Guiding Light Discussion Thread

[NothinButAttitude]

 

Which is why I wish they would've brought Hope Bauer back to fulfill that void if they didn't want Ed back. I feel like they had numerous opportunities to do so. They could've done it right after the end of Santa Barbara by snagging up Robin Mattison, who previously occupied the role, before the went to AMC. They could've snagged Mattison once again after she left AMC. I think they could've recast Julia Barr as Hope too when she left AMC in '06. Or they could've asked Elvera Roussel back. 

[cassadine1991]

So many things this show could've done but didn't. 

[GH_Girl]

 

As much as I wasn't a big Buzz fan, I guess I'm glad he did that because MC has been HYSTERICAL on Veep this season. 

Please register in order to view this content

[NothinButAttitude]

 

Yeah but GL has been off air for a long time. Buzz should've left a LONG time ago. '99 should've been the latest he stayed. Anything over that was pointless as Buzz didn't have any story after that. He should've been written off with Drew's mom, Selina.

[Mitch]

I heard that also, but what I meant was..why did TPTB keep him around??? He was "old," not particularly attractive (disclaimer I thought his Tom Hughes was hot..) and his character was annoying as hell, and he was a big pout (he told a story about the director telling him to "tone it down," and he just really read the lines after that...)

 

PS was "My" Ed but he was so cold...Hulswit was the Ed when I was a kid and "my Moms" Ed and he was much closer to Charita Bauer interpretation of Bert...warm, a bit chubby, normal, a calmness where you would see why people would look up to them but a back bone when it was needed. He also looked more like he could have been O'leary's dad...(at his best O'leary had the same thing that Charita and Hulwist brought to their roles, but he insisted on his "comedy" and his mugging, when Rick should have taken over from Bert as being the go to Bauer.)

 

Van Fleet always came off as too weak. Also, he came on during a HUGE change (when I think the show hit bottom...until Peapack came..) with Charitas's death, the decimation of the Bauers..(Hillary killed off, Mike written off..) the obscuration of the Reardons, the rise of the Lewis as the 'core" family and Reva ate the show alive. He might have worked at another time but GL just became a totally different show overnight and it did not work at all.

 

 It was just typical Rauch and E & B bullshitting that they were going to focus on the core with all the complaints. They were boasting they were going to show flashbacks of him and Bert which would impact the story but never did. They actually had a good story built in there with him...Ed was the doctor for Jesses' Mom and his dad blamed Ed for killing her (hence getting Mo's heart to Jesse...) It was a good "GL" story with the dad coming between  Chele and Jesse and the economic disparity. But it wasnt "cartoony" enough for them so they got bored. I always wanted Nola to get involved with Jesse's dad as she buttinskied her way into trying to help Chele, and have her caught in between Ed (in a sisterly way) and the dad too, and if they gave Jess a bad girl social climbing sister to go after Bill Lewis, so there would be Jesse/Chele/Bill/Bad Girl thing going.  With the adults having problems, the kids having problems, and it all tied together, with Aunt Meta drinking a bourbon and handing out sassy advice, it would have been good.

 

The most frustrating part of Rauch and E & B tenure was the "What coulda.shoulda been" they demonstrated they had some good ideas and could actually write some interesting stuff. And then it would go back to being a shallow cartoon.

Edited June 16, 2017 by Mitch

[NothinButAttitude]

 

Well if he was gonna just read lines, he should've quit. Like said in my last post, Buzz became pointless after '99. He was not needed at all. Especially not for Harley and Frank, who were at their most entertaining years before he arrived. 

 

 

I love how you summed this up perfectly. 

 

I do wish that a director or someone higher up would've told O'Leary to scrap the comedy aspect, and tried to get him to capture all the characteristics you pointed out that Charita and Mart's Ed possessed. 

[vetsoapfan]

 

Roussel was by far the best of the adult Hopes, and I really wanted her to return, although I would have accepted either Mattson or Barr in the role. Nobody in charge gave a damn about the Bauers, or the history of the show in general, however, and many decisions that could have stabilized TGL were never made. When Aunt Meta returned to Springfield in 1996, they never even bothered to address what had happened to her husband, Bruce Banning. We surmised he must have died, and some fansites reported that as suppised fact, but it was never referenced on air. Lousy, incompetent writing and producing.

[robbwolff]

 

Didn't GL create a few scenes featuring Gentry and Ellen Parker as Maureen? I kinda remember that. And wasn't McTavish toying with a Ed/Nola romance before Peter Simon left in 1996?

