Douglas Marland was actually a miracle worker on THE DOCTORS. He worked wonders with the absolute garbage he inherited, and his work there even lead to Gloria Monty's hiring him to revamp GENERAL HOSPITAL, where his writing brought the almost-cancelled series from the toilet of the ratings up to the top.

I respectfully disagree. I was a huge fan of The Doctors from 1968 until Marland became headwriter, and during his reign, I all but stopped watching. His style was completely wrong for that series. The Doctors had succeeded wonderfully with well-researched, melodramatic medical storylines and wry humor. Marland's tone was too serious and dry. He replaced sparkling, witty dialogue with his usual brand of droning, dry as toast expository dialogue. The melodramatic stories so superbly written by the Pollocks were eschewed for endless stories centering around business or half-baked plots that dragged on for months. The reason that Marland was selected for GH had nothing to do with alleged "success" at The Doctors, unless you consider alienating the veteran audience as successful. The ratings for The Doctors fell under Marland, which is why he was let go. ABC wanted him because he did manage to drive away the undesirable older demographic.

Marland's work at General Hospital was the diametric opposite of The Doctors. In fact, I consider GH his greatest success. Unlike most, in general I was indifferent to his work on GL, and while his early writing on ATWT was superb, by the time he died it had become formulaic. It was still among the best that daytime had to offer, and infinitely sueprior to any dreck televised today, but, in my opinion, Marland was not a perfect fit for every soap.

I notice you mentioned half and half for Jean Holloway. She is mostly remembered for bad writing. What do you think were the not so bad moments?