As The World Turns Discussion Thread

[BetterForgotten]

LOL, I always thought Hunt Block looked like he had severe constipation in those scenes (or in any emotional scenes really...) 

[Fevuh]

So, I thought Hunt was nice too look at, and he was good at playing the bad guy.  IMO he was good as Ben Warren but I never warmed up to him as Craig.  Craig was always Scott Bryce for me.

But damn I didn't know how badly Hunt cried.  I missed this totally or - I did become a part time watcher at the time due to my work schedule, and not DVRing religiously.  

What's jarring is how--- even easy stuff here in the scene --- was there no Director?  I fear there was a Director and this was a 10th try.  LOL.  My feedback would be - OK, if that's all ya got, then - do NOT go from bad cry to spoken word at the drop of a hat. He literally is supposed to be in the throes of grief and then, bam, "now that we have that out of the way..."...awful.

[BetterForgotten]

With the more time that passes, the more and more that Sheffer run feels alienating and perplexing. Even then, the show felt so foreign to itself for me. Why were so many people distracted by an increasingly dying soap press and irrelevant Daytime Emmy awards? 

I guess I can see it being appetizing to newer and casual viewers at the time, and maybe some loyal fans were excited to see things finally happening on the show after those very long/boring years in the mid/late 90’s (not to mention, Leah Laiman tanked the show pretty badly before she was fired), but upon revisiting some of it years later, so much of it hasn’t aged well (I think that’s true for so many things for that era actually, not just on soaps), and it just feels as empty and hollow as ever. 

[MarlandFan]

I never understood the Hogan Sheffer love. And bringing back Craig as a villain was a slap in the face to both the character and the audience.  

[Vee]

I understood revamping Craig and why he was chosen to shake things up. He'd come on as a villain doing nasty things, I could buy a regression in the character and I thought using him was a smart choice. I do think, especially now rewatching the glory years from the '80s, that so much of the dimension and growth of the character under Bryce and Marland was drained in the process. Not all at once, but slowly and especially later on. By 2004 or so Craig was just a cartoon. I also never, ever got the obsession with Carly, but that may be due to my having very little time for Carly for many years. (I adore Maura on GH)

I liked Hunt Block but he was a very specific type of performer. There were things he could do and things he simply couldn't or wouldn't; the mask of smarm and charm almost never slipped from the character. (Oddly enough, Block's brief run on OLTL had a similar smarmy 'villain' but one who turned out to have a heart and some pathos, right before he was brutally gunned down at the end of the last writer's strike.) Scott Bryce, by contrast, looked like a doughy suburban dad by the 2000s and seemed like he would be unthreatening, but unlike the slicker Block SB was still able to effortlessly play both a very cold villain and a complex, flawed but three-dimensional man. When he came back he hadn't missed a beat. He could give them what they wanted, the problem is the show was no longer equipped for writing Craig as anything more than a quippy cardboard villain by the time he returned, and Bryce's performance was a threat to that.

I think the early Sheffer years have a fair amount to recommend story and character-wise, but I do agree several elements have dated very poorly or come off crass in that unique 2000s way. Ultimately what always fascinated me as an outsider about Sheffer's ATWT (and what was also both one of its biggest boons and flaws at times) was that so much of it was an exercise in recreating a show, recrafting and revamping a series of legacy characters with hot new actors and plugging them in anywhere. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it was just very two-dimensional or vapid. Sometimes it was both at once. I also think a lot of the dialogue work was very smart, way above the other shows I was watching. Later on it got crass. The scene people always cite with Kim and Susan feels very 90210 to me - it's not the way Kim would talk about Susan's daughters IMO, who she helped raise. But it gets eyes and it popped onscreen. That was the ethos of too much of Sheffer's reign in the end. There was always a shallow popcorn/primetime element that dragged down some of the better stuff. And I say that as someone who liked the spa storyline.

Edited May 3, 2023 by Vee

[MichaelGL]

Sheffer would've probably flourished on a primetime soap of his own creation, like a Marc Cherry/Desperate Housewives. 

Edited May 3, 2023 by MichaelGL

[P.J.]

You and me both. And the only real reason I felt anything at Bryant's death was Carly and Emily's scene discussing the sudden unfairness of it all, which in the aftermath of 9*11 was even more poignant. Otherwise, that kid was a waste of airtime.

[P.J.]

