Members Khan Posted November 22, 2011 Members Share Posted November 22, 2011 (Inspired by Soapsuds' thread on Best and Worst Actors...) ALL MY CHILDREN Best EP: Jacqueline Babbin Best HW: Wisner Washam Worst EP: Jean Dadario-Burke Worst HW: Charles Pratt, Jr. ANOTHER WORLD Best EP: Paul Rauch Best HW: Harding Lemay Worst EP: Charlotte Savitz Worst HW: Michael Malone AS THE WORLD TURNS Best EP: Robert Calhoun Best HW (tie): Douglas Marland; Robert Soderberg & Edith Sommer Worst EP: John Valente Worst HW: Stephen Black & Henry Stern DAYS OF OUR LIVES Best EP: Al Rabin Best HW: Pat Falken Smith Worst EP: Tom Langan Worst HW: Tom Langan GENERAL HOSPITAL Best EP: Wendy Riche Best HW: Douglas Marland Worst EP: Jill Farren Phelps Worst HW: Megan McTavish GUIDING LIGHT Best EP: Allen Potter Best HW: Douglas Marland Worst EP: John Conboy Worst HW: Ellen Weston LOVING Best EP: Joseph Stuart Best HW: Douglas Marland Worst EP: Josie Emmerich Worst HW: Ralph Ellis ONE LIFE TO LIVE Best EP: Joseph Stuart Best HW: Gordon Russell Worst EP: Maxine Levinson Worst HW: Dena Higley SANTA BARBARA Best EP: Bridget and Jerome Dobson Best HW: Bridget and Jerome Dobson Worst EP: John Conboy Worst HW: Charles Pratt, Jr. SEARCH FOR TOMORROW Best EP: Bernie Sofronski Best HW (tie): Joyce & John William Corrington; Ralph Ellis & Eugenie Hunt Worst EP: Ellen Barrett Worst HW: Paul Avila Mayer & Stephanie Braxton Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members DaytimeFan Posted November 22, 2011 Members Share Posted November 22, 2011 Y&R BEST EP: William J Bell BEST HW: William J Bell Worst EP: Lynn Marie Latham Worst HW: Maria Arena Bell Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members RavenWhitney Posted November 22, 2011 Members Share Posted November 22, 2011 Another World Worst EP: John Valente/Terri Guarneri Worst HW: Maggie DePriest's second stint Best HW: Harding Lemay (first time) and Tom King/Craig Carlson (under Phelps) Best EP: Rauch ATWT Worst EP: John Valente Worst HW: Black/Stern tie with Jessica D. Klein Best HW: Marland Best EP: Mary Ellis Bunim because she took the show into the modern age tie with Robert Calhoun Edge of Night Best and Worst EP: Nick Nicholson (worst for hiring Lee Sheldon) Worst HW: Lee Sheldon Best HW: Slesar GH: Best and Worst EP: Monty best first time/worst second time. All of Phelps Best HW: Pat Faulken Smith Worst HW: Megan McTavish tie with Guza's last three years OLTL: Worst EP: Susan B. Horgan Worst HW: Corringtons tie with Higly Best EP and HW Valenti and Carlivati YR Best HW: Kay Alden Worst HW: Maria Bell - she has actually done more damage that Latham, but I think Latham would have gotten worse too! Worst EP: Latham for firing legacy personnel to bring in Knots Landing alum and friends and family Capitol Best HW: Peggy O'Shea Worst HW: James Lipton Guiding Light Worst EP: Michael Laibson tie see below Worst HW: Ellen Weston the worst headwriter next to Black and Stern; her GL was incomprehensible Worst EP: John Conboy for hiring his f_g h_ag, Weston Best EP: Gail Kobe Best HW: Nancy Curlee/Stephen Demorest/James Reilly and Lorraine Broderick (GL was golden for a three year period during this committee's time in office! Somerset Best HW: Slesar Worst HW: Russell Kubec Loving: Best HW: Marland AMC: Worst HW: Upchuck Pratt Best HW: Nixon/Broderick/Washam Best EP: Babbin ties with Behr DOOL: Best EP: Tom Langan/Al Rabin (Tom moderized the show and brought in a lot of talent) Worst EP: Corday for keeping Higly these last two years Best HW: Pat Faulken Smith/Bell tie with Maggie DePriest/Sheri Anderson/Leah Laiman. those were fun and solid years under each of those three ladies Worst HW: Higly, Flippin, Laemmle, Harrower, Gene Palumbo, Hogan Sheffer (DOOL has had more bad headwriters as GL and it hasn't been around as long!) