The soap opera writers' discussion

[Faulkner]

Oh ok. I was very unhappy with San Cristobal, Beth/Phillip/Harley, clone Reva,  Teri/Annie (in spite of Signy Coleman’s best efforts) and the mob on GL, which why I didn’t enjoy a lot of B&E. It just felt like they thought the show needed this huge reset (maybe it did), but they took some of the worst elements of ‘80s sci-fi/action-adventure soap and Reilly-era DAYS to do it. And Labine loved her some mob, so it didn’t surprise me that she carried on the Santos stuff. 

 

What really made GL at all watchable in those last 15 years were the actors and their chemistry with each other. They elevated a whole lot of really iffy and desperate writing. GL took a lot of risks to save itself, but maybe it needed a DNR order at some point.

Edited July 24, 2018 by Faulkner

[teplin]

 

I think that's the case for all soaps the last 20 years or so -- the stories and production values are so bad, affection for the characters is pretty much all that's left. I don't blame the writers completely, the handicaps -- from network interference to performer guarantees -- have become pretty much insurmountable.

[Faulkner]

I think that’s largely true, but I didn’t find many of the other soaps watchable at all during that time period. The GL cast felt like they were performing with some kind of collective purpose to me. Like damn the world: we are going to get dressed in closets and perform in the woods with cheap cameras up our noses, and we’re going to do this with some dignity. (Not that there weren’t dark spots: I’ve never seen a performer as charismatic as Beth Ehlers become as hardened and brittle so quickly. I mean, maybe Julia Roberts? Lol.) 

 

Whereas many of the other shows post-‘97-00 felt... soulless, like DAYS, OLTL, post-Alden Y&R, and especially GH, which had good dialogue writers supporting a show that was morally bankrupt.

Edited July 24, 2018 by Faulkner

[robbwolff]

 

I'm curious. How can you determine what was Curlee's material and what was the material of her co-head writers (Reilly and Demorest)?

 

 

[JarrodMFiresofLove]

 

Sorry, not going into that argument. I'm not a fan of Curlee's. I get that some people are.

 

I didn't like Annie coming back as Terry DeMarco in the form of Signy Coleman. It was one of Esensten & Brown's misfires. Fortunately that story didn't last and Coleman was written out after a year. I did love the later guest appearance by Coleman as Annie, which I think was done by a different headwriter, where we learned the institution Alan put her in was designed to look like Josh and Reva's home. Very clever. They could have done more with that.

 

I agree that Estensten & Brown were trying to reset the show. And I think that was in tandem with Rauch's overall design to reconfigure things and make GL more watchable. The Reva/Dolly clone story was a bit too sci-fi/horror for my tastes but I think they wrapped it up pretty fast, and at least they were willing to take risks. They were running out of new ground to explore with Reva and I think they wanted to keep Kim Zimmer challenged.

[danfling]

I think that the writers who wrote the Stanley Norris murder storyline were wonderful, and I am sad to see that they are not on the list of the ten best headwriters.  This, of course, is on The Guiding Light.

 

I think that the story was written by Ralph Ellis and Eugenie Hunt.    (I could be mistaken.)

 

This is my favorite murder mystery of any of the soap operas that I have watched.

 

This storyline introduced many new characters to the show:  Barbara, Ken, Holly, Kit, and Roger.  It also re-integrated the show racially, although Olivia Cole's character may have already been established as the friend of Janet.

Edited July 24, 2018 by danfling

[robbwolff]

 

Nowhere did I say I was a fan of Curlee. In fact, I wasn't watching regularly at that time. I'm not trying to argue; just genuinely curious about how one can determine what was her material and what was the material of her co-head writers. 

Edited July 24, 2018 by robbwolff

[JarrodMFiresofLove]

 

In the same way you can tell what another writer (like Lucky Gold) contributes by finding similarities across stories that he cowrote with others. Gold had worked under Labine, then took over; and later he came back and worked under Kreizman. Since he introduced the Boudreaus when he was in charge, you can really see what his contributions are under Kreizman when someone like Remy Boudreau is recast and added back into the show. The writers tend to have their "pet" characters/actors and the issue-driven stories they prefer telling get revisited when they are working behind the scenes again.

 

Gold would work on ATWT after GL folded. So you look at those episodes and you start to find things that signify the Lucky Gold touch. You can do this for any writer.

 

Claire Labine's material is easy to spot because her characters have more normal speech patterns.

 

Sometimes you have to factor in the writer-producer relationship. I think Paul Rauch was very strong willed so he kept a tighter reign on the material headwriters created under him. Basically he gave them an idea and they built the plot. I think Goutman was like that too over on ATWT. Only some of Goutman's headwriters struggled to translate his vision.

 

Going back to the early 90s material on GL, you can see where the Curlee influences come in. But Stephen Demorest had a longer run so he was probably a bit more influential than she was during those years. Then you have to factor in Jill Farren Phelps who tended to build shows around hunky male actors (which why Vincent Irizarry returned as Nick McHenry and Mark Derwin got loads of screen time as A.J. Mallett, not to mention all Rick Hearst's frontburner stories as Alan-Michael Spaulding).

