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How would you rate GL, ATWT, AMC finales?


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#1: ATWT--The ending tied up everything beautifully, except for the horrible treatment of Lisa. It was a brilliant idea to have Bob serve as narrator.

#2: AMC--The episode was really good until the last final (and very disappointing) moments. If AMC was really ending for good, I believe that the finale would have been perfect.

#3: GL--Even though many veterans returned, they all got bit parts (so it amounted to nothing much), and too much time was devoted to characters that were complete non-entities. GL's ending was just OK.

Going with Gray Bunny's suggestion, if AW was compared to these other three soaps, its finale would easily rank as the worst of the bunch. Regardless of the very touching final scenes, a man dressed-up in a gorilla suit (and crashing a wedding) is a completly disrespectful way to end a 35 year old soap (that was once considered the Cadillac of the industry). However, while the gorilla completely ruined the finale, AW cannot be blamed for failing to bring back their veterans, since only one month passed from the date the cancellation was announced to the date the final episode was filmed. (NBC really screwed this soap in that regard.)

Although I've forgotten the details of everything else regarding this soap's final episode (and thus cannot rank the soap's finale among the others listed above), the final scene of SFT--that Jo and Stu shared--is hands down the best scene in any soap finale. Also, while Capitol's finale has been panned by many others (which ends as the shows heroine, Sloane, is about to be killed by a firing squad), I actually like the idea of a tragic ending; given that soaps by their very nature have so many tragic storylines, ending things on a happy note just doesn't seem very realistic. (Although I concede that a long-running soap would never end in tragedy, given the huge fan outcry that would happen as a result.)

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I wouldn't say AW was the worst of these finales. I thought the gorilla was stupid fun, nothing offensive. I don't think it was "disrespectful." Cass and Lila weren't exactly June and Ward - they were quirky characters. I liked the video messages where various characters said goodbye to viewers. I liked Frankie saying goodbye to her daughter.I liked the last scene with Rachel. Could it have been better? Yes. Was it that bad? I don't think it was.

As for the other three finales:

GL - It looked cheap, yes, but I still liked the last episode. I loved the various openings they showed at the start, all the years of history. I was very touched that they brought Fletcher back for Alex, that they remembered past characters like Ben, and that we got to see some other happy endings for characters like Rick and Mindy. I liked the last montage they did, even with the cheesy song. I wish they'd shown more of Rick and Mindy, I wish the stories had been better, but I thought they did a good job with what they had. I will always remember the ending because my mother broke down watching it - so for me, it did say goodbye for the viewers who'd watched for decades. That's what I want out of a soap.

AMC - Very good. I'm glad they chose to minimize the new characters in the finale. Some nice moments with old favorites. A strong contrast between people celebrating life and JR having a complete mental breakdown. The scenes with JR and Dixie broke my heart. Honestly I was a little underwhelmed by everything with Erica/Jack, mostly because I don't see him as her soulmate and I'm not overly invested in whether she's with him or not. I know that it's part of Erica, that he is a man and she's always searching for a man to complete her, but I would have rather seen more focus on the Kane family and the return of Mark, for the finale. I loved everything with Stuart and Marian, and the writing for David and his various foes and friends had just the right layers of respect and disdain. I've never had the emotional connection to AMC that I had to the P&G soaps, but I thought it was a fitting goodbye, and I think they did a great job of having a cliffhanger and still wrapping up 40 years. My only complaint about the cliffhanger was that just hearing a shot seemed a little weak to me. I wish they'd shown the gun firing.

ATWT - What can I say? ATWT and GL were "my" shows. And yet, ATWT's last episode seemed very distant to me. I don't think Chris Goutman gave a damn about wrapping up over 50 years of history. He wanted to produce a finale that pleased him. So what did he give? Pat, overnarrated, generic goodbyes, and Prince of Tides music. What happened to the past? There was zero mention of Andy, Sabrina, Lyla, Ellen - not even a phone call. Even Emma no longer existed. It's as if people had vanished from the time stream as soon as they left Oakdale. For a show built on history, that was inexcusable. It was nice to see happy endings for Bob, Kim, Lucinda, John, Tom, Margo. I liked the scene where Emily and Susan said goodbye to Allison. I liked the goodbye between Bob and Susan. Barbara and Henry had a fun last scene. The globe looked cheap and kind of said it all about Goutman's run and his taste.

