As The World Turns Discussion Thread

[Khan]

It depresses me to see Doug Marland's writing picked apart so much, lol. (Seriously, was I wrong for loving his ATWT as much as I did?)

[DRW50]

I think we all loved Marland's ATWT. It's just a chance to talk about some of the stories that we thought may not have worked. I felt like we never really got to see what Sabrina could have been. It's a testament to his talent that we're talking about this all these years later. Other than saying "That sucked," I don't know how much I have to say about a lot of what came after his passing (although there are still good moments, at least until Sheffer).

Edited August 16, 2011 by CarlD2

[Khan]

I think the only time where I had to question Marland's vision for a particular story was during the "Who Killed Carolyn Crawford?" period. Not so much because it went on for almost two years, but because it seemed as if for most of that time, the story just lacked momentum. I mean, you really had to keep notes, or you'd forget the story was still happening.

[DRW50]

I wasn't able to watch on a regular basis at this time so I don't really remember (my strongest memories of watching back then are mostly of the Aaron story, because I was a big Iva fan, Lucinda fan, Julie fan, and the Charter and only member of the Heather Rattray Fan Club).

Watching some of it back now, on Youtube, I think the story is decent, aside from a bit of a non-ending and a few too many characters. I think it works mostly because Rex Smith is so charismatic and because of the focus on core characters like Barbara and Frannie. But I can certainly see why, at the time, playing out over 2 years, it was too much for viewers.

[P.J.]

I think the analysis sounds negative. I'm sure if the same stories were airing today, they'd be pulled apart to the nth degree too. It doesn't make Marland less of a complete, multi-layered storyteller.

I'm not saying the criticisms aren't accurate or valid, but it's so hard to recapture the details of the stories so many years later. What I know is that families interacted, every action had consequences, and people had honest motivations, even if they were the stupidest decisions of their lives. I may see Marland through rose-colored glasses, but he is definitely the gold standard. The idiots now are simply gold-colored [!@#$%^&*].

Re: Carolyn Crawford....it's the one time (or the most obvious) Marland rewrote one of his stories to suit his fan base, and it was a huge mistake. Rex Smith was hardly Olivier...and if I remember correctly, wasn't there a writer's strike that played into it somehow?

Edited August 16, 2011 by P.J.

[DRW50]

I think in terms of us analyzing stories, part of it is down to watching scattered episodes on clips. For instance, until the last year, I'd only ever seen a handful of a handful of ATWT episodes from 1988 or 1989. I'd only seen a handful of 1986 or 1987. I've still only seen, recently, a handful of 1990-1992 (I was watching at the time but it was so long ago). When you watch the show that way, you become more analytical than if you are watching in real time, 5 days a week, because there isn't the same flow - for instance, if you watch an episode from May 1986 and then 3 years later you watch a new one uploaded from April 1986.

I love Marland's work, it's what got me hooked on ATWT, and I still enjoy it. Analyzing it, good and bad, makes me love it even more, because there are so many layers. And the good thing about a character like Sabrina is that she never really had a final end, so we can talk about what might have been, instead of being depressed because she was hacked to death under a Christmas tree a la Guza GH.

Edited August 16, 2011 by CarlD2

[saynotoursoap]

Carl, I do not recall the story Irna spoke of, but when I started watching World Turns regularly, she was nearing the end of her writing. The farm story may have occurred earlier. It is interesting that rural settings involving the Hughes family had been used by the soap since the very beginning and continued until the end with the Snyders.

My earliest memories of Carol and Tom place them in their own apartment. Carol worked for Lisa at the exciting Wade bookstore, center of riveting drama circa the 1970’s. Tom and Carol had a conservative approach to marriage for that era; however, Tom was more old-fashioned than Carol. Carol wanted traditional matrimony married with modern ideas of equality. She considered herself an equal partner in the relationship and decision-making. Tom was staid, and held fast to the opinion that Carol’s place was in the home, cooking and cleaning and deferring to his every wish. This created tension in the arrangement, particularly when he decided that she should not work.

The other story point, very early in the marriage, was Carol’s diagnosis of being infertile. The writers dragged that idea on for years (literally). Tom was not at all interested in having children (this was well over a decade before he found out that he had fathered Lien in Vietnam). His sole interest lay in his burgeoning law career. Every time he and Carol had a disagreement, Carol fretted that Tom secretly harbored regret at not being able to have a child with her. Quite frankly, this grew very tiresome as scene after scene over months and months and years and years saw Carol asking Tom if he were not upset over being childless, and he would reassure her to no avail.