And I understood it too---to a point. It was just too big a departure for me. Especially when Block couldn't really seem to connect emotionally with his children. And the continual dumbing down of every woman in his path to allow him to be the biggest stud/starmaker in town was grating. 

It was only when Lindstrom got the role that Craig showed the slightest inkling of humanity.

Edited May 4, 2023 by P.J.

[DRW50]

One of the reasons I was so disappointed is because, even though the writing on GL wasn't exactly great, I did think Hunt Block added some layers to his work as Ben Warren. When he showed up on ATWT with that terrible dye job, smirking and noise-making, it just felt wrong. That was what Sheffer wanted, though - a "man with balls." And the soap press of the time, full of people desperate to cling to any life raft and full of people who put their own tiresome attempts at branding through snark above all else, lapped it up.

[Fevuh]

Man after Marland the show went down fast.  That's my memory anyway.  The mid to late 90's were a vast wasteland of boring.  That's what I remember.  For that reason I despise the opening with the seasons, geese flying, tampon advertisement opening.  I hate it.  Because it matched how boring the show became and I remember trying to stick in and keep watching because for so many years there was consistency, and excitement.  

As an aside, is anyone following the husband of Martha Byrne case?  I wanna say somethin'. I have to say it's a little disappointing to see posts on her page - and it's her giving updates, but she's doing conservative talk shows, which is fine to get the message out however you can.  I guess.  What's disappointing is how people immediately jump to blaming the current President - it's just sick.  To my knowledge, it didn't happen during this Presidency, and what does that have to do with whatever happened with the husband - no matter WHO was President, and I think - stop making it political.  Either be a Martha fan and focus on that but stop making it politicial.  If you want to go that route I'd have a lot more to say, and I'd also say - you might want to do a little research and find out who you are working for.  But, I probably shouldn't even say that because if you're working, you just want to get paid, and I don't know everything about it.  Just sounds like the person who paid the person or something and is it our responsibility to always find out where money came from if ya got paid?  Dunno.  But, very political all of a sudden on her FB page.

Edited May 4, 2023 by Fevuh

[Soapsuds]

It was never explained either why Craig reverted to being evil again. It just made no sense. 

Fans rooting for SB Craig was the total opposite of what Goutman wanted.

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And out the door SB went.

Edited May 4, 2023 by Soapsuds

[DRW50]

One of the responses I remember hearing from some at the show, or magazine writers, or fans, was Craig blew up a truck, he's always been bad. He did that 20 years earlier. That's like justifying that weird, sleazy story with Margo and that Doc guy by saying Margo slept with a married James Stenbeck in the early '80s so who cares. It goes against the entire point of character growth.

 

I do think the show lost a great deal in 1993 and 1994. I still think 1995 was overall a strong year, Valente and the hacks P&G brought in just destroyed any progress.

Much as I defend those very dark, ponderous final few years under Marland, if I'm being honest, I think the show was going to hit a wall even if he had lived. But I want to believe - if he had stayed (which is a big if as he had been there for nearly a decade already and had tried for other shows), he would have kept it from falling to where it went. I also have to imagine he never would have made obvious mistakes like the handling of Shannon's return.

[wonderwoman1951]

i’ve always believed that cbs vp for daytime, barbara bloom, had a lot to do with that — martha byrne, too. not for nothing, but both were replaced by actors who worked with bloom at abc. all part of the massive influx of former abc daytime actors who invaded oakdale in the final years, mostly playing characters not connected to the core families.

Edited May 4, 2023 by wonderwoman1951

[MarlandFan]

I don't think Marland's final years were dark or ponderous at all.  Once the horrible Carolyn Crawford murder mystery finally(!) ended, the show improved. The Lily/Holden amnesia story, the reveal about Aaron's paternity, Scott's arrival, Lucinda's half-siblings, Susan and Larry's romance, the introduction of Damien Grimaldi were all great stories that injected both past history and future potential. If he had lived, Marland would definitely have tightened/fixed the Royce/Neal storyline and was also creating/preparing the Kasnoff family for a 1993/94 debut.  I do think that Marland may have become frustrated with the havoc that the OJ Simpson trial brought to soaps in 1995.  By that point, with the constant disruption of airings and the escalating cost of production, P&G may have become more "hands-on" and he might have quit.

[wonderwoman1951]

expect he would have been frustrated, but marland died in march 1993.

Edited May 4, 2023 by wonderwoman1951