1 hour ago, titan1978 said:

The AMC one used the format the best. But the GH one was an outlier even back then. It was kind of the theme but you could tell they wanted it to stand out.

AMC's was easily the best, and should never have been retired for that Guiding Light Powerpoint-esque thing they did near the end. It had real specificity to that show and was made with detail and love.

OLTL's was a total afterthought, terrible, and you could tell how Frons felt about the show. I think the most it had beyond a black stage and lights was a few very vague backdrops of a college campus, the Llanview U setting he briefly tried to put over for the youth set in 2004.

I would bring back FOTH today, sequence, heads and all. I don't care. That would be one of my first orders of business lol. You could use the theme unchanged tbh, the sax is back in fashion enough. Or you could re-record it. I think FOTH is timeless and apart from a few cosmetic changes to the look I wouldn't do much to it. I've always felt it was a huge mistake to go away from it, first to the dumb rock version of the theme and then to Frank's even worse series of Powerpoints than AMC's, along with whatever the hell that thing was he used to do with the opening when he first took over in 2012. This show does not need to look like Generic Brand X, and that's what the current opening is. When you watched FOTH you knew where you were, and it was home.

(I'd probably even try to get Lynn to do the eyebrow again)

Edited 1 hour ago1 hr by Vee

The last few shots ending with Mac seemed crammed in.

2 hours ago, DRW50 said:

Sometimes I forget about just how wretched everything about the mid/late '00s opening was - it is so damn cheap looking, and has the blaring horn music, the seizure-inducing strobe lighting, the shots of Geary trying to look badass (oh he's walking away while all the men [no girls allowed!] stay seated).

The 2000s opening was clearly an attempt to get people to take the show very seriously as a primetime-adjacent, action-oriented show with all the rock music, blaring horns and strobes lol. It was tryhard and overproduced. The part that cracked me up was when they had to do quick edits during the Liason era and suddenly Becky Herbst is flying at the screen like a ghost near the beginning with the leads after spending years in the background. Or the occasional subliminal shots of Alan, Monica and Bobbie.

The one that came near the end of Guza II had these weird artificial backdrops behind the actors which always made me think I was watching a Fox Kids horror-oriented show. Wyndemere behind people's profile shots looked like Big Bad Beetleborgs, and meanwhile the horn is still howling away.

2 hours ago, carolineg said:

I personally was always perplexed with Mac ending the opening.

Mac ending the opening cracked me up near the end of FOTH's run, when he was so irrelevant. You could always depend on ol' Mac at the end! But he was also a comforting presence there in his own way, and it was a keepsake of the time when, as you guys have said, he was a major male lead in the early '90s. I was glad when JFP updated it to have Luke and Laura at the end, even if everything else about the show was a mess at that time.

Now I've done at least three separate posts I should've knitted together. Oh well.

I remember Jason after Stone died and before his accident making sure Robin was doing okay, spending time with her, etc. IIRC she visits him in the hospital after the accident and she was one of the few people he was not a dick to, even if he didn’t know her yet.

I remember that WLS interview with Labine, and in recent years MVJ has contradicted the Carly part of that timeline, saying she was wholly created with Guza and the staying writers before the official credited change in HW. I tend to believe MVJ’s version of events eve no though I adore Claire Labine. Maybe the truth lies somewhere in the middle. MVJ is certainly a Guza apologist!

Just now, titan1978 said:

I remember that WLS interview with Labine, and in recent years MVJ has contradicted the Carly part of that timeline, saying she was wholly created with Guza and the staying writers before the official credited change in HW. I tend to believe MVJ’s version of events eve no though I adore Claire Labine. Maybe the truth lies somewhere in the middle. MVJ is certainly a Guza apologist!

I think it is probably somewhere in the middle. IIRC Carly's first day is one of Labine's last credited but don't quote me there. I do think the thumbnail sketch of the character came from Labine, but Mulcahey, Guza, Harris, etc. are what really fleshed her out into a person onscreen almost immediately.

Same goes with Jason/Robin in a way. Labine was clearly setting them up IMO from what I've seen, but it's Guza and co. who made them take flight to become a supercouple. I think she's right though that she left them a couple very good springboards.

23 minutes ago, Vee said:

(I'd probably even try to get Lynn to do the eyebrow again)

Rena did static version of her shot with her nails visible in the current photo montage that mirrored her old shot and I knew it was purposeful and I loved her for it.