10 hours ago, Paul Raven said:

I wonder how much of the Dobson's bible Marland used? In a way it would be helpful to a writer new to the show to have that template to work from.

The wrap-up of the Roger story, perhaps. But Marland came in and immediately made it his show. He did not like the Phillip paternity story, so he accelerated some of it (one of the first things he did was have Jackie tell Justin the truth). He also had a problem with Lezlie Dalton (Elizabeth). While he kept her on the canvas for a year, most of her storyline was leading up to writing her out of the show. It seems pretty obvious the Dobsons were heavily invested in the Mike/Elizabeth/Justin/Jackie quadrangle. They had spent a lot of time setting it up. That quickly died when Marland took over.

In the end, he never dealt with with Phillip's paternity, never did the big reveal--that only happened after Long took over. By then, major players in the storyline, Jackie and Elizabeth, were gone, and Hope was in the process of being yeeted out of Alan's orbit. I believe it would have played out much differently under the Dobsons.

I'm also convinced that the Alan/Hope storyline would have been vastly different if the Dobsons had stayed. There was a lot of foreshadowing that Alan was going to disillusion Hope before they left. Marland mentioned in an interview that fan mail indicated they were popular with the audience, so that's why he married them off very early on. While he didn't make Alan a model husband, he eventually gave Alan a redemption arc, which was quickly dismantled by Long after he left. The Amanda storyline also would have been different. It seemed the Dobsons were making her the spoiler in the Ben/Eve story, more on the manipulative side. He gave some of those qualities to Vanessa instead, and had Amanda just be a woman in love who made some mistakes getting and keeping Ben.

Early on he brought in his own characters: Nola, Kelly, Morgan, Jennifer, the Chamberlains, Trish, Josh, etc., several who became prominant that first year. Which is understandable; new writers do that all the time, but I think it's another indication he did not keep to the Dobsons storyline projections.

Edited 4 hours ago4 hr by DeeVee

12 hours ago, DeeVee said:

How wild that the reason why the Dobsons were yanked from GL to ATWT is because they were TOO successful with GL! It had jumped over ATWT. The network and P&G saw ATWT as their #1 show. So they moved the Dobsons over to bring ATWT back up to #1, which they did.

Yea, the Dobs did NOT move ATWT to the 1 spot. MAYBE it won its timeslot a couple of times. Compared to GL, their ATWT was a cartoon mess..more plot than nuanced characters like GL (Mr. Big anyone?) Bridget is a character who seemed to really live in her own head, and sees reality that way. I would love what she had to say about obscuring the Hughes family, especially Nancy and Chris. It's just interesting that they wrote the Bauers so well with Bert being the center of things. I would think they would like more conflicted matriarch like Nancy, who did not have the "good nature, discussing a spine of steel" that Charita played but was colder and more outwardly controlling. Also she wrote Mike and Ed so well, and on ATWT she had two brothers with Bob being the galant one and Don being the more conflicted one. It woudl hav been interesting if they leaned into Nancy being controlling and her adult children pulling away from her a bit so she softens ( or as Marland retro wrote..give her menopause (was she too old for that).

Love to hear the backstage movements going on at the that time.

3 minutes ago, Mitch64 said:

Compared to GL, their ATWT was a cartoon mess..more plot than nuanced characters like GL (Mr. Big anyone?)

I think the obvious answer is they did not want to leave GL. I get the impression from what she said that it was like their baby. It's different when a writer is looking to come on to a different show--they would be bringing their best stuff.

I suspect some of what they planned to do on GL worked its way over to ATWT--particularly the James/Barbara story. Lots of parallels with Alan and Hope--they even fell in love on an island. Then they got married and James turned into a controlling freakazoid who made her totally miserable. You can see Alan behaving that way with both Elizabeth and Jackie (though Jackie refused to put up with it--Marland totally eviserated Jackie's character after Mowery was brought in).