 

I just found Nancy Curlee to be a journeyman type writer. She was not this great iconic soap scribe like Pam Long, Doug Marland and Claire Labine.

Edited July 24, 2018 by JarrodMFiresofLove

[MichaelGL]

Interesting perspective. Some points I can agree with, some not so much.

 

It's rare to find others such as myself who viewed Lloyd Gold's tenure as good. I loved how he began to focus on Holly/Billy/Buzz, had Claire pulling her usual manipulations around Springfield and interacting with Alan, and the earthquake was a guilty pleasure of mines. I think his tenure injected new energy into the show, and it showed with the ratings. It was until the time travel story that Gold lost me and telling from the ratings around that time, he lost a few other viewers too. 

Even though I think Gold was on the writing team, it was Ellen Weston who wrote the reveal that Gus was the product of Alan and a nun. I would have made Gus the love child between Rita and Alan IMO. Millee Taggart brought back Annie during the Reva stalker storyline in which she was in a mental institution. 

I will never forgive McTavish for killing off my favorite character Nadine, and in such a disgusting way. Her tenure was a hit or miss for me.

Someone else noticed that there was a subtle shift in the feel of the show from when Pam Long and Nancy Curlee co-wrote to when Curlee wrote with Demorest and co. I agree there does seem to be a change. 1989 IMO was the show's best year. 

 

[JarrodMFiresofLove]

 

I should have guessed Taggart did the episodes with Annie in the institution. Very good stuff.

 

And I'd forgotten about Claire's second stint in the early 2000s. There was more they could have done with her. She should have been there when Michelle and Danny were having their daughter.

 

One story I remember was with the mobster Salerno. Was that done by Gold or by Weston? I know it was one of those rare times Danny and Reva interacted since Reva was helping him nail Salerno, I think as part of her news show.

[danfling]

I just learned that the late wife of actor Tom Ligon (Katherine Dunfee Clarke), who was also a daughter of David Clarke (Ryan's Hope) and an actress wrote scripts for the serial Capitol.

[BetterForgotten]

I always thought Pam Long needed a strong producer to reign in some of her tendencies. Her and Gail Kobe were probably too similar or wanted to really put their stamp on GL, even if that meant disregarding it's history.

 

I vastly prefer her second stint on GL, mostly because I think Robert Calhoun was really able to reign her in, and having Curlee has a Co-HW during that stint really helped to ground her work in ways her first stint wasn't able to achieve. I also think the return of Roger and Holly is what the show really needed at that time - and it was Curlee and Calhoun who were responsible for that, as Curlee said Long didn't even know who those characters were...

Edited July 25, 2018 by BetterForgotten

[JarrodMFiresofLove]

 

Probably they had ideas they planned to use on Texas if it had not been cancelled. So when P&G moved them both to GL, they just transferred some of that material and grafted it on to GL. This meant having to reduce screen time for some of the Bauers and other character Marland created that did not fit into this vision. Plus they wanted to bring over some of the cast from Texas.

 

But by 87 it was more a matter of canceling out the damage Munisteri and Manetta had done, refocusing the stories Pam had started in her first tenure, plus the creation of a new family, the Coopers.

 

In 1989 she reconceived Roger and Holly, giving Holly a new backstory (a Swiss husband named Lindsey we never met and a career Holly really didn't have under the Dobsons and Marland). Plus they revised Chrissie, to where she was now Blake. And Roger had become some spy, or whatever kind of intrigue it was to explain his absence for much of the decade after his presumed death nine years earlier.

 

Roger was then put into Spaulding corporate stories, while Holly ran WSPR.

 

Roger and Holly's parents were not mentioned during Long's reintroduction of these characters, though McTavish brought Holly's mother back later, and Estensten & Brown brought Holly's brother on for a story arc in the late 90s.

Edited July 25, 2018 by JarrodMFiresofLove

[Mitch]

I have a lot of problems with Pam Long..but really, she more then any other writer on GL or any other soap(who wast the creator of the soap) set the tone for the show that lasted long after her tenure was over. Her characters were really the characters who we think of as being the mainstays on the show...(Phillip Rick Beth, Reva, Josh, Alex, and recreations of Roger and Holly) which is amazing. I think her Coopers are over rated as they are warmed over versions of the Reardons...(Frank for Tony, Both Harley and Nadine for Nola..crappy diner vs. homey neighborhood bar) but I have always hated the Coopers.  While Pam was great with creating characters I dont think her storylines were that great....I do think that Curlee and Company really added energy, humor and ensemble storylines while keeping the heart, and that their years on the show I think..to me, where what all soaps should be, smart without the annoying pretentiousness of the Dobsons and Labine, current without being the boring public service announcement of Nixon's storylines, fun and sometimes falshes of camp without going over the top like Reilly did himself. Their plots were well constructed and they used history without being as earnestly boring as Marland  could be..(I loved that their characters gossiped about each other and sometimes "good" characters didnt get along with other "good characters...) I think all in all they wrote the perfect soap.

[danfling]

When it was announced that Ms. Long was to be the new headwriter of One Life to Live, I thought that she would be a wonderful writer.    (This was during the time that her primetime show Second Noah was still airing.)    I was terribly disappointed with her writing.