OLTL: Jean Passanante joins writing team

[Sylph]

You know, this is off-topic: but I still do not believe Bob Guza to be horror of horrors. Something happened there. What? Who knows. And does anyone care? I bet no. I wish We Love Soaps or Giddens or anyone interviewed him.

[DeeeDee]

+1.

[DRW50]

Early on he had someone to sit on him. Now he doesn't. Even in his big hyped 1996 run, you can see the anger towards women, the Jason worship, the disdain for the Quartermaine family, the contempt for Luke and Laura's marriage.

[Sylph]

It's not just "having someone to sit on him", that's the least important of reasons... Something else.

[Juliajms]

He didn't say characters, he said actors. It's all but inevitable that some of the actors from ATWT will show up on OLTL and the other soaps for that matter. Why wouldn't those shows want to take some of the more talented people, if they can get them?

Honestly, I've never really understood this notion of "CBS" or "ABC" actors, as if we are in the old days of Hollywood studios owning actors. The way I look at it is there are a group of people who are soap actors and if they show up on a soap on another network, why should that be a problem? I doubt OLTL has the money to purposely stuff their show with ATWT actors just for the hell of it anyway.

[Sylph]

With all this discussion... Why hasn't Frons just purchased ATWT?

[Juliajms]

Because it's failing worse than his own soaps, which are also in a free fall maybe? I do think he wishes he could get some of ATWT's audience, that's common sense, but has any soap managed to get a significant share of a canceled soaps audience in the last 15 years?

Large groups of fans don't seem to follow actors or pairings to new shows or pick up new shows when their show is canceled. I think after the way Katherine/Stephan, Jake/Taylor, Sonny/Claudia (and arguably Shelle) flopped, even Frons has figured out that trying to recreate couples does not bring in enough viewers to matter. If anything it seems to create a backlash. That's very different from hiring someone from a different show and letting them create a new character. That has worked over and over again at least from a creative standpoint.

[EricMontreal22]

OLTL is where she built her rep (as it is), as an associate to Malone and Griffith in the 90s.

I loved his run on Loving

[EricMontreal22]

I dunno but they've always been doing it--witness James Lipton's career.

[MichaelGL]

Do Hogan Sheffer, Dena Higley, Jean Passanante, Esensten and Brown, and Megan McTavish all have the same publicist? They're like the std that just won't go away.

[Y&RWorldTurner]

Sheffer, Higley, Passanante, and E&B all share James Sarnoff as an agent, who has a known reputation for recycling hack after hack on soap after soap.

[DRW50]

For me she built her rep when she thrashed AMC to pieces...

I guess Linda Gottlieb was holding all those people together when she was at OLTL. Malone, Griffith, and Passanante have done a whole lot of nothing since.

[Eric83]

What kind of stories did Jean Pissy do during her tenure at OLTL?

Her AMC stories sound HORRIBLE.

[DRW50]

She was co-head writer with Leah Laiman and Peggy Sloane.

The stories at the time were:

Marty and Dylan read Shakespeare in Angel Square and pined for each other as Marty stayed married to Dylan because Dylan was paralyzed. Blair sank her hooks into Patrick and rolled around on her apartment floor with him, not knowing Todd had returned from the dead. Todd punished her by taking Starr, he burnt down the set for Angel Square's play, etc. Blair and Todd reconciled but she was pregnant with Patrick's baby. Then Starr got sick and the baby was going to be used as a bone marrow donor.

Carlo was back from the dead. Alex and Carlo drove Asa nuts to get his money. Alex faked a pregnancy to keep Carlo. Max and Maggie scammed Carlo or tried to make him think he was dying and he put them in some sort of fake looking cave-in. Antonio went undercover to try to get Carlo and Antonio had to break up with Andy. There was a lovely scene where Andy LITERALLY clung to Antonio's leg and he dragged her with him as he walked out of the room.

Kelly and Joey dated. Dorian got a woman to run naked in the woods and entrance Joey. This same woman, Olivia, seduced Cord at BE. Dorian was using her to try to get control of BE. I can't remember if she meant for her to break up Kelly/Joey. This was when Kelly's true frosty dullness took over and when Nathan Fillion spent over a year being wasted before he left the show.

The quasi-friendship between Dorian and Viki was nuked so that Dorian could write a tell-all book about Viki.

Drew, Bo's son, pined for Kelly. Becky Lee returned to town briefly and she and Drew were con artists. Becky Lee was, inexplicably, a nasty, vicious bitch who talked like she just got kicked out of Dogpatch.

Rachel was a hooker who outed RJ and Nora's affair when the whole family went on Tad Martin's talk show. This story was dropped.

Cassie and Kevin fell in lust as they were rivals at the Banner. Carlo used a hypnotist to get Viki to go into a rage whenever she was around Kevin (where was Carlo when Tim Gibbs was around...). Viki nearly killed Kevin in her ragey rage.

Carlo was killed on a yacht, with multiple suspects. The killer was Alex, who then held Andy hostage with...a hairbrush.

[Eric83]

Was Rachel a hooker while she was an addict?

Also Nora and RJ?! Never knew about that one, was she cheating on someone while they were together?