For this reason, I did not particularly like the union. Carol and Tom were boring, despite Rita Walter being an appealing actress. I never understood why the writers did not use that plot point to generate story. For example, Laura on Love is a Many Splendored Thing was also obsessed with being barren, but the writers on that soap milked it for all it was worth. Laura was prepared to reconcile with her cheating husband Mark Elliott to give dying sister Iris’ baby a home. When Iris was cured, Laura kidnapped the child and nearly killed them both in a car crash. Then Laura and Mark adopted the demonic orphan Maria, who tried to kill Mark and pushed a miraculously pregnant Laura down the stairs causing a miscarriage. You get the picture.

Carol and Tom really did not have an interesting story until the fascinating Judith Chapman arrived as Natalie Bannon, and Carol became intrigued with Jay Stallings, a junior John Dixon in training. This is when Carol and Tom really took off, though in different directions as the young couple divorced, with Tom marrying Natalie and Carol marrying Jay. Finally, after five or so years, the Soderbergs wisely began to exploit Carol’s need to be a mother by having scheming frenemies Jay and Natalie fall into a stormy affair, with Natalie becoming pregnant with his child. Nat dangled the baby in front of Carol and Jay like a tantalizing carrot, while conniving to get every penny she could from them. Carol was also used in the Andy Dixon kidnapping story, the tot cruelly snatched while under maternal Carol’s watch, which absolutely mortified her.

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[saynotoursoap]

I would not say that it was “frustrating,” rather, it was very suspenseful. We had much healthier attention spans in those days. I am not saying that to be snarky. The conventions of serials were different. After the kitchen sink and coffee chatter of the 50s and 60s, drama shown in the 1970s moved comparatively quickly. I remember my parents feeling that it moved too quickly, in fact, and now, I feel the same way about today’s serials.

Actually, the ratings went up during this period. John raped Kim and had his accident in the summer of 1974, and Kim got amnesia in the summer of 1975. The ratings at this time went from a 9.7 to a 10.8. For that season, 74-75, World Turns was the only soap to average over a ten rating.

World Turns was criticized and satirized for being slow as molasses, but in truth, that was the secret to its success. It was almost hypnotic in its storytelling. The plot progressed very leisurely, sucking you in, and once it had you, the writers would throw in something very sensational to knock you off balance. The audience needed to see Kim suffer for cheating on her sister, but once she had paid for her sins, the writers kept piling on the disasters, which then made the audience feel sorry for her. That was part of the plan to redeem Kim’s character, and it was ingenuous.

Kim came so close to happiness, and every time, another complication arose to thwart it. She decided to leave John, and he fell over the railing in their apartment building. His injuries were real, not faked. Kim, now of good moral character, could not leave him for Dan. When she did finally muster the courage once John was healed, she lost her memory in the Centerville tornado. That was wonderful because she didn’t remember anything from the last five years. Everyone attempted to convince her that John was rotten to the core, but so many maligned him with unkind words, the efforts backfired. Kim felt sympathetic toward John, and he tricked her into believing that they were happily married. She slept with him and became pregnant with Andy. Only then did she get her memory back and realize what a louse he was. She tried desperately to phone Dan, who was ready to leave Oakdale for Bolivia since he could not have Kim. Kim left messages on Dan’s answering machine, but a vengeful Susan overheard the call and erased the tape. When Dan left without responding to Kim’s message, Susan viciously lied to Kim that Dan no longer wanted her and could not face her because he pitied her. Susan suggested that if Kim really loved him, she would write a letter telling him that she was letting him go and to have no further contact with him. This drove the audience crazy with anticipation, wondering when John and Susan’s schemes would finally be exposed.

In my opinion, this is one of the problems with today’s soaps. There is no suspense, no anticipation. The writers want to skip the quiet moments and pacing that builds characters and situations. They want to jump from one plot point to another, hitting only the high points, but that does not allow an audience to feel deeply. You need peaks and valleys in storytelling to create a natural momentum. Keeping constant action going desensitizes the audience. It makes the stories and characters appear shallow, and the audience loses its investment. Also, more often than not, the high points are usually superfluous. For example, the Centerville tornado served a very real purpose in providing a terrifying event that would block Kim’s memory and send her back to the wrong man. It was not like a 2011 soap, staged solely to bombard the viewer with CGI effects and provide a quick boost to ratings, rather than create a legitimate plot device with a real emotional aftermath.

In the case of Dan/Kim/John, getting there was more than half the fun. Once Kim and Dan were together, the Soderbergs did not know what to do with them and resorted to a ridiculous one night stand between Dan and Susan while Dan was married to Kim. So much for his character. Not really knowing what to do, they unwisely had Dan die from the same brain tumor that killed his brother. John also began to languish in story limbo without Kim. After shooting himself and framing Dan for attempted murder, John appeared to be on the road to redemption when he saved Mary and Teddy from the infamous Ellison apartment building fire, but it went nowhere. That, coupled with an influx of too many new short-term characters and diminished screen time for the Hughes family is what finally knocked the show out of the #1 spot for good.

