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As The World Turns Discussion Thread


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GL brought back some favorites in the last weeks of its run..so I'm sure with Atwt it wasn't just money.

 

Sheffer was nowhere near Marland's level..and Tom/jean putting him on his level said all that needed to be said.

 

Victoria Rowell was right to rave about Susan Dansby years ago on Twitter.  She seemed intelligent and more vocal about what was wrong with soaps.

 

I wish the 4th panelist Charlotte was given more time to speak.

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Agreed with nearly all of those points. I thought the show really went downhill after Sheffer left in early 2005. Every time I tried to turn in during that period, I kept seeing mind-numbingly dull Paul-Meg-Dusty storylines, or not-so-interesting drama surrounding Carly's insta-sister Gwen, or CarJack stuck in the same never-ending cycle of break-ups and make-ups.

 

The period you mention around late 2009 was MUCH better, and significantly, that's when David Kreizman joined as co-head writer. I know that a lot of SON regulars like to blame Kreizman for GL's problems in later years, but I think he's very good at developing character-driven storylines. And developing characters generally: I'd be surprised if Reid wasn't a Kreizman creation. 

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Crazy Julia got played out. Still crazy Julia was better than BLAND Julia. Killing Bryant was shortsighted. Hogan loved killing people off. GL has no money. Yet GL brought back many fan favorites for the end. I did like the first 2 yrs of Hogan's run. Hogan was vastly overrated. He was no Doug Marland. The ending wasn't all that. Aside from Lucinda and John ending up together They'd had to kill my beautiful Reid. One of the best new character to step foot in Oakdale in years. So BLAND Chirs Hughes could have his heart. Those years were a chore to watch. 

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It was mostly just done to try to make us feel sorry for Craig, as Hunt Block awkwardly tried to force out tears and made weird trombone sounds before they had Carly give him pity sex. The whole story was gross to me, and crass. 

 

Sheffer hated soaps and it showed from start to finish. The writers who were forced into daytime due to lack of real options elsewhere and openly expressed contempt for the genre - while being cheerleaded by the likes of Michael Logan and other shills who also saw themselves as being above daytime - helped kill the genre off for good.

 

Even now we have Mr. "Jack Abbott black rabbit," who was supposed to have left the genre for greener pastures, going back and forth. Just go write more for the WWE - that's become a bad parody of a soap anyway. 

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It’s like y’all just watched a completely different show. I just can’t relate. I wish I could find a place where people loved As The World Turns. People here hate the Snyder family, they hate Martha Byrne’s Lily, Katie, Carly, Jack, the men under Marland’s tenure, NO head writer it seems, or any period of the show except the 60s and 70s (which are unavailable for viewing so they’re only memories so old that the memories of what the show was back then aren’t real) or it seems any storyline that didn’t involve Kim, Bob, John or Lucinda. So weird. Sometimes, I wonder: what do you people LIKE about the show??? Don’t bother answering. I’ve learned my lesson. Stay away from the toxic boards at Soap Opera Network. 

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After reading some comments here I might actually watch this Locher Room session. I didn't realize JP's hands were so tied by higher ups. You can blame her for listening to them but at the end of the day she probably just wanted to keep her job, and why wouldn't she. I thought quite some storyline ideas from her tenure were actually not bad, just not well executed or too fast-paced. Lucinda marrying Brian who was secretly gay should've been a large storyline spanning a much longer period of time. Hunter being Emily's son from an unused egg had great potential. I can't think of any others from the top of my head so maybe there are not that many after all

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.

 

 

I had no idea there actually as a co-headwriter from that moment on. That might definitely explain the positive changes I started to see.

 

 

Yeah, they never really developed Jade beyond being obsessed with Will and Gwen. A shame considering her being Rose's daughter gave her quite some connections.

 

I remember Hunt Block being ridiculously popular on Dutch message boards, and to be honest I can see why (but ATWT started airing here in 1990 so I'm pretty sure the Dutch people never knew the original Craig, or only briefly). .

 

 

Don't let the negatives get to you. I really enjoyed the show from 2000 until say 2004, but admittedly that's when I started watching and I think everyone has a special place in their heart for the characters that were on during the time they started watching. Sometimes I watch old episodes mainly from 2000-2002 and I think they still hold up pretty well.

