Guiding Light discussion thread

[Contessa Donatella]

Thank god they weren't there long enough to call it an era. Maybe black spot on the record? Have you ever read what they said about writing for a soap? The poor things had to work so hard!  Not that you could tell any hard work had gone on from the results.

[P.J.]

The other real irony about the engagement ball---other than the Reardons, it's really filled with Henry and Vanessa's business acquaintances. Vanessa has two friends there--Trish and Helena--and unless I missed her, the only true friend friend Nola had, Gracie, isn't there. Nola has a semi-repaired reputation at this point, but it's not like people didn't remember the dirt she'd done. The ONLY person that Vanessa doesn't know there is Billy. (Irony number 2)

Re: Josh/Nola  --not that I've seen. It does answer a question though. There was a point where Josh is interested in who fathered Nola's child. I presume that had something to do with him trying to make Floyd a "star".

I do find myself really irritated by Tony now. 

[P.J.]

I believe Van also drops her coat for Mark. It seemed to be her early go-to move.

I couldn't ever really see Van and Nola as frenemies either. They just irritated each other too much. Yeah, I agree, Van and Reva aren't really friends. They get along, but they rarely naturally confided in each other.

I could seen Van as that strong town matriarch, had Maeve stayed. She wouldn't have taken Dinah's [!@#$%^&*], she'd have divorced Matt's trifling ass, and stepped in at Spaulding while Alan was too busy screwing Phillip's sloppy seconds. 

[DRW50]

Thanks @chrisml . As @Contessa Donatella said, that just is not true about a lot of fans being upset with Philece Sampler (RIP) being replaced by Anna Stuart. I wonder if this is another case of Logan sticking up for his friends (or going after actors he wasn't fond of).

That quote about Maureen is a lot of BS. Essentially admitting they only killed Maureen so Ed could have story. The biggest problem with this idea is that by 1993, Ed - and the Bauers in general - had become isolated, had been isolated for nearly a decade. This just furthered his isolation, and they had to work even harder to come up with story for him. That's how we got Ed/Eve, which I think I liked more than most fans did.

Killing off an important character for the sake of a few strong scenes - and that was literally all we got here - is always a mistake.

This is also another reminder of how brutally male-dominated JFP's run at GL was.

Thanks.

You can tell Long and Kobe had no real use for Nola/Quint, separately or together, by the way they wrote out all of their satellite characters in such a quick space of time. It just makes them lingering on for another year and a half even worse.

Edited Wednesday at 12:59 AM by DRW50

[Contessa Donatella]

Thanks for reiterating this one. Philece was amazing on DAYS but she was no Donna Love. Logan made me mad with this. I mean someone from the show called Anna once a week the whole time asking "are you ready to come home yet?"  That's a rising inflection because they were hopeful. 

This reminds me of people who point out that Ellen Parker was on several times as a ghost & also that she won an Emmy. Good grief! Do those people miss the point entirely? Mo was dead. Not even that fabulous line about making them a suburban joke can make up for that. What do they not understand about dead?

Edited Wednesday at 01:08 AM by Contessa Donatella

[P.J.]

It's a combination of things. Vanessa and Henry had been so close, that just the fact he was keeping something secret from her threatened her. She felt herself being cut out of Henry's life--his interest in Bea and her family, the friendship he was developing with Quint even before he knew Quint was his son, and then Henry's doting on his new found son and praising him to the heavens, while (understandably) seeing Vanessa's plethora of shortcomings (Quint's self-made and independent while Vanessa's spoiled and can't even manage her money). 

But yeah, getting "replaced" by someone as "common" as Nola--wasn't ever going to sit well with Vanessa.

[P.J.]

I kind of understand why Curlee had to sell it publicly as "we need story for Ed", but geez. If they really would've had balls, they'd have canned Peter Simon. They could've then written a story of Mo getting her groove back after having to "publicly" grieve this marriage after learning she'd been cheated on for the third time. 

[DRW50]

I think the same line was used when Frankie was killed on AW by JFP a few years later. It just doesn't work unless the character is hugely connected to the show. And even then, soaps often move on with the many "loves of my life" characters have.

I agree that writing Ed out for a while and showing Maureen cope, as a single working mother, would have been more compelling.

Edited Wednesday at 01:34 AM by DRW50

[Contessa Donatella]

But in my personal reboot Michelle is with Bill. They are the fulfillment of Rachel Minor & Bryan Buffington, their youthful promise.

 

[Tisy-Lish]

Did Michelle and Bill have one of those Tara/Phil promises like early AMC?  Young love stories like that are something very unique to soaps, because soaps actually have the time to play them out long-term.     

 

[Contessa Donatella]

Yabbut then there's this:

GL HW Nancy Curlee when asked if she had any story regrets,

"Although Maureen's death was a lynchpin in a carefully conceived, well-executed story, Ellen Parker was so fine & so well loved, that her absence left a hole in the show that was later hard to fill."

More like impossible to fill!

And I am reminded that Jill didn't even have the guts to fire Ellen in person. That day they were both at the studio, working. Jill waited till that afternoon, called Ellen at home, told her on the phone. Did you know that?

I have a list, a Jill list. It includes so many things I hold against her. It includes 3 things she can take credit for. Just 3. Balanced against possibly hundreds.

 

YES!!!! Exactly so. 

[DeeVee]

Two things about this:

Doing the math, it made me realize Heather Tom is FIFTY YEARS OLD. OMG, I feel so old. 

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 (I am old, but I didn't need the reminder, LOL.)

As to the comments about why they killed off Maureen, gee, unless I missed something, I don't remember anything memorable involving Ed dealing with her death. Not like Jack on Ryan's Hope when Mary died, or Tony on GH when his daughter died. When Cassie died on Y&R it impacted the show literally for years. They screwed up bigtime and couldn't even be bothered to at least write something compelling to make her death worth it, story-wise.

That would have been great! Or why not have the guts to write a real love triangle with Mo/Ed/Lillian? Or have Maureen not really die somehow but everyone thinks she's dead? She could have had amnesia (that would have been necessary, because she would never leave Michelle). Maybe Roger could have found her and kept her from Ed out of spite. 

There were like a million possibilities that did not have to end with her dying.

[DRW50]

There was a little - he had to cope with being a single parent to Michelle, she began leaning on Holly, which caused problems for Holly due to Holly being drawn back to Roger, etc. But not near enough fallout, because ultimately Maureen and Ed were not huge characters on the canvas. I don't even know if GL got much story out of Bert losing Bill, and that was when Bert was at the center of the show. These stories rarely pay off as much as they should.

[P.J.]

I just meant that publicly Curlee couldn't just say "hey, my EP is bored by housefrau Mo, and we're going to try and reset the character of Ed the same way we did Ross, by giving him a hot young thing."

Unless I'm forgetting something, they didn't even really try to fill Mo's shoes until they brought Meta on. They tried giving Michelle a mentor in Holly, and they might have tried making Van and Billy that "stable" couple (had not Jordan been fired)....but after that, they sure weren't leaning into "Vanessa the matriarch" giving her that himbo Matt. 

And re: 1992---because it can't be said enough---I HATE the Ross' election nightmare episode. I get that a lot of work went into it---but I still HATE it.

Edited Wednesday at 03:12 AM by P.J.

[Contessa Donatella]

Is that what Mulcahey is proud of?