Guiding Light discussion thread

[Contessa Donatella]

I just liked Dollar's Marina enough to make the distinction when Bruno comes up. 

Not sure which Lizzie actress you mean. 

[Mitch64]

Yea...I still don't get how an actor, writer, director..someone on the set didn't say, "They met when he came back to town, it was on screen, the audience saw that..." (its like Whoopi Goldberg in Soap Dish..."He was decapitated...I looked it up..he DOESNT HAVE A HEAD!") but maybe they did and as you say, they didn't give a crap it was someone's bright idea that they did and they said "Screw it, those dummies will eat this up as long as we show Mike showing his abs in the next scene."

It kind of like Amanda is Bradon's kid...which COULD have worked if they actaully watched the video and read the scripts back then (Jane Marie Stafford was her name at the time she gave birth and they said in a million times so it would be on the birth certificate) so a potentially good storyline ( Alex protecting Alan from the truth back fired and made them enemies again, Amanda the feral child of Brandon being the outsider in the family, not a kid of Alans' but totally cut off from the sibling dynamic Alan and Alex have, even when they are at each other's throats) was ruined from a write and producers laziness.

Well all of them were miscast..Lizzie should not have been a cheap Paris Hilton knock off, but the last actress, who seemed more like Mindy's illegitmate kid then a child born of the angsty Phillip and Mindy, and who killed a man to protect her mother...

Edited 16 hours ago by Mitch64

[Contessa Donatella]

Crystal Hunt was next to last & the very last, I believe was Emme Rylan, who also was called Marcy before Emme. 

[P.J.]

Totally agree. Although I love the '01-'02 return, with him egging Barbara into madness and   engineering Carly, Emily and Rose's kidnappings. 

 

Who's the bigger villain? Roger.  He raped two women, he was about to kidnap Chrissie, and he was blackmailing Alan. Alan was morally corrupt, but you always felt he had some kind of ability to care about someone other than himself. Not so with Roger.

[kalbir]

I haven't seen a lot of CB Alan, but were there times he could be considered an anti-hero/romantic leading man?

I never thought of Roger as an anti-hero/romantic leading man. Roger was a villain, but he was also a complex and layered character. MZ acting and the writing during the Potter and Calhoun eras is what allowed Roger to be more than just a one-dimensional villain.

[DRW50]

I think most of that period of Roger was the material we can't see (the '70s), although I do think they circled around that direction again in 93-94. I wonder what JFP's plans would have been for the character if she'd stayed, as Roger goes back to being a full heel (and is more regressed than he ever was in his second stint) under Laibson.

Edited 5 hours ago by DRW50

[Contessa Donatella]

Wait, what about the Dobsons?!! The marital rape storyline is what got it all started.

[kalbir]

I said "the writing during the Potter and Calhoun eras", so that means Dobsons and Long/Curlee respectively.

[P.J.]

I, personally, would never consider either Roger or Alan a romantic leading man. Some could argue Alan was briefly with Hope/Rita (or was at least working on turning that corner) and becoming more anti-hero-ish around that time with that and the Jennifer/Amanda story.

While I've never really seen pre-77 Roger (his relationship with Peggy), what I've seen never strays far from villain territory. Yes, he loves Chrissie/Blake and Hart, but it's always more about what he needs than affection. 

This isn't to say that CB's Alan and Roger aren't complex and layered characters. I would never call them one-dimensional. (Contrast them with a  cardboard villain like ATWT's Tonio Reyes ...ugh)  They love, but it gets smothered by their need to control and manipulate people.  Alan loses some of his complexity when Long takes over. Although in fairness, part of that is probably due to CB's health. He seems to be gone for chunks of time in '83. Particularly in the fall. There's a plot point of him leaving Vanessa in charge of Spaulding for a time to teach her a lesson, and then he's gone again and returns just in time for the reveal in the Eli Simms/Fishing picture story.

[Contessa Donatella]

I beg your pardon. I totally misunderstood. I'm used to the writers being mentioned by name. However, I get what you meant, now.