Guiding Light Discussion Thread

[Liberty City]

 

Gosh. Barbara Esenstein & James Harmon Brown were on fire during this time. They took a set up, made by Victor Miller, Michael Conforti, Nancy Williams Watt & Michael Conforti, and turned it into something magical.

[Forever8]

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[titan1978]

It’s disappointing that they (and I’m sure Rauch) decided to lean towards his less grounded OLTL tenure after this, with the Clone and the mystery island and all that.

[Mitch]

Yes..I think they are better at turning a soap around then the long haul..they had good ideas...(I actually thought Annie framing Reva was imaginative and character appropriate) bringing back Van and Ed, and starting a class struggle thing (Jessie's dad hating the Bauers) but those good ideas would be dropped to go back to the perils of Reva and Annie became a cartoon (and Alan her lapdog..)  Though I don't think it the Clone or the stupid Island from Hell was their idea..

[titan1978]

As much as I morbidly enjoyed the Brent/Marion storyline, the show was pretty awful and their first year or so really shines.  There is a sense of community again, pairings with rooting value, and the Annie story is so much soapy fun and uses the right characters.  Josh is a little stupid at times, but nothing compared to the men on Reilly’s DAYS at the same time.

[MichaelGL]

B&E, like Long/Ryder started off strong, but in a short amount of time everything went off the rails. 

[Mitch]

Jarsh I can always forgive for stupidity as we all know what organ he really thought with.   I did think Josh was always an ass...he really DID help in Annie's breakdown and I wish Reva would have seen that if life went a different way she could have become Annie..it would have given them more color and just more of an interesting dynamic..unfortunately it was the start of Reva become self righteous in her own right.

 

The first year was good..I thought they made some bad choices..I would have used the Jeffery Morgan wrap up storyline to usher Buzz happily off with Jenna..I would have kept Bridget and Nola...(maybe pair Nola with Jessie's dad..) I am the minority and LOVED Poser's Amanda but while they were stuck with the "Brandon" thing..they could have easily reversed it and thrown Amanda with Ben Warren...it was time for Marj's Alex to go but Amanda was not a replacemetn...An Ed recast would have been good but I would have gone with another actor and made him the glue to keep the town together and had him help Holly (again..I liked the Nursery Rhyme stalker..it wasnt supernatural or science fiction and it didn't revolve around REEEVAAA!)

[FrenchBug82]

Does anyone know why the Annie story wrapped up (the first time around) in such a weird out-of-nowhere deus ex machina (Eddie Banks) that made no sense based on the story that had been told for years prior?
Did they expect CW to renew her contract for some reason and were taken by surprise and had to come up with a quick plot point to explain why Alan and Annie wouldn't get married?
I remember feeling so cheated by the way CW was written out because I liked the way Annie had devolved in front of our eyes and retconning that scheming past felt sooooo cheap and tacked-on.

[MichaelGL]

Not sure about the Eddie Banks exit for Annie; but didn't Annie and Rick also share a past? I always hoped they could've delved more into their history and maybe let her be a small thorn in Abby/Ricks side for years to come. 

[robbwolff]

Annie and Rick had been married. They divorced sometime in 1995 after Abby had been introduced. There was also another guy from her past, Jake, who never showed up in Springfield. At one point, there were rumors that Kin Shriner was slated to play the role of Jake.

[Forever8]

Guiding Light Promos from the late 90's from Bold Restless including the Reva Clone story... 

 

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[Mitch]

Yea, agree, the Eddie Banks came out of nowhere and made no sense..besides giving Jeva an easy off...(they didn't contribute to anything..Annie was always EVIL!)  A better way was to somehow find out that Rick and Annie's divorce was not legal and that way give Reva pause as she was pulling Rick and Abby into her fight.  The connection of Annie to Rick and Ed (who was her sponsor) should have been there...maybe Rick could have seen the good in Annie much to Abby's annoyance..maybe Annie was preggers with Ricks kid and lost it as she was drinking...Ed constantly reminding Annie that she needed to go to meetings and her obession with Jeva was part of her addiction and Alan getting pissed off that Ed is interferring ("Once a Bauer always a Bauer") giving them some more conflict...tons of stuff. E & B was no good at the subtle B story stuff that made Springfield seem real and Rauch and MADD werent interested in anything not BIG!

[FrenchBug82]

This, this, THIS. That's what irked me, most of all.
The story of Annie had been soapy and campy at times but the underlying story of her slowly becoming *that* person had been wonderful - well-plotted and paced and of course brilliantly acted.

She was likeable when she started and that's why part of me (and I imagine a lot of the audience) kind of felt her pain and could not completely hate her.
The reason her meltdown at the witness stand was a standout moment of GL history is because it was not merely evil revealed nor just crazy talk: there was a genuine human emotion behind her obsession with Reva. 
We FELT her, however awful she had become, because we had known her as a good person and we could understand how Reva's return from the dead slowly destroying her dreams of a better life after a rough time with her addiction and stuff would have made her very bitter and fixated on Reva.
And, while the show may not have done this intentionally, there was a subtext there about Reva, a great character but a character who WAS attention-sucking. What she was doing to Annie's life could be (and ultimately would be) what her return would do to the show itself.
So that Eddie Banks retcon not only made no sense but just pulled the rug from under why Annie was so compelling. And it signalled to the audience that, no, we were supposed to love Reva and root for her, not have a complicated love-hate relationship with her - which would have been more interesting and would have made Reva so much easier to swallow.

Of course, confirming TPTB by then did not understand what made Annie work as an antagonist, they wrote her cartoonishly evil when she returned (I mean that brainwash potion subplot... come on).
But even with that said, that Eddie Banks twist felt so tacked-on and random that it feels like a last-minute write or a change of plans.

[victoria foxton]

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[Soaplovers]

I had hoped the show would have had Annie be like Sonni...someone who got better after being crazy..and leave town for a new life.

 

Sonni had redeemed herself, and some strong good bye scenes with characters before leaving...with a final scene questioning if she was ok or not truly.

 

Annie could have had a similar situation with the door open to a return down the line..but left town with some dignity