HOLIDAY MIRACLE: Prospect Park Back On Track To Revive AMC and OLTL

[John]

Yes SBH wrote breakdowns from 1988-94 at OLTL then became its EP Til Oct 1996

[JackPeyton]

Marlene McPherson?

Id comment, but i dont want a threat of a lawsuit from her and her husband.

[Soaplovers]

I think it's interesting that the head-writer selection for One Life to Live seems to be vastly superior thus far to the rumored selection for All My Children. Kind of an odd reversal of fortunes considering that One Life to Live has always been viewed as an after-thought from both it's creator and ABC. Hopefully, PP will give equal attention to both shows.

[SFK]

I must admit. I was so dazzled by the DID s/l that much else going on in Llanview at the time has blurred with age. For me, DID carried the show and anything else I enjoyed was just icing. The thing is, you can't tell that story over and over again, you can only revisit and delineate/stretch a few things out, so I don't want to set myself up for disappointment if my Viki and Dorian as remembered and adored don't automatically return with SBH's presence. What I would really love to know are her reactions to the many developments on OLTL since her absence. I'm sure there's a lot of crap not to her taste. If we see a return of beautifully layered social issue stories, maybe even a visit from Miss Ellen Holly, I would probably shed a tear for soap victory.

Someone should make a pic of Niki Smith handing her red wig to Erica Kane. "Now who's the red headed stepchild, bitch?"

[Vee]

Horgan's work had its peaks and valleys, but she was working with Michael Malone and still operating off the Gottlieb/Malone example which was, at the time, the gold standard and I thought very good. She was pretty candid about her mistakes in that period in an online radio interview from a few years ago - I think someone linked it in here somewhere. And bottom line, she was part of the team that gave me some of my favorite couples and some of the best soap I ever watched. I just adored Todd and Blair, Todd and Rebecca, Max and Luna, Patrick and Marty, Antonio and Andy. I loved the DID story and Viki and Dorian and Joey and the hospital rapist and all of that. I loved it - including, yes, Angel Square. No one writer gets everything right. We could do a lot worse.

I've said this before, but I really enjoyed what I saw of Marlene McPherson's work and I think she'd be well suited to work with Agnes or someone else at AMC. She had the feel of a place like Pine Valley, and she was applying it to Salem USA. At times it felt almost like a throwback to really old school soap to me - long conversations and characters. Of course it apparently went pear shaped later on, but I missed a lot of that and when Ken Corday is involved, I trust nothing.

I wouldn't expect Ellen Holly, though. I heard she turned down another invite sometime in the last couple years, probably 2011, and was recently referring to her time at OLTL after 1970 as being like "being a fire hydrant pissed on by junkyard dogs."

[Chris B]

I wonder if the HWs had to pitch story bibles in order to book the gig, like one traditionally would. Otherwise, I don't understand how they've handled casting. I'm sure in order to meet their airdate they probably have a good idea for casting, in addition to other new actors we don't know about. There must be some story to know that you need a Cara or Angie or Clint, ya know? February will probably be a fast moving month for them.

ETA:

I realized I didn't give my thoughts on the HWs in this thread.

AMC - Whoever the Co-HW is will be make it or break it for me. I watched DAYS for MarDar's entire run and I enjoyed the character returns, lack of Daniel and the tone, but the show was very slow and poorly placed. Some stories were downright bad and they didn't seem to understand how to build a story. I understand the network probably interferred, but at the beginning at least they should've been given a fair shot and I don't think they delivered. Things happened at the wrong moment, no tension was built, characters were isolated, etc. And on a personal level I just can't stand Marlene McPherson. Her threatening a blogger with a legal notice for something so innocent was petty and childish. Nothing worse than someone who can't handle criticism. That alone is reason not to want her employed on any soap.

OLTL - They got REALLY lucky. I'm excited to see where they take this. Susie Horgan was great on ATWT. Most of her stuff is often credited to Doug Marland, but she really left him a perfect show. She did great things there and from what I hear, has already had success at OLTL. I could see this being a very surprising show. Ron Carlivati has a very distinct tone and so do Thom Racina and Horgan. It's going to be different and I'm interested in seeing HOW it will be different and how they'll interpret certain characters like Blair, Viki, Dorian and Clint.

Basically, I'm VERY excited for OLTL and I'm equally excited for AMC, but in a trainwreck way now. I hope AMC can surprise me.

[JackPeyton]

It seems like it is more thrown together than coming together, so i wouldnt be surprised by no bibles and them just taking what actors they can get. It seems like some actors were contacted before writers were even found.

[Vee]

I've been stumbling across interviews with him in all sorts of places for a decade, and I've never gotten the impression Thom Racina suffered fools. I figure if he's involved in this then they may actually be serious this time - or at least, putting on another good show of claiming to be serious in order to keep hold of the rights.

[JackPeyton]

Oh, i think it is absolutely legit and serious.

