Bizarre soap scenes

[DRW50]

Claire Labine was a mess on OLTL and GL. Apparently there was big interference at GL, but still...I was horrified. I had to stop watching at some point in spring 2001. The "wacky" Blake stories, the ugly and brutally violent ending for Selena, not to mention making her so weak, and the San Cristobel crap was the end for me.

Did you know that supposedly Mary/Mae was supposed to be Nola's daughter, Stacey? That story never happened because Lisa Brown refused to return.

[DRW50]

Oh, that reminds me of another random and odd story on GL at this time, weeks and weeks devoted to the FBI raiding the Phillip/Harley home because Susan and Olivia's brother and someone else were involved in Internet piracy! I really wonder if someone at P&G or CBS was trying to push something.

[ZoeTate]

OMG the GL Internet Piracy thing - do you recall the early 20's mobster Tony and Olivia's brother Sam going to a Boy Band concert with Susan, Max, Lizzie??? And it was that horrible group with the song about masturbation - Liquid Dreams!!

[DRW50]

I had forgotten about that. I remember being a bit put off at the time by a young looking Susan having story with men who looked to be mid-20s. It was obvious that the show had no idea where they were going with any of these stories.

For GL I would also include Buzz ranting on a rooftop for an entire episode.

[EricMontreal22]

When Labine first showed up at OLTL it was in dire, dire states. I think probably the worst I have seen it (this includes the Higley era), and her first month was a joy. Lots of fun, everything seemed to be coming together... From what I remember (and I admit my late 90s OLTL knowledge has a lot of holes) that VERY quickly disappeared, despite some moments of great stuff. I think she needs someone like Avila to help control her--I don't trust her son would do that, and when she brings out a wacky animal sidekick--watch out (did her GL have one?)

[DRW50]

I always remember that era for the Patrick wig, Kelly getting a parade for killing a baby, and Mel Hayes the patron saint of Llanview. Oh, and the beginning of the Tea deification that never ends.

I mostly enjoyed the smaller stories - Hank/Carlotta, Viki's sex therapy, etc.

[foxhunter]

I think he was forced to do a rewrite. After the SSK mess they brought in Wayne Northrop again and Marlena had a husband that she completely forgot about. I seriously think JER wanted to write the absolutely worst storylines ever to punish KC. At the time i remember thinking that he must want to get the show cancelled. the WTF moments for me were when Sami/Lucas/Carrie/Austin were at the Rolling Stones concert. Just. So. Bad.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnwm8d13b_4&feature=related

skip to 9:27

[DRW50]

Austin Peck's face is hilarious. I didn't realize Carrie, Austin, and Sami all had such undying love for the Stones. More like stoned.

[JackPeyton]

didnt steve/kayla have a scene with Clay Aiken?

[All My Shadows]

Clay appeared in one of the Christmas episodes a few years ago and sung to them. It wasn't toooo bizarre, just random.

[ReddFoxx]

And the one that probably ranks as the most bizarre soap scene

Fallon gets beamed up

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ju8YH6ewoqQ

I can't figure out what the point of this was.

[~bl~]

I didn't think it was that weird that on GL, Beth and Jeffrey had sex in a Japanese restaurant as a decade earlier on the same show, Blake and Ross had sex in a Japanese restaurant.

I think a bizarre soap scene is whenever a soap opera recasts a part and half the scene is with one actor and the second half is with another. That's odd.

On Ryan's Hope, when Delia was hanging out with the ape, that was awkwardly strange.

[DRW50]

I had forgotten about the Blake/Ross scene. I'd probably call that bizarre too.

Sadly Delia and the ape was one of my favorite Delia stories.

[Michael]

On Days, there was the time Marlena willingly jumped out of a plane, then decided she was tired of wandering around lost and laid down to take a nap in the snow, only to be awakened by an axe-wielding... Smokey Robinson.

[DeliaIrisFan]

I would say there are any number of scenes that could be used to make that statement about any writer who has had a head writing soap gig in the past fifteen years or so (at the very least, at one of the ABC/P&G network/sponsor-owned shows). For my money, Labine is one of the only ones in that boat who has decades' worth of previous material that could be used to refute a statement like that. Based on that, I can only assume that she actually was being "controlled" at GL and OLTL - by people like MADD, Rauch and Phelps, as well as others much higher up on the food chain whose names we'll never know. And I have no doubt that the outcome would have been much better without that interference.

As far as I'm concerned, the lore about what Labine (with Paul Avila Mayer) accomplished at Love of Life in the '70s makes it a real tragedy that she was by all accounts not given a chance to execute her vision for GL in the 21st century. For me, the rumor that the May character was supposed to be revealed to be Nola's daughter, which I actually never heard before but does make a lot of sense, speaks volumes. But it's no surprise that the story petered out because of CBS/P&G's mistreatment of vets and Paul Rauch's godawful casting preferences.

And yes, IMO, Labine did revitalize OLTL in those first few months, only for the long-range stories not to amount to much by the end of her time there. The same could be said for every regime at the show since Disney bought ABC, except that most of the others skipped over that first part (i.e. revitalizing the show). As with GL, it seems to me like a no-brainer that Labine would have been a natural fit at OLTL, given her history. The fact that I saw more glimpses of what could have been than I did at GL makes it even sadder in some ways that it didn't pan out.

It's easy, based on the past decade or two, to put every head writer who died before 1995 on a pedestal and demonize the rest. (Except Agnes Nixon, who seems to be able to flout all WGA rules about credits and such, according to popular wisdom, although an overall critical assessment of AMC when she was last listed as head writer could definitely be used to condemn her as well.) Certainly, some of the current crop must revel in churning out the kind of garbage that daytime now strives for, if they keep jockeying for these jobs. Labine actually is the only head writer I know of who has ever said in an interview that maybe she doesn't know how to do this anymore and that she's given up.

You can agree with her on that, and you can reduce her work to the most overtly recognizable "gimmicks," particularly of her most recent stints. However, as someone who has watched her work on a daily basis, I think that there was always something for just about everyone to enjoy when she was truly steering a show, even if animal scenes and so forth weren't your cup of tea. I respect her for what I consider to be years and years of stellar work - and for staying out of the fray in recent years. Not because I think she has suddenly forgotten how to write, but because the industry has forgotten how to let writers write.