Article: WIll Soap Operas Find Happiness in Prime Time?

[EricMontreal22]

And didn't Lemay's inspiration for the Frames come from *his* own family and childhood experience? I have no doubt that Marland's own life didn't play a part, still I'm sure there was some inspiration taken from his time at AW... (I miss lower middle class families on soaps...)

[Y&RWorldTurner]

Were the Reardons supposed to be Catholic? I think I read they originally were, then somehow, I think after Marland left, they suddenly became Protestant.

I hate how dismantled that family became once Marland left. Then by the early 90's, only Maureen and Bridget were left, and that albatross that was Matt was the last real Reardon on the show by the end.

[DRW50]

That's not nice to say about Matt. But I love it.

I think it was Pam Long that did that family in. I don't think she cared about them once she was sole headwriter, did she?

[Y&RWorldTurner]

She probably saw no use for them, with her pet projects being the Cooper's and Reva (and the Shayne's by extension).

It was probably Long that turned them from Catholic to Protestant over night too...

Didn't Long introduce Chelsea though? And of course Curlee fashioned Bridget off of a young Nola.

McTavish wrote so horribly for Nola and Bridget in the mid 90's, she really hated those characters. Poor Lisa Brown and Melissa Hayden were also treated horribly by Rauch.

[DRW50]

Chelsea arrived in late 1986. Who was headwriter then? I can never remember, that's one of those blurry GL years for me. I know that was just about the end of the line for Bea.

The writing for Bridget was so degrading under McTavish I wanted to retch at the time. I think they had her mucking out stables to win Hart, but as we heard repeatedly, she was too ugly and could never compare to Dinah.

I hated what Rauch did with Nola. Bridget...at least he let her go early, I guess. I just hated what became of her before she left.

[EricMontreal22]

Like most of the major soaps, wiki has a fairly accurate and good list of who wrote/produced when (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guiding_Light#Head_writers_and_executive_producers)

I know nothing about McTavish's GL, except that it was hated (did she do ANYTHING good? After a fairly good AMC run? lol)

[DRW50]

I guess Jeff Ryder or Mary Ryan Munisteri & Ellen Barrett brought Chelsea and the Bauer siblings in.

I thought she started off not bad. She made Roger Thorpe conniving again after about a year where he was a wet noodle. She wrote a lot for Dinah, who was a fun young bitch/vamp. She brought back Amanda Spaulding. She wrote Reva's return, which, after a dud trip to Amishland, picked up, as Reva got together with Alan and fought with Josh, who was nasty to her because he wanted to deny his feelings as he was now married to Annie. Her "best" story, although it was offensive, was about Lucy Cooper's rapist, Brent. He faked his own death and dressed in drag and befriended Lucy as an ugly woman named Marian. "Marian" killed several people (Nadine Cooper, Det. Cutter) who stumbled onto his secret. He also changed Lucy's HIV test results to make her think she was HIV-positive. He thought this would destroy her but instead it brought her closer to her boyfriend, Alan-Michael. She also befriended a woman with HIV who was named Susan Bates (Bates like Psycho, I guess). Brent beat Susan up and she was left comatose. The climax of the story was Brent holding Lucy hostage at the lighthouse as he suffered a mental breakdown as he flashed back to his abuse as a child. Unfortunately this story, which was flawlessly acted by Frank Beaty, was too much for him, and Frank had a mental breakdown and the role had to be temporarily recast several times.

Her other decent story was when Holly got pregnant and had a Down's baby, but this story never went anywhere, unfortunately.

The rest got worse and worse and worse. A promising story about a civil rights activist, Griffin (played by the guy who played Angie's husband Charles on LOVING), turned into a sick, shameful slap in the face when they had Gilly Grant fall in love with him and nearly have sex with him...only for her mother to burst into the room and tell Gilly that Griffin was her father. Gilly left town, crushed. A horrible way to get rid of a longtime character like Gilly.

Roger Thorpe descended back into rape, and was the subject of a degrading and unpleasant story where Dinah and Roger's son Hart, Dinah's lover, gaslighted Roger, drugging him, making him think he'd killed Hart. They then took him to an asylum and gave him electroshock therapy.

Blake Marler had a one night stand with Rick and realized she was pregnant by twins with two different fathers. Amanda Spaulding was revealed to be a former madam who had once employed Vanessa's young husband Matt Reardon. But as they reminded us OVER and OVER, Matt had only slept with women, never with men. Vanessa was tossed to the side as some old thing and finally Maeve Kinkead left the show.

Reva married Buzz Cooper and they yelled a lot and worked to save Fifth Street from demolition. Dalia sang about 50 times a month.

Phillip Spaulding returned, but this story became a somewhat boring mess as he came back to figure out which "A. Spaulding" had framed him for something.

Nola, formerly a fun character, was now depressed, as her husband Quint, her soulmate, had dumped her for a young female student. She had a fantasy where she shot him, upsetting some longtime fans.

Probably the best story at the time was Annie Lewis's descent into pill addiction.

[DRW50]

Oh, and probably the tackiest story, or one of them, was when civil rights leader Griffin was shot. After a "who shot Griffin?" story, viewers learned that...he had paid to have himself shot, to get publicity for his cause.