GL - B+

AMC - B

ATWT - C

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GL-After sticking through watching the show be totally destroyed throughout the decade and especially there 2003 and 2007-2009 those final weeks to see so many returns and reunions occur was nice for a change. Sure it could have been handled better but I was quite satisfied to see characters who had been thrown under the bus or annihilated such as Dylan, Bridget, Nola, Fletcher etc. return and get a happy ending. Billy and Vanessa, Ed and Holly, Josh and Reva etc. I got a complete sense of closure with GL's ending.

AMC-Today is probably the first time I've watched more than sixty seconds of AMC since 2008 when I saw Ricky Paull Goldin and Beth Ehlers had joined the cast and probably the first time I've seen a full episode of AMC in a good ten to fifteen years. I only watched out of curiosity and rumors as well as to watch the sun set on an era of soaps. I wasn't completely lost--although I don't know characters I did manage to recognize a lot of faces including Cady McClain(ATWT), Irizarry (GL and Y&R), Lindsay Hartley(Passions and Days), Daniel Cosgrove(he must be a curse! Third year with a cancelled soap in a row he was on) etc. I thought the ending was decent but I don't know enough about the recent show history to entirely judge. Loved the Scarlett O'Hara ending though, fitting perhaps for the ultimate daytime diva just before the gun shot.

ATWT- Like Carl, ATWT and GL were my shows. I never got into ABC soaps at all so I never watched again really. I remain completely mixed on this ending. ATWT deserved so much better of an ending, in fact it shouldn't have been cancelled so fast after GL's ending but per usual Goutman and Co didn't care about the show and stuck to their idiotic vision to make viewers angry and continue to tune out in droves. The only saving grace of course for ATWT's finale was the return of John, and leaving Holden and Lily left dangling.

I think I was most disappointed by AW's finale in that 1. yeah the gorilla thing was silly 2. Anne's secret should have been she was really Frankie, which would have been less bizarre than what she was keeping 3. No mention of Iris.

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Totally agree!

GL did a good finale, a far better production than any show they had done in years. It was (slightly) boring but overall was a great ending. I loved the various openings used.

ATWT looked cheap and felt rushed. The pace of the finale was off with certain character's stories moving at different speeds. Bob's office looked like hell and made the hospital look like a vet clinic. I agree that more vets should have been used for a finale built on so much history. ATWT, unlike AMC, had no future and therefore didn't need to chase demos. Also, Oakdale did not feel like a community and a party would have been a nice touch. Goutman kept it cheap, just a few contract players per scene, and I doubt PGP gave him any other option.

AMC did a great job with the party. It made Pine Valley feel connected, something that has not happened in a very long time. Also, it was nice seeing the actors so dressed and looking great. The cliffhanger was a nice touch; it just sucks that JR had to loose his marbles and exit the canvus in such a tragic and out of character manner. Finding out Dixie, along with everyone else, was still alive should have had the opposite efffect. I wasn't up for his hateful manner, either, and don't know if it felt right for a final show. Nonetheless, the new writers now have a clean slate and a way to dispose of any unwanted characters via the shooting.

GL B

AMC B-

ATWT C

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Never let it be said we always disagree.

I think JR losing it even with DIxie back just adds to some of the pain and the anger, and is a good reminder that he's never been able to count on anything.

If I could have changed anything I would have changed the homophobic part of the story, mostly just because it felt tacked on and it's too bad Bianca was reduced to yet again, being this supporting person who is there to show us how awful bigotry is. It's 2001 all over again.

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I just got through watching the AMC Finale on SoapNet and loved it. They kept the tradition and ended with a bang with an awesome cliffhanger. Cliffhangers are just the best if done right and this one was done right.

Somebody mentioned The Edge of Night which I thought was the best up to this point but I think AMC surpassed it probably b/c of the legacy the show carried.

I was able to see all three of those finales b/c I loved all three shows and I thought the best was AMC but I liked ATWT also and with the world spinning at the end. Guiding Light felt a little generic in a bad way probably b/c of the production values at the time on the show but I still liked it.

1.) All My Children

2.) As the World Turns

3.) Guiding Light

AMC raised the bar high for OLTL which has better writing right now to outdo them. I feel very good knowing that AMC will continue online and maybe on television after this finale which sells that cliffhanger even more. Due to the cliffhanger this could be a huge premiere for AMC when it returns. Not nowhere near the level of Who Shot JR? LOL! but pretty big for the people who watched it.