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Soapsuds Posted November 22, 2011 Members Share Posted November 22, 2011 ALL MY CHILDREN Best EP: Felicia M. Behr Best HW: Wisner Washam & Lorraine Broderick Worst EP: Jean Dadario-Burke Worst HW: The poison pancake HW.....lol AS THE WORLD TURNS Best EP: Robert Calhoun..no one comes close....Mary Ellis Bunim second Best HW : Douglas Marland; Bridget & Jerome Dobson, Caroline Franz and John Saffron Mid 1983–1984 John Saffron 1984 – November 1984 Tom King and Millee Taggart November 1984 – April 1985 Cynthia Benjamin and Susan Bedsow Horgan April 1985 – November 1985 Susan Bedsow Horgan Worst EP: John Valente...he was the one who totally turned the show south with him being put EP....a fatal blow to the show. and Chris Goutman...TIE Worst HW: Stephen Black & Henry Stern...actually their ATWT was dark but not as bad as what Jean Pissy did....Jessica Klein's HW was boring.... GENERAL HOSPITAL Best EP: Wendy Riche & Gloria Monty Best HW: Claire Labine by a mile long Worst EP: Jill Farren Phelps Worst HW: Elton John...aka Bob Guza GUIDING LIGHT Best EP: Robert Calhoun..hmmmm..he was damn good Best HW: Pam Long tied with Millie Taggart..the whole James E Reilly foursome in 92 I believe. Worst EP: John Conboy & Ellen Wheeler...dont cry Ellen..... Worst HW: Ellen Weston...bitch.....lol ONE LIFE TO LIVE Best EP: Paul Rauch & Susan Bedsow Horgan Best HW: Michael Malone Worst EP: Jill Farren Phillips Worst HW: Dena Higley Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members OldGHFan Posted November 22, 2011 Members Share Posted November 22, 2011 GH Best EP - Gloria Monty (HM to Wendy Riche) Best Writer - Douglas Marland (HM to Claire Labine) Worst EP - Jill "the soap killer" Phelps Worst Writer - Bob "the hack" Guza Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members beebs Posted November 22, 2011 Members Share Posted November 22, 2011 GENERAL HOSPITAL BEST EP: Wendy Riche BEST HW: Douglas Marland WORST EP: Jill Farren Phelps WORST HW: Bob Guza DAYS OF OUR LIVES BEST EP: Al Rabin BEST HW: Willam J. Bell WORST EP: Stephen Wyman WORST HW: (tie) Jim Reilly (the second time around), Hogan Sheffer ONE LIFE TO LIVE BEST EP: Joseph Stuart BEST HW: Michael Malone WORST EP: Paul Rauch WORST HW: (tie) Dena Higley, Ron Carlivati THE YOUNG & THE RESTLESS BEST EP: Bill Bell BEST HW: Bill Bell WORST EP: Paul Rauch WORST HW: (tie) Hogan Sheffer, Maria Arena Bell Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members aMLCproduction Posted November 22, 2011 Members Share Posted November 22, 2011 Very good post. I would love to hear some of the resoning behind some of these chocies. Esp the older soap folks like Ralp Ellis and Eugene Hunt. Not to familair with their work. Colhoun from ATWT. So can we go back or start to give reasons for the chocies? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members LeClerc Posted November 22, 2011 Members Share Posted November 22, 2011 Out of curiosity what did you like about Tom King and Craig Carlson under JFP? I've never really been clear on what was DePriest and what was the King and Carlson from that era. Were they really that different? They wrote both before and after DePriest right? ALL MY CHILDREN Best EP: Jacqueline Babbin Best HW: Wisner Washam Worst EP: Jean Dadario Burke and Julie Hanan Carruthers (ultimately came down to a tie because I just spent way more time than any normal person should trying to decide between the two lol) Worst HW: Charles Pratt, Jr Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members kalbir Posted November 22, 2011 Members Share Posted November 22, 2011 Best: Bill Bell Worst: Lynn Marie Latham Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Soapsuds Posted November 22, 2011 Members Share Posted November 22, 2011 A friend on here asked me about ATWT history...the writing....here is a link ...a good read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_As_the_World_Turns_%281980-1989%29 I'm trying to remember Black and Stern years....man I sure forgot them..for obvious reasons.... I know James was back with Model Paul in toe....lol....Zoey and Mark and Mike's sister whats her name on the show....Zoey was such an awful character. Jessica Klein had that infamous church fire...she didnt last that long as HW...I think around 2 months.....lol Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members beebs Posted November 23, 2011 Members Share Posted November 23, 2011 Well with GH it's fairly self-evident. Wendy Riche's direction revitalized the show, though I still wish she'd pushed Guza out the first time and not let him back. What he's done to this show is criminal. JFP makes a trained monkey look competent. Her penchant for allowing misogynistic themes on her shows and undervaluing Genie Francis (who I always saw as vastly more important to the show than Tony Geary) bother the hell out of me, as does her complete spinelessness in the face of Frons' constant interference. One thing I WILL say in her favour is that GH today LOOKS outstanding...until the dialogue starts. Guza is again self-evident. The man thinks he's writing The Godfather, and seems to forget that the show's meant to be targeted at women, not 20 year old men. And for the last time, SONNY CORINTHOS IS NOT A HERO. Doug Marland beat Claire Labine out by a very slim margin, mostly because I saw what came before Marland and he really pushed the show in an entirely new direction that was credible, exciting, and thoughtful. He wrote in a slew of new characters without making the viewer feel like they were being bombarded by unfamiliar faces (it helps that the majority of the new characters were close relatives or children of existing characters), wrote off the dead weight, and made the teen characters believable (something the Pollocks really failed at judging by the way Laura was written pre-Marland). The story was fresher, less heavy-handed, and integrated the goings-on in the hospital better in the story than before (IMO). The only beef I have with Claire Labine is her humour always came across oddly slapstick and old fashioned, whereas in every other regard, she was a very cerebral, thoughtful writer. Her GH got a bit dark, but the story was compelling and I'd kill for the show to be even half of what it was under her pen. Days is one of those shows where I feel like it's been about 4 different shows in the course of its run. The most consistently strong producer was Al Rabin. He had a strong vision for the show, and it served the show well. Bill Bell, of course, is fantastic. His stories for this show may have aged a bit badly (Mickey's amnesia is something I think would make anyone's eyes roll nowadays) but Bell was always great at making stories that seem goofy and stilted work beautifully. Ken Corday needs to be sent packing. Much as the show is a personal/familial thing to him and he loves it dearly, the man has allowed more damage to be done to his show out of pure cluelessness than I think his mother's heart could ever bear. Between the Melaswen fiasco, allowing Dena Higley to sh*t all over everything for two years without so much as flinching, and allowing Gary Tomlin to turn the lights on so bright that any cost savings in that studio are surely being offset by the energy bill, I'm not what you'd call a fan. In addition, the man needs to step away from writing the background music. The endless one-note piano hits are starting to drive me insane. I'm not saying everything Linda did was great, but she absolutely took something that was going down the tubes fast and looked pretty much like every other soap and made it look distinct, feel different, and stand out. The stories went from being over-the-top parody of soap opera to being relatable and mature, and I don't think I've seen OLTL dare to be the kind of envelope-pushing serial that Agnes originally envisioned since then. A lot of that is thanks to Michael Malone. Much as I find his overemphasis on Todd annoying, Malone's first run did a lot of good for the show. Making Viki's DID less of a farcical plot point and more of a real, complex psychological problem. The story didn't assume the audience were stupid (as many regimes afterwards have done with Tess etc., thanks Higley for THAT little nugget), and was absolutely engaging. By this same hand, no one did more to undo Agnes' original vision than one Paul Rauch. I don't know how one man can go from doing such good on one show (AW) to doing everything so awful on every other (OLTL, SB, GL, Y&R). OLTL's ratings may have stayed high under Rauch, but he treated vets awfully, whitewashes the canvas, and was clearly of the opinion that people enjoy seeing everything under flat, blinding lighting. The show became a cartoon under his watch, and while there are a LOT of elements during his run that I enjoy (Cord/Tina, Maria, Anything involving Gabrielle and Max, the idea of 1888), a lot of his OLTL was over-the-top camp that's eyeroll-worthy in retrospect. Also, as far as I'm concenred, Ron Carlivati's writing can be good, but I've yet to see an instance where good stories