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Great writers, bad stories?


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1992 if I recall correctly. Marland was going to do the Frannie falls for a murder again 2.0 but changed his mind throughout the story. Darryl was married to Caroline. Caroline was murdered and the evidence pointed to Darryl. I think at the time Frannie and Darryl did get married...but Darryl had an affair with Barbara and conceived Jennifer. I hate that Darryl never returned after Jennifer's death.

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I think that's the story I always read about as one of Marland's biggest flops--either in one of the Soap Encyclopedias (not sure if it made the second edition of Schemering's in '88 or if it was in the 97 Waggert one), etc.

I prefer to chock that up as on of Passanante's stories whistling.jpg But I admit that coul dbe unfair. I DO think libidizone was... (though who knows, again Agnes does sometimes pull out the random crazy)

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ABC pulled the trigger much too quickly on Cliff and Angie's romance. Of course, people are going to protest; and of course, some are going to protest on the basis of skin color (not to mention the fact that both Cliff and Angie had been part of fabulously successful couples). But you have to stay the course. If Agnes Nixon - and no, it wasn't Agnes Nixon who wrote Cliff/Angie, it was Maggie DePriest - had bailed every time one of her stories got a little too controversial, she'd never be the legend that she is.

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There was a backlash against Slesar when he did the story where Raven was set up to believe she had committed a crime.The feeling was some characters were compromised by being part of the charade.

Raven caught Calvin kissing Didi then happily broke the news to Star that Calvin is having an affair. Calvin vowed to make Raven pay. Star returned to New York. Raven discovered that Gavin is a member of Jim's acting troupe and threw the whole company out of the Whitney Theater. Smiley concocted a plan to make Raven think that she shot and killed Jinx, Cliff and Calvin agreed to assist with Jim and Smiley's scam. After Buffy left for Palm Springs, Johnny pretended to be wealthy playboy Lance and tried to seduce Raven.

Pretending to be a jealous lover, Jinx forced her way into Buffy's penthouse and pulled a gun on Raven. Jinx faked death when the gun went off during a struggle with Raven.. Calvin "arrested" Raven for Jinx's "murder", and she was jailed at the abandoned police precinct, which had been restored to look real. Raven called Cliff and begged him to help her ....

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Yeah, the Duncan/Shannon/haunted castle story just sucked. The Frannie/Darryl story wasn't nearly as bad...even if it featured that horrid ballet sequence on the beach in Puerto Rico. Darryl and Barbara conceived Jennifer before he married Frannie.

I think the Josh-is-redeemed-and-marries-Meg story was (if not bad) not well received. Marland had a tendency to get preachy, and truly having Iva feel obligated to forgive her rapist and accept him as "family" didn't sit well with some people. I don't think there's anyway he could try and tell that story today, the way he did, on primetime, daytime or cable.

The Lily runs off to Montega to find Sierra and gets cut by revolutionaries story sucked.

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I wouldn't say this was "bad," but I think Marland's efforts to keep the Snyder farm going in the early 90's were extremely flawed. Woody, Hutch, Linc, Hannah, boring Ned Simon, annoying Debbie, markdown Lily AKA Rosanna. I liked Linc but that was because of his relationship with Connor. This all just felt warmed over, to say the least.

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It was Felicia Behr's decision to fire Peter Bergman. She also fired Ellen Wheeler and pushed out Robert Gentry, telling him that she'd love him to stay with the show but that he would never be lead in a story ever again. I think Behr wanted a tighter canvass. I think with Agnes's early 2000s run, Passanante was increasingly giving story direction. Agnes obviously wrote the Bianca coming out stuff, and the reopening of the Glamorama and Opal's conflict with Marian rang like classic Agnes. All the other strangeness (Alex/Anna, Janet's write off) I'd bet was from Passanante. Of course, that's just an educated guess, but just my take on things.

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God I hated anything to do with Mcwhatever Castle...(besides the reveal of "Hello Barbara!") What a stupid concept, to take a castle rock by rock, transport it to Oakdale and build it again rock by rock...coming complete with a ghost which somehow moved with the castle. And Carl, your right, Lilith was a freakin' hoot, killing people right and left and shipping their remains home in boxes, and provided me with my favorite Marland scene, presenting to Duncan the annoying as hell Shanon's shrunken head, complete with a faithfull copy of the actresses scraggily hair! "LASSIE" Duncan screams out and then has to dodge Lilith's bodyguards, all natives as they shoot poison darts at him. Quite a relief at the time with some of Marland's overly serious and sometimes ponderous and depressing stories.

I think Marland's duds were also ones other people would praise, like Margo gets raped, Margo goes through months and months of not knowing if she was "HIV positive," (said over and over and over) and Margo pulling the plug. Margo up until Dolan was kind of a lighthearted character, even the miscarriage wasnt enough to keep her down, but after that.. it was depressing as hell.

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I didn't mind the stories with Margo's rape and HIV scare because I thought they had believable impact on the character and had a lot of good drama for everyone involved - it did make her more dour, but I think that was down to Dolan's performance, which seemed to become more miserable with each passing year.

One story which, again, wasn't "bad," but which annoys me because I didn't think it had any real impact or purpose, was Shannon's pregnancy and miscarriage. They seemed to just be stalling for time before they reunited Duncan and Shannon and the story was so solemn and just took away the last of Shannon's humor and personality. It was certainly very well-acted but not worth the time spent on it.

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This still goes into conjecture--but Agnes seems to imply in her TVlegends interview she DID suggest that story. I think even when DePriest was there she had some story push--I actually think she did, to some extent, till the Rayfield era (as awful as Passanante was). When McTavish returned Susan Lucci gushed about how Agnes was back too--and that probably helped shape at least the early years. The sad thing you get from watching that A&E Biography on the show is no matter how strong a presence she was people still didn't take her ideas.

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