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Y'all actually watched that mess? I just couldn't bear to sit there and watch Jean state the obvious--that she was basically there to collect a check. 

 

If this video reinforces anything (from all your commentary), it is that this genre is dying simply because it no longer possesses visionaries that care for the genre and don't fear fighting against TPTB to keep these shows alive and flourishing. 

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I see what you're saying, but I'm not entirely sure if I agree. If we look at the 4 soaps on the air today, half of them (Y&R, GH) do seem to be written as generically as possible, with no particular vision or voice discernible from the head writers. But B&B and DOOL do have more distinctive head writers at the helm; I personally think Brad Bell's vision is inane, and I enjoy Ron Carlivati's distinctive style quite a bit, but YMMV.

 

Also, I think that "visionary" writers can sometimes harm a show; Bob Guza had a distinctive voice, and he ended up gutting much of what was good about GH. And Claire Labine tried to impose her distinctive style on GL, and the results were nearly unwatchable. 

Edited by prefab1
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I have very strong feelings about ATWT’s last five years, but this about sums it up. There were so many tools in place for it to be a great show, but those tools were never utilized to their fullest potential, and it just made for a frustrating show. You had a solid core of important families, a decent spread of characters in all age groups, a cast that had a history working together on the show, characters that had long histories with each other, large enough openings to introduce new characters and explore new relationships, etc., but every single time it seemed like we were headed for something with substance, it was derailed for some short-term villain of the month story or side-lined for a boring A story.

 

That being said, I give a lot of credit to maybe the first two years of JP’s run because for all of the show’s faults, it was mostly not a sick or embarrassing soap. I came into ATWT after watching JER’s second run at DAYS, which became an embarrassing joke. AMC was turning into a joke as McTavish’s third run quickly soured. Later, I was deep into Ronald’s OLTL until it, too, became a sick joke. As boring and lame as JP’s ATWT became, and as far from its glory days the show had strayed, it never had dead people transported to a tropical island, never had an aborted fetus roaming its sets, and never had men running around in their underwear trying to hide bags of blood. ATWT’s “bad” was nowhere near the level of bad that I saw on other shows that I had once enjoyed watching, so it’s just hard for me to beat up on it.
 

Of course, I was a teen then, and I didn’t have the luxury of comparing the show to previous eras, but in the grand scheme of soaps in 2005-2010, ATWT was far from the worst, IMO.

Edited by All My Shadows
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So glad that I missed the most recent episode of The Locher Room as I have a very low tolerance for bull-s*hit. Hopefully Victoria Rowell can have Susan Dansby on her podcast where I can listen.  Maybe she can have Tamara Tunie too, seeing as Tunie clearly can't stand the prospect of having to go on this livestream and have to lie and make nice regarding her experience on ATWT.  

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Let's face it, had Marland lived past 1993..he would have most likely resigned from Atwt eventually.  Curlee,Long, Dobson's left the genre..and Nixon was kept out of the writing room at AMC.

 

Sheffer needed a strong EP to keep him in line...while Ron on Days needs a co head writer to balance him out.

 

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No amount of strong EPs will balance out someone who hates soaps. Sheffer bragged about how he wasn't a soap writer, and he was appalled at the basic tenets of storytelling which didn't involve "men with balls" and random characters humping. He said as much himself. He may have been a good writer in another genre, but not daytime. 

 

Marland would have left ATWT within a few years, as he had another soap planned. The main difference might have been that he could have left ATWT in a better place. ATWT was actually in good shape when P&G and John Valente began hacking it to pieces, but the year to two years before that had been terrible for the show - moribund, dispiriting, and almost daring viewers to stop watching from sheer apathy. 

Edited by DRW50
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This may be old news... but I don't remember hearing about it at the time.

 

I just watched a 2016 Robert DeNiro movie called The Comedian. He plays a former sitcom star, who's trying to break loose from his sitcom character and have a career in stand-up comedy. Anyway, towards the end of the movie he attends a "classic TV convention" and while he's at a table for meet-and-greets, guess who's at the table right next to him? "Soap Opera vixen" Colleen Zenk!

She has no lines and is only in about two quick shots, but it was pretty nice to see regardless. The movie wasn't all that great, though, in my opinion.

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