Per request, the failures of Brown&Esensten

[Chris B]

It's completely false. David Paulsen had complete control during the final season under the condition he stay under budget. B&E were never anything more than script writers/editors to my knowledge.

I blame Loving (and Agnes Nixon) for the horrible death of Ryan's Hope so I've never really watched or paid much attention to that show, despite my Marland love. The only episode I've ever seen is the 1987 one posted on YouTube which, admittedly, is fantastic.

[EricMontreal22]

Chris, you haven't even seen the oh so classic Marland (with a bit of early AMC/Agnes) 1984 episode on youtube when he was still writing?? It starts here

Well, I liked their work on Loving and most of City very much and have a hard time thinking PC could be better--but you know my feelings--PC to me is responsible for the death of Loving/The City (even if I know in my head it's not) so I never gave it a fair shake either, like you and Loving

[EricMontreal22]

Thanks--were they there before the 9th season? I wish it was easier to find out who was Headwriter/Show Runner for those primetime soaps. From the 90s on it's a lot easier (like I know Pratt was in charge of Melrose, taking over from Star by Season 4 I believe),but with Dallas, Knots, etc, it's pretty impossible to find out who, if anyone, was in chagre of the overall story (Peyton Place is even harder, as you know). I guess this should go in the Primetime thread

[Mitch]

GL was such a friggen mess when B & E took over, that it seemed they gave the show a semblance of its old self. The destruction of GL started earlier then even McTrash, it started when Curlee left and it became the "Buzz Cooper Hour," Contrary to what the hype says, the show could easily have survived Mo's death, it was the abrupt shift from Coventry Lane (where the Bauers lived) to Fifth Street, and plots surrounding face cream, will Buzz leave town, Ross having a double named Howie, Tangie Freakin' Hill, Alan faking a chinese accent to fool Roger of all people, etc...the show was sunk, and McTrash just pushed it further.

So B & E looked like bright stars when they first came on. And to tell you the truth, for most of their run, the show WAS still GL, and it was entertaining. I didnt enjoy any of the clone but by that time I was tired of Zimmer and her latest attempt to grab another emmy..but some of it coulda, woulda been interesting if some of the themes that were touched on were explored (Josh's need for control, how he quickly picks up a love interest and discards it as soon as Reva appears, and the moral implications of cloning and individualty, etc.)

I actually liked Holly the Stalker...I felt the mystery was set up well, it did involve the entire cast and MG looked smoking in her leather jacket. That plot failed as they should have had Holly come out of her therapy and be a stronger, more forcefull woman, walking around town in her leather jacket giving everyone one of her patented sarcastic quips, and running the station and the paper. Instead they put her into her pastel dresses (EVERYONE wore a pastel dress on GL then) and made her sad and lonely and going around SF wearing a hair shirt. I also kinda liked the mob, at least the premise...if they had explored the implications of the hispanic Santos family (who I would have made tied to the mob instead of in the actual mob) trying to mainstream themselves in SF society, (I would have also had Carmen welcome Michelle to the family, if only to use her and the Bauer name to catapult themselves into respectable society,) and how the lily white families of SF keep rejecting them, it would have been interesting, but once again, it became all about Carmen trying to kill Michelle at every turn....(Carmen and Michelle were like cartoon versions of the earlier Alex vs. Mindy storyline.)

But that was the biggest problem with E & B, the show "touched," on deeper thoughts, and then quickly backed away..the show WAS GL but it was a cheap, glossy, plasticy version of real GL. It was at least enteraining (Until San Crud, nothing about princes, especially embodied by Brad Cole is entertaining or has any meaning on GL.)

But they still were miles above when Confornti (I believe??) was writing GL and McTrash. Its too bad Labine couldnt right the ship, as that was the make or break point for GL. Rauch didnt want her, he like E & B as he could control them. Labine was harder to control and they fought at every turn and Rauch sabatoged her. If they had switched to a new exec producer at that time I think Labine could have worked.

[detroitpiston]

Stuff that B&E did at AMC that I hated:

The Crash arc with Kendall always whining about Spike and Sabine-lee constantly apologizing with that damn "Apologies" song always playing

Sabine-lee and Zach trapped in the hole

EVERYTHING with Richie(I do think that if an actor who did more than grind his teeth had been cast this could have been better)

Ryan losing his memory of Annie, then Annie turning into a psycho(thank God MCE was able to turn out a solid performance with the shitty material they wrote)

Tad's Uncle being the one behind Jessie's shooting(not a bad idea, just executed horribly)

Julia getting killed just so Tad could get Kathy without any drama

Frank South took over after Darren. Pratt didn't until season 7, along with Carol whatsherface who does the CSI franchise.

[Khan]

DeeeDee: "Pretty much."

I really wanted Claire Labine to succeed and leave her imprint on GL if only b/c, all the other "greats" of the genre - Irna, of course, Agnes, Bill, Doug Marland, the Dobsons, Pam Long, Nancy Curlee, etc. - had had their chance to do so. Sure, you could blame Paul Rauch for the hot mess she made of things, but I really believe if P&G had simply said, "Look, just take a step back and let her write the damn show!," Rauch would have had to back off. Like Harding Lemay once said, Rauch'll go along with you, but you have to bully him. Unfortunately, I don't think P&G could help from interfering, either.

