Guiding Light Discussion Thread

[Khan]

Even James Harmon Brown and Barbara Esensten admitted (to Soap Opera Weekly?) that they knew they had messed up when they introduced the Rapid Aging Serum.

Of course, it wasn't as if we could have waited years (even with SORAS'ing at play, it would've taken years) for Clone Reva to age naturally, so IDK what the alternative might have been (aside from, you know, not doing the story at all).

Edited April 25, 2022 by Khan

[Darn]

Reva had a string of stupid storylines with diminishing returns and after a point they never seemed to help the ratings yet there was. On every single day in one of her stupid outlandish stories chewing up every set in Springfield.

Reva's Amish. Reva the clone, Reva the princess, Reva gets stalked, Reva saves the refugees, Reva the mercy killer, Reva travels through paintings and amidst all that nonsense her most successful story was her conflict with her rebellious long-lost son. A tried and true soap staple. 

I just wonder why soaps continue pushing the same characters frontburner despite ratings reflecting either disinterest or viewer revolt. GL was at the bottom of the ratings for it's last decade with Reva in A story constantly YET they stuck with her. I do not get it.

[Contessa Donatella]

One reason can be the actor's contract. If they're guaranteed to work 4 days a week, then, they're going to write them in action for 4 days a week. They're not going to pay them for 4 days & only use them 2! I believe Grant Aleksander thought that other people deserved to have time on air that he & his contract & his character were gobbling up. He left for awhile.

[antmunoz]

When Alan and Elizabeth moved to Springfield, weren’t they staying with Jackie until they could find a house to buy?

I don’t recall Hope insisting that Alan buy her another house, but I can accept it. 
 

This house, whether it be the house that Elizabeth lived in or that Hope lived in )possibly one and the same), was later retconned into being the Spaulding mansion, which had “always” been in town. 
 

My last memory of Ed’s living room was Danny and Michelle’s final showdown with Carmen

[Sapounopera]

For some reason I think that Alan and Hope moved to Amanda's house after a while. I think I remember Hope visiting Amanda in the classic Spaulding living room.

[Khan]

GL's final decade (or more) was wall-to-wall inexplicable choices.

[Mitch64]

They were under the delusion that Zimmer and to a lesser degree, Newman, were the end all and be all of GL. Zimmer had her fans bombarding the studio and the boards every time she came on set that she "Knocked it out of the ballpark again!" etc, and both of them went to the press and cried if they had two straight days off.  The ratings went up during the Annie trial (more Annie and Watros more the draw, plus there was a lot of stuff going on with other characters then..) and then the Clone got a lot of press, (believe it or not MADD chalked that up to their greatest success) and the ratings subsided a bit when they gave Josh and Reva a much needed rest after the clone..(all of those lookey lous were not going to stick around for anything as they were not interested in GL..just the Clone freak show..) .so net execs being lazy and dense from there were afraid to give Jeva a break. Rauch believed in a super couple to be the face of a show so with Roger and Holly gone it was Jeva.

[Contessa Donatella]

KZ certainly told the press & every fan she ever had & possibly even strangers on the street what they had to say to her bosses to make sure she didn't get put on the (as if she ever did) back burner. But, I don't believe RN did & I never saw any resulting fan action or mess in the press that he had. Not that it would matter. They were gonna put him where ever they wanted to & he was gonna salute & head over there.

[Spoon]

Under Rauch new supercouples Rassie and Manny became popular, at a detriment to the show.  They needed a bigger emphasis on the core families instead of just having one or two Bauers, and a handful for the other families.

Too many random, unrelated characters when they should've mined the various family trees.  Jim and Tony Reardon could've had children, Bridget and Matt definitely had more siblings.  Then of course there's Bea Reardon's other daughter that was never cast.  Nola's daughter Anastasia should've been cast and maybe a plot involving Floyd being released from jail and wanting a relationship with his grown daughter.

If Rick, Phillip and Beth were there, Melinda Sue should of been there.  Alan-Michael also should've been back after two or three years away.

Edited April 27, 2022 by Spoon

[Mitch64]

That was the problem...as someone upthread posted...E & B said they the focus should be on the lovers and not the families.  Jill Hurst answers posts on the GL FB page often and she is quite honest about things, and she said Rauch and MADD thought the show should be all about glamour and BIG moments and I remember Rauchie in interviews saying things like the show was going to be about "PASSION" and big stakes...(how is Jeva breaking up, making up, breaking up..making up...big stakes???) and he thought business stories made his eyes glaze over...(admittedly MADD and previous writers never really made it clear what Spaulding does, who has the most stock, who are the investors, etc so it was just silly all the time.)

So you have a dumbed down GL and you get a dumbed down audience who are not attracted to the show, its history or its families, but about the actors or the couple of the moment that, I guess they could have fantasies they were part of...i don't know, I never got shippers. So eventually that was all that was left, and the problem is..the couple beast is a hard animal to keep feeding, you have to repeat the same storylines over and over again, characters don't learn or grow and you have to resort to sc-fi or fantasy crap to make things different. Remember when Richie bit the big one and a fan almost got ran over crossing the street she was so upset about it? What the hell could you do with a dumb Prince, what was the storyline future for him?? That's what we were left with. 

[Khan]

Then, if that weren't bad enough, some fans got together and sent incoming EP John Conboy flowers, and that was what convinced him to bring back Bradley Cole as Jeffrey after we were finally rid of him.

I think it was around that time, or maybe a little before, when I started to appreciate Y&R more, because they seemed to be the very last soap not to cave into fanbases.  Of course, I should've known that they, too, would eventually be corrupted in that way.

Edited April 28, 2022 by Khan

[MichaelGL]

The brief moment where we didn't have Richie/Jeffrey/BC on the canvas was miles better than anything we'd see after. 

[Mitch64]

And he and Weston were seen..."rocking out" to Cole and his music during a fan event..I don't know if it was before they hired him or after and I have to say, to see those old f*cks dancing to Cole's musical stylings...along with BC's frauing fans..would be more entertaining then anything the two of them came up with!

[Khan]

IDK why, but I suddenly see both Conboy and Weston jumping into mosh pits and being carried on their backs by BC fans, lol.

[Contessa Donatella]

That's the most disgusting thing I've heard in months! Now how am I evuh gonna get that visual out of my head!

I have a question. I've been reading & searching to try to find it but I have not. I figure it's been posted & thoroughly discussed, so this is probably duplicating. Sorry. When it came out of a Locher room chat that Pamela K. Long had someone in mind for Reva Shayne & that someone was not KZ, who was it?