Glenn Beck Hires Soap Vet

[soapfan770]

I thought Wheeler was a decent actress and director but as the alleged EP as GL it forever cemented a tainted, sullied reputation.  It was in those last two years of GL that was pretty obvious that Wheeler had some severe mental issues going on in her head from the interviews she would. She always talked again and again about crying about joy and sorrow so much. I figured the line Zimmer used about Wheeler living on an organic farm in Utah was right. Guess we were all wrong, although Glenn Beck's official press release contained numerous errors. 

[DRW50]

A reputation with who, though? I think it only stays that way for viewers if they want it to stay that way. It didn't sully anything for me. What sullies my memory of GL is stuff like Marah stripping to her underwear and asking to be raped, or Ben Reade being revealed as a victim of sexual abuse to justify his being a serial killer.

 

It's not that I think she was a good producer, as she wasn't, but it was also just the end of the line for a show that had been run into the ground by many people before her. The only real difference, to me anyway, was cheaper production values.

[soapfan770]

For me it was a reputation for being cheap and out of her league. Certainly Laibson, Rauch and Conboy did far, far worse damage to GL but to me Wheeler despite her efforts early on eventually proved to be just as disappointing. The first year was really good but somewhere they lost it.  I credit her for giving a satisfying conclusion to GL but some of the oddities and character ruinations she would have to rubber stamp before it happened were just as excruciating to watch. Of course Wheeler probably could have pulled off all her ideas quite successfully had she had a much more stronger head writer.  

[DRW50]

Oh I get individual opinion, like what you express. I tuned out for most of her run so I likely missed the worst. I just meant that in terms of the overall collective opinion that I sometimes see, that her run had to be the worst ever, what an atrocity for GL, etc. That type of thing bugs me more, because it often feels like people speaking for all fans. They aren't speaking for me.

[Vee]

It's not like I think the last decade of GL pre-Wheeler was genius, because it wasn't. But I embraced Ellen Wheeler taking over initially, because I thought this was a woman who knew both ends of the business, who had trained under Chris Goutman, who at the time was seen as the savior of ATWT along with Hogan Sheffer, and who was hiring new blood. Within a short period I realized Wheeler had actually hired a green HW who had started stories he had no idea how to finish without securing certain castmembers (Peter Simon, etc.) and she had no idea what to infuse the show with, other than her own rather skewed perspective on its classical themes.

 

Yes, GL (like DAYS) had originated with a religious undercurrent. But it wasn't Mormon fundamentalism, which Wheeler has long been alleged to have close ties to and which I think we saw weird echoes of in the show itself (in terms of large and extended families, women with many babies, etc. - especially the ending). It wasn't an utter inability to end stories, or to express any kind of homosexual storyline beyond the most platonic and toothless expression therein. (Even Luke and Noah on ATWT, which supposedly were cracked down upon by a conservative Procter & Gamble, got more than Otalia.) I think Wheeler was at war at GL with both her own values and her own stories, and I think the ending of the show reflected a lot of a cracked mirror of Mormon fundamentalist values with the show's own core principles. Maybe it's just because I read Jon Krakauer's expose Under the Banner of Heaven, but the entire town running through the streets spying on Blake and Frank's date or hanging around the ballpark with half a dozen babies left a sour, unsettling taste in my mouth.

[soapfan770]

Ah gotcha. Well watching GL under Ellen Wheeler's is sort of like(not comparable though) to watching Y&R under Phelps and Pratt; we've already seen the worst and been offended by previous regimes nothing seems to phase the viewers anymore even when its bad. 

I actually didn't even know(or possibly forgot) Wheeler was even LDS til this thread popped up. I just remember her giving a very bizarre interview to SOD in 2007/2008 or thereabouts which still stands out in my head. I remember a lot of people made fun of her for it, just like Kim Zimmer flaunting her weight gain and diet around the same time. Complete madness on GL's was amok. 

 

[ajsp35801]

Think like Rush Limbaugh with a mental disorder who has been known to self medicate.