One Life to Live OLTL: The Prospect Park Era (old production thread)

[Darn]

Farah Fath is like that friend you have that you don't really like but they've been your friend for so long you kind of just put up with them. That friend who comments on everything you post but you never respond. She's that friend.

[cassadine1991]

i thought Y&R always included the actors' faces?

[Winchester91]

That's why I believe she was miscast as the plucky single mom. She'd have done better as a sassy stripper who has her middle finger up to all those who hate her. Seriously, I liked her better with that one flashback as Stacy than 4 years of Gigi.

[Khan]

They did. That's what I'm saying. I think Y&R was the first to include the actors' faces back when the show premiered. Before then, opening sequences tended to avoid that practice for the very reason that casts were fluid, with multiple comings and goings. Even GH, which was supposedly THE soap in the '80's, the one that set trends for the others to follow, had an opening that consisted merely of an ambulance whizzing past the camera's view and "GENERAL HOSPITAL" zooming out at you with Jack Urbont's theme playing underneath.

[Vee]

I thought Farah was actually perfect as hardscrabble, no-nonsense Gigi, in the stories where the character worked. She had a great dry humor that was part of the actress, and she deployed it wonderfully. I still remember Bo and Nora's wedding where she and Viki go rummaging through Nora's old clothes, desperate to find a dress for the bride - Viki is sure they'll find something, and Gigi just holds up a horrible outfit and asks, "will we, Viki?" Her delivery was perfect. However much of a pill Farah is IRL, and I've heard she is quite the pill from people who know her close up, I think she has a certain gritty temperament and wit that made that character perfect for her.

She didn't work as a frontburner lead heroine, and she really couldn't handle high drama - it was those stories which made her intolerable. But right to the end - which I just rewatched - she snapped right back into Gigi getting her kid and her man in shape and bossing her friends around about their personal drama. I always, always liked her more than I liked Rex, who was so lame by the end. JPL also had some good dry comic timing, but his attempts at real drama - and also his histrionics - were absolutely unwatchable. Those two could not handle frontburner work.

[EricMontreal22]

To be fair, some of that is because those soap openings were made in the 50s when TV creedits were very simple, in general.

[~bl~]

With how AMC and OLTL are taping in blocks this kind of opening may not be as problematic. While it may be an issue when new people were hired after the credits were originally taped due to matching problems, they have hiatuses in between. So let's say they stopped taping for the year, the new season begins again and a new style could be created.

[Vee]

I just don't care about what they were doing fifty or sixty years ago. When I watch a soap - whenever I have watched a soap - I have always expected to see the world and faces I enjoy in the opening. There are a few exceptions I'll make, like the Linda Gottlieb opening I first started watching OLTL with, but that was horribly unpopular with most people. I expect a full opening and I am glad to get it.

[Khan]

Perhaps Rex and Gigi were better off as a supporting, comic couple, like Eugene and Calliope on DAYS? (Sorry if the analogy offends any fans out there, lol.)

[Vee]

I think they certainly were.

[Darn]

I think both FF and JPL got lazy because they didn't like their stories. But the shows just kept chugging along and giving them constant frontburner material no matter how defeated and bored the actors appeared onscreen.

[John]

[Vee]

ALL DAY FOR FREE

God, this is getting depressing. Not the shows or the relaunch, just these idiot fans.

Next the question will be, "what if I want to watch tomorrow I don't want to pay!!11"

[~bl~]

Comparing them to Eugene and Calliope, what??? Seriously...

[EricMontreal22]

Why can't they be on SoapNet?!?!?!?