Jean Passanante

[Khan]

Because, the new sets were smaller, making it more time- and cost-efficient for the crew to take down and re-assemble them each day. With all due respect, however, Goutman's production/scenic design team could never hold a decorative candle to Lloyd Ranney Evans and Larry L. King.

[Saving ATWT]

Yeah, the soap press has serious wood for Hogan but remember the state of ATWT before him: Barbara was barely on air; the show had no focus; Hogan created Rose; gave the Stuart family a role; and got rid of lackluster characters like David Stenbeck, Julia, Camile, realBrad and a handful of others. His first two years at ATWT were good and that shouldn't be dismissed because he was a failed Dreamworks writer who was favored by the soap press.

[Khan]

Technically speaking, it was Leah Laiman who created that continuity fack-up. Aside from Rose, though, there's little to suggest another HW, good or bad, wouldn't have done those same things.

Oh, and as for giving the Stewarts a role...? Really? Because, if they were truly serious about re-integrating the Stewarts, then why did they never bring back Ellen (even for an occasional recurring role), or Betsy, or Dee, or even Jeff and Annie and their quads? I'll cut Susan some slack even though they never featured her nearly enough, but SORAS'ing Alison, giving the already-front-burner Emily even more story (that retarded her emotional growth at best; and assassinated her character at worst)...that's not what I call revitalizing a clan.

[Saving ATWT]

I actually like Laimen far more than Passanante and was able to ID Lucky Gold's work in the final months of ATWT--it was the semi-good stuff. Pretty sure he wrote the Lucinda material as well as some of the Molly material.

[Mitch]

Wasn't Rose already there....Hogan just explained who she was and how she got there (and why was it that they killed off Rose, they should have killed Lily off) ...reminds me of Kreizman being touted for creating Jonathon..aka, the yelling thing that ate Springfield, but it was Taggert that came up with the concept.

God I hated the second David Steinbeck, though what happened to the first one, he was all kinds of hot.

[Khan]

More or less. Goutman had Laiman create Rose, b/c he thought Martha Byrne would win another Emmy excel at playing a dual role. I'd still love to know whether Hogan actually thought it would be good to bring back Lisa Brown and explain how Iva gave birth to twins and didn't remember, but it certainly happened under his watch.

That's only b/c Lily had become an absolute pill by then. (The writing was doing no one any favors, lol.) IMO, she was a much bigger asset to the show than Rose, who was just "too AMC" for AS THE WORLD TURNS.

Daniel Markel? He's either selling real estate or working in the stock market. Forget which.

[Saving ATWT]

Daniel Markel was hot and could have been retained. It was Reid Hammilton who sucked! How was Rose too AMC? I like how Hogan broke from the past and recent history. When Marland died, he was phasing out the Snyder family and the show was somewhat in flux. After Marland, the long list of writers destroyed key characters and pretty much raped the show's history. By the time Hogan was hired, characters like Frannie, Andy, Iva and many others were ruined. For example, after Andy's wheel chair stunt to keep Denise, he was prety worthless as a main player.

[Khan]

I'm sure many said the same after all the [!@#$%^&*] John pulled on Kim. ;-)

In a way, Doug Marland did the same thing w/ Barbara, having the onetime heroine lead Tom to think he'd cheated on Margo w/ her. Her about-face was pretty shocking to audiences at the time, but Marland knew Colleen Zenk Pinter could do more than just play poor, suffering Barbara. Now, I don't know whether Scott DeFreitas ever could have pulled off "bad Andy," but his foolish stunt, I thought, laid the groundwork pretty well for that direction. Of course, leave it to TPTB not to explore the potential.

[Saving ATWT]

I saw Andy as so weak after the wheel chair stunt. John was always 'bad, and Barbara came off as sexy during the Tom story. Andy never had all that much sex appeal and became an uber-wimp in his efforts to keep Denise. BTW, I loved Denise and wish they had kept her and Hope around. She was the ATWT answer to Y&R Dru but, in my view, had even more potential. Like female lead potenial.

[DRW50]

Sentiment was a major part of ATWT's success. Hogan turned Oakdale into a cold, ugly place, full of callousness and sociopaths with tired one-liners.

I also don't think any of his stories unfolded all that well. I seem to remember many of them just sort of ending and feeling like stunts.

[Mitch]

It always kills me when someone says, a certain act "ruins," a soap character, if they all acted nicely there would be no soap (I am not saying murder or something stupid, I think Alan could have survived planning a hit on Jonathon, but it was the aftermath, where he never showed remorse for killing an innocent bystander that "ruined," him, plus there was a lot of good story in Alan being tortured by the guilt.) I don't think Scotty D could play bad well, but he always played self pity well, and that was exactley what he was doing in the wheelchair story and I think they pulled it off (I am in the minority, I never liked SD, he looks like the puppet in "A Year without Santa Claus," )

How was Frannie ruined? They made a huge mistake in not bringing her and Sabrina back...Sabrina could have been Barbara the New Generation and next pain in the Hughes ass...( of course, I would have made her an unrepentant, smoking, boozing slut, which would have made Marland roll in his grave) but there is nothing like a good sister/gray sister storyline to get a soap going.

