OLTL Tribute Thread

[DRW50]

Marlena de Lacroix takes a hard look at OLTL as 1990 draws to a close...

The Tragedy of One Life to Live

1990 has not been a good year for One Life to Live.

If I just want to write about a bad soap, I have many choices. But OLTL must be cited now because, as it enters 1991, it's a needless tragedy. OLTL paradoxically takes soap's best onscreen and backstage talents, mixes them together, and then manages to waste them all. Take diamonds, throw them into a Cuisinart, and out comes shoe leather.

ABC's mighty and profitable battleship will probably continue to sail on after the rest of us are well into our new lives. But as OLTL stands now, it's an ever-swirling, pounding headache. It's a hurricane of energy - but it has no heart. This year, OLTL has played more like a bunch of empty story manipulations than as a drama about the feelings of human beings.

I suspect the fault somehow lies with Paul Rauch, the most gifted producer on soaps. Going back to his Another World days, I've often proclaimed his brilliance and I still believe in it. Soaps are such a rigidly formatted medium that hardly anyone dares to try something new. Rauch alone has had both the imagination and the clout to be daytime's master innovator. He was the first to try an hour soap (AW), an hour-and-a-half soap (AW) and location shoots that were so lavishly budgeted they looked like feature movies (AW and OLTL). His 1987 Viki-Goes-to-Heaven sequence was a triumph.

However, when you risk big things, you risk failing big. Too many of Rauch's recent innovative sequences have bombed big time - Buchanan City, Eterna, the stiff Austrian remote that aired in February.

Rauch does have sophisticated taste in actors. He picks the best of New York theater actors - gems like Patricia Elliott (Renee), Thom Christopher (Carlo) and Brian Tarantina (Lucky). However, his younger talent choices tend to be either big hits (Jessica Tuck as Megan, John Loprieno as Cord, Michael Palance as Dan), or big misses (Audrey Landers as Charlotte, John Viscardi as Tony, the grating Fiona Hutchinson as Gabrielle).

Yes, Karen Witter (Tina) was the best replacement actor pick of the 20th century. And flawless Erika Slezak (Viki), who was with the show long before the current regime, is exempt from any of the negativity of this review. Her talents have made Viki's storylines the only ones really worth watching this year.

However, even Slezak's best storyline - the physical handicaps resulting from Viki's stroke - was marred by OLTL's habit of repeatedly coming up with plots that insult the viewer's intelligence. Now, every soap asks us to suspend belief in reality once in a while. But OLTL always pushes it one step too far. Viki once murdered Harry O'Neill (played by Frank Converse) while in her schizophrenic identity, Niki. OK. But last (sweeps) month, Niki came out and murdered Johnny (Anthony Crivello)!

Over the last year, OLTL has committed a series of stupid plot twists. Car-crash victim Max (originally played by James DePaiva) coming back to life, first as the Elephant Man, then as (the albeit divine) Nicholas Walker; Gabrielle sleeping with him again and not realizing that he has the same body as her dead lover, Max? And another of Cord's weddings getting interrupted at the altar!

I believe OLTL comes up with these doozies, not because co-head writers Craig Carlson (formerly of Capitol) and Leah Laiman (Days of Our Lives and the late, bravura, Tribes) lack talent. Their writing gifts on OLTL appear to be both oversupervised and overrestricted. They had to devote almost all of 1990 to devising plots to explain away the departures of characters, after the original actors who played them left. (Editor's note: Carlson and Laiman are now associate head writers; Maggie De Priest is the head writer; see page 2)

The writers also met with OLTL's major problem - it has too many human set pieces; ongoing, unchanging characters like the five Buchanan men. Tina and Gabrielle must be constantly provided with the same old plots, leaving little room for character development and creativity. What's really wrong with OLTL, is that no going character is ever allowed to grow or change.

The best examples are Tina and Gabrielle. They are never allowed to grow up after their habitual bad, sometimes criminal, acts. Both are always nonsensically forgiven by "loving" relatives, no doubt so that we can be given the opportunity to sit through yet another set of their lies.

The Buchanan men are supposed to be such tough, unyielding guys that there aren't a hell of a lot of plots that can be used to show their vulnerabilities. So, whenever nothing else is happening, illegitimate sons, or sons they never knew they had, or both, are thrown at them - to an almost comic effect. I wouldn't be surprised if young Joey already has an illegitimate son waiting for him somewhere.

