If I remember correctly I had read somewhere in a soap magazine or online that Michael Malone was warned against taking the job at Another World in 1997. He was told what he wanted to do was not going to the result you seen on screen due to TPTB. But I also think when he is paired with the correct producer and writers that is when he turns out the magic that he had on the first run of OLTL. I have read that many people believe his downfall at OLTL was losing Josh Griffith as co-headwriter and Linda Gottelib as EP. When you have a team that works so well, it can be hard to keep that up when the team begins to crumble.

Megan McTavish. Love her to death. When she's good, she's crazy good.

Megan McTavish. Love her to death. When she's good, she's crazy good.

Well, you got the 'crazy' part right.

Nah, I admit she can sometimes be good (but then spins out of control).

Harding Lemay stands head and shoulders above the rest for me. What he did with AW has never been duplicated on any other soap -- literate, sophisticated, heartfelt and never condescending to the audience. I watch some snippets of his Mac and Rachel on YouTube occasionally and I still marvel at the realness and the rawness of that relationship, especially when they're at odds. And I've never enjoyed a character as much as I have the Lemay-McKinsey version of Iris. Even the few weeks he came back as AW headwriter in 1988 were magical, even if just for the scenes in which Rachel and Sharlene clashed.]

I never saw his 70s stint but I remember watching his brief 88 stint on SoapNet in 2003 (can't believe it was 10 years ago). The writers' strike AW got crazy, but he spun crap into gold immediately. It was a miracle.