OLTL Tribute Thread

[DRW50]

February 1974 TV Radio Mirror

[saynotoursoap]

Personally, I do not feel One Life to Live struggled with writing in its early years. Considering the controversial nature of the drama and a lower station clearance, it actually performed quite well. It started off with a mid-5 rating and rose into the 6's for its second and third year. I never felt the audience rejected a tendency toward social issues on it or AMC, which actually continued the social aspect longer than OLTL. Both soaps always managed to incoroprate topical issues in an entertaining manner. If anything, it was a victim of that timeslot, which was quite competitive. OLTL went up against Edge of Night in an era which was considered Edge's best (it finished number 2 in the yearly Nielsens). Not surprisingly, when CBS moved Edge back an hour in 1972, OLTL's ratings rose into the 7's against a dying Secret Storm, and dropped again only after CBS selected its monster hit Match Game to be One Life's new competition. Many people believe that All My Children was an out of the box hit, but it was not. It debuted with lower ratings than OLTL and experienced much slower growth. The difference was that when it did take off, it was meteoric and flew much higher. Part of that was due to its own timeslot. For its first five years, AMC was broadcast at I eastern/ 12 central, which meant it faced zero network competition. The lunch hour scheduling also proved useful as it gave them a larger audience pool than a morning or afternoon soap. I really feel compelled to applaud ABC of the 70s for their patience with new programs. The network easily could have dumped both soaps when they were not instant hits. ABC could have fired Gordon Russell when he did not follow AMC's successful formula. Instead, he was allowed to experiment and create a very unique vision for OLTL which was far more adult and daring than anything seen on other soaps. I remember when Kathy Breech was playing kittenish Karen. Larry left Llanview for a medical convention or something, and Lana dropped by to visit. She wanted to know how Karen would amuse herself in Larry's absence. Karen laughed and showed her friend a stash of marijuana, and they got stoned. On any other soap, this would have been a plot point to foreshadow Karen's impending addiction to drugs, but not under Russell. It was nothing more than simple, recreational use and was written to illustrate something about Karen's character rather than to set up a specific story. This is what I loved about Gordon Russell's writing and the vision of his One Life to Live.

[DRW50]

I'd wondered if AMC more successfully hid their social issues under more of the guise of entertainment, or colorful characters (like Phoebe). Since I've never seen either show in that era, I can't say.

That scene with Lana and Karen sounds like something very rare for soaps. Do you think this was used to help lead up to Lana's death, or was it kept separate?

[BKuzak]

Wow, I've never heard of that being done on soaps before. Now a character couldn't come on a soap and get stoned unless it was a big major storyline where they end up on other drugs and then rehab. I would have loved it if they had Viki doing that during her breast cancer. Todd brings over a joint and they have a good time for themselves one night.

[BKuzak]

Does anyone else remember the original Carlotta Vega (although she didn't go by that last name) in 1994. She was a little heavy and didn't speak much english. Nora had to talk to her about Dorian's trial. then in 1995 they to flesh Carlotta out so they hired Patricia Mauceri, gave her two sons, got her away from being Dorian's maid and gave her the diner.

[SFK]

Yes, the first Carlotta is in this clip:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Wgi5JzVdQY

[EricMontreal22]

Great post, SayNoToYourSoap. You're right about ABC's patience back then (it may have helped that they were *still* seen as something of the young, upstart network--and they were wise to aim for a younger, different demo for their soaps and not directly take CBS's audience--even if articles from the 70s in soap magazines often seem to show soap fans confused by the different tone of ABC's soaps, it obviously worked.) However, they also seemed to know if they had a dud, fairly quickly--Best of Everything and A World Apart premiered a few months after AMC and were quickly canceled--Best of Everything, I believe, in less than 6months.

[DRW50]

Thanks to SFK.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzlNAeixrRQ

[Vee]

This is back when Cristian and Natalie couldn't buy airtime all year, up until his exit story and John's intro in the fall.

I always liked this cozy little cottage Viki and the kids moved into when Mitch ousted them from Llanfair. I believe it then became the home of the Llanview U "Love Crew" the following summer.

They kept teasing the Bo/Nora/Gabrielle/Max quad but never pulled the trigger. At the height of Frons's power this team was impotent re: the vets from the start. And Jen and Joey were unbearable together, particularly with the incredibly heavy-handed attempts to remodel Jen into NuMarty, right down to a motorcycle crash and Andrew and Nora giving two separate monologues all about how she was exactly like their friend Marty Saybrooke. She ruined the last real attempt to make Joey Buchanan a modern lead.

I dug Shanelle Workman as rocker girl Sarah but the story was a mess of dropped plans for Tina, C.J., etc. Nothing came of any of it even when they brought it up onscreen. By the time they threw up their hands and paired her with then-recurring bandmate Riley they were through with the character. And wow - SW's singing voice is much worse than I remember. Her entire storyline plays even worse now than it did then.

Edited March 4, 2013 by Vee

[DRW50]

I liked Cris and Natalie. It's a shame the show never did more with them.

Some stories were just too plot instead of character or the right casting (Jen/Joey/Rex), and others apparently had no concrete plot at all (Flash).

Probably the best thing I can say is they were at least trying to link all the stories and community together, ie, Al's radio broadcasts (I take it this was before he died).

