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Writers Who Weren't Given Enough Time


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I think that AMC had mostly been such a cliched, plot-driven mess since McTavish's disastrous second stint right on through Culliton. There was just something so refreshingly contemporary about Rayfield/Cascio's stint, and I found it very watchable. I mostly disliked Culliton's stint. I generally loathe umbrella storylines, and I thought Culliton's Proteus umbrella storyline was one of the worst I'd ever seen. It was so convoluted, to this day I have no clue as to what it was all about. Though to be fair, I have no idea about the behind the scenes politics that obviously forced endless rewrites. I did hear that he had some dynamic plans to turn the show around. Evidently he loved Julia Barr and was ready to position Brooke into major, major story that would've kept her front burner for years, but Frons came aboard, read his story projections, essentially said "not on your life will Julia Barr be front center," and canned him.

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I would say Claire Labine at GL, due to the interference of Paul Rauch, though I didn't see much of it - but I suspect most fans would quite disagree. All I remember of it now really is mostly the lowlights, very vague impressions - Reva and the refugees, Mark Dobies, and May Merisi or something. What was all that about? Can anyone go into detail about her tenure? I thought she'd be a perfect fit for the show, but the lesbian storyline she outlined for Olivia and Holly in a recent interview sounded extremely regressive, on par with The Children's Hour. One got the impression from her comments, vague though they were, that Holly would develop an attraction for the heterosexual Olivia .

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Her disastrous tenure at OLTL made me wary of her being on another soap. I did feel sorry for her because there was supposedly a campaign against her from the very start, and you could see that in the soap press. I haven't read them in a long time but at the time it seemed like any actor fired from the show when she started would blame her and exonerate Paul Rauch of any responsibility.

At the time the show seemed to be full of little set pieces, like Holly/Buzz/Billy, Blake's comic relief stories or Susan and Sam being involved in piracy, or Reva's lover and his weird ex wife. The bigger stories, for whatever reason, annoyed me greatly, with Danny becoming Sonny Corinthos and Edmund duping Beth and running San Cristobel. There were also very weird stories full of OTT violence, like Tony, who was supposed to be a younger leading man, beating up Selena, who had some completely pointless backstory with the Santos family. This led to Buzz spending an entire Thanksgiving episode insulting people - I think I quit for a while after that.

Somewhere in the middle of her run she was fired and then rehired, which was embarrassing for everyone.

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I vaguely remember Blake taking some sort of interest in Spaulding Enterprises while under Taggart, and I thought to myself "Lawd this will be the best thing to happen to Blake in quite awhile, excluding the Tori storyline, which was alright I suppose" Blake had not been heavily involved with any of the corporate stories on GL for quite awhile, since the early 90s. I thought it might just be the one chance to rejuvenate the character, turning her into an eventual thorn in Alex's side at the company.

Then there was a discussion between Ross and Phillip about Phillip's possible insider trading Spaulding.

Then Jude was hit by a car, and after that much of stories mentioned above or seedlings that Taggart had planted as stories were never heard again or mentioned.

Ben Reade went from an aspiring young gentleman wanting to climb his way up the ladder at Spaulding, to an escort. And his other half, Marina portrayed by Aubrey Dollar, who also had similar dreams of making it big, was thrown into Shayne's orbit, instantly recast with gay porn star...errr I mean "underwear model".

And I was soooo disappointed by the squashed Danny and Cassie pairing. IMO, PAS had chemistry with anyone but Nancy St. Alban.

Labines tenure had drove me away from the show, too inconsistent, with random scenes here and there just for laughs or scenes that played out like PSA's, and the stories that were consistent were of jump the shark quality.

IMO, Lloyd Gold who took over the show when Labine was let go was able to stabilize the show in some way and restore some sort of consistent focus with the show(one that I thought was missing since B&E departed) I liked the refocusing on Spaulding vs. Lewis, with Olivia caught in the middle, Phillip/Harley/Rick baby drama with a newly arrived Gus somehow thrown in the mix and finally the introduction of the Boudreaux family, which was a sad but admirable attempt to reinstate some diversity in Springfield.

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Wasn't Blake going to work in PR again, for Spaulding? I remember liking the idea. The Tori story had a lot of potential as it went along, but the moment where Blake, after being held captive for weeks, went to get her hair and nails done and change of clothes. That was such a painful example of how confused the writing for Blake had become over the years.

