Guiding Light Discussion Thread

[vetsoapfan]

ITA 100%. After Nancy Curlee left, TGL was severely decimated, and began a crippling downward spiral to its inevitable death.

Its cancellation felt, to me, like a mercy killing.

[Contessa Donatella]

Well, on the good side, we had Gina Tognoni playing an excellent Dinah & Tom Pelphrey's Jonathan Randall was superb, whats-his-face great playing Shane when he had been forgettable on AMC. But, then, we had that awful actor playing Grady. Besides Grady I'm not sure who you're accusing. 

If nothing else people should remember that GL at the end added to the body of knowledge on how to produce a show in the modern era. People from all over came to GL to see the new techniques they were experimenting with. Nothing was going to save them, but there was a nobility in the way they faced the end. 

And, dammit, if Nancy Curlee hadn't gotten pregnant another time immediately she'd have come right back to GL! That was her intention. We can blame Stephen Demorest's mighty sperm. 

[vetsoapfan]

To be brutally frank, I would say that TGL in its dying days added to the knowledge of how NEVER to produce a soap in this or any era; that canceling it, before steering it right into the toilet where it circled the drain before the inevitable flush, would honor the show's (and the overall genre's) integrity much more appropriately.

JMHO.

[Khan]

That is exactly what I would call GL's cancellation, @vetsoapfan: a mercy killing. 

ATWT still had life left in it, because its' core had not become as wrecked as GL's had become.  All it needed was an EP and HW who cared enough and who could write and produce the show without too much interference from P&G or from CBS, and it would have bounced back in no time.  But GL could have had all those things and more and it still would have needed at least 1-2 years that it did not have just to become watchable again, let alone good or great.

I agree.

[vetsoapfan]

Again, ITA 100%.

Although the writing for ATWT had wavered between tepid and poor for a solid decade before its demise, and although a plethora of inept production choices had been long been heaped upon the show, the core was still relatively intact and recognizable. ATWT miraculously escaped the enormous damage that had torn apart TGL (and which has destroyed Days of Our Lives). This miracle left Oakdale still salvageable in its final days. A capable producer and writer could have turned ATWT around relatively quickly, whereas I believe it would have taken a complete, extensive and lengthy overhaul to get TGL anywhere near "fighting shape" again.

[P.J.]

Thanks! I am amazed how much late 70's-early 80's stuff is up, and how good the quality is. It does take some maddening jumps though. 

[Contessa Donatella]

I am beyond accustomed to people who do not agree with me about the final days of GL. I respect the difference of opinion. Neither of us stands alone in our perspectives. But, you might be surprised at how many people discover GL on YouTube & become huge aficionados of both Otalia & Jami. Me, I dearly love the additional days we got. You & others, do not. That's just the way it stands. If you bring up what was brutal, it was the way the show was treated by CBS. And, the incalculable hardships the cast & crew & staff & leadership had to endure. 

Here is another way that I differ. To me what was done to ATWT was worse. Because they destroyed the narrative tradition & the show, left with a kind of lame pod storytelling, couldn't honor its vets or tell meaningful umbrella stories & just jammed specific characters down the throats of all us who hung in there & watched even though it was shite. 

[BoldRestless]

Merry Christmas, GL fans! Saw this lovely Christmas retrospective on the Italian youtube page:

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[DRW50]

On a technical level I agree with you, and ATWT did keep more of their longtime vets, but I do think GL, in spite of so much destruction and callousness, still found some semblance of itself in that final year or so through the returns and through re-centering vital characters like Vanessa (even if I wish she'd had more to do). That's what I was missing from ATWT. So many choices that felt obvious, like bringing back Andy even for a day, never happened. That history was even more of a core for me with ATWT than it was for GL, so the erosion of it over ATWT's last fifteen years made it harder for me to watch.

Thank you. Merry Christmas to you too. I miss my P&G soaps more than ever around this time of year. At least we have our memories, and these videos.

Edited December 24, 2023 by DRW50

[MichaelGL]

I agree with this sentiment. 

[kalbir]

Lets keep it real here, the P&G shows were effectively over in the aftermath of OJ.

[Contessa Donatella]

Is it real if that is not the way you experienced it? And, how can it be said that they were "effectively over" if they continued to make a profit? Plus, how can we deem them as over when they continued to be on the air? Sure, they weren't as successful as they had been. And, we know now that they were not ever going to reclaim any positions of former glory. But they had fans & they employed hundreds of people. I'm sorry but I just don't see it the way you do & I do not think that's being "unreal'. 

[Khan]

That certainly was true for AW.  Between OJ and JFP, AW never stood a chance.

[DRW50]

ATWT did manage to rebuild itself in 1995 - if not for a combination of P&G's many wrong choices and the extremely incompetent Valente/Black & Stern combo, they might have had a chance. GL was lucky to make it through most of 1994, 1995, and 1996.

[DramatistDreamer]

OJ trial is an excuse many people use to mask poor choices and indifference by many of these production companies. Look, the reality is that, as bad as ATWT and GL were in their final years, Y&R (I don’t watch the others) is every bit as bad now as those shows were in the final years but Sony has a measure of giving a damn about these shows continuing to exist, P&G began to care less and less as they no longer could use them as cash cows. P&G began to starve their shows’  budgets way before other soaps did but they obviously began their exit strategy years before AW got cancelled. It just happened to coincide with the aftermath of the Simpson trial.

Edited December 24, 2023 by DramatistDreamer