[Vee]

Al as "the Voice of the Night" - which later had very strange connotations for my personal life, don't ask - was pretty much the first thing Malone and Griffith did when they came back to OLTL. On their first airdate there was his moody radio show, playing the tunes, a lot of them apparently Josh Griffith and Frank Valentini choices, as they had the heads for edgy music on staff. It was pretty nice stuff, and a very strong first three days, I remember. And NM was hamming it up with this gravelly, sexy voice, commenting in a meta way on the goings-on in Llanview, but the identity of the DJ was not revealed for some time - Marcie was infatuated with the voice on the radio but had no idea it was Al, nor did the audience for awhile. I knew instantly it was Al from the voice, but a lot of people seemed to have missed it. Al continued as the omnipresent Voice until his death. It was also supposed to be a callback to Luna and her radio show.

The sense of community was great, but the storylines Malone wrote were so, so heavy-handed. There was that stuff, which worked out well, but then things like Antonio and Jessica's re-introduction. And within minutes of Joey and Flash being tested they were being called "the priest and the punk" onscreen, I think Jen was "the party girl" - theatrical, arch stuff like that plugged into dialogue which he often got away with in the '90s with better writers but which just didn't work onscreen in 2003. It was beyond melodrama. All this got worse with the Mitch caper, the dream sequences and psychedelic fantasies of the fall and much of 2004.

And then you heard stories about Frons making them test Flash and Joey and wanting her true identity changed, then changed back, leading to the reveal that Sarah was infatuated with her cousin and Shanelle Workman having to play a scene where she said, "I figured that since we were cousins, it was okay" - it was just a disaster. They'd clearly had no other plan for Sarah/Flash than the Joey triangle, so when that flopped, she was paired with Riley the dayplayer and shuffled to the side until she was fired.

They were playing Jen with more airtime than she'd gotten even in Gary Tomlin's heyday, when he was in love with her, and Jessica Morris was dreadful. Bruce Michael Hall was made far worse by her, etc. I mean, I could go on and on about the mess of this era, and I am going on and on, because it was such a crazy quilt of madness. It wasn't that it was Dena Higley bad, but rather that it was totally insane (and also very bad in areas). Even the good stuff - their obvious love for the history and families of the show, the music, the community - was a mess. Some good ideas and a lot of horrible, pretentious-adolescent execution. But you couldn't stop watching, either out of sheer car-accident fascination (like when Blair and Dorian found another secret room beneath Llanfair and got caught in a Raiders of the Lost Ark-style collapsing trap room with poison spikes while searching for the magical Bahdra diamond, the mystical Indian source of Victor Lord's wealth and power) or because of the occasional good story or idea that would slip through that you'd hope they could execute properly.

When Al died, River with the terrible hair became "the Spirit of the Night" in his place - he had been inspired by Al. That lasted for awhile, but the actor was awful and the character was virtually nothing.

Edited March 4, 2013 by Vee

[DRW50]

I think we're the only two BMH Joey people around.

I'd forgotten there was any brief interaction with Troy and Gabrielle. I wish they'd written her as more like she was in the Rauch era, still vulnerable and a little crazy, but not as fluttery and not as weak.

[Vee]

They interacted again after Al died in the fall.

In a depression, Gabrielle began frequenting a dive bar on the outskirts of town. There she discovered Troy, who claimed he had day passes from St. Anne's, and they renewed a strange sort of friendship. She told no one, IIRC. Eventually Gabby snapped out of her funk and got engaged to Bo right before being killed on New Year's, but of course this was all done to set up Troy as a red herring in the Music Box Killer storyline. Stephen Haver (Matt Ashford's best role) had used his access to St. Anne's as a psychologist to let Troy out on the nights he killed and use him as a patsy.

The best thing they did with Gabby before Al's death was have her discover the truth about Matthew's paternity before anyone else, by having her intercept the letter from the late Sam to Nora and Bo. She agonized over it for a day or two before going to Bo and delivering the immortal Gabrielle Medina line with impeccable, teary Fiona Hutchison delivery - "little Matthew Rap-pa-port...is your son!" So it sort of ended before it began, there.

She also was kind of a meddling mom to Marcie and Al that summer just before he died, but that lasted about two seconds. She was sort of quietly meddlesome about Marcie's weight while not meaning to be mean about it.

This was shortly after the lady furies of Llanview attempted to kill Mitch - an episode or two devoted to a cabal of, IIRC, Dorian, Blair, Lindsey (who was completely nuts at the time) and a reluctant and stupid Jessica conspiring to gaslight and kill him while he was blind. There was one episode which ended with him cowering, sobbing on the carpet at Llanfair as they all stood over him. All the lunacy on OLTL aside, it was very satisfying for me since at the time AMC was running a story one hour earlier where Bianca was being raped, which turned me away from watching a full episode of AMC for many years until McTavish was fired. Later, the ladies lured him to the docks and "killed" him, or so they thought - the deed wasn't done for another month or so. But this was a great period where for a while, Blair and Dorian were constant co-conspirators, the only game in town to kill Mitch with Todd presumed dead. They were constantly lying to the cops like this episode, with Blair toting baby Jack on her knee. Blair has never been this dangerous since, and I hope they bring that back.

Edited March 4, 2013 by Vee

[BKuzak]

I'm Nathan Fillion's Joey fan. I know he won't come back because he has castle but I really haven't met a good Joey since him. Maybe the'll hire a great Joey someday for the new show and he'll be the next best thing.

Which Kevin do you like? I really liked Kevin Stapleton. he was goodlooking and seemed to be able to go up against anybody from Todd to even his mother Viki. he and Viki had their battles at The Banner and especially when he started dating Cassie. He had a lot more chemestry with Cassie than Timothy Gibbs did.

My second favorite is Dan Gauthier and he seems to be the producers favorite too because they've kept bringing him back.

[DRW50]

Kirk Geiger

Dan Gauthier

Kevin Stapleton

in that order.