[NothinButAttitude]

 

Weren't there other Bauer siblings too? When Meta returned, it would've been nice for her to mention the whereabouts of them too. I just find it inexcusable when shows just toss legendary core families to the aside to push crappy newer families forward. Only a few soaps truly got away with it (i.e. Young and the Restless, Another World...) b/c the replacements were just as interesting. While I loved the Lewis/Shayne clan, I never saw them are core families that made me warm inside. And don't get me started on the Coopers...

[vetsoapfan]

 

Aunt Meta had a sister named Trudy Bauer Palmer, but neither Trudy nor her husband, Clyde Palmer, have/had been mentioned for decades. I doubt anyone associated with writing the show after Douglas Marland quit knew they even existed. 

 

I think a soap like Y&R got away with refocusing itself around new core families (the Williamses, Abbotts, and Newmans) because most of the original cast playing the Brookses and Fosters voluntarily quit the series, and because the show had the brilliant William J. Bell guiding the ship through the transition period. It was far different on TGL, many of whose core actors were unceremoniously fired in the early 1980s, and whose writing was in the toilet for much of that decade. Jeff Ryder: blechh. Knowing that stalwarts like Mart Hulswit, Don Stewart, Elvera Roussel, Marsha Clark, Millette Alexander, and so many others, COULD HAVE continued on with the program, was infuriating to longtime fans, who did not appreciate having 2/3 of the cast gutted. We lost Mike, Hope, Hillary, and the "real" Ed Bauer, and got stuck with Jackson Freemont, Suzanne Saxon, Warren Andrews, and a host of irrelevant and/or nauseating characters who stunk up the screen. Nooooo, thank you.

Edited June 16, 2017 by vetsoapfan

[NothinButAttitude]

 

From what I've seen of Warren, he wasn't bad until they took him from being the hardened hospital administrator to a killer by '87. I think that he had stellar chemistry with Alexandra. 

 

From what I've seen of Jackson & Suzanne, I didn't care for them at all. I couldn't get into the singing stories at that time despite loving Lujack and later Chelsea. 

 

But speaking of this period of the show, was Johnny the scion of Trudy or Meta? Or was he simply just some distant Bauer that they didn't go into detail about who he was related to? 

[cassadine1991]

Soapcentral has Johnny as the son of Jack Bauer, the nephew of Papa Bauer

[vetsoapfan]

 

Johnny was a "fake," newly created Bauer, who sprang from a branch of the family tree which had never existed. His parents were the middle-aged Jack and Lanie Bauer, who briefly popped up in Springfield in the 1980s, to little interest. They disappeared  not long afterwards. Jack's father was supposedly a man of German descent named Otto, brother to the the original patriarch of the family, Papa Bauer. (Papa was Ed's and Mike's paternal grandfather, introduced to TGL in 1948.)

 

In four decades of life with the Springfield Bauers, we had never heard of this "Otto" or his descendants; they never showed up for Christmases, weddings, or even Papa Bauer's funeral. Their sudden appearance reeked of clueless PTBs saying to the audience, "There you go, some strangers with the name Bauer. Now shut up about that family."

 

It did not appease the fans who longed to see beloved, familiar characters of yore.

Edited June 17, 2017 by vetsoapfan

[NothinButAttitude]

 

Oh wow. Didn't know that. 

 

Why didn't they simply just have him be an offspring of Meta or Trudy? That would've made more sense. I swear some of these head writers make such an easy task so difficult. 

 

What were your person thoughts on Johnny?

[vetsoapfan]

 

Meta actually had a stepson named Joey, whose young-adult offspring could have been introduced, but I doubt TPTB knew he existed. He was never mentioned after Aunt Meta returned to Sprinfield in 1996. Ed's father Bill had potentially fathered a young man named Paul (Hillary's brother), whose arrival could also have expanded the Bauer family and provided story fodder, but again, TPTB did not know the show's history. Johnny's being Trudy's grandson would have made him a real, blood Bauer, but since TPTB did not ever acknowledge Trudy's existence, that family tie never panned out either. When Jeanne Cooper guested on TGL during its final weeks, I wanted it to be as Trudy, a significant nod to history, but instead she appeared as an irrelevant nobody, with no ties to the canvas. Yet another waste by stupid PTB.

 

If *I* had been running the show, so much would have been different. LOL.

 

As for Johnny, I was indifferent. His being a fake Bauer TPTB foisted upon us always left me cold.

 

 

 

Edited June 17, 2017 by vetsoapfan