AMC and OLTL Canceled!

[Khan]

But wouldn't that seriously impinge upon their airing reruns of THE DOCTORS - which I hear will happen any day now? :-D

[Vee]

There were a lot of long stretches on PC I enjoyed. When Karen Harris headwrote(?) pre-vampires, I thought it was must-see. Even some of the early supernatural stuff they did, I thought, had some innovation. By the end it was a joke. The truth is that it was slapped together by Wendy Riche to upstage Claire Labine's Heart & Soul, and it did that; they didn't really think out the actual bible or planned arcs so well. Look what became of some of the early couples and characters, like whoever it was Rib Hillis played again, and his girlfriend. Julie was a consistently mauled character as well.

It could've gone on for a long time if it had been better handled, and people like Debbi Morgan hadn't been so casually dismissed; they never even resolved what exactly happened to her, and whether or not Rachel Locke had killed her.

[You're Soaking in it]

This is a bit strange for me to even say out loud, but I would sort of like to hear Megan McTavish's response to the cancellations.

Flying in the face of pretty much insurmountable fan and critic opposition , she still seemed to perceive herself as AMC's quintissential writer... and she wrote for OLTL (if you want to call it that) for nearly two years.

Call it morbid curiousity... or call it "one for the road" ... I'd just like to hear what's running through her mind now.

[Vee]

Megan did not write OLTL. She ghostwrote for Jill Farren Phelps, who was told she could no longer headwrite herself behind the scenes. They continued this practice, albeit with perhaps more Megan, at GH, and were promptly told their bullshit could not fly at the big show.

This is in no way an exoneration of Megan McTavish, who is a soapkiller, period.

[~bl~]

I sometimes feel like the equivalent of a soap opera hoarder between recordings, books and magazines. I have way too much stuff on DVD and/or VHS including SoapNet's run of Ryan's Hope to about 1979, where there were too many cast changes to care (and SoapNet stopped running the Ryan's Hope marathon during the weekend sans ads). I barely have much in the last 2-3 years other than OLTL. While I'm typing this I am converting episodes of GH and ATWT from 1999-2000 that I've had in a closet for all this time. So I know I have things to watch for years even no more soaps are on the air.

[Khan]

The only thing running through Megan McTavish's mind is a hamster on a wheel.

And I think Jenny McCarthy's just bitter b/c she probably auditioned once for a soap and got laughed right out of the building.

[You're Soaking in it]

Wasn't it Morgan's choice to leave? And Ellen was then mis- recast with Marie-Alise Recanser?

[Vee]

The question is why Debbi chose to leave. At the time, I blamed PC's mismanagement and poor use of her character; perhaps that wasn't it, but NuEllen, horribly miscast, was equally poorly-used if not moreso.

~bl,~ I would pay for that run of RH on DVD. I'm not kidding.

[DRW50]

Yes, Ellen was recast. I think one of the reasons Debbi left was because she wanted to play a bitch, and Ellen never was that. I can't remember.

They did treat the character horribly, and in general, that happened quite a bit on PC. I still cringe sometimes at what they did to Frank Scanlon, saved only by the very underrated Jay Pickett. He was all but jacking off in a pair of Karen's panties at one point.

[Mr. Vixen]

Wel big fake breasts don't get you as far in daytime as they do in primetime!

Unless you're a certain Bensonhurst Mama on GH..

[Jonathan]

Guys, the Trent Garrett tweets are fake.

http://soapoperasource.com/amc/news/trent-garrett-not-exiting-amc-confirms-fan-club-president.html

[Vee]

It got pretty rough for poor Frank by the end; I remember his stalker period. Didn't he end the show alive and well and not evil, though? For once? I also remember the suddenly Hispanic Joe. That was baffling.

I recall that Frank also ended up becoming a frickin' superhero. I thought GL did that Marvel Comics crossover terribly but I thought they had huge balls for attempting such a big PR stunt; it was the execution that was poor. I would've tried something like that to get OLTL attention, but I would've done it the "right" wrong way. You would've had to play it as ridiculous as it would be, like something out of Kick-Ass or Super. I think no ridiculous risk is too great as long as you couple it with solid, down to earth storytelling on the rest of the canvas, and as long as you can somehow reconcile the bizarre with the everyday. Of course, that's what I would say before OLTL was cancelled.

[You're Soaking in it]

How can anyone be sure, Vee? After all, during that time, it was almost entirely plot-driven, out-of-character, and gimmicky.

For whatever it's worth, I know that McTavish was "consulting" at OLTL in early-1999... and that Agnes Nixon was back "consulting" (after cutting herself off when ABC dismissed Broderick over a year before) at AMC... There was a noticeable change in tone and story direction on AMC as well, and between that and what people at the studios were saying, that got Soap Opera Weekly poking for info.

It was actually due to the questioning that ABC finally confirmed that McTavish was out at AMC. Her return the year before was so awfully received, they held off for a few months, if I recall correctly, before they actually named her head writer of OLTL.

I do agree with you, though, Vee... She seemed to gel really well with JFP. They were both equally good at producing an awful product for OLTL.

As in, the same way Brandon Buddy's were fake?

[DRW50]

To be fair to JFP, she managed to produce an awful product at OLTL through three different writing teams.

Yes, Frank had some superpower by the end, I think. They also made him a nice guy in the last few years, which was needed. I remember that the Time in a Bottle, which was panned by the soap press, was one of the only "books" I enjoyed (for the Frank/Karen/Rhonda stuff, not Eve and Ian in past life flashbacks). I liked the Caleb stuff at first but then they had Rafe, ugh.

[marceline]

Oh man, doesn't anybody check anything anymore?