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

[Vee]

That was quite the candid interview. And I appreciated it.

[cassadine1991]

I always knew that's what happened with ABC, and combined with Kristen's interview of her saying she was more than ready of returning paints ABC as very greedy

[Winchester91]

I'll be frank. The show is better off not having Starr or John at all.

[John]

Love that Marin shadowed at ABC's OLTL so she knows the characters. Love Jessica too & all her scripts. Jen just loves OLTL, you can tell. OLTL IMO is in the best of hands

[cassadine1991]

no wonder Marin and Jessica's episodes were well written

[jfung79]

Love the Jen Pepperman interview -- I'm glad she wants the stories to be more interwoven. That sounds "old school" though in the best way, so I'm not sure what she means when she said Thom and Susie were more old-school.

Crossovers would have been hard to do. I still wish ABC/PP had come to an agreement though.

I'm tired of hearing how people don't have time to watch more per week though. That's setting them up to be in a box and contradict themselves if they ever add episodes, and is also a bit dismissive of soap fans who do watch five episodes a week, and an hour at that.

[John]

Probably just that Marin & Jessica got the vision for oLTL that Jen & PP want

[cassadine1991]

not necessarily, though they would've had to talk to Ron and Frank, and from their behavior, that would've been a problem.. I think we are more likely to see an AMC/OLTL crossover

[jfung79]

Oh, I also want to say it's clear in the episodes Marin Gazzaniga's written already that Marin Gazzaniga cares about the characters' reactions, not missing things, continuity, and writing from the standpoint of character. I was singing her praises from her first episode, after I saw her work, on a day when her name came up in the credits and no one even knew she was one of the writers. So I completely buy what Pepperman is saying about her.

I am a bit puzzled how the show can both slow down and show more character beats, and speed up though to keep story moving fast enough with the reduced episode count. I know what Pepperman means but I think it could be hard to pull off. Having the cast more interconnected in the same stories may help with that. I think the oldsters and the youngsters already interact pretty well though -- more than they do on AMC. It's Cutter and Rama who are off on their island and need to be woven in more.

[greens_dupres]

Wow I think she somehow addressed every single concern fans have expressed. It seems like for the second taping cycle they are keeping what was working- especially the character driven stuff while trying to change for the better with more integration, less musical guests, etc. When EPs were announced, I felt like OLTL had maybe gotten the shorter end of the stick since JP had less history than Ginger's long tenure at AMC but they are clearly in fabulous hands. I want to give her a hug and send her cupcakes after reading this interview .

[cassadine1991]

and knowing that she already has knowledge of these characters is great, I say it was a good idea to promote her to HW

[jfung79]

Take the PP schedule change for example. Suddenly PP reduces the episode count from four to two, and that throws the timeline out of whack. What would that have done to GH if there had been a crossover?

I think the ABC decision has little to nothing to do with Ron and Frank, who Pepperman still makes a point of saying she loves. Even GH/PC crossovers were hard to do and they had the same executive producer in Wendy Riche for awhile.

[Winchester91]

The AMC/OLTL crossovers were good, though...and got me hooked into both shows during the AJ/Miranda baby switch.

[cassadine1991]

me too.. and all the characters going back and forth b/w shows.. I would love to see something like that again, and even the actors of both shows would love that, since it looks like both casts have gotten closer, I think they've always been close

[jfung79]

Indeed, that's great she was in the Writer Development Program!

I wonder when she wrote for ATWT too.