ATWT

Best HW: Robert Soderberg and Edith Sommer,Douglas Marland (both times),Jerry and Bridget Dobson,Millee Taggart and Tom King,Richard Culliton and Loraiine Broderick.

Worst HW:the writers after the Dobsons :KC Collier ,Paul Roberts..etc ,Black and Stern,Jessica Klein,Leah Laiman,Jean Passanante and Hogan Sheffer

Best EP: Joe Rothenberger,Robert Calhon,Laurence Caso.

Worst EP: Mary-Ellis Bunim,John Valente,Felicia Minei Beher.Christopher Goutman

The Soderberg era is the first era when I started watching consistently. They took over after Irna Phillips and pulled the show together playing all the Hughes and Stewarts. Their succesors,Ralph Ellis and Eugenie Hunt who were good on Search for Tomorrow basically rode on the Soderberg coat tails and the show started showing its' age. Marland's first run featuring the Willows and Lisa storyline freshened the show up . The Dobson's modernized the show . They gave us Stenbeck,set up John Dixon as a villian and an antagonist for David Stewart. On the minus side they trashed Lisa and Nancy and Chris.

The show suffered with inferior writers until Taggart and King came aboard. Black and Stern with John Valente tried to disassemble Marland's second stint which was the best era of the show.

Richard Culliton started to put the show back on its' track witth the John and Lisa romance /revenge.

Anything the Sheffer,Carolyn Culliton and Passanante did to improve the show fizzeled out . Sheffer tried to reinvent the wheel with jerky story pacing and bringing back old favorites with new personalities.

A lot of people didn't like Lorraine Broderick saying her ATWT was too dark. My opinion is that one of the biggest mistakes was made when she was replaced with Laiman.

Rothenberger,Calhoun and Caso were great producers because they respected the show ,the actors and they let their writers write.

Mary- Ellis Bunim did modernize the shw but she also de-emphasized the Hughes and Lisa.

I would put FMB and CG in an iffy to worst catagory. Both of these started off as good EP's. Both were bad for Lisa. (Do you see a pattern here? I am a Lisa fan!) Goutman especially tried to be the head writer and he thought he and only he knew what was best for the show.

Oh yes......Goutman got rid of Martha Byrnne .

Doug Marland [...] 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).

God bless YouTube. Without it, I never would have had the opportunity to watch what is available of his work online. And now that I have, too, I think it outclasses what I've seen of Pat Falken Smith's GH by a lot.

Just wondering, why is everyone listing Jean Dadario Burke as one of the worst EP's on AMC?

Y&R:(Best)

HW-Bill Bell,Kay Alden

EP:Bill Bell,Ed Scott

(Worse)

HW:Maria Bell,Hogan Sheffer

EP:Paul Rauch

B&B:(Best)

HW:Bill Bell,Brad Bell (early stint)

EP: Bill Bell

(Worse)

HW:Brad Bell (Latest stint)

EP:N/A

Just wondering, why is everyone listing Jean Dadario Burke as one of the worst EP's on AMC?

Did you watch her AMC? The show was dreadful under her watch and BORING! The production values did nothing to rise above Passanante's horrid writing and she certainly didn't know how to guide the ship. Simply put,Jean Dedario Burke's AMC was a mess.

Khan, I'm curious why you find Burke a worse ep for AMC than JHC? I don't think they're too far apart, but...

Because I don't automatically accept the notion that JHC was Frons' paid yes-man where AMC was concerned. Yes, Frons put the squeeze on her like he did all his EP's; and yes, AMC's quality varied greatly (from "WTCrap?!" to "Fine, whatever") under her watch due to her inability to manage an Orange Julius let alone a long-running daytime drama series. But don't say the poor dear didn't have a vision for AMC. It's just that her vision was wrong.

I think Burke sometimes gets something of a bad wrap. Was she ineffectual creatively? ABSOLUTELY. Was she one of the worst EPs ever? Not even in the top 15.

Exactly--and she did good work at Loving/The City all things considered. I still see JHC as more useless--but to be fair she had a LOT longer to swork with

Some of Jean's AMC wasn't all that great, but I thought it was much better produced under her then under JHC. JHC changed the look and feel of Pine Valley. Neither were the best, but JHC sucked really, really bad.

I completely agree. The show LOOKED better under Jean anyway. It's funny, manty were excited/worried that she'd bring some of The City's style with her to AMC--she seemed to get the AMC job not so much because they were disappointed at Francesca James' ratings, but as a 'thank you" for doing a good job at The City which was taken off so quickly.

But Jean really did nothing as EP. I mean, sure her production values were fine, but that's because she just left everything as the previous regime had it. I can see where people would prefer that to someone who made changes to the show that sucked.

But to me. Jean did absolutely nothing as a producer. You know that cliched saying about reinventing the wheel that I've already seen posted in this thread? Well, not only did Jean do nothing to reinvent it, she didn't even have to change a tire while she was at AMC. Only difference is the writing was more sh!tastic for Jean than it was for those that worked prior to - well, at least when Passanante's work was airing. But JDB's AMC under Agnes Nixon's pen was just as boring and that's a problem.

Now I hate JHC as well and don't think she was a figurehead at all (IMO, AMC was the afterthought for Frons even moreso than OLTL). I voted them both as the worst ever, but at least I'm not seeing much defense of her here. Frankly, if anyone got shat on writing-wise, it was JHC. I actually thought JHC's production enhanced and gave McTavish's initial storylines a sense of importance that they may not have had under Burke. IMO, JHC's production in the beginning year or so of McTavish's run actually made her storylines more interesting than they actually were. I do give her credit there.

They're two different kinds of evils, JDB and JHC. Equally sh!tastic, yet unfair to compare.

Of the soaps I've followed for years and not just here and there... also, only judging on years when I was a regular viewer.

ATWT

Best HW: Marland

Worst HW: Sheffer

DAYS

Best HW: JER stint #1

Worst HW: Tom Langan

GL

Best HW: Millee Taggart (I only watched GL daily from like circa 1997-2003)

Worst HW: Ellen Weston, from what I saw, but Kreizman might have been worse.

Y&R

Best HW: Alden (didn't see the Bill Bell years)

Worst HW: MAB/Sheffer

I've also watched a lot of B&B but I was only a regular viewer during Brad Bell's tenure. I only saw Bill Bell's work on Youtube....

so um, I guess....

B&B

Best HW: Brad Bell (manic)

Worst HW: Brad Bell (depressive)

Edited November 25, 201114 yr by juppiter

B&B

Best HW: Brad Bell pre-2005/post-2009

Worst HW: Brad Bell 2005-2009

B&B

Best HW: Brad Bell pre-2005/post-2009

Worst HW: Brad Bell 2005-2009

Nah to me that is simplifying it wayyy too much, he is more spastic than that... it is more like best HW: Brad Bell for two weeks in January, worst HW: Brad Bell for the next three months, best HW: Brad Bell for a single episode that B&B submits to the emmys, worst HW: Brad Bell for next three months, etc. etc.