Guiding Light Discussion Thread

[kalbir]

@P.J. @DRW50 Thank you for the additional cast departures. Wow, I hadn't realized it was that many.

I think 1995 had the most contract cast departures.

[P.J.]

I hate to put it that way, but yeah. And I'm not sure I'd consider Woods, Carolyn Clark or Peter Simon major losses (even if he's much better than the recast Van Vleet).

[DRW50]

I don't think it hurt a lot at the time - I'd say his 1996 departure hurt more. 

[Paul Raven]

By mid 85 GL compared to 5 years earlier only Ross, Vanessa, Henry (?) and Ed remained remained. Everyone else had been written/killed off-not a good position to be in.

The only Bauers were Ed and Rick.

Doug Marland had set up the Reardons as the next core family but they too had been whittled away, basically down to Maureen at that point.

 

[Alan]

I remember how heralded Claire Labine's arrival on GL was. Kim Zimmer even went on Live with Regis to promote the new regime's first episode. I had never watched Labine's work before so I didn't know what to expect. Her first episode included a fantasy sequence with Reva and Josh duking it out in a boxing ring and bad slapstick comedy with Pilar Santos. Looking back Labine and her kids were probably aiming for a zeitgeisty Ally McBeal feel but it didn't work. GL's best comedy came from the characters and their inherent personalities, not from zany gimmicks. 

 

May Meresi was a pitiful character ("cigars! cigarettes! cigarillos!") but once she was unmasked as Mary Murto I realized that Elizabeth Hobgood was actually a good actress stuck with a crappy role. Just as the character was starting to get interesting she was cut. I remember fan speculation that May was originally supposed to be Stacy Chamberlain.

[Vee]

I still don't understand why it didn't work better. Either Labine was just past it or Rauch/CBS/P&G was interfering, or some mix. GL would seem an ideal fit for Labine, but she inherited an incredibly tacky, garish iteration of the show.

I thought May was definitely supposed to be Stacey.

[DRW50]

 

I think she was sabotaged from day one - I've said this before but I've rarely if ever seen one fired actor after another going to the press and blaming the new headwriter the way they did with her. Beyond that, I just think, similar to her OLTL run, she couldn't make the current show work or didn't have a producer who was able to actually work with her.

The same cringey comedy that had managed to mostly work on GH and then became a struggle on OLTL was even more of a struggle on GL, because you couldn't just give Blake Lucy Coe's old lines - GL had many complicated characters. 

And in contrast to some of the attempts at comedy, there were pieces of abject misery I just couldn't get through, whether it be a shootout in the Bauer kitchen, Tony beating up Selina, or Cassie being locked up in a tower and then having a late term miscarriage via a car crash while on the run. 

[Contessa Donatella]

For example? Also, did they happen before or after Rauch fired them? What I'm trying to get at is if it was after they came back to save Rauch's backside when he couldn't find anyone who would come work for him. Because I can imagine that things might have changed when that happened.

Edited December 2, 2024 by Contessa Donatella
more

[DRW50]

Most of them happened before. I would say the Selina story, the changes in Blake, the Bauer kitchen shootout, etc. were similar to past plots or character beats of theirs. 

[Contessa Donatella]

I can't explain it. Perhaps it was an exaggeration & most of what she really wanted to do is what got shot down & not literally "everything." Although considering the writer who said it, well, they are not prone to exaggerating. I remain puzzled. It seemed to dovetail perfectly into the fact that she had such a bad go there, as to why that was so. 

I know the reason she left GH was because she was exhausted & wanted the year off but ABC made her do OLTL, so no time off. Was it after that for GL? Just thinking on paper ... 

[prefab1]

On paper, Labine would seem like such a good fit for GL, because her best headwriter stints (like on GH) were sterling examples of character-driven writing, and GL's main strength was its deep roster of complex characters. In theory, GL should be a perfect playbox for a character-driven writer, since its lead characters had clear flaws and were often driven to behave in self-destructive ways. So a lot of the conflict that leads to great drama could just emerge organically from their interactions and reactions to ordinary situations. 

But it seems like the Labines weren't fans of the show and didn't take enough time to really learn about the characters and their motivations; during this era, a lot of the long-running characters seem like 2-D cutouts of themselves. And conflict is often coming from external bad guys, usually affiliated with either the mob of San Cristobel. During that September 2000 episode I shared, Reva is reduced to being an unwitting victim of her new boyfriend Noah and his shady associate. Love her or hate her, Reva is normally a human cyclone of drama, but in this episode she gets nothing to do except be pulled around by the plot machinations. What a waste!

[Khan]

I'm not sure I should reveal this, but that might have been the point when Claire Labine began to fall asleep during story conferences.

[allmc2008]

Oh. That changes everything we thought we knew. I mean, if she was being sabotaged, falling asleep during story conferences is one motive to drive her away.

[Vee]

Didn't Labine bring on Noah? I remember switching it on after hearing about the writing change, seeing Zimmer (who was already on my last nerve in those days due to the Rauch Queen of Love era) once again shacked up with this beefcake (Mark Dobies) who looked too young like the total cliche soap boytoy* and thinking 'no.' I think Labine even tried to write him up, like he was a Jon Lindstrom or even John J. York capable of carrying more colorful or nuanced character material, and just no.

(* - in fairness, Dobies later did quite good work on OLTL in an utterly thankless role that went through many bizarre changes.)

[robbwolff]

Claire did not create the character of Noah Chase. Noah first appeared in March 2000. Claire started as head writer in early June, though her material didn't start airing until August.