easily dimiss it, and thus validate their own tastes.