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I agree with both Carl and Saving ATWT. For me and a few other viewers of GL, we got miles more than what we expected from the final week. Never thought we would get the returns we had, like Fletcher, Holly, Ed, Nola, and Bridget. As a fan of Billy and Vanessa's I loved the wedding, I liked the scene with Lillian at Maureen's grave, and most importantly I enjoyed that we got happy ending for most of the characters (except for Jeffrey, which was vindicating for me). I have to add as well, the opening montage was a great as well.

AMC's finale was good, and I would rank it a grade above GL's. It was classic AMC. I was bracing myself for the gore at the end, and was satisfied that we didn't get to see anyone killed off, but left wondering. Erica's ending was perfect.

I just wish that it had been two hours, and that we would have gotten that look into the future.

ATWT's ending felt hallow. It did not feel like the end of a 50 year era, but more like a regular episode right before a new regime comes in.

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That is the best insignt I've read so far in terms of ATWT. Goutman's end of the world felt like any regular day in Oakdale or, at best, a holiday special. The episode gave no sense of closure to viewers and made me, as usual, want to tune in next week. I believe Goutman had some crazy hope of a last minute pick up or something along these lines.

AMC looked so plush. The party was just such a smart way of uniting the canvus. Back in the day, parties were a staple of daytime tv; these days, due to budget contraints, these events are over and, when a funeral happens, about five people show up with key family members MIA. ABC can never be accused of running daytime on the cheap, like PGP did.

I am so curious to see the Finale of OLTL.

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I'm still amazed anytime this subject comes up, and GL's ending is praised. Four years of limping along, (two of those utterly unwatchable), and a week featuring a double wedding where both couples basically got together off-screen; a cheap, arguably redemptive death, whose ashes ended up dumped in what looked like a duck pond without any mention of his offscreen children; and it's iconic couple reunited in the last minute and a half of a flashforward....and it's somehow golden.

Yet ATWT's which actually made some feel like they wanted to tune in tomorrow, is sub-par. I don't think some understood...that is the point. Everyone was starting new chapters in their lives. Their lives were continuing...even if we wouldn't get to see it play out. And in a way, that thought is comforting to me.

While some ending "party" scene may have brought everyone together for one last day...I think it would have ultimately felt hollow. I would rather see some meaningful family scenes than everyone get two lines in the middle of a crowd looking glammed up.

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I guess the problem for me with ATWT's ending was it just seemed like generic things happening to generic people. All it would have taken to make me happy was lines like Margo saying, "Katie, Mama just called - she can't wait to finally see her new grandbaby!" or, "Allison, Ellen couldn't be here but she wanted you to have this." That's all I needed. Instead, I just felt like Goutman was doing what he wanted, whether it suited the show or not - like devoting days of the final week to Janet having a baby. Don't get me wrong, there were things I liked - the happy endings, the closure for characters like Lucinda and Barbara, Carly and Jack having another baby - but I just didn't feel an emotional connection. I didn't feel like I knew the people.

I thought the last week of GL was pretty good. I would agree that the last year of ATWT was better than GL's last year, GL's last year was uneven, at best, but I thought they wrapped it up nicely. I didn't feel that way with ATWT. That's why I rate GL's ending above ATWT's.

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Since ATWT has always been my soap, and the best soap ever for most of its run, it pains me to say that its finale was the absolute worst. It felt like the ending for the current frontburner characters, not the ending of an iconic 54-year soap. There are a million reasons why the finale fell flat: the disgraceful treatment of 50-year vet Eileen Fulton; the disastrous coupling of Katie and Chris, when everyone knew Simon was her true soul-mate: having Jon Hensley's last scenes be with Noelle Beck, whom he had NO chemistry with, when ATWT's first Leading Actress Emmy winner Martha Byrne said she was more than willing to come back for the end; no farewell scenes between longtime screen partners, like Katie and Henry; no flashbacks at all; and no returns of people we cared about over the years (except for the wonderful Larry Bryggmann)....instead we get Iris Dumbrowski and Ralph Manzio?

It is no wonder that even Soap Opera Digest could not muster up any praise. They listed it as the most disappointing finale .

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