As The World Turns Discussion Thread

[P.J.]

So...poor little Pissy "had her hands tied", and that's why her stories were repetitive and unmotivated? Really?  Yes, Gwen and Will may have had to be front burner---but there was nothing to write for them other than becoming baby-obsessed at 20?  It was important for Brad to come back younger than Jack---even though that completely contradicted what we'd seen play out on screen, and vastly changed Jack's backstory (if one thought about it....which of course, the show wouldn't have wanted us to do....)? 

 

Making it make a little sense is a low threshold, and Pissy rarely even made that.  There are so many stories that could have made more sense, had someone in the writing room taken five minutes and thought about the "why" of things, and restrained themselves from going that one last step that made things distasteful. 

 

RE: the critical nature of the discussion. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad it's not just some rah-rah, "everything was GREAT" discussion, but sometimes it does get me down. I try and remember everyone has the right to express their opinions. But for me, Marland was a GOD, the Snyders were a breath of fresh air, and CARJACK ROCKED.  

[Vee]

Passanante was repeatedly employed as a HW because she would write as directed, not because she had a talent for it. And she wrote the poorest stories possible. I'm sure she's as talented a staff/breakdown writer as many say she is, but she has never been a good HW. Ever. Her AMC was its nadir for me, next to the Rayfield/Cascio Fronsian interregnum in early 2003.

 

@Darn reminded me of a statement somewhere once that said most HWs today keep pitching baby stories above all because the networks will almost universally approve those vs. anything else. That explains why AMC, GL, etc. turned into Mormon baby factories by the end. It's why fùcking party girl Maxie Jones on GH has two fùcking kids. It's laziness, apathy and keeping the checks coming. I thought ATWT was hollowed out and dead long before it was cancelled and Passanante is a major part of that.

Edited August 9, 2020 by Vee

[prefab1]

 

Speaking of CarJack... I know this will probably be an unpopular opinion, but while I liked both Maura West and Michael Park as actors, and I thought Carly and Jack were both well-defined characters who had a lot of chemistry together at one point, the Passanante era just made me so sick of CarJack as a couple. Most of their storylines seemed to keep falling into the same pattern: Carly does something that offends Jack's sense of morality, so he yells at her, then she yells back, then they break up for a while, then they get back together a few months later. 

 

It reminded me a lot of GL's Reva and Josh, another relationship I ultimately found toxic, with the man ultimately judging the woman and making her feel she wasn't good enough for him. That's why I'm probably the only one on these boards who preferred Reva with Jeffrey, who accepted her for exactly who she was. I actually felt the same way about Carly and Craig, and I thought Maura West had great chemistry with both Hunt Block and Jon Lindstrom, chemistry I wish the show had explored a bit more. 

[Soapsuds]

 

[Soapsuds]

 

 

[P.J.]

 

 

Well, notice I said CarJack rocked----not always the writing for them. It often felt to me like TPTB knew they could yank strings and have their fans root for them. And you're right----the story was mostly "Carly bad, Jack good....wash, rinse, repeat".  I think CBS's  emphasis on female-driven story devolved into this trope  where the man was always right, and in some ways undercut their leading men. Both Josh and Jack got to the point where they looked like Puritans who ignored their mistakes and focused on correcting their woman. (Ironic when Josh started out as a horndog chasing anything in skirts, and Jack as an undercover cop who had gotten lost in the darker side of life...) 

 

At least CarJack got to touch on Jack's high-handed tendency to moralize.  I had quit caring about Josh and Reva 10 years before the show ended.

[Soaplovers]

My problem was the make up and break up of CarJack.  I would have preferred if they broke up, co existed as parents while both found couplings that had decent development. It would have made their reconciliation even more powerful..imho.  Look at Bob and Kim..spent years apart..both had decent pairings..but by 1985, reconciled and the impact was felt in positive ways.

[DramatistDreamer]

 

ITA with this assessment. Y&R does some awful writing of their women characters. It's disappointing to sometimes read the misogynistic comments on the female characters. The characterizations drove me away from watching these shows many years ago.  Sometimes people don't understand that there is a difference between writing a sense of agency for a woman character and simply sticking her in a storyline in order to drive story for the male character. I'm not sure that many viewers take this under consideration but I do think the writing is to blame for this.  Writers rooms got stale and became enamored of too much "group-think" and some may not agree but I think there was too much "pulpy" screenwriting-tic tendencies in the writing for ATWT in the last decade or so of the show. 