Edited August 16, 2011 by saynotoursoap

[DRW50]

As always thank you for the tantalizing details on these stories, saynotoursoap. I sometimes think Irna must have had a soft spot for Carol, as she brought Carol back after previous writers had gotten rid of her, and Carol also represented a lot of the purity which Irna felt other young women on the show lacked. I wonder what her long term plans for Carol would have been.

So throughout the 70s was Tom just this uptight guy that reacted to other people? Did his role diminish as time went on? I know he had a story with some woman who was in jail or had been in jail or something (or maybe not) and then Barbara dumped him for James. Was this down to anything with the actor? Peter Galman seemed popular, and so did his replacement, but I haven't heard much of anything about the last Tom before Deas (what was it, Tom Tammi?).

Why was Jay written out? Was it something abrupt? This is one character I wish I could see, because the description of him sounds very different than the man I've seen in photos and interviews - singing, dancing, antique-hunting. Since I've never seen the character I just end up picturing the actor.

What did you think of Carol/Steve?

What did you think of the Lisa/Grant/Joyce stories?

[DRW50]

I also wondered why the show felt they had to burn down the Wade bookstore. Was this supposed to signify some new beginning or something? It's kind of sad, in the May 1981 episode, seeing Lisa work at what seemed to be the hospital gift shop. Nothing against hospital gift shops, but it's not exactly what I expect for Lisa.

[Mitch]

I think the Marland critiques really come as a backlash of the "Marland is genius," group, but it also comes from the fact that Marland is so good, that you actually CAN take a critical look at his work without condemning it totally as I would Sheffer, Kreizman, Weston.

Marland WAS good but he had a particular distinctive style which had it quirks..at least on ATWT...(I dislike that his characters are SO damn polite, the sex scenes dont sizzle, his tendancy to cast some pretty plain people in some roles, which is fine, ATWT was like real life, but when those plain people would become supermodels and people would rave about how beautiful they are, and of course, the tried and true homoerotic stable boy/farm hand/mechanic in tight jeans in love with a woman who was not half as pretty as they were.) Other things I do love, his focus on history, and the little quirks of characters (love how he revives the Lisa/Ellen feud, without making it a big deal, they would simply snipe at each other with no reference to the past no big scenes, they just reacted to each other as anyone would with that history) how everyone had something to do, even poor Ellen Stewart with no family in town, etc. Its almost like some of my favorite popular authors who I really really like and can read and be entertained by and I am invested enough to take a step back and critique the work. The only other soap writer I can say that about is Pam Long, who I have a love hate relationship with her work and what she did to GL.

The Jay actor was simply let go during the Dobsons, and was referred to for months as just being in the next room while Carol flirted with greasy Steve Andropolous...until they finally killed him in the silver mine cave in and his death had no impact as we didnt see him for six months. The Wade Bookstore thing was bad in a way, it was kind of like Company was to GL during the last 20 so years, always there and people converged to talk and gossip and overhear each other. Some of my earliest memories was Lisa holding a stack of books, etc. I can see them transfering the bookstore to the hospital as it would include Lisa in shenanigans at the hospital but it never panned out and the set was ugly as hell. During the youthifying of ATWT the Dobson tried their first time, they should have made the bookstore a coffee house bookstore, maybe had one of the younger characters take it over and it could have been a spot for the younger people to hang out while carrying on the tradition.

[DRW50]

That's very true about Marland's work, about being able to appreciate it.

That's very odd about Jay. Did you miss him, or did you prefer Carol with Steve (or with neither of them)?

I like the idea of trying to modernize the bookstore instead of burning down the set. You could have had a lot of scenes there, with Tom, the studious Stewarts, various spies hiding behind books, etc.

Lisa's working in some sort of corner. It was Peapack before Peapack. I think I would have enjoyed her more in a phonebooth, like the announcer on GLOW.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Y8blLm5-9E

I never can get past how they style Annie to look so old.

Edited August 16, 2011 by CarlD2

[Mitch]

Which is so weird as they were so hard trying to modernize the show, Lisa and Kim are more vital and interesting then either of the Stewart girls and they dressed both of those girls as frumps chasing after a slummed should Brad (yes, I have a hard time seeing Lisa in that cramped little bookstore and you are right, it looks like Wheeler designed the damn thing in the CBS studio storeroom she housed the goody 7-11 set..but then I could never see Lisa with a book unless its "110 ways to get your man,")

[DRW50]

The moment when Lily learns the whole truth about Aaron has been uploaded. It's very strong stuff, full of all kinds of complex emotions and drama only daytime soaps can do. I was especially impressed by Susan Marie Snyder's work.

[DRW50]

Some stunning vintage clips in this, along with more familiar scenes. This also seems to have the burning down of the Wade bookstore. I will see that store set someday, I swear...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNgOHdTir74