Guiding Light Discussion Thread

[Mitch64]

Just a few weeks after Long was back after the strike and the show is cooking. This is one of my fave periods of GL...I never really thought how beautiful Chelsea was and she has some spunk...why did I think she was boring back in the day? Sonni/Solita is just starting to get really good, I love Alex's line, "I'll join a classics book club" Mo is finally getting something to do other the serve coffee (even if it is to crush on Fletcher) and boy, Phillip is being a real pr*ck, not to mention his best friend's wife has got his baby in the oven. Rick and Meredith never made any sense...they had no chemistry. Everyone looks so young and why did we not understand that those 80s sweaters look horrible on everyone.

[Khan]

All GL needed at that point was a strong EP - and it'd have one with Robert Calhoun.

[P.J.]

Oh, because she was. 

It's strange to see Johnny taking on Phillip, and Mindy in the middle of a triangle with Frank and Will. 

[kalbir]

Robert Calhoun run was June 1989 to July 1991. Recall that SOD named GL Most Improved Show of 1989 and to me it was thanks to Robert Calhoun.

It still disappoints me that the ratings during Robert Calhoun's run did not reflect the quality of the show.

I'd go as far as to say that Robert Calhoun was GL's last good EP and he was the only good EP they had in the final 25 years.

[Mitch64]

I did like the Calhoun era..though I do have to say there were some good things to say about both JFP and ....I know ...Rauch (I can't believe I am saying it myself.) I blame their excesses on not having P&G reign them in....(who in the upper admin thought it would be a good idea to kill the matriarch and to hand the show over to a new character played by a hambone who had no one to reign HIM in?? Who thought a dumb island of blond  people would work?)

[kalbir]

Yes, JFP got the ratings up in her first year, but to me she was coasting off the groundwork laid during Robert Calhoun's run. It also helped that the ABC big three were tanking at various times during that year and Days was in their post-supercouple/pre-Reilly mess era.

Edited October 5, 2024 by kalbir

[Khan]

ICAM!  Compared to DAYS, GH and OLTL, JFP's first year at GL looked spectacular, lol.

IIRC, Robert Calhoun didn't raise ATWT's ratings at first either.  In fact, even after Douglas Marland returned as HW, the show remained in the middle of the pack.  But everyone who was paying attention agreed that ATWT was improving; and, over time, the ratings did rise.  So, it's possible the same could've happened for RC over at GL, except he didn't stay long enough for anyone to find out.

Edited October 5, 2024 by Khan

[kalbir]

Robert Calhoun/Douglas Marland run at As the World Turns was September 1985 to October 1988. It took about a year for As the World Turns to show growth but even with the ratings increase that started Fall 1986, As the World Turns was jockeying for position in the Top 5 with the ABC big three and supercouple Days. I don't believe that supercouple Days was a better show than Robert Calhoun/Douglas Marland As the World Turns and Robert Calhoun GL despite the ratings showing otherwise.

Robert Calhoun run at GL did not see a ratings increase which to me is unfortunate. Since his groundwork got the ratings up for a year from July 1991, then I think if Robert Calhoun had stayed for another year he would have gotten the ratings up too.

 

Edited October 5, 2024 by kalbir

[P.J.]

while this isn't exactly new, what's odd about this episode is that there are two scenes in English that weren't included in the original. The Billy/Vanessa scene at 16.48, and Alan/Reva starts 22.38.

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Edited October 6, 2024 by P.J.

[vetsoapfan]

I couldn't agree more.

To me, soap viewers are a hardy bunch, who will stick with their favorite shows even during the darkest of times, when things are not going well on screen. The audience's loyalty to beloved characters keeps us holding on, even when the writing is subpar or the production values are weak. We USED TO know that things would get better. In the 1950s-1970s, egregious weaknesses seemed to be paid attention to and tweaked a lot faster than in the 1980s and beyond. Since the turn of the century, slop is taking forever to get mopped up, and often it just never does. We no longer expect bad situations to improve to a significant degree. We can only hope for soaps to become "less bad" when recycled producers and writers get shifted around.

When TPTB cripple the structure, style and quality of a show, AND annihilate a huge swath of the vets, it leaves us with no rational reason to keep holding on. This is particularly true in the modern era, where we know positive changes are unlikely to happen. If a show is in the toilet and many/most/all of our favorite characters are gone...why should we force ourselves to endure drivel, focused on characters we neither really know nor have emotional investment in? It's much easier to tune out and stay away, when our principle motivations to watch, good writing and beloved characters, are no longer part of the equation.

I think TGL was an early example of this problem. Starting in the 1980s, its quality deteriorated drastically, 2/3 (it seemed) of familiar characters were axed, and the revolving door of writers and newbies began.

After waiting, petitioning and even begging TPTB to fix things for YEARS, I think the long-time, die-hard Springfield fans finally got burned out, fed up, and started drifting away. They never came back en masse.

Robert Calhoun's reign was remarkable, and Nancy Curlee's writing divine, but once the emotional attachment has been severed, it's very difficult to lure the audience back in. If TGL's glorious resurgence in the early 1990s had lasted longer, disgruntled fans might have eventually been tempted to check the show out again, but it was basically in the toilet once more by 1994-95, and all-but-extinguished throughout its Peapack run. P&G and CBS did  not do what needed to be done; they went into an indifferent, cost-cutting, tone-deaf mode and allowed this once-proud show to stagger to an ignorable death.

The fact that TGL had a pitiful rating of 1.6 (!!!) during its final season confirms how much the audience had turned away from it, and how much TIIC had failed it.

I truly believe that if the suits had vetoed the harmful changes that began happening in the '80s, and if they had invested continued care in the writing and production, the show may very well have still gotten cancelled anyway (P&G seemed determined), but at least it wouldn't have been the unmitigated slap in the face it end up being.

An iconic serial that lasted a whopping 72 years deserved so much better.

[kalbir]

@vetsoapfan Which did the most damage to GL?

Douglas Marland departure.

Gail Kobe/Pamela Long chasing all the 1980s trends.

Writer turnover during Joe Willmore run.

Killing off Maureen Bauer.

Nancy Curlee departure.

To me killing off Maureen Bauer felt like the beginning of the end and Nancy Curlee departure felt like the end.

The P&G shows were not in a good place creatively in June 1994 (Nancy Curlee departure from GL was three months earlier, Douglas Marland material was done at As the World Turns, Another World had been limping along for 15 years) when OJ began and I feel they were effectively over in the aftermath of OJ. In the 1990s ratings thread we can see that by the end of 1995 the P&G shows are the bottom tier (Bell shows and Days were the top and ABC big three were the middle).

[vetsoapfan]

I think all of the issues which you mentioned were destructive, really.

To be honest, while I did not want Marland replaced at TGL, I think the show could have continued to flourish under Pat Falken Smith, just as GH did when she replaced Marland as head writer over there. I though PFS was instantly excellent at TGL, and seemed to understand the show and its characters very well. (The only show PFS failed at, IMHO, was Ryan's Hope. Her tenure there was painful.)

Pamela Long was not without talent (some of her stuff was lovely), but the dumbing-down of the show with heretofore-unseen sci-fi/fantasy/camp idiocy damaged the tone, style and integrity of the soap. Long's biggest blunder, however, which she must share blame for with Kobe, was the cast purge.  Kobe is notorious for pontificating to Mimi Torchin that, in soaps, the PLOTS are what's important, not the characters. Neither Long nor Kobe understood this show or what was important to its audience.

It showed.

Joe Willmore's run didn't have a huge impact on TGL either way, I'd say. It didn't improve, but it didn't deteriorate as noticeably as when Long & Kobe first gutted it, or when Ellen Wheeler & Peapack were in full swing.

Killing off Maureen Bauer was, literally, a shocking decision. I never thought anyone could win me over as the new Bauer family matriarch, but Ellen Parker miraculously did the trick. I found her Maureen to be warm, loving, maternal and wise, but never saccharine. 

For me, the destruction of the show's core family (killing off Bill and Hillary Bauer, replacing Ed, and writing out Mike and Hope in the early 1980s) was the first blow, but all that could have been reversed somewhat by bringing back some familiar faces to placate the alienated audience. It was bad enough we had lost Bert (which, of course, could not be helped). Bill could have remained and become an older-but-wiser, repentant patriarch, striving to follow in Papa Bauer's footsteps. Killing him off was gratuitous. Meta could have returned to help guide him. Mike and Hope could have, and should have, been brought back. I'd have reached out to Mart Hulswit as well. A miscast (IMHO) Ed and Rick weren't able to carry the mantle of Springfield's tentpole family, and the series as a whole suffered..

When Ellen Parker's Maureen worked out, and TIIC killed her off as well, in my heart I knew the show was doomed. Reva, Buzz, the Santos mob and the San Cristocrapians just put the fork in it. 

Losing Nancy Curlee was a huge detriment, to be sure, but with all the incompetent and damaging decisions foisted upon the show by TPTB, I wonder if even her fine writing could have mitigated all the carnage done between the time she left and when TGL was mercifully put out of its misery. Could she have single-handedly repaired a cannibalized shell of a once-great soap?

[Mitch64]

I think she could have...just by shifting the focus to Ross and his family, and building the show around them, and NOT Jeva and their crap...would have worked wonders. Rick could stay as the town doctor support, Ed could return for appearances to keep a legacy connection, but focusing the core on a family character actor and good writing could do the trick. 

[vetsoapfan]

The question is, would TIIC even have allowed Curlee the free reign to write the show as she thought best? The higher ups who had been obsessed with Jeva, or with Manny, or with Buzzard, or with the San Cristocrapians? Long gone are the days when writers can do what they want; network and P&G interference always came into play during TGL's waning years.

Left alone to her own devices (or better yet, with actual support), I'd agree that Nancy Curlee might have been able to guide Springfield back into the light, so to speak, but not with the "suits" undermining her every move, alas.

[Soapsuds]

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