Guiding Light Discussion Thread

[j swift]

I appreciate the immediate dissolve from the theme into the first act.

As soap viewers we were conditioned to watching the cold open, then the theme, then the announcer saying, “today's episode is brought to you by blah blah blah”, and then the first set of commercials.

So, it is nice to see a production try to change things up in order to stop the audience from changing the channel. 

[NothinButAttitude]

Now I am eager to watch this reunion: 

 

[BetterForgotten]

Oh wow, Petronia still looks great. Amelia is equally stunning as well. 

[NothinButAttitude]

I miss both of them on daytime so bad. Gilly and her trials and tribulations at WSPR (being wedged between Roger/Holly) was some of my fave material during the Curlee era. 

Is it bad I hope Michele Val Jean snatches both of them up for The Gates? 

[MichaelGL]

That'd be a dream come true!

[DRW50]

Morgan Englund is currently on Alan's show. He looks pretty good for being over 60.

I would love that, especially after how bad I've heard Amelia's material on Passions was. She and Petronia are both so underrated and classy.

[NothinButAttitude]

I would even be fine with them playing the same dynamics on a soap. Amelia's character being a force in the workplace while Petronia's character is a stuffy socialite who wants the best for her children. Make it happen, P&G and Michelle!!

And Amelia was criminally pigeonholed on Passions, in my opinion. Even though Passions wasn't my cup of tea, I tried watching for Amelia, but I grew tired of her character yearning for her sister's husband and being bitter. It grew tiring. One of the many reasons I was unable to connect with Passions. 

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[DRW50]

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[Mitch64]

I can't believe McTrash screwed Gilly up by taking her out of Roger and the Spaulding's and having her chase after her own father..then McTavish tries to disguise it as a discussion on race by making her hot daddy a civil rights leader, when then shoots himself to frame Alan.  Damn, McTavish was just begging to get that show cancelled.

I know that they wimped out on pairing AM and Gilly (or is that what JFP wants us to believe so she could put him with her pet Sonia Santra...) but instead of this storyline, they should have paired her with Nick (did they have chemistry) and her Mom would be torn between her snobbery of having her daughter involved with a Spaulding with an issue of her daughter in a mixed race relationship. Alex could have accepted the mixed race thing ("I did live in Paris in the 60s dear...") but given the past antagonism with Gilly, be wary....but realizing that she had to let her son live his life (and gasp, show some growth.) 

England his still a piece of ass. I wish instead of Bridget and he getting together off screen they had them reunite during the Reva trial and then leave town happy. 

The begging of Bert's pathetic farwell....(funny that the last clip of the intro, which was Bert, is not Miss Sally, it really says a lot of what GL became in a short time.) I love that in the 80s..all of Mindy's boyfriends were matching her hair pouf for pouf!

[Soapsuds]

I love how nicely you stated it!

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[Khan]

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[VelekaCarruthers]

For all you lovely, devoted GL fans from way back. Here are the first two pages of Soderberg/Sommer's revised Story Projection II (revised after network and P&G comments) that projects story at least 8 months from end of May 1969. Incredible read!  I may try to scan the whole thing at some point!

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[Contessa Donatella]

Melissa Scardaville speaks out about GUIDING LIGHT once more

Melissa Scardaville published a note. April 19, 2009 Another GL Note I wrote this on 4/2, right after GL was canceled. I thought I would post it. Enjoy it if you can.

In 1941, in the midst of World World II, the Citizen Kane premiere and Joe DiMaggio's hitting streak, Guiding Light was canceled for the first time. Around 75,000 angry letters convinced Procter & Gamble, the show's sponsor, to return the serial to the airways. Decades later, GL became broadcast history's longest running drama, enjoying a 72-year run that produced over 15,000 episodes and launched the careers of acting luminaries such as Cicely Tyson, Kevin Bacon and Allison Janney. On April 1, 2009, Guiding Light endured its second and final cancellation, one that cannot be overturned by viewer outrage. When the show airs its final episode in September, a vital and integral part of American history will cease. It's easy to dismiss that claim as grandiose. After all, it's only a television show, or worse it's only a soap opera. Yet it is its very identity as a soap opera that makes its loss so acute. America can embrace very few inventions as her own. While baseball and jazz are sources of pride, soap operas, a genre created in the 1930s by former school teacher Irna Phillips, are stigmatized in the United States. Given this ostracism, many people miss what soaps actually are: a treasure trove of our culture's shifting attitudes and ideas, desires and ambitions. Soap operas offer an ongoing record of our collective memory where no single person or group can claim authorship. On the rare occasion that a U.S. daytime soap leaves the airways, talk focuses on the missteps made by the show themselves. Guiding Light is not simply a casualty of its own mistakes but is emblematic of a moribund television industry. Television thrived in eras when daytime earned windfall profits for networks and production companies; primetime banked on the occasional blockbuster and syndication deals. That model has been dead for years yet networks operate as if that paradigm can be revived. They convince themselves that the Internet, cable channels and fickle viewers are simply blocking their pathways to success. The thing is, networks don't really know who watches television, how they watch and incorporate the programming (or not) into their daily lives and why people watch in the first place. Answers to these questions would not matter as much if big decisions and big money didn't ride on them. The ratings are broken and Guiding Light is one victim. At this stage people talk about the inevitable. Of course, Guiding Light would be canceled. Soaps are dying, after all. What is not said is that soaps are dying, not out of disinterest, but neglect. A genre that has nurtured countless innovations can only survive so long when our culture treats them as back alley laboratories. It was not inevitable that Guiding Light stay on the air for 72 years, just as it was not inevitable that the show leave now. Since it will depart, let us take a moment to acknowledge that these decades of narratives have stretched over and connected generations. Let us acknowledge that anyone who sits down to enjoy *any* television show owes a debt to Guiding Light. - Melissa Scardaville

(Melissa was previously the "Guiding Light" Editor at "Soap Opera Digest". She had the pleasure of working with colleagues at Digest especially including Jen Lenhart who was the Editor for "As the World Turns" since those two PGP soaps worked closely together and actors & press & leadership, etc. Nothing pleased her as much any Wednesday --when the magazine went to bed -- but to hear that the tear sheet of an interview she'd done or that week's 'Editor's Choice' was up on the bulletin board at the studio -- like the one she wrote that had a headline 'The King Is Back!' ---Yes, when Grant was back at the show!)

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