Guiding Light Discussion Thread

[DRW50]

 

Alex was just a plot device for Nick and Mindy angst, then under Laibson, mostly a plot device for Spaulding drama. And lots of bad comedy. I have to admit I did enjoy her comedy with Hawk, although I can't imagine Beverlee having to play that stuff.

 

I have only seen bits of her work as Pamela but I think that really must have been a dream role for her talents. It's a shame she was there at such a bad transition period for SB.

 

It's a good thing that I was not on boards in the early '90s as I would have been very critical of talents like Marj and Liz Keifer, etc. It took a number of years for me to realize it was not their fault.

 

(I will not say that about Geoffrey Scott's Billy as I think he was just a [!@#$%^&*] actor).

[j swift]

I was just re-reading the return of Amanda Spaulding and I would have shaded the crap out of that character.  Ben McFadden love lorn lass, or even Mark Evans side chick, would never have become a Malibu madame.  And the whole Alan is her father/brother/uncle/3rd cousin retcon is an awful plot point to keep rehashing.

 

BTW it makes me smile to imagine Ellen Wheeler trying to explain the concept of Peapack to Beverly McKinsey (no, there won't be any fur coats but you'll have your own bush to change behind...)

Edited August 7, 2018 by j swift

[Soaplovers]

Marj's best role was as Myrna Clegg on Capital.. she took over the role and made it her own.  She wasn't Alexandra, though I do think when she first started as Alexandra, she did try to emulate Beverlee a bit without much success.  With that said, she had better chemistry with Fletcher than Beverlee did.

 

 

[SFK]

I think it was her second stint at GL when Marj did an interview where she shared that Myrna was her favorite role. That was before Vanessa, which I think became her favorite as she got to do a slice of all her soap characters combined and really draw upon her comedic background.

 

Marj was for all intents and purposes my first Alex because she was in the role when I really started watching GL faithfully. I was totally transfixed, I loved her, and it was months before the light bulbs went on and I realized she was Myrna and Monica Warner. Thing is, I just love Marj and her Marjness, what she brings to everything she does. I absolutely adore Beverlee McKinsey for the same reasons and I think I have an easier time than others accepting the two distinct portrayals of the character since I basically watched the transition in reverse via tape trade in the late '90s. AFWIW, try as I might, I have a hard time imagining Beverlee McKinsey as Myrna. I'm picturing her in scenes written for Carolyn and Marj and I just can't picture her playing that character beyond the very Iris-like scenes where she's lounging in a dressing gown having Clarissa over for a Pinteresque tea.

[GMac]

 

 

@j swift I tend to agree that Hollen would have been the best choice to play Trish.  The story you mentioned for the character sound interesting and while she was never written as antagonist, I could see the conflict with Mindy and Alan that you mentioned.

 

I'm not anti-Marj, she just wasn't right for the role of Baroness Alexandra von Halkein.  She just didn't have the nuance to play the character's grey areas whereas Beverlee excelled (but TBH, what actress could have taken over that role?  I seriously doubt anyone).  I LOVE @Khan's idea to tie her into the Lewises, I can picture Marj now playing a somewhat trashy Tulsa aunt now.

 

I must not have been watching around the time of the stories you mentioned with Jennifer Richards; I don't recall any of that or maybe I'm just getting old lol

 

[robbwolff]

It's been a long time but I don't think Jennifer returned to Springfield. She had been written out during the Gene Palumbo/L. Virginia Browne period (winter 1983). I believe she phoned Amanda in August 1983 wanting Matthew back. Amanda and Matthew then left Springfield to join Jennifer.

[MichaelGL]

Mathew would've been a great character to mix it up with Spaulding men like Philllip and Alan-Michael. 

Mallet and Susan's returns all failed because they were not the characters they were before they left, at least not at their core. Heck, Susan was de-Sorased  and Mallet was banging his Goddaughter. Marina. I'm glad Hurst took over when she did, because she tried to make the show somewhat familiar in those final months. 

