As The World Turns Discussion Thread

[NothinButAttitude]

 

ATWT had some cheap ass sets too though. I grew tired of looking at the town square, Oakdale PD, the Snyder's kitchen, Lily's new ugly ass house, CarJack's house, Al's Diner, that one suite at the Lakeview that everyone occupied, and that kitchen set that was supposed to be WOAK. All that sh-t made me wanna weep. 

[DRW50]

 

I could say it was hollow, especially considering the gifts they still had compared to GL. It just showed me once and for all that Goutman simply did not care. He grafted empty cliches onto the canvas without bothering to do anything with them. Susan and Emily standing around talking about losing Alison, with no mention or appearance by Ellen. Forcing the Katie/Chris pairing. All the airtime spent on "Juicy Janet" and mushmouth Dusty. Bonnie leaving town alone and defeated because of Dusty's unwashed ass - and this was also Jessica's last appearance on ATWT, making it even sadder for me. The last go-round of "evil Damnei." Trying to imply that Holden and Lily might reconcile even though I don't think anyone wanted it by that point. Not even bothering to give any closure to Lisa and barely bothering to let her appear in the final episodes. The trite "kill your gays" ending for Reid that pretty much showed Goutman had no interest in setting up a future or reminders that life goes on. Making sure no gay characters had a happy ending, which made me wonder if there was some sort of resentment going on. What worked was mostly what the actors saved for me, and then the bits with Lucinda and Barbara. Lucinda is probably one of the only things i can genuinely praise about ATWT's last year, along with Barbara, and Molly's return. I guess Carly and Jack reuniting was nice but I hated what Goutman had done to Carly over the years. Even the end with Kim and Bob was made into something more basic than the actors deserved. 

 

I think the building blocks were in place but nothing was done with them, whereas just about nothing was left of GL but at least in the end there were some efforts made to remember what made it such an amazing show. 

 

It's always going to bother me. 

Edited April 8, 2017 by DRW50

[All My Shadows]

 

But this is exactly what I meant when I said that there were huge missteps. When I say the ending wasn't hollow, I'm personally meaning that what we saw - the characters, stories, etc. - wasn't thrown together as a show of pretense to conceal what had been a completely different program over its last few years. They may not have brought back Ellen to be with Susan and Emily, but Susan and Emily were there and had been there, and any viewer who'd been watching for 3 years or 30 years knew who they were. They didn't need to be "brought back" because they'd never left. TPTB's massive skimping on returns didn't leave the show with a dearth of long-standing characters at its end. ATWT was still filled with ATWT characters and families, so regardless of how crappy some of those final storylines were, had the show lived, things were always lined up for ATWT to truly be ATWT again.

I feel as though GL, on the other hand, did a great job at bringing back characters at the last minute and delving into the past, but they never should have been in a position to have to "bring back" characters like Ed and Holly, and I figure the chance of them coming back without a cancellation notice was slim to none (obvious exception being Grant Aleksander and Krista Tesreau). To me, as nice and neat as GL's ending was, it did very little to hide the fact that the show had been running aimlessly and desperately on fumes with no sense of self for years. What they did in the last few weeks could have been the show through a lot of those years.

I guess what I'm saying is that GL might have gotten the "ending" right, but ATWT had tons more going for it at its end.

[DRW50]

 

I guess to me, it did leave the show with a dearth, as the attempts to suddenly cobble together a Stewart family when they hadn't been written that way in a long time (I guess it was nice that they did at least leave Emily and Susan on the canvas which is probably what you are saying), among other issues, felt contrived to me, but I see what you're saying. For me it is worse to have the materials and do nothing with them than to not have them but try to bring them back. I guess we can agree to disagree.

[DramatistDreamer]

Is it just me, or does that ATWT screenshot look highly unflattering (I'm not even discussing GL)? Not just the long faces but the colors are washed out and the lighting is garish.

It's very telling of where the show was technically and creatively when it went off the air, IMO.

[P.J.]

 

Oh, the way Wheeler tried to sell those cheap assed sets as "reality". Oy vey...and the six weeks she spent shooting Peapack through weeds and sold that as "artistic vision".

 

No, you're not imagining the lighting issues. I guess the budget no longer covered even the barest essentials, and I remember someone saying that as the makeup lights burnt out, they weren't replaced either. Some of those scenes---good grief, there were times Maura looked more like Baby Jane than herself.

 

I think sometimes we forget how extraordinary it was to have so much of ATWT's vets intact and involved at the end. Less than ten years into Y&R's run, they'd ditched 99% of their original families/cast. GL clung to the Bauers, but I couldn't tell you another family they started out with either. Even Holly's Norris connection didn't enter until the late '60's/early 70's.

 

While we're on the subject, I'd rather have seen Mart Hulswit return as Ed than sour ol' Peter Simon.  HA!

Edited April 8, 2017 by P.J.

[Soapsuds]

Hulswit was my favorite Ed. I gave up on GL probably in the last 2 or 3 years of its historic run. I only watched bits and pieces of the finale even though a lot of fan favorites came back. It was just so badly produced and written that I couldn't watch it all.