I just think it all ended up happening so fast there wasnt enough time for story bibles and hirings are going of that.

[jfung79]

I don't see it this way at all. OLTL is not being favored. Agnes Nixon is still involved and she gives AMC more time and thought. And there is nothing second-rate about the most recent Outstanding Writing Emmy Award-winning headwriter being AMC's headwriter, from an objective standpoint. There have also been more signings for AMC.

I agree with Vee based on what I've seen on YouTube of Marlene McPherson's Days that it felt like classic soap; it had longer, still dramatic but layered, understated, character-based scenes. Pacing issues, dropped stories, things happening off-screen, these are all classic signs that network interference is going on. When people say that her writing has "infected" the current team of Tomlin/Whitesell as well, to me that's a good thing -- as I've started watching in the past week or so leading up to the 12,000th episode, Days feels like a good old character-based, grounded, family/community-centered, realistic, romantic, hopeful Procter and Gamble-style soap, in the best possible sense of that, with a lot of youthful energy and very good younger actors too. I think that P&G feel is more down to Lorraine Broderick, and to the scriptwriters practically all being P&G alums, rather than Tomlin/Whitesell or any lingering influence from the previous headwriting regime, though. It may also be what Ken Corday wants to do with Days now (has he given any recent interviews like that?), which I for one welcome. It's what I look for in a soap and it's far from boring. I'm thrilled that I no longer see Days as that silly plot-oriented soap with clunky dialogue and over the top acting.

[Vee]

Melissa Salmons from OLTL is also at DAYS now. I could hear the better half of that old OLTL Carlivati dialogue team's particular type of writing in the scenes with Kristen and John a week or two ago, and I think they're better for it.

[Chris B]

I don't think anyone is saying OLTL is being favored, but the way it's working out looks better on paper for OLTL than it does for AMC. Yes Marlene McPherson won an Emmy for Best Writing (a good episode), but their run overall had a lot of problems for the people who watched it. I did think MarDar would've been okay with an experienced Co-HW who better knew how to execute their ideas. As for more signings for AMC, I don't count that. We don't know what they have in the works behind the scenes. It's possible since they're sharing studios that they'll be shooting AMC first, then OLTL the next five weeks.

[Soaplovers]

I was a watcher of Days during MarDar stint.. and I had to tune out because of the vast amount of whip lash I experienced at how things were started and then dropped. I do remember enjoying the show during the weeks leading up to the unveiling of the Horton town square and even the first month or so afterwards.

I think their initial ideas of Jack's PTSD, John being accused of being a Bernie Madoff, and even Maggie's search for her lost child were very good ideas.. but they were not carried out properly. If they had someone like Lorraine Broderick as co-head-writer, then I think we would have had some great stories with proper pacing and all the beats being hit at the right time.

I will be excited when interviews are done with the new writers.. providing story previews and what they hope to see in the future.

[Vee]

I thought those concepts were dynamite, and so was Evil Gay Will, the E.J./Sami ONS and the E.J. and Will thing. I thought it was clear they were taking a slow, long road to a more functional romance with Will and Sonny and I thought the build was healthy. I also loved seeing the bullshit perfect lives of Sami, Rafe (who I despise), Austin and Carrie blown up. And I thought what they did with John and Marlena as the elders, counseling in stories like Will's, was the best and most organic use of them since the mid-'90s.

I also admired that they were willing to take chances. Sami actually has to have a job, wants her own career. I loved her rapport with Sarah Brown as Madison, who I thought was great on the show. I dug her with Eric Martsolf. I liked seeing women have jobs and lives. I liked what they were doing early on with E.J. and Nicole reconnecting, and the political race. I liked that people sat down and talked and built on character, and actually sounded like human beings, a definite rarity on DAYS since around 1993.

Not every concept delivered the way it should have, no, and some of the stories were bad, and at least part of that is surely on McPherson and Thomas, but we've all watched Corday and Sony's DAYS long enough to know the issues with stories and pacing and choices cannot be all on the writers they keep hiring and firing in order to bring back Gary Tomlin, daytime's perennial Honorary Mention winner, as well as his second, Whitesell, who I can't say enough bad things about from OLTL. Gary's a nice guy and he was a pretty good EP at OLTL who truly loved the show, but his taste in writers and in, well, taste was off years ago. He helped turn OLTL into a quasi-DAYS at that time, and it didn't surprise me when he went back first to Reilly's PSSNS and then to DAYS itself. What I can say is that McPherson and Thomas's DAYS was the only one that had me consistently interested and intelligently engaged in over a decade, and it's not like Jim Reilly's '90s DAYS was ever written as anything other than a compulsively watchable cartoon, either.

[EricMontreal22]

It sounds like she was knocked back and forth between ATWT and GL a lot--but she remembers OLTL very well if her interview from a year or two back on Brandon's Buzz is any indication.