[SFK]

WHAT?? Wait, was he the one who played Charles on Loving?

ETA: Derr, you answered that two posts up.

[EricMontreal22]

He was, yes (according to Carl above).

HAHA Why am I not surprised to read that McTavish started off well enough and then it all fell apart. Thanks for all that summary. I don't know much about her EP< Michael Laibson but it doesn't sound like he did much to reign her in the way FMBehr did.

[DRW50]

Griffin was one of the black characters who disappeared once Rauch took over.

I have a certain high tolerance, and at times admiration, for McTavish's AMC writing, at least her stronger material. I think her GH work was not bad at all. But yes, after enjoying her early GL stuff, I was very upset by some of her material, and while the episodes were entertaining for a while, I finally had to stop watching in summer 96. Gilly and Nadine were two of my all time favorite characters and what was done to Nadine (she kept seeing a vision of a woman's death and then as the candlestick was about to fall on her she realized it was her) was bad enough, but Gilly's exit was too much.

The one consistently good story from her tenure was Abby, a deaf Amish girl who moved to Springfield with Reva and fell in love with Rick Bauer. The episode where she was in the hospital, alone, scared, and kept seeing all these awful things and had people yelling at her -- it was pretty good.

[EricMontreal22]

I remember Abby--she stuck around for a while didn't she? At least I caught some of her episodes (was that before or after Reva went Amish?)

Yeah, as you know, I feel much the same about MCTavish at AMC (due in no small part because her early 90s period got me into soaps) and I do think one of her big probs is trying to please those in charge--ie her OLTL was a marked improvement over Pam Long's and JFP's as writer/EP but it was still very obviously basically JFP's OLTL (I do think her stuff at GH, even if it was largely a hommage to the campy early 80s was better than much of what came when she left and JFP stayed)

Waht's with McTavish in the late 90s and visions--her late AMC characters all had those visions of death--and so did her GL?

[DRW50]

I thought her GH was a lot better than Luza's late 90s stuff or what happened after he returned. Not that that's saying much. She was the one who seemed to try to build AJ back up.

Yes, Nadine saw her own death. And Abby stayed around until 2000. She and Reva met in Goshen, the Amish place. Abby's mother was played by the wonderful Tandy Cronyn. She recurred for 6 months or a year.

I actually liked her Reva, and Reva/Buzz. I just hated the whole Save Fifth Street stuff.

There was a Marlena article written in fall 1996 which trashed McTavish's GL as "banging a hollow drum." If I ever find that SPW I'll type it out.

There's some McTavish GL on Youtube, I'll find a bit for you.

[DRW50]

Here's some of her GL. Alan Michael and Lucy marry at Universal Studios. Phillip wears a Frankenstein Costume.

I will say that McTavish's run was the first time I enjoyed Marj Dusay as Alex and she enabled me to get over the bias I had against Marj for taking over for Beverlee McKinsey.

[Saving ATWT]

Again Eric, thanks for the great article. I have no idea where you dig all this stuff up.

Just a few thoughts...

The longest-running shows are generally going to have the most middle-aged/older vet characters; that is, unless, a writer comes along and guts out core families and, in the process, basically creates a new program. The PGP shows were, at the time, the oldest soaps on TV so it could only be expected that they would maintain the oldest demos. This was and to this day is the case with World Turns. Can you imagine what the demos would be like today if Lisa, Bob, Kim and Lucinda were still all on the front burner? When ATWT started, the main focus of the show revolved around younger people but, as those characters aged, so did the viewers.

I'm starting to see the same thing happening with Y&R. Because the show has mostly focused on the same core characters for about the last 25 years, the leading characters are all about 50 years of age. Y&R is number one due to the stability of the cast but, eventually, this can become a problem. Y&R is the As the World Turns of today from a ratings standpoint. By the middle of the 1970's, World Turns had an aging cast but was loathed to dismiss a formula that maintained the show at #1 for 20 years. No real changes were made until rating dropped, at which point, younger characters, such as Barbara Ryan, popped up everywhere.

I'm no MAB fan but I do respect her efforts when it comes to supporting younger characters like Billy, Cloe, and Adam who are more modern incarnations (clones or chips off the old block) of Jack, Jill and Victor. While the development of these characters has been static, future writers may be able to liven them up and give someone like Billy a more organic feel. This method of revamping a show is far better than tossing out entire families and eliminating history.

My only grip with Marland on ATWT is that most of his younger characters didn't stick. The majority didn't last more than one season and ended up moving on to places like Montega. Marland could have set the stage for the next generation of World Turns during the 1980's (created characters like Bill Bell's Lauren, the Abbot clan, Nikki) who might have lived on until today. The only remains left from Marland on World Turns are Holden, Lilly, (Luke, Allison, and Lucy, as babies) and Roseanna (off screen). Paul and Emily come from previous writers and Carly, Jack and Molly were all brought on screen by later writers. At this point, the farmhouse is Marland's most lasting legacy. One can wonder what the show might be like today had Marland lived and characters like Evan and Conner Walsh had developed.