Another World

[Xanthe]

Jamie and Lisa's first meeting is so awful. I remembered not liking it but it was even worse than I remembered.

The way they chose to show Maisie's murder was very strange -- I thought when they started with the choppy effect that they would just give us some quick cuts and not really show it. But instead they stopped cutting and showed the gloved hand merely touch Maisie's throat and she fell to the ground, hopelessly dead. Meanwhile they spent a lot longer on the brawl with Michael and Donna which was given the freeze frame position at the very end.

[Mona Kane Croft]

Nobody did prostitutes like Agnes Nixon at All My Children.  Donna Beck and Estelle with their respective pimps, Tyrone and Billy Clyde.  Nixon's prostitute storylines were both overtly simple and full of stereotypes, while also being nuanced and complex (unexplainable, I know).  No other soap opera's prostitute storylines could hold a candle to Nixon's work on AMC.   And the Estelle/Billy Clyde stuff was also during the height of the AIDS epidemic.

 

[DRW50]

I think most of the Estelle story was over by the time AIDS became more known to the public.

I'd agree that Nixon did a better job with those stories than other writers did. I wonder if she ever planned any at AW but they didn't go through.

[Mona Kane Croft]

Lemay said or wrote somewhere (I assume an interview) that he was fired immediately after the strike ended and before any of his scripted episodes had even aired.  So he certainly was not fired because of ratings.  It is fairly typical that TPTB try to reward the scab writers in some way (often by hiring them later in lower level writing positions).  But P&G hired Swajeski as head-writer immediate after the strike, which was a pretty bold and obvious move.  There must have been something in her work as a scab that they liked, and thought she would be a better fit than Lemay without even waiting for his episodes to air.  Funny though -- if Lemay was not a good fit for AW in 1988, why did TPTB allow Swajeski to use Lemay's storyline projections for almost an entire year after the strike?  

[Contessa Donatella]

And, did what seemed like her special treatment somewhow accrue to her being from the network?

[watson71]

I really wish Lemay’s bible for AW in 1988 would show up online- so we could see what storylines Swajeski used, as well as how Lemay planned to reunite Mac and Iris after the fallout from the takeover.

[Mona Kane Croft]

That would be fun to see.  But actually, one can almost tell by watching AW in 1988-89, which material was from Lemay's projection bible, and what was original to Swajeski.    If I have time later, I'll try to review it all and give some specific examples of each -- which will be only my opinion, of course.   

Good point, Contessa.  After a strike, scab writers often get special treatment.  But Swajeski seemed to get EXTRA special treatment.   Was it the quality of her writing during the strike?  Or something else????    

Edited June 2, 2024 by Mona Kane Croft

[Contessa Donatella]

I've often thought that the people who climbed over the network fence got it better than others. I can only think of her & Rauch however at the moment. 

[AbcNbc247]

Were fans and soap publications upset and angry about it at the time?

[Mona Kane Croft]

I don't recall any backlash to much of Nixon's work.  But at the time, I was a young adult and not paying attention to that sort of thing as much as I did in later years.   

[Jdee43]

It was interesting seeing Margaret DePriest turn up as an actor on The Doctors in December 1967 through March 1968 in the small role of an adoption agency official. She was also a head writer for a few shows in the 70s, including The Doctors in 1976. Her stints on Another World were terrible though, as were most of her time after on other shows.

Edited June 3, 2024 by Jdee43

[Contessa Donatella]

Speaking of Margaret DePriest, there are two other things that I would mention.

She did not watch the show. That's a pet peeve of mind. I don't believe a writer can really be in touch with their show if they do not watch it. As far as MDP was concerned when it left her written, that was it. She did not follow it past the last period on the page. She came under scrutiny over Frankie Frame's death. She claimed that she did not write it to be gratuitously violent but she had no control over it once a director & actor dealt with it. They said but when you watched it, didn't you blah blah & that's when she said she NEVER watched the shows she wrote.

About that same serial killer story, Jill tried to get her to change the plan so there would be some soapy way that Frankie would end up not dead, MDP flatly refused to even consider such a thing. 

[chrisml]

Everyone passed the buck when it came to Frankie Frame's death, so I don't believe any of them. MDP and JFP  have a track record of violence against women. They also have a history of putting the blame on other people for their mistakes. It was only a few years later that JFP got in trouble at GH for how violent and dark GH became with all the violence and yet another serial killer storyline.

As for the 1987 serial killer storyline, it seems to go along with MDP's obsession with punishing strong women. It was all designed for a character (Lisa) who had no lasting impression on the show. As someone else said on this thread, Lisa's backstory and connection to Glaser is so distasteful. 

I can't think of a serial killer storyline on a soap that had a long lasting effect on a show. They just seem designed to fire people and get immediate ratings that inevitably fall because there's no longterm story.

[Xanthe]

I can't speak to storylines on other soaps, but I'm not sure what fans would be upset about, exactly, since prostitution was never recommended -- it was a disgraceful and/or salacious episode from the character's past. I don't remember AW ever really directly addressing sexually transmitted disease head on -- they avoided the issue with virginal Dawn Rollo's AIDS storyline, maybe mentioned safe sex in a throwaway conversation about Amanda's unplanned pregnancy or around Matthew (buying condoms from Judith Barcroft) and Josie (confiding in Kathryn Erbe) thinking about having sex, but overall maybe just seemed to have fewer incidents of casual sex. At least, when I look through the AWHP character guide, it seems like the 70s had all kinds of random hookups listed under "lovers" that were more likely to be "flirtations" in the later 80s and 90s.

Let's see -- AW had Sharlene's prostitution storyline, then Sandy's past, and then MJ's along with her ex-boyfriend/pimp. Any others? Was Josie's modeling career supposed to have devolved into prostitution before she returned and became a cop?

[Sapounopera]

I am shocked to say that she was better than Marland on The Doctors.