OLTL: Jean Passanante joins writing team

[Llantano Incorporated]

per Daytime Confidential by way of Soapnet.

See ya OLTL! As if the show wasn't bad enough right now.

This industry is beyond dead.

http://www.daytimeconfidential.com/2010/04/02/confirmed-jean-passanante-in-as-one-life-to-lives-associate-head-writer

Oops. Sorry. Its Associate Head Writer.

I don't see Carlvati re-signing either.

He is so hit or miss that whatever the outcome, the show is inching closer to its demise.

[alexisfan07]

Someone explain why she's not good for the show to the rest of us, please.

[bellcurve]

Gotta love how Jamey Giddens stole Toups' So-and-so writer IN!©

[Sylph]

I want to see this. The reasons are many (The Martyrdom of Ron Carlivati especially interests me) and just for how long will she be head writer, if at all. With these dreadful ratings, I don't know for how much more they think they can keep this show on air, but apparently they're "confident". She must've signed a several-months-to-a-year contract or something. And it should contain a cancellation-before-"due-time" clause.

[All My Shadows]

Oh, this is gonna be fun.

And people, please. Let's not act like we haven't been discussing the possibility of OLTL being toast for months now.

[Sylph]

And it's not like it was all Ron Carlivati's fault. He sure cemented it, but many before him contributed to the dreadful state of affairs.

[AllMyDaysatGH]

LOL at Jamey Gidden's saying, "Somebody buy Soap Opera Network's Toups a drink!". Yep, and you better make it strong ;D.

[alexisfan07]

I would blame Frons if anyone. I bet he influences Ron's storyline directions more than we'd like to think he does.

[All My Shadows]

Right. This can be said about all of the soaps, really. If people would just cut it out with the ridiculous notion that quality and ratings are directly correlated. One is purely subjective, the other is not.

[Sylph]

That's du jour. You accept a head writing gig knowing that. It is too easy to blame Frons.

Have you seen the video interview?

[DRW50]

F***.

I will always associate her with Gillian Andrassy, one of my favorite soap characters, being shot in the head as she was about to leave on her dream honeymoon. It was just a vile exit for such a lovely presence. Her AMC tenure was shockingly bad. She put a black man in a cage and had him raised to basically think of himself as a dog.

That's not even getting into what she did to Adam on ATWT, among many others.

When she was at OLTL the last time around the show was extremely generic and boring - that was 1996/early 1997.

In some odd way this probably means OLTL is not in danger yet, as I think they would have just let Ron stay as headwriter and wrap things up. But it still sucks.

[Sylph]

Plus this funny notion that Ron Carlivati popped up like a mushroom after the rain in Llanview Forrest and didn't know what he was getting himself into. He started as a writers' assistant back in 1996 (!) so he knew very well what network interference is, how it works and how Brian Frons operates.

If you knew it and didn't like it, you shouldn't have accepted the offer to be OLTL's head writer.

[Llantano Incorporated]

Other than 1991 and the Dena Higley era,, OLTL's worst period was definitely that 96-97 timeframe. No identity. No vision. Generic. But who am I to talk as I enjoyed (like a guilty pleasure) JFP's OLTL.

Oh well.

I have found OLTL awful the last two weeks, but was quite enjoying it beforehand.

[All My Shadows]

Exactly.

On a more personal level, I think this is kinda funny because my experience with Jean's WT and Ron's OL are similar. The first year or so, I loved it, watched obsessively every single day and would be pissed if I missed an episode. Truly enjoyed it, would probably still enjoy it if I had a chance to see it again now. Then everything went to pot, and I was happy for the few scraps of good episodes that they'd throw out there every now then. The only difference is that with OLTL, for a few months after the good times, I could still watch half of the stories and like them (while ignoring the other half), and now I hate all of the stories. The same thing happened with ATWT, but in reverse order. I couldn't watch it for a long, long time, but now half of the stories have me in it.

So yes, for me, this is gonna be funnnnn. I hope they just promote her to co-HW already. Methinks our Ronald may get very territorial when it comes to his goofy innovations such as Delphina, Christina Comes Home for Christmas, the Buenos Dias Cafe, and anything involving David Vickers. If Jean can take a healthy squat over his Corn Flakes, I'll be eternally grateful.

[DRW50]

Most of the stories at that time involved a cartoonish version of Carlo. I wonder if he will come back again. Then again, it was Malone that brought Carlo back, not Passanante.

That was also Blair/Patrick rutting on the floor, Dylan in a wheelchair, Todd's first return from the dead, Cassie/Kevin, Alex with a bad pregnancy pillow, Joey and Cord being entranced by Cameron/Olivia the naked woman in the woods/businesswoman at BE, Dorian writing the tell-all book about Viki's DID experiences, Asa being duped into thinking he was terminally ill, and Erika Slezak's least favorite story, Viki being hypnotized into trying to kill Kevin. Then again that can't be a lot worse than most of what Viki has had over the past decade.