Backstage Mysteries: Forever Unsolved

[robbwolff]

My husband and I had no problems with the gorilla at all. It was a nod to the past and to an era of AW we both loved. I imagine Carolyn was a nod to Carolyn Culliton, though your reference to Hinsey made me laugh. There was also a nod in the final episodes to Samuel Ratcliffe, an AW writer who died in the 90s.

[amybrickwallace]

OK, I can see if there was a history there. I only got to watch AW's final two years and change on NBC - starting at the beginning of 1997 with the death of Gabe. I also remember when Lisa Peluso was introduced as Lila (I always remember the way she said "Shaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaane", LOL). Still, what may have seemed like a good idea on paper just didn't seem to have a great execution. Maybe I felt that way because it was obviously a guy in costume...if a trained gorilla had been on instead it may have come across as more authentic. I do recall Felicia saying she was going to call Sam Ratcliffe.

[slick jones]

There was a nod to Sam Ratcliffe at the end of Search For Tomorrow as well. When Liza was in the airport, she met a man named Sam Ratcliffe(he looked like Rod Arrants .I think it was him)as I recall.

Larkin Malloy also popped through the airport on SFT.

[amybrickwallace]

That was indeed Rod Arrants.

[antmunoz]

Sam Ratcliffe on SFT was not played by Rod Arrants. He had bushy hair, but it was most definitely not the same actor. Liza only thought it was Rusty for a second until Sam turned around and she saw his face. Unfortunately, the actor didn't make the final credit crawl, since it was only for the main cast that week.

Larkin is there too, along with Nelson Aspen and Adam Storke, in the airport crowds. And John Pankow (MAD ABOUT YOU) was the priest who married Hogan and Patti.

[All My Shadows]

I gotta join the conversation here about Lisa in the last ten years of ATWT. It got to the point where I'm pretty sure Nancy was getting more screen time than Lisa. Which isn't a bad thing, per se, but COME ON! Say what you will about EF's flutteriness, but we all know our beloved EH was ticky as hell. They both had their quirks that made their characters who they were, and we accepted that.

The last time they had any investment in Lisa had to have been when they randomly had her running a teen music club ("Crash") that looked like a freaking general store. I loved having her mix it up with the younger characters, but for a character with such a storied history, it just seemed hollow and dull. They could have done a LOT more with her.

I feel they did a lot of right by Susan/MM. They sorta reset the Stewarts as an important part of the show even without bringing on more people to round the family out (the injustice of them never having brought on one of those damn quads!!), and Susan had a good bit to do. Sometimes it was a lot of hand-wringing at Emily and Alison, but they had her play an appropriate mother role.

Bob and Kim, it can't even be debated, were shown tons of love towards the end. Lucinda was still a heavy hitter but in terribly boring business storylines that should have ceased to exist in the 90s. They kept her busy, though.

ATWT had so many tools at its disposal towards the end. Even if the end was inevitable, they could have gone out in a much more grander fashion, but we all know what it was.

[titan1978]

That is the real tragedy of ATWT's last few years. No other cancelled soap in the last decade had so much of its core still intact, and on contract or available and happy with recurring, yet TPTB chose to not use them.

[vetsoapfan]

Another mystery, which NONE of us will ever solve, LOL, is why the soaps keep hiring the same tired writers over and over again. Daytime TV has become a recycle-the-hack ghetto.

Back in the day, weak writers would move from one soap to another, but it was rare for a writer who had failed miserably at one soap to be rehired, to destroy that exact same show again. Margaret DePriest, for example, went from show to show, and she was never very good, but she was slightly better suited at certain soaps than she was at others. The same with Robert Cenedella. Ann Marcus was terrible at DAYS, in my opinion, but quite well suited for MARY HARTMAN 2, and her work at SEARCH FOR TOMORROW made the ratings soar. So I can sort of see why various writers would have the chance to take over DIFFERENT shows, even if they had previously failed at other ones. But with Dena Higley, and so many other writers, they have nothing but failure wherever they go, and to hire them again AT THE SAME SHOW, where they had already proven to be ill-suited and incompetent...that's just suicidal.

Why don't TBTB accept the obvious, admit that certain writers should never work on a daytime soap ever again, and then a give a chance to different writers who are new to the genre, but who have had success at character-driven storytelling elsewhere? It worked, to varying degrees of success, with Harding Lemay, Michael Malone (during his first stint at OLTL), Hogan Sheffer (during his first year at ATWT), etc.

I would rather see a brand-new name in the credits, and give that newbie scribe a chance to show what he can do, than cringe in abject horror as the names Dena Higley, Charles Pratt, Thom Racina, Jean Passanante, etc., spring onto my TV screen yet again.

The fans know that rehiring the same hacks is destroying daytime. Why can't TPTB figure this out?

This is the soaps' biggest unsolved mystery...ever!

[Khan]

TPTB hire the same HW's over and over and over, because they take dictation very well.

[DramatistDreamer]

The Case of the Revolving Door of Hack Writers is no mystery to me. Daytime recycled itself right out of attracting new talent. While they're in the business of boomeranging the same hacks from show to show, the talented writer out of the Iowa Writers Workshop is going to stay far away.

[amybrickwallace]

When I was a kid and learning how to speak big words, I called revolving doors "revolting doors". (I don't remember that, but my mother does.) When it comes to soaps, I think "revolting doors" are the perfect phrase to use!!

[DRW50]

What I'd like to know is when it became the norm for daytime to be written and produced by people who (to me) clearly hate soaps, see soaps as a bad joke, are desperate for primetime, or all of the above.

Goutman, Sheffer, JFP, Pratt, MAB, Carlivati, Guza, on and on.

No wonder the genre is in its death throes when so many of the people who have been involved in it in the last few decades treat it with such open contempt.

One of the reasons I never bash Tomlin, McTavish, etc. as much as some do is because I at least never felt like they hated soaps.

Look at people like The Dobsons, who essentially said they got into it because of Bridget's parents, more than any great love, - they made some mistakes, but overall I felt like they tried to understand and respect the conventions of the genre, even as they spoofed them or worked to expand them.

[Susan Hunter]

I think it is because it takes a certain unique set of skills to churn out the amount of story that is needed to write daytime. And since they dismantled soap writing programs, it's easier to hire a tired old hack who understands how the business works, than it is to train someone else to do it. Isn't Hogan Sheffer the last person from outside of the soap world, to get a shot at writing? Or maybe it's Ron Carlivati. And since everyone demands instant results, a writer doesn't have time for own the job training. They have to hit the ground running.

I have two soap mysteries.

1) Why will a soap create a new character, instead of using a character from the soap's past with a lot of untapped potential? For instance, on Days of our Lives. Why create the Hillbilly trio and Serena, when they could have easily been characters connected to the show's past. I think it has been disproven that soap writers make extra money for creating new characters. So what is the incentive?

2) What did Matt Ashford do to Ken Corday?

[amybrickwallace]

I don't think we'll EVER find out the answer to #2.

[NothinButAttitude]

I've always wondered what Matt Ashford did that makes Ken so mad. Because it's obvious that Corday does not care for MA or Jack Deveraux.