Guiding Light Discussion Thread

[Mitch64]

Which is weird, as she wrote for GL years ago..granted it was mostly under Ryder, but she was there acting when the show was solid. 

 

Lord, Maeve/Fletcher was dull as hell (well, poor Maeve was ) It was JFP/Anderson who put them together, and I think it was JFP, but definitely Anderson who married them off. Saddling Holly with a socially relevant storyline with dull Fletcher (and Hammer walking all over MG's lines) was the final stab and really, Holly never recovered from it. I still think the first Brent victim should have been Fletcher, with Roger being framed by Brent. You could have still had Lucy in it but not the centerpiece and have an increasingly whacked out Holly going after Roger...they should always have been in each other's orbits..just not "together" Brent could have been a great new villain but JFP wanted to sell the Lucy character so she tried to get the audiences sympathy for her with the rape.

 

I know Rauch took all the credit for crazy Annie, but Megan laid the groundwork with her starting the lies (covering up her marriage to Rick) and her odd hyperness around the kids, along with the addiction issues. It was clear they were heading that way, but may have allowed the character to not quite go into full cartoon psycho mode so Jeva looked saintly.

[Contessa Donatella]

Doesn't everyone have a kind of universal hatred of that tired old stunt?

1. This is stupid.

2. People don't think this way. Once a fan of someone like MG, always a fan. And, that goes double for the character of Holly. What the frack! Everyone, all of us, get older. Fact of life. Fans aren't stupid.

Evil McT was both stupid & she thought everyone else was, also. 

If anyone ever underestimated audience, she did.

 

[Mitch64]

I always thought MG's Holly was a hell of a lot sexier then Kimmer's post resurrection Reva..MG was one of the only women to created sparks with RR's Alan in one single scene and of course, they didn't follow up on it. 

Its too bad..if they had pursued the Roger ALS storyline, and brought a suitable Ed back, the two of them could have been dealing with Roger and once his storyline is finished for the characters and the audience, the two of them could have gotten together. Holly as the sexy sarcastic matriarch of the show after all that has gone on.."Please Blake, even Bert would have been left speachless with your behavior."

[Contessa Donatella]

I love it!!! Truly one of the sexiest women on soaps. There's this story, it's true, about her & Jan Morgan when they got together. Maureen was  in a state, she'd had this repetitive pattern, she'd be with a man, they'd break up, she'd be with a woman, they'd break up, rinse & repeat, they are at this party, standing around talking like a cocktail party & when Maureen finally stops complaining for a minute, Jan says,

Really? I've always thought you were perfect just the way you are, for anyone, even me. 

Well, Maureen melted into a puddle. When she recovered her senses, I think the ladies began to dance & talk & laugh & the evening progressed just as you imagine it doing & they were together for about 20 years. 

Isn't that a lovely story? Especially since it's true. 

 

[Khan]

I still believe Megan McTavish only took the GL gig, because she was pissed about getting fired from AMC, and wanted to prove to everyone that she didn't need Felicia Minei Behr or Agnes Nixon to make her [!@#$%^&*] look good.

All in all, she was like Pat Falken Smith, but without her talent, lol.

[Vee]

I actually think AMC and GL are cut from the same cloth in many ways. I don't think they're that dissimilar in their sort of purehearted Americana texture. I can see why someone thought she'd be a good choice. The problem, as noted above, is that Megan was backstopped at AMC by many talented creatives who filtered her worst impulses and problem writing. Not so at GL.

[Mitch64]

Agreed. JFP blew up the whole writing team that was in place before..so we just had Anderson and whomever...and Liabson seemed at a loss and didn't understand GL..which was odd as he worked on ATWT when Marland was there. I remember him being at a fan event and taking some people aside and asking them for input (he might have been yanking their cranks or he might have seen the axe hovering...)

I wonder what it could have been like if someone with talent was their to reign her in..Brent/Marion was creative..she brought back Nola (and dropped the ball) she brought back Amanda (and dropped the ball) 

Odd thing is, I would have loved to know what the hell she was doing with Zachary the angel...Was he reincarnated...would he become human with his great love of MancrazedChelle? I didn't care about watching it, I just would love to see what she planned. 