Edited August 7, 2018 by MichaelGL

[JarrodMFiresofLove]

 

Great comment(s). I agree that a lot of characters added in the later years fell flat. I thought Ava had potential, especially when she was revealed to be the daughter of Olivia & Jeffrey but they didn't really develop her properly. I couldnt' stand Doris and her overweight daughter whose name I can't recall. The plot where Doris married Alan was absurd.

 

I didn't mind Cyrus too much. I liked his storyline with Alex. It was probably Marj's biggest story in the 2000s. But of course Cyrus, like so many other men, had to eventually be paired with Harley. I still remember Beth Ehlers' last episode. To me that's when GL completely fell apart. A show without Harley just seemed dead in the water.

 

I was not a fan of Otalia...they felt over hyped. I never bought Olivia being gay and not even bisexual. She had gone through so many men in her early years on the show and she always kind of seemed like a brunette Reva to me. It was like if they had suddenly made Reva gay or Alex gay, it just didn't fit the way the character of Olivia had been originally designed. She was never questioning her sexuality on anything.

 

The strangest pairing was Buzz & Lillian. Namely because both characters were pretty much played out by the end and theirs seemed like a default relationship (because there was no one else to put them with). It did give us Lillian's only on screen wedding. When she was introduced she'd already been married to Bradley Raines and that marriage lasted one storyline. So for 95% of Lillian's time on the show she never had a husband till she finally married Buzz.

 

I liked a lot of the Wednesday episodes. I think my favorite one was where Harley and Alan intervened to help Gus kick his drug habit. Ricky Paull Goldin, Beth Ehlers and Ron Raines were all fantastic in that episode. I do agree that these self-contained episodes didn't need to occur every week. Once a month would have been fine. Otherwise it started to feel too gimmicky. I think these episodes not only raised ratings but they also gave the actors a lot of the material they would submit for Emmy voting. Gina Tognoni earned two Emmys under Wheeler, and I think it was because of these special Wednesday episodes where she had a whole hour to basically do the show from her character's neurotic point of view.

 

One thing I like about the later years of GL was how Jordan Clarke was rehired to play Billy again full-time. He always brought something special to the show. Billy's relationships with Josh and with Reva, as well as with Vanessa, were a mainstay of the program.

Edited August 9, 2018 by JarrodMFiresofLove

[vetsoapfan]

How depressing it is to rehash the dreadful Peapack years, and to remember how totally gutted, crippled, and unrecognizable TGL was during its final years.

 

It staggered to cancellation after being dealt so many serious, egregious death blows. Sigh.

 

I'm actually surprised it lasted as long as it did.

 

To me, the Light really faded after its core was decimated and identity gutted by Gail Kobe and Pamela Long in 1984-ish. I was ready to see it end then, but was glad when the show rebounded in the late 1980s-early 1990s, and then again (briefly) under Millie Taggart and Carolyn Culliton in 2003. 

 

Alas, the last six YEARS were basically unwatchable.

[Sapounopera]

 

How about Rita Stapleton? Showing up in town with her son?

[DRW50]

 

That would have been interesting. I know there were rumors the show nearly brought her back in the late '80s.

[dc11786]

 

Ashlee Wolfe, wasn't it? I couldn't remember it myself. So much of Kriezman and Wheeler's turn was them trying to keep a sinking ship afloat rather than putting what they could on a lifeboat and sailing away to a different ship that they could have made work. The emergence of Doris as a more prominent presence in Springfield baffled me. Didn't they reveal she was alos a lesbian?

 

I remember tuning in to see the Alex / Cyrus stuff, but somehow fell into the nonsense that was Marina / Cyrus. I thought Mandy Bruno should have been shipped out with Shayne in 2004. The only time I was remotely interested in her Marina was when they toyed with a Sandy / Marina / Shayne triangle and then later when they had Marina / Jonathan meet. I thought Marina / Danny was terrible especially when they had Blake and Danny chem test, which I loved. 