 

As an aside--I've written screenplays and I've written plays and I've even written written a couple television scripts and they are NOT the same, each calls for a different way of thinking and writing. It is not easy and a lot can go wrong when it is not done with consideration.  In theater, everyone (including the writer) is prepared to have to do everything in one take, because on stage there are no second chances, which makes it an easier transition to the pace of soaps where things move at a more frenetic, less predictable pace.  I've been on stage where an actor fumbled their lines or someone did something that was not rehearsed (I once was onstage where one actor, who had supposedly practiced a slap, ended up slapping a co-star so hard, it left a mark for the rest of the first Act!) and you have to roll with the punches (or slap). I've also been in the front row (or in the back) and had to witness an actor completely garble a piece of dialogue I had written and had to stifle my reflexive reaction. In theater, there are no second takes.

Ever been on the set of a film? I have. You can literally have a director who does 12 takes of a character nodding because they want the sunlight to frame the character's face in a specific scene. And if the scene absolutely needs that shot, as long as there is sunlight, they're going to keep doing it until they get the right shot in frame. In soaps, they might do one or two shots, then move on because, no one has a movie budget for daytime (not even in the bigger-budget of the  80s).

But I digress...lol.

 

Edited August 9, 2020 by DramatistDreamer

[P.J.]

I get your point, but Bob and Kim weren't a couple when she got pregnant. While Kim had at least one successful pairing with Dan (we could argue about Nick), Bob went through a string of not-so interesting women, or so I heard. Their friendship grew, granted, all through that time. But they really weren't what I would call a couple until like....'83?

 

I do wish Carly and Jack would've "co-existed" more. Although I wouldn't really have ever wanted to see them stable or happy with anyone else.

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Edited August 9, 2020 by P.J.

[P.J.]

 

Obviously, most of the viewers are never going to understand the pressures HW's face in terms of volume and balancing a multitude of characters with issues that are beyond their control. Or even trying to walk the line between growth and keeping characters capable of stirring pots and creating the requisite drama.  

 

But Pissy seems particularly lacking in character progression, even if a story seems to be entirely created to showcase such. A character can still be a screwup, after making a mature decision . My biggest story beef with Pissy was Carly's tumor. Carly was legitimately sick. And what could've been a heart-rending story ----with no truly "bad" guy----where Jack and Katie could've simply realized  they were getting married for the wrong reasons, and ended their relationship, instead threw Carly under the bus the moment she decided lie. Jack supporting Carly while sick didn't mean they had to reunite; and Brad being attracted to Katie ( :barf ) didn't need to be propped, it could've developed naturally. 

 

None of the climaxes would've really changed. But....no. HacksawJean struck again. Ugh...still makes me furious.

 

 

[DRW50]

Other than Holden, and that Caleb recast, I liked all the Snyders from 85-93, and generally I liked Jack (mostly because of Michael Park). And yes, Doug Marland was a genius, and I have defended his work as much or more than I've criticized it (at ATWT - I am not that fond of his GL work).

 

I think - and I don't mean @P.J. when I say this - some people don't understand that people can love a show and still be very critical. I'm not going to couch my criticism of ATWT because that criticism is why I kept going back to the show all the way to the end. Irna Philips herself tore the show apart at times, and she loved it as her own child. 

 

RIP to Hogan Sheffer, but I will never accept his ATWT, I will never praise it, and I do not feel one teeny, tiny ounce of guilt for that. The world is burning - if people don't want to see that on this board, then I'm sure they have better things to do while we still can. 

[All My Shadows]

And this was a part of the bigger problem - the show did not tell many long-term stories in its last five years. No slow build-ups, no very deliberate attempts to touch on every possible emotion attached to an event, no satisfying climax (whew, calm down), no lengthy period to pick up the pieces afterward, none of that. It was an endless cycle of cartoon villains who came in and terrorized the town for a month or two before heading out and relationships that happened because...they just happened. Part of what made it frustrating for me was that this was a soap that was known, more than any of the others, for being so slow-moving, so deliberate, so life-like in how things developed.

[juppiter]

 

And this is why you guys sometimes talk about storylines and entire characters/recasts from those last five years and I don't remember them at all despite the fact that I watched until the end. They really totally wrecked the show. Only the fact that the cast was so great kept things together.

[DramatistDreamer]

Totally random thought but, have we ever discussed the fact that the show had two characters named Denise just a bit over a decade apart?

[BetterForgotten]

I think people have generally been very fair with their analysis of the soaps and their characters on this board. No one would be putting much thought into a show if they didn't love it or really loved what it once stood for. Perhaps because we love these shows so much is why we critique them. This is a message board after all, and that means everyone who contributes will add their POV into the mix. 

 

How boring would this and other threads be if we were a bunch of pollyannas who thought everything the show did was excellent and excusable?  Critiquing a show doesn't equate to not loving it, I've never understood how some could jump to that conclusion.