Whatever "#1" she was referring to--network, time slot, or P&G--the smart thing to have done at the time was to put Marland at ATWT--he had recently come from GH, which was blowing up in the ratings and popular zeitgeist--and keep the Dobsons at GL. Yanking successful writers from a show for any reason is insane to me.

Edited 3 hours ago3 hr by DeeVee

26 minutes ago, DeeVee said:

Whatever "#1" she was referring to--network, time slot, or P&G--the smart thing to have done at the time was to put Marland at ATWT--he had recently come from GH, which was blowing up in the ratings and popular zeitgeist--and keep the Dobsons at GL.

Douglas Marland was at ATWT before moving over to GL. His was a temporary stint, however, and for reasons that have never been fully explained.

I think P&G asked the Dobsons to take over ATWT for one reason: to contemporize what had become a very staid show. And I think P&G put an enormous amount of pressure on the Dobsons not just to shake up ATWT, but to emulate what was happening on the ABCD soaps as well. That's why I don't believe they were as successful at ATWT as they had been at GL, because it was too much a case of trying to imitate the competition.

Edited 2 hours ago2 hr by Khan

3 minutes ago, Khan said:

Douglas Marland was at ATWT before moving over to GL. His was a temporary stint, however, and for reasons that have never been fully explained.

Yes, he mentioned in interviews that they put him on ATWT for a 13 week cycle before he did GL. From the Bridget Dobson interview, it sounds like the HW of ATWT at the time was suffering from burn-out. She also said they wrote both shows for a little while. So seems like there was some scrambling around late 1979 with ATWT.

I know the Dobsons didn't want to take over ATWT, and in one way I can see that..if I wasn't writing one of the PG shows I would hate to take over an ABC show, or Days or the Bell shows. But ATWT was so close to GL and who wouldn't want a crack at what had become an American institution and Irna's baby?

I think instead of using their projections for GL they just (unsuccessfully) copied their past storylines on GL...Brad/Dee/John from Ed/Holly/Roger (which is a shame as there was some real drama in having Dee in love with John, with his history with Dan/Kim.) and James/Babs from Alan/Hope..again, though James was a one note villain, who had any charm it came from AH.

I think the real way to for the Dobsons would have been AW..which had always been a bit of a more psycho/sexual storyline then Apple Pie/core family ATWT.

I do agree that the pressure was on them to make ATWT more ABC like, and since they had no real love for ATWT, they just did it and collected a paycheck while creating SB.

9 minutes ago, Mitch64 said:

I think the real way to for the Dobsons would have been AW..which had always been a bit of a more psycho/sexual storyline then Apple Pie/core family ATWT.

And if not AW, then certainly SFT.

2 minutes ago, Mitch64 said:

I think instead of using their projections for GL they just (unsuccessfully) copied their past storylines on GL...Brad/Dee/John from Ed/Holly/Roger (which is a shame as there was some real drama in having Dee in love with John, with his history with Dan/Kim.) and James/Babs from Alan/Hope..again, though James was a one note villain, who had any charm it came from AH.

Oh, yeah, I forgot they wrote the Dee/John story, a REALLY poor imitation of their Holly/Roger story. For some reason the women (well, men, too) they wrote on ATWT didn't have the same nuance as on GL. You can't just transplant a story to a different set of characters--a big part of why Holly and Roger's story worked so well was the long history the characters had: Holly, Roger, Ed, Rita. Brad was such a snooze that when he and Dee finally got together they flopped so hard the characters broke up for good almost instantly. They tried to make Maggie, the lawyer who defended John, into a female version of Ross. It just did not work.

I agree, it would have been better if Dee had fallen in love with John the way Hope fell for Alan, because of the history. Marland did use history with Alan and Hope's story, mining Mike's resentment for Alan. I will totally give him credit for that. I'm not saying I hated what Marland did with their story, I was actually pretty into it at the time, only that the Dobsons had a different plan. Both story choices were valid, IMO. (Except for the redemption, thing, LOL, I never understood why you would neuter a character like Alan).

Edited 1 hour ago1 hr by DeeVee