[VelekaCarruthers]

Another reason Megan dissed Conforti in her book: he was on GL staff when she was HW there and he and Miller replaced her as co heads for five months while they waited for Brown/Esensten to finish up The City.  Megan never discusses in her book that fact. I wonder how she and Conforti got along in the GL writers' room. He probably saw the handwriting on the wall with her stories.  Zach, Brent/Marion were not GL. But she couldn't come up with a plot for Amanda or Nola out of the gate, only her James E Reilly crap National Enquirer stories.

[Mitch64]

I get the Brent storyline...the ratings had dropped so bad and the canvas was fractured as it became "Guiding Buzz" and they felt they had to beat a drum loudly as a columnist said..but how easy would it be to write for Amanda returning home after all these years, and realizing her father invited her back as weapon against Alex and AM and her choosing her own way (and instead of chasing Ross, they could have naturally been drawn back together working on something) and Nola wanting to fill her sister's shoes by trying to Mother Chele, Bridget and even Dinah (they could have written that Dinah spent time with Nola in Europe and that Nola encourgaged her "change of character")  then Nola finds out about Ed and Lillian and the [!@#$%^&*] hits the fan! It wouldn't be hard.

[alwaysAMC]

Coming over here from the AMC thread as I see the McTavish book is being discussed, and I have to ask GL fans:  Was the Brent/Marion storyline well-received by GL fans?  Did critics like it?  I saw the actor was nominated for an Emmy.  I read about it in her book, and I was intrigued so I then did some quick YouTube searches for videos to see how it played out and it looked extremely interesting and ahead of its time in the 90s (kind of).  I would have totally watched that live if I knew about it, but for some reason it was never on my radar back then

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[VelekaCarruthers]

I watched it live and was turned off but I had been spoiled because I loved, loved, loved the Curlee/Demorest era and even some of Long's material. I knew McTavish would be a disaster. No one cared about Brent/Marian especially killing off Nadine. There were brief, and I mean brief moments where some episodes had a Marland or Long flavor but it never lasted.  She was a complete disaster on GL.

[DRW50]

I do think the Brent/Marian story garnered some interest. The ratings went up - the show was very close to being canceled up to that point - and Frank Beaty was widely praised. I thought the story was very compelling to watch on a day-to-day basis. Ugly, and yes, a ripoff of various films, but entertaining. I hated that they killed Nadine but I was still watching and enjoying the story. I think the inherent ugliness of the plot and the one-note treatment given to the "good" characters was masked by the pacing and the drive and by Beaty. And Rick Heart and Sonia Satra did well, even though I never cared for Lucy. I knew they were making us feel sorry for Lucy, but in this case, it worked, as she was put through hell, instead of just endless "poor Lucy has a crush on Alan Michael," stuff.

The woman who played Susan, Nick's girlfriend, also did very well with a thankless part. I imagine someone at the show might have agreed because I was pretty sure they had planned for her to be killed by Brent but she survived and then just left with Nick (Vincent was fired, right?). 

I do wonder what would have been if they had tried to keep Brent on the show, as they seemed to be planning before Frank Beaty's breakdown made it impossible. I can't see it working, but it still would have been better than the other stories on display.

That was the biggest problem - there was absolutely nothing else to care about, maybe other than Annie's spiral into pill addiction. You had "A. Spaulding" and "Save Fifth Street," and the incredibly grotesque Lonitrat stuff with Roger/Dinah/Hart.

I tend to agree. Nixon did come from P&G soaps, and GL was the P&G soap of all P&G soaps. 

The writing team in general at GL had so much upheaval and there was no one of value running P&G at that time. 

Maybe McTavish and MADD could have worked better together, but then MADD pissed all over any viewer goodwill almost immediately. 

Edited March 18 by DRW50

[Contessa Donatella]

What are you speaking of here?

I agree with this, to the degree that their fans were different & had different things they looked for in their soaps.

[DRW50]

Her comments about Michael Zaslow.

[Khan]

IIRC, much of the soap press was too busy praising Beaty's performance and McTavish's audacity in telling such a story to see what was really going on.

Personally, though, I thought the Brent/Marian storyline was transphobic - before the word even existed, I guess - and not at all the kind of story that should have been on GL (or anywhere else on daytime, for that matter).  As awful as stories like the Dreaming Death or Infinity had been for a lot of GL fans, even those tales couldn't have been as offensive as having a psychotic rapist going around Springfield dressed as Jill Farren Phelps and murdering people just to keep terrorizing his victim.

Edited March 18 by Khan