[DeliaIrisFan]

The Esensten and Brown interview that really turned me off of them was from Soap Opera Weekly in 1999, when I was in college, which included such pearls of wisdom as:

And the best part: "Although they have an office, when they're trying to come up with story ideas, 'We go to a bar, because it's the only place we can have some wine, sit for hours and hours and eat while we talk,' Esensten says."

The interview ran with a picture of the two of them, at their beloved bar I presume, holding (very big) glasses of wine. Up until reading that, I had tried to see the best in their work at GL - much of which was entertaining in their first year or so, albeit often in a mindless brain candy kind of way. I wanted to believe the hype that they had saved GL from cancellation and this show I loved when I was younger was not dead. Needless to say, this interview woke me up from that dream, and I pretty quickly came to see them as among the worst in daytime (it didn't hurt that this was at the same time the show was shifting from over-the-top stories involving recognizable characters to San Cristobel and the mob, and any effort at dialogue above a 5th grade level went out the window). In hindsight, I actually believe they were telling the truth in the 2000 interview about the clone and the mind-altering aftershave being foisted on them by the network. Even so, I still have a bad taste in my mouth where they are concerned, even with time and perspective and having seen much worse in the way of writing on soaps - not to mention much more esteemed head writers having had to fall on their swords in the past 10-15 years for ideas that I'm pretty sure were not their own.

Speaking of which, as far as the other unofficial topic of this thread - Claire Labine - I am admittedly biased. For my money, just about everything that Labine wrote prior to ABC being taken over by Disney was consistently among the best material that has ever been done in soaps. And what's aired across the board on ABC soaps since the Disney takeover, collectively, has been by far the worst in the network's history. So it makes the most sense to me that the creative environment at ABC since that time, including when the Labines were writing for OLTL, has changed to a degree that it doesn't allow for the kind of work that Labine had always been known for. I think it's really that simple, and I for one would rather call for the toxic micromanaging to stop and good writers to once again be allowed to truly write these shows, for however long they have left on the air, than pick apart how a legendary writer arranged deck chairs on the Titanic.

That said, despite its shortcomings, I am not ashamed to say that Claire and Matt Labine's OLTL, by and large, was the last time I consistently enjoyed watching a soap every day. What I most remember about OLTL in 1997 was that the dialogue was top-notch, just about every character and relationship was well-rounded and had qualities that made them unique and human, and I actually cared about what happened to those characters and within that community. The only time the show was less than stellar was whenever something would actually happen. In hindsight, it just seems to me like there must have been a perpetual tug of war between the writers and the networks, with storytelling at a stalemate. I almost always found the show to be a pleasure to watch whenever nothing much was happening, but obviously a string of lovely scenes without much plot advancement did not lure in new viewers. The Labines may not have met their mandate to bring up the ratings/demos, but in a way they succeeded - at least in staving off the destructive stories that I'm sure the network was pushing for. The worst stories that made it onto the air when the Labines' names were in the credits were not nearly as ugly or as damaging to the show in the longterm as Nora cheating on Bo to give him a baby so he wouldn't commit suicide; or Natalie almost becoming a living heart donor to the reincarnated Victor Lord; or the worst (so far), Jessica being electro-shocked, sexually assaulted by her biological father, and shot this past month. The Labines' OLTL was pretty much always respectable and had heart and intelligence. What's really a shame is that I believe at any given moment, the Labines had the show perfectly positioned to be running on all cylinders immediately if the network would have just committed to a few long-range stories that I'm sure they proposed and got picked apart in focus groups and market research meetings.

Fast forward a few years and the Labines ended up getting hired to write GL, at the post-Ed Trach P&G (which by all accounts has consistently made working at Disney's ABC daytime seem like attending an extended writers' retreat). Throw in Paul Rauch as producer, and there was just no way that it was going to work out. Looking back at what I watched of that, I choose to remember Mary Stuart getting what turned out to be her last meaningful material on a soap and Roger being mentioned in the Labines' first credited episode, and not judge them by much else from that unfortunate chapter. I can't imagine what any writer could have done, given the structure of GL at the time and the fact that she was evidently not empowered to reposition it in a meaningful way (as Labine herself said in that We Love Soaps interview, Rauch wouldn't let her get off that damn island and she was at a loss for how to prolong that any further). GL at the time was just a bizarre conglomeration of a few literate, heartfelt Labine scenes here and there with lots of cheesy Rauch "intrigue," often back-to-back. Strangely, that combo must have worked for some people, because the ratings actually went up (or stabilized while other shows went down); there was even one week when GL tied for 4th place. That was back when there were 10-11 soaps, and I don't think that GL had ranked that high since 1993 or so, and it certainly never happened again. But Labine was crucified on the internet and I'm sure P&G and Rauch were all too happy to oblige the calls for her head and be rid of a strong female writer who was obviously not on the same page with them and their "vision." I maintain that she would have been an asset to GL to the end, had she been given the power. In fact, she's probably the only living soap writer who could have possibly made that Peapack production model work.

But after touching the lives of millions of viewers for decades, the woman certainly does not deserve to spend her golden years trying to spin gold out of the schlock the networks are hellbent on putting on the air and taking the fall for it. Her legacy is still solid, in my book.