I got tired of seeing the same sets too but nothing compared to the awful GL sets. Hands down that was the worse.

Edited April 8, 2017 by Soapsuds

[vetsoapfan]

I believe both Wheeler and Goutman were incompetent producers, for various reasons, but I do believe that Wheeler WANTED to do a good job. She just did not have the skill or the insight or the budget to do so. She NEVER should have been hired in the first place. Goutman just did not give a damn. Both producers decimated their shows, but at least ATWT had familiar and comforting faces on screen up until the very end. I appreciate TGL's attempts at bringing back some past characters in the final months, but it came across as if the show's history only went back to the early 1980s. All TGL's best decades, ironically, were ignored. And for me, I wanted the final scene to be with the Bauers in their kitchen, not Reva. Many of the characters featured on the last episode did not deserve the airtime.

[Mitch]

Agreed... I couldn't stand Wheeler's vision but I do think she actually cared, and cared a lot. I don't think she was particularly gifted or creative, and I think that no one could have saved the show in the state it was in, even if Marland came back from the grave, teamed up with Pam Long and Nancy Curlee and Caso was the producer.  The first few months of Wheeler were pretty "good" but you could tell MADD and the network were interfering and by the time MADD left the budget was even worse.

 

Gautman, could have given three shits.

[All My Shadows]

GL also got very bogged down by gimmick after gimmick after gimmick. The "Inside the Light" episodes, which weren't all bad but a misguided attempt at addressing the show's issues without really addressing the show's issues, the superhero stuff with Harley which was embarrassing, and of course Peapack. The only gimmick out of the era that I think worked, and I believe it was almost universally praised, was the 70th anniversary special with Beth Ehlers as Irna Phillips.

[tune_in_tomorrow]

I never watched GL until the end so can't really speak to it but I knew that there was SOME attempt to respect history -- at least back to the '80s so most fans who tuned in at the end could at least identify the characters. I'm one of those who thought the last several months of ATWT were a waste. I didn't need to see a turnstyle of characters or actors from the golden age but with as much time as it had to wrap things up,  there was more than enough opportunity to acknowledge the history that made it successful. Instead what I saw was a last minute scramble to *pretend* there was a nod to the past but there really wasn't. There were, what, about 15 characters (not necessarily actors) who had been on the show for more than 20 years and I saw nothing that acknowledged the past except for the reunion of Lucinda and John. Meg was a vixenish spitfire in the '80s; in 2010 she's carted off to a mental hospital because of her obsession of some man (as I recall). Dusty and Craig were entirely different characters. No revisiting of the Kim-John, Kim-Susan, Bob-Lisa battles, or even more recent Barbara-Carly conflict. Instead it was make sure Katie had a man, Luke the Gay was unhappy, and window dress the rest.

 

Sorry for the long rant. As unhappy I was with "my show" AW hooking up Rachel and Carl somewhere along the line, I appreciate what they did with their finale with only a few weeks notice. ATWT deserved better...and I wasn't even a loyal viewer.

[NothinButAttitude]

 

I still get upset how the sets looked so lavish on both GL and ATWT about 2004-05, and then went to the pits of hell around 2006 onwards. 

 

 

I wanted the same too. I wanted Holly and Ed to get the final scene in the Bauer kitchen with them saying something impactful and powerful, and shutting out the lights before the cameras panned over outside the kitchen window to a shot of the lighthouse in the distance. The end. Reva and Josh shouldn't've gotten the final scene. That was meant for the Bauers. 

 

 

Minus the gorilla, AW did have a decent finale, which was produced by Goutman and JP! I don't know what the f-ck happened to them following that b/c the final weeks of ATWT were abysmal. I don't hate the finale like most, but many of the characters' endings were horrid. 

[Khan]

Oh, there was so much I wanted to see on GL's finale...like Rick Bauer (Michael O'Leary) getting involved in a car accident, hovering between life and death, reuniting with his two moms, Leslie (Lynne Adams) and Maureen (Ellen Parker), in Heaven; and then, coming back from the nearly-dead to his grateful family and friends.

 

But anyways.  Y'all were saying about ATWT?

[P.J.]

Craig and Dusty hadn't been the "same" characters for the last ten years of the run. (And you can add Paul to that list. Once Howarth took over in '03, he became a schizophrenic crybaby.) It still pisses me off that they tried to sell a "return to his roots" crap when Block waded in like Godzilla and ate the damn show.

 

I forget when it started, but bit by bit the sets shrank. Originally, the Carjack house had a nice entryway, stairs and a large living room with a nook towards the back for a set of table and chairs. One day, the landing on the stairs went away. Then the entryway lost a foot of space. Then the turn at the top of the stairs left. Then the stairs got shortened.

 

Anyway, I swear to God, by the end, there were no stairs, just a door that supposedly led to the stairs. It was sad.

 

Nope....hated it.

[Soaplovers]

I guess I'm in the minority...but I think it was time for both AT&T and GL to deoart..both shows were pretty much gutted though at least ATWT still had decent lighting and sets...unlike the b movie look of GL.

 

If I could revive any P and God show..it would be Edge of Night.