I didn't watch too often during Lloyd's time but I think stories like the time travel painting and "why am I a virgin" overshadowed some of his better work. I thought the Beth/Lorelei story was some of Beth Chamberlin's best work. It was probably the first time I didn't want to throttle her version of Beth (although I liked her with Ben Warren, long ago).

It's tough for me with the Labines and GL because I know they are good writers, but I just could not deal with GL at that point. Unlike ATWT, where I'd never been able to fully watch the show again after Valente, I did stay with GL fairly consistently from about 1995-2000 (taking some time off here and there). But their changes just alienated me.

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While I liked many small details in Nixon's brief return as co-HW, Passanate solo was so many kinds of bad, it's hard to defend much oif that era--so I kinda agree with you. I almost forgot about the Proteus mess--wasn't that started under Passanante (or maybe the several months after Passanante took off amongst rumours of being fired and the show had no HW and we were stuck with endless directrionless stuff liek Ghost Gillian and Jesse wandering around). It was all kinds of bad--I still couldn't tell you head or tails of what basicallyt he story was about, it seemed to constantly be re-written and yeah... But likeyou say, I'm sure some behind the scenes things were at fault, and it's no shock that Frons wasn't keen on a Brooke story (even McTavish seemed to want to write for Brooke a lot more than she was allowed).

I think you do have a point about Rayfield/Cascio genuinely giving it a contemporary sense. A lot of that didn't work for me, but some of it was definitely what the show needed (if that makes any sort of sense). I also liked some of the lighter stuff like Lysistrata (who I know many on here didn't)/.

"Labines tenure had drove me away from the show, too inconsistent, with random scenes here and there just for laughs or scenes that played out like PSA's, and the stories that were consistent were of jump the shark quality."

That does make em think of the Labines' period at OLTL as well...

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Proteus started with Passanante, I'm pretty sure.

I liked Culliton's version more as it led to something - Vanessa's full psychotic break, the time in the mental hospital, the reveal of Trey as her son. That was the first and last time for quite a while that I felt like stories had a start, beginning, and end, even if there were a lot of duds in there.

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I find it so hard to believe the Labine's were so bad at GL. Maybe it really wasn't the show for them, regardless of the circumstances with Paul Raunch. I know their work on OLTL wasn't a huge hit, but I was under the impression that the show was at least watchable (and from what I saw, it was). I think had they taken the offer to go to ATWT after leaving GH, it would've been a much better fit. That's the type of show they would do well.

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Your view of their OLTL work may depend on how you felt about Kelly and Tea. They both made me sick, so I could not watch huge chunks of OLTL during the Labine time.

They probably would have been best off at ATWT.

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I loved Culliton's AMC and the whole Proteus caper - sans the original incarnation of Simone, which was just a "smoldering femme fatale" to tempt Mateo, who by that point was well-established as a shitheel. (At that time the show had invested years in teasing Ryan/Hayley, who had major chemistry, but never pulled the trigger presumably because of the Consuelos' offscreen influence) Terri Ivens couldn't sell "dark vixen," the character was nothing on the page, and by the time they made her into a screwball comedienne - which did work very well - it was no surprise to me that she never got a major storyline again.

I don't think AMC ever fully recovered from Frons dismantling the Culliton/Nixon regime. There are things I enjoyed after - Angie and Jesse, the Castillos, Dixie's eventual return, Bianca and Marissa and so on - but overall I thought that was the show at its best period prior to cancellation. I also thought the Fronsified AMC of Rayfield/Cascio was absolute dung from start to finish. As goofy as Malone II was making OLTL during that time, he still knew the show; AMC at the 1 o'clock hour was like watching suits from VH1 or something with only a passing familiarity with the show try to 'make it hot.' It was just awful.

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I always wondered how much Labine came up with that wasn't approved at GL. Story ideas they liked and were trashed for example May the much maligned cigarette girl character was originally going to be a redhead. What happened with that, was she really going to be Stacy? The first week or so of Labine was really good (this was when Michelle and Danny broke up and Joie Lenz was playing the role), it felt like a different show and I enjoyed it. Then eventually it became odd. Blake becoming an ordained minister after taking a mail order class she found out about on a late night WSPR infomercial was bizarre, but during the climax they "fixed" it in such a way to say the character was written out of character. It was completely meta, like someone finally was able to sit down with Labine and tell her what was wrong (meaning Blake is not Delia), and then those comments ended up coming out of Blake's mouth.

There was a long term that was written and then not executed after the second firing. To this day I wonder what was on it.

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