Guiding Light Discussion Thread

[JarrodMFiresofLove]

 

I loved all the Santos stuff, as well as Richard & Cassie's courtship and wedding. At first I wasn't a fan of Selena and Drew, but I even grew to like them. Early Olivia and Edmond were well written. Both characters changed significantly over the next decade. One thing I really loved was how Esensten wrote Marah, where it was like Reva being confronted with her own past repeated by her daughter.

Edited September 3, 2018 by JarrodMFiresofLove

[vetsoapfan]

 

Right, the characters evolved and grew beyond their original conception, just as Maureen Bauer did. Part of the joy of watching soaps is seeing character evolution.

[victoria foxton]

Reva mentions Y&R's Newman's at 14.14. 

 

Edited September 3, 2018 by victoria foxton

[vetsoapfan]

 

That's a good way to put it. Their work was not the worst in TGL's history, but nothing to rave about either, if you compared them to all the excellent headwriters we had been treated to before.

[Darn]

 

That's clone Reva again lol

 

It's wild that GL went from the realism of Maureen's death to cloning in 4 short years. I don't know how the Josh character recovered from that...he basically created a girl in order to fück her.

[vetsoapfan]

 

I don't think Josh (or the show itself) ever did recover from the clone nonsense. It's what drove TGL beyond the hope of salvation, IMHO.

[BetterForgotten]

It was the era where everyone tried to emulate Reilly's ratings success at DAYS, but no one knew how...

 

To be fair to GL though, 1997 was a bit of a bounce back for them, but it all deteriorated by early 1998. 

[vetsoapfan]

 

Remember how our mothers used to say, when we would do something destructive: "If Johnny jumped off a cliff would you do it too?"

 

Soaps' jumping onto the science-fiction/fantasy bandwagon was the equivalent of such mindless copycat behavior. History tells us that after an initial jolt of surprise among the audience, viewers burn out over the absurd, low-brow campy stories because the shows simply cannot sustain or top them. In the end, the stunt stories just hurt the shows. JMHO.

Edited September 4, 2018 by vetsoapfan

[Khan]

 

That's my opinion as well.  Even JER, who was supposedly a master at that kind of storytelling, burned out eventually.  His second run at DAYS was about as godawful as it could get.

[DRW50]

 

Even the last years of his first run were a mess, to the point that some felt he was deliberately sabotaging the show on his way out. If not for Eileen Davidson I really wonder how people would have felt about 96/97 DAYS.

[Vee]

Paul Rauch's GL was tacky, hot neon shít. Brown and Esensten, mediocre writers at best and terrible at worst, were perfectly suited for his latter-day decline. Embarrassing. Who gave a fúck about an island kingdom of faux-British prigs in the middle of nowhere that had nothing to do with the town or characters? Certainly not me, and I was not some longtime viewer - I was their supposed 'new audience' and I thought it was hilarious and tuned out. It's because of Paul Rauch, San Cristobel, the clone, etc. that it took me years to give GL or its past the time of day.

 

JFP had a few very specific skills she honed over many long years that are sometimes noticeable, but as someone said long ago - I think it was Marcy Walker (who had a disastrous stint on GL and knew it) - her being a good line producer didn't make her a good all-around EP. She reached the limit of her talents around 1992 and dealt GL one of several death blows. Later she moved on to crippling AW and my show (OLTL), and then spent years helping to dismantle GH and finally Y&R. She hasn't had anything novel or legitimate to offer the genre in decades and her reputation is well-deserved. I'll stop before I segue into how she made half the female leads physically embody her onscreen and get paired with her favorite leading men, or digress into the Kale Browne Welfare Program on ABC.

Edited September 4, 2018 by Vee

[Mitch]

Actually, that happened way before Conboy..back when she was first cast in Phelps days. Alex went from a complex character to a shrieking shrew obsessed with both her brother and her son. I remember a horrible scene of Alex and Roger...she had a snake and Roger sucked the venom out of her...with her moaning and shriecking and..God it was horrible.

[JarrodMFiresofLove]

 

I try not to disparage Marj too much..she's a long-time vet of TV shows, quite numerous to list. Sometimes she's fabulous and other times her acting choices seem all wrong. I've watched episodes of Capitol on YouTube and she is wonderful in those. But maybe it's because she was balanced out by a strong, tough presence like Richard Egan who played her husband on that series.

[j swift]

The problem is also how it effects the show moving forward.  So, years later, when Reva has cancer why can't they come up with another clone and another magic potion?  Once you've gone to the magic potion well once with a character it is hard to go back to gritty realism.

 

Upon reflection, I'll think that I'll remember TGL/GL as most innovative soap as well as the soap that was unable to maintain a tone.  It is difficult to imagine the fan who liked the drawing-room-drama of Jackie/Justin/Alan/Elizabeth/Mike staying around for stories of clones and fairy princesses; no matter the quality, the tonal shift was extreme.  I think it is reflective of fans on this board who seemed to be watching a completely different show depending upon when they jumped in.

 

Also, was Joshua funding the clone research?  How did that guy not go broke?  He lived in Italy and Venezuela for years with out much means for support beyond Lewis Oil.  Weren't Lewis Oil stockholders pissed that they were funding unethical medical research?

Edited September 4, 2018 by j swift

[redontop4]

I have been watching the complete August '92 episodes recently posted on YouTube. This is just post-blackout. Sherry Stringfield departs in the first episode, and Liz Keifer takes over a few days later. Kimberley Simms is gone, and these are Beverlee McKinsey's final days. Reilly/Demorest/Broderick are head writers, and the legendary Patrick Mulcahey joins them mid-month. And, of course, Jill Farren Phelps is exec producer.

 

To say this show was "on fire" is accurate. Every story is clicking (why did BM complain about the writing in her last months at GL?), and the show is chock-a-block with romance, suspense, humor, heart, wit, and style. The actors appear energized with the exception of Ellen Parker, who, bless her heart, acts like she is in a different show. Maureen is a rock and a sounding board for several characters, notably Bridget at this point, but she is so painfully passive and reactive that she feels adrift from the action. (I also agree that EP could be a bit "big" in her performances with not a lot of subtlety in her work.) I am happy to see that the show holds up so well, something that cannot be said about most 25-year-old soap episodes.