 

If the show was investing in making Sandy work, I thought Ava would have been a neat way to examine his backstory and add new dimensions to the canvas, but that wasn't the case. I thought Jeffrey raping Olivia and producing Ava was the most insane twist in a story especially since we were suppose to still like Jeffrey. I understand why Conboy brought him back; he hadn't been in daytime in years and didn't understand how online fanbases worked. What I didn't get is why Wheeler kept him. By that point, the budget was nothing. It was time to cut losses.

 

I would have bought Olivia as a lesbian if she was paired with a dynamic character. 

 

I thought Buzz and Lillian had potential circa 2004/2005 when they first toyed with the idea. Beth and Harley as stepsisters would have been darling. I seem to recall this was also around the period where Beth was toying with the idea of having an affair with Rick and Ed Bauer was suppose to return during that pointless Santa Domingo story. Rick and Beth's affair would have easily led to some uneasy for Ed and Lillian, which would have spilled over into Lillian and Buzz. By the end, I was surprised that they were even revisiting that because the show never seemed all that invested in it. 

 

The ITL episodes were clearly Emmy bait, which IMO was unfair. 

[JarrodMFiresofLove]

I honestly thought they would put Buzz with Alexandra. That was hinted at several times, even during Joan Collins' short three-month tenure. But I guess Lillian and Buzz were okay, not offensive. I agree that having Beth and Harley as step sisters is a neat idea, an idea that Pam Long would have gone to town with.

 

I always felt that if Wheeler had brought Pam Long in around 2007, the show could have rebounded. Instead it became more about a cheaper production model over good writing.

 

I didn't mind Bradley Cole as Jeffrey, though Richard was the far better role for him. Richard was consistent. Jeffrey was all over the map. I didn't care for Jeffrey's weird affair with Beth, which Conboy & Weston did. It made no sense. Also Jeffrey's sudden dalliance with Marah before Marah left town. Didn't Marah end up moving to Paris to be with Mindy? The Lewises were always going to Paris which seemed silly.

 

As for the ITL episodes being Emmy bait, I think all producers design stories with head writers that are meant to sway Emmy voters. It's how they garner free publicity for the show. So that's one thing Ellen Wheeler did correctly. Putting Gina Tognoni or Kim Zimmer in a position to snag another Emmy brought Guiding Light much-needed publicity/hype in those final years.

 

Yes, Doris became a lesbian (at the turn of a dime) and her daughter's name was Ashlee. I didn't find Ashlee to be a compelling character, except when she would temporarily interact with Jonathan. Killing Tammy off baffled me but letting Tom Pelphrey go and writing Jonathan off was an even bigger mistake. Pelphrey was his generation's Michael Zaslow. The show needed that new "Roger' to drive long-term story and Jonathan's volatile relationship with Reva was perfect made-to-order drama. I felt Sandy was a dud, probably because of how he was introduced. And after Conboy and Weston left he was quickly axed by Wheeler & Kreizman which didn't surprise me.

 

The Boudreaus were a family with great potential. But like so many African American characters on the show, they fell flat. It would have been better if they had brought Gilly back. Maybe she could have married the Boudreau father and been the matriarch to Mel and Remy. That would have connected this newer family more to the history of what came before. After Mel married Rick, she was given two careers-- lawyer and doctor, which seemed unrealistic.

[Darn]

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"Perhaps you didn't hear Joseph, I'm not receiving tonight which means please leave!"

 

My god, what a scene! They are both fabulous here. It's so well written. Which creative team was this? And is that Alexandra's house or the Spaulding mansion? It actually looks...large and not the one library set their used for the last 10 years.

 

Even simply things like Alexandra acknowledging the generational differences between herself and Reva (when she talks about how you can't drink or smoke while pregnant now) adds so much to the characters. Now people on soaps are ALL in the general age range of 25-40. You can have Jack on Y&R talking about the same concerns as someone 40 years younger than him. It's so stupid.

[victoria foxton]

An amazing set of scenes with two legends.