[Saving ATWT]

I don't know if sentimental writing played all that well this decade. The final week of ATWT reminded me of the Walton's and that isn't something you find on TV anymore. I loved the Waltons but have this feeling that I'm in the minority. Late 1990's ATWT was cheezy and, while I loved Lyla's singing, it certainly didn't thrive in demos. Sentiment, in part, is what killed ATWT. Networks only care about demos and it would seem as if the 18-49 demo enjoys mob murder on GH to Bob and Kim on ATWT. I want my shows to live and realize we all must ajust to colder story. I don't see Hogan's Oakdale as ugly--there was a lot of love between Rose and Lily; CarJack; Lilly and Holden; Jake and Molly; Emily and Hal; Paul and Roseanna. I do think Hogan gave the show an edgy feeling with a element of emotional realism. Marland, at times, rammed 'morality' down the viewer's throat. I also like that Hogan often cheated us out of the customary happy ending. Loved the manner in which he took the unquestionable absolute of childhood innocence and made it questionable when Will killed Rose. A lot of people saw it as shock for the sake of shock but I thought it was good writing.

[DRW50]

The ABC soaps are in a different situation to P&G soaps, as CBS did not own the P&G soaps.

I never saw Hogan's ATWT as edgy because I didn't think he had the talent for that. Killing Bryant led to nothing more than Hunt Block doing bad fake crying for a day or two and bedding Carly. Julia raping Jack was nothing more than a guffaw-fest. He even managed to make turning Rose/Emily/Carly into old women into no big deal. Hogan only cared about protecting his pets, and he couldn't even do that very well.

If you take risks you need to have the talent to back it up, and I have seen little talent from Hogan over the years. It's all flash with a hollow core, and his inability to write friendships, romance, or family takes away from the cornerstones of soap. Henry Slesar could write those as well as write mysteries -- something else Hogan couldn't write.

Once Hogan stopped getting praise for hating soaps and for being so avant garde, he just seemed to flail around until he finally left. He ended up with brilliant stuff like Alison/Aaron/Lucy on the run.

Honest sentimentality is what built ATWT, IMO. That doesn't have to be Waltons. Irna Phillips had a very tough edge to her writing, but she also wrote from the heart. So did many others at ATWT over the years. I think ATWT moving away from that is what killed it. Once you have no heart, and you can't tell stories worth a crap, what do you have?

If any attempt at sentiment failed after Hogan left it was because Goutman and Passanante really don't know how to do that. Goutman often seemed bore with if not outright contemputous towards the roots of ATWT. He wanted something he saw as different, and better than a soap. Which meant that the finale weeks were clogged up with a St. Elsewhere ripoff, Prince of Tides music, loud narration, and Ciccione overload. If there had been honest attempts at sentiment then it would have worked better.

[Saving ATWT]

Yes, the ABC shows are in a different position and that is why ATWT had to work even harder to remain on air.

Sentimenal TV was basically DEAD by the middle to late 1990's--I'm not putting a value judgement on this but stating as a matter of fact. Homefront and Beauty and the Beast are the last primetime examples that come to mind. As for daytime, Bill Bell set the tone for the entire genre by about 1990 and he was far from overly sentimental. I'd dare to say the ABC shows were, for the most part, colder (your word) and even more sophisticated (for lack of a better term). I loved ATWT but, by the late 1990's was cheezt and sentimental in all the wrong ways: That niche of programming, which had long been dead in primetime, was now dead in daytime. I can remember articles about the possible cancellation of ATWT as early as 1996--that was the year Lyla left and belted out her last out of tune swan song. I loved that old school version of Oakdale but the show had to get ratings stable and demos up--people, especially those belowq 49 years of age, were not tuning in. I loved Nancy teaching little black girls to read with the help of hip hop but it was cliche, trite, overly sentimental and not to mention racially chauvinistic. Then PGP brought in Lorraine Broderick who had no handle on the show and had to create a bunch of new, uninteresting and dumpy characters--remember Georgia? For better or worse, Hogan bought ATWT another 8 years by refocusing the show and getting it great media attention. You speak of Passanante as if she breathed life back into ATWT but, for the last two years, all I saw was a dying show highlighted by silly 'specials' and baby drama. Oddly, I got the feeling that she best when writing for the gay characters (maybe because they didn't have kids). Jean's writing is overly sentimental with no substance behind the overly-emotional surface. Sentiment without substance should be cancelled.

[Khan]

Thank you. To both statements. LOL!