It's not easy to slash an old favorite like OLTL. But every day I tune into the show and I never make it all the way through the full hour. My attention (and remote control) always drift elsewhere. However, probably because I've watched OLTL half my life and i know the show has so much talent behind it, I always zap back to it in hopes that it's gotten better. But throughout a1990, all OLTL gave me was a headache.

Edited September 3, 2011 by CarlD2

[Cheap21]

WHAT! Why no love for Fiona as Gabrielle? She was popular and loved. Was she disliked by the soap press? I might understand if she was brand new but she had to have been on the show 3-4 years by that point

[DRW50]

Later on Marlena just had an offhand mention of Fiona crying every day as Gabrielle.

I don't want to say "it's snobbery", since I've done the same thing with other characters, but I think maybe these characters like Gabrielle and Tina were tough for some longtime fans to take or perhaps some in the soap press who wanted Lemay-type drama. For instance, SOD had a surprising amount of putdowns of Andrea Evans in the late 80's, with Michael Logan even devoting part of a column to his dinner party friends trashing her and her walk and so on.

Fiona did seem popular with most fans, and I've loved most of her work in the clips I've seen - I think her peak was the baby switch story. Derivative or not, she gave some beautiful performances, especially when she was on trial and when she was pleading for Michael to bring the baby back.

In a lot of ways I think Gabrielle and Tina were two of the best examples of how soaps as a woman's medium managed to continue on no matter what trends changed daytime. I love her last scene (you can't embed):

Please register in order to view this content

Edited September 3, 2011 by CarlD2

[Vee]

I'd still bring Gabby back with Max, Tina and Cord before the end. Why not?

I have heard Michael Malone say - and it may have been hyperbole - that he had been interested in having Gabrielle on the show opposite Max in the '90s, but Paul Rauch had already driven her off. I know he had planned a Max/Gabrielle/Bo/Nora quadrangle in 2003, and that would have driven the show as a frontburner story like gangbusters if it had been allowed. But it wasn't.

Edited September 4, 2011 by Vee

[DRW50]

That's interesting, about Rauch. I thought it was the new ABC Daytime head who had pushed her away; she seemed OK with Rauch when he started at GL. It's hard to keep track of all that.

I remember when they used her as an excuse to get Al off the show - she had been released from prison, offcamera, and Al went to live with her. Then 4 or 5 years later Al returned and we learned Max was a deadbeat dad...again.

I think they should have just had Luna leave town alive and Al and the twins would go with her, with Max visiting offcamera.

[Vee]

I was crushed when Luna was killed, but I also really liked Max and Maggie. I hated when she was thrown off the show in such a silly way.

[DRW50]

I didn't get to see much of Luna until I started watching clips on Youtube, but I do like most of her stories (especially her first two years or so - they seemed to lose track of her once she got married). I think her death was an example of a writer loving his creation more than the story. Only a year before Luna and Max had split so it would have made sense for her to leave Llanview, as it had never truly been her home anyway, since she'd only moved there a few years earlier.

I thought Maggie just came in at a very bad time, in terms of writing. So much of 1996 seemed to be Carlo and to a lesser degree Dorian as the Scooby Doo villains to Llanview's couples.

Edited September 4, 2011 by CarlD2

[Khan]

Didn't Maggie leave Llanview because her clown school had failed?

[DRW50]

Max sabotaged her attempts to open a clown school. Jessica was almost killed in the explosion he started. Maggie felt betrayed and never looked back.

[Cheap21]

what a dumb storyline that was. Too bad bc I liked the character of Maggie but she was riddled with silly and boring ploys

[Khan]

GO MAX!

Asking an audience to accept and understand Maggie's dream of opening a clown school was mighty presumptuous on Claire Labine's part. An art gallery or a cosmetics company, fine. But a clown school? Seriously?

Edited September 5, 2011 by Khan

[DRW50]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuO0Q4OFuYs

[DRW50]

The show had such strong and complex female characters at this time, all of whom could take you from wanting to shake them to breaking your heart within a single sentence. Where did that go?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kaz1TghTJ8

[Khan]

The '90's took that with them.

[DRW50]

More moments I hadn't seen before. Susannah tries to force Niki to face Victor's abuse, instead of shrugging it off. I really wish this type of material was allowed today, instead of Tess and Niki being "fun" characters.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1it8QW-9Yzo