of his aren't destroyed by his penchant for moustache-twirling psychos-du-jour, rampant misogyny, and too much focus on all things Todd. Basically, this show was amazing until Bill Bell wasn't writing it anymore, then it slowly became 'good', then 'alright', and now I ask people what they're thinking when they tell me they watch it. I put the blame squarely on MAB and Hogan for what I see as a complete and total break in canon to the rest of the series. Days may have pulled off changing the reality of the show's world, but Y&R's world was always far too rooted in (an albeit highly glamourized version of) reality for me to accept even a quarter of what's gone on on this show in the last three years. The last straw was definitely the whole twin doppelgangers storyline. It was the last time I was watching regularly, and it just put me off so much I don't think I could ever watch it again. And back to Paul Rauch bashing, his whole approach to lighting has undone years and years of distinctiveness on Y&R, and replaced it with OLTL circa 1988 sitcom lighting. Awful. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members DRW50 Posted November 23, 2011 Members Share Posted November 23, 2011 I can never say Rauch was worse for OLTL than JFP. Certainly in terms of treatment of some actors, I would agree, and he did move away from the essence of the show, but I thought it was still entertaining up to about 5 years into his run. JFP just demolished the show and there were only a few actors who made this slightly more bearable. She gutted just about everything and all that was left was stalling, stalling, more stalling, and endless degradation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members juniorz1 Posted November 23, 2011 Members Share Posted November 23, 2011 ALL MY CHILDREN BEST HW- (tie) Agnes Nixon & Lorraine Broderick BEST EP- (tie) Francesca James & Felicia Minei Behr WORST HW- Jean Passanante WORST EP- (tie) JULIE HANAN CARRUTHERS(!) and Jean Dedario Burke ANOTHER WORLD BEST HW- (tie) Harding Lemay & Donna Swajeski (I was alive to watch during her run & it was the best of my lifetime) BEST EP- (tie) Michael Laibson & Chris Goutman(No Rauch bc he was part of the disastrous decision to go 90 mins) WORST HW- (tie) Michael Malone & Peggy Sloane (the show went WAY off track when Swajeski left IMO) WORST EP- Charlotte Savitz AS THE WORLD TURNS BEST HW- Doug Marland....................... and Hogan Sheffer (only cuz he got me hooked- was an NBC guy during the Marland years) BEST EP- Robert Calhoun........................ and Chris Goutman WORST HW- Black & Stern WORST EP-- Felicia Minei Behr DAYS OF OUR LIVES BEST HW- (tie) Pat Falken Smith & Maggie DePriest BEST EP- (tie) Al Rabin & Gary Tomlin WORST HW- (tie) James E. Reilly & Dena Higley WORST EP- (tie) Tom Langan, Stephen Wyman, & Ken Corday ONE LIFE TO LIVE BEST HW- Michael Malone (1st stint) BEST EP- (tie) Linda Gottlieb & Jill Farren Phelps WORST HW- Dena Higley WORST EP- Paul Rauch SANTA BARBARA BEST EP- Jerome & Bridget Dobson (although I liked Jill Farren Phelps as well) BEST HW- (tie) Jerome & Bridget Dobson and Anne Howard Bailey WORST EP- Paul Rauch BY FAR. At least Conboy had the good sense to bring back the Lockridges!!!! WORST HW- Pam Long BY FAR (she makes Pratt & Conboy look like Hemingway) The Young & the Restless BEST EP- (tie) John Conboy & Bill Bell Sr. BEST HW- Bill Bell Sr. & Kay Alden WORST EP- Lynn Marie Latham WORST HW- (tie) Lynn Marie Latham & Josh Griffith (people forget how shitastic Griffith's tenure at y&r was) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members NYC123 Posted November 23, 2011 Members Share Posted November 23, 2011 All My Children Best HW: Agnes Nixon/Lorraine Broderick Worst HW: Megan McTavish Best EP: Behr Worst EP: Julie Hanan Carruthers General Hospital Best HW: Claire Labine Worst HW: Robert Guza Jr. Best EP: Wendy Riche Worst EP: Jill Farren Phelps Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members y&r_fan Posted November 23, 2011 Members Share Posted November 23, 2011 Y&R Best EP: David Shaughnessy Best HW: Bill Bell, Kay Alden, Jack Smith Worst EP: Paul Rauch Worst HW: Maria Arena Bell/Hogan Sheffer/Scott Hamner Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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