First of all, let me just say that if not for the chance to see Lisa Brown (Nola), Maeve Kinkead (Vanessa) and certainly MG again, GUIDING LIGHT's last few days would've been a farce and a complete waste of time. Right up to the very end, Ellen Wheeler and her team had no clue at all how to run any show, let alone one like GL.

Second, it's a testimony to MG's power and skill as an actor that Holly came out as "whole" and "sound" as she did at the end. Let's face it, this show treated Holly (and MG) shabbily for a very long time; and had another, lesser actor been asked to perform that same material, I've no doubt Holly would've ended up a total loon.

It’s an ending she hopes the fans will find satisfying. I think you will.

And I think I did. (Holly ended up w/ Ed, right?) I mean, given the circumstances - Roger was gone (and it would've been scandalous to have them back together anyway); Ross was, too (and no way would fans have accepted that knowing that he "belonged" with Blake) - having Ed and Holly back together was a nice, fitting touch. It showed how the two had come full circle after all the years and drama, but with the knowledge that they were wiser, saner people than before.

Roger was not by any stretch of the imagination “a good man,” but he was a fascinating, complex one and his love affair with the steel butterfly, Holly, struck an enduringly responsive chord with the viewers.

Here's the difference, I think, between Roger/Holly and GH's Luke/Laura: although the idea of a rape victim reconciling with her attacker is never cool (witness OLTL's "rapemance" between Marty and Todd, er, "Todd"), I, for one, would never have balked right away at the suggestion of Roger and Holly reconciling, b/c the road to that reconciliation was far rockier, far more character-driven, and included more realistic twists than running from the mob and saving the world from a supervillain and his "weather machine."

If this is the future (for soaps), as an actor, it really concerns me. There’s no director, no time, no spontaneity. If this is what has to be done to save the form, I think there’s room for debate about trying to preserve the process, too.

Sad words, but probably true. I don't want to disparage the efforts of those trying to keep the genre alive on the web and elsewhere, but unless and until someone figures out how to make this not just profitable again but effective, character-driven entertainment, part of me wonders whether soaps aren't better off going the way of westerns and live anthology shows of the '50's.

Oh, what absolutely did me in was when Holly fell in love with her abuser, Sebastian (Doug Hutchison). I was asked to do a lot of things over the years I was on the show that I didn’t particularly love, but it was my job to play them. But this was too much. I just couldn’t bend any more; I couldn’t fulfill the terms of that story. [...] It was insulting, insulting that this character (Holly) had come no further, that she was made to regress to that point of degradation. That was the end for me.

Words like "nadir" and "degradation" don't begin to describe that particular story. Sebastian/Holly made the "Nursery Rhyme Stalker" story look downright plausible.

One of the few things I appreciate from Gold's tenure as HW was the Billy/Holly/Buzz triangle. Taggert had started on Ed and Holly but of course Conboy and Weston dropped the ball big time there. I do give Wheeler and Kriezman the credit to making everything almost right with GL's ending with Ed and Holly together, Fletcher and Alex, Bridget and Dylan etc. Even though I hated the couple, we really needed a Fletcher and Holly scene though.

Zimmer looked good up until about 2005 or so, after that then she literally took up the whole screen.

Great photos. Love the picture of Theo and his well wishes.

I've always loved the photo of Meta, Bert, and Meta's "little white wings," as she called them, lol.

<

Edited May 16, 201114 yr by Paul Raven

Stanley Norris and Leslie Jackson Norris

Papa and Bert Bauer

Alan and Hope's wedding

Edited May 17, 201114 yr by Paul Raven

Of all the GL stuff we can't see I think it's the early Norris days I want to see most.

It looks like Robin Johnson or some fans of hers are putting up clips of her work as Darcy Decker. There are about 16 parts so far.

Amazingly GL did get the occasion to make SOD covers, some particular great ones here too:

Still looking for the GL 60th Anniversary cover SOD did that had Zaslow and Zimmer on it.

I have that cover somewhere, although it's in rough shape.

They also have a cover at Soap Opera World, although there's a subscription label on it.

http://www.soapoperaworld.com/soap-opera-digest-kathleen-noone-paul-satterfield.html

Uh, why is it amazing GL couples got a lot of SOD covers

Rick and Roxie

Mindy and Kurt

Phillip and Beth

Fletcher and Claire, etc., etc all got covers of SOD.

There was a bit a of a flap in the early/mid 90's because GL didn't get as many covers, as they didn't sell. I think the one from that time (Lucy/Alan-Michael) was a low-seller. They got a few more covers when the ratings went back up in 1997.

This is tru, but GL still got a lot of SOW covers and SOM covers then.

Edited May 29, 201114 yr by shadow

Edited May 29, 201114 yr by Paul Raven