Worst Executive Producer...

[Khan]

It would have depended on which HW she had to work with, though.  If she had had someone like Lorraine Broderick as her HW, then maybe (she would have been good at GL).  Chances are, however, Francesca James would have been stuck with someone like Megan McTavish or Brown & Esensten.

[Planet Soap]

Gary Tomlin is iffy for me. He had a great balance of humor and drama. I enjoyed Todd and Blair from 2000-2003 especially the dead baby lie storyline and it's Live Week reveal. I liked the Lindsay vs Norah dynamic, and Asa's fake funeral with all his wives returning and the acknowledging that Blair used to be played by an Asian. It was a great and funny episode.

 

 But the singing and dancing, and animation were a bit much for me. The worst of Tomlin had to be the Nikki Smith framing Natalie for having DID. Nikki came off as cartoonish and over the top. THE ABSOLUTE WORST was the very idea that Mitch Lawrence was Jessica's father. I'm not opposed to the Alison Perkins baby switch and Natalie being added to the canvas, but Mitch raping Viki and fathering Jeessica (which took 10 years to correct), awful.

Edited May 6, 2019 by ironlion

[chrisml]

Tomlin's OLTL tenure had its problems, but it was still watchable on the whole. He fostered characters I cared about, and while I never cared for Todd, there were other storylines I could watch. I don't know how he was on other shows, but I think Tomlin could have been excellent if he'd been paired with stronger headwriters. I adored Barbara Garrick as Allison so I would have put up with a lot just to see her, but it goes to show how selective the memory is. I had forgotten about Mitch and Jessica because Allison was my sole focus. I get the beach stuff with Todd was inane (and I always FFed most of Todd's stuff so it didn't matter to me) but what came after was an absolute mess for the most part.

Edited May 6, 2019 by chrisml

[Khan]

 

It says a lot when an EP/HW-ing team can ruin a character's slutty alter ego beyond redemption.

 

I really think the original outcome to the Jessica/Natalie story (that the two were switched at birth, and Natalie was Clint and Viki's actual, sole daughter) was just fine, and that Tomlin, Lorraine Broderick and Chris Whitesell needlessly panicked just because the viewers had caught onto that fact.  So what if we had figured it out?  That's not why we tune in anyway!  We tune in, to see how that revelation will affect everyone's lives.

Edited May 6, 2019 by Khan

[Vee]

I seriously doubt it was ever rewritten. I don't think Jessica not being Viki's was ever going to be the final outcome. I think the planned outcome was what we ended up getting: Both Jessica and Natalie are Viki's daughters. I'd heard about that reveal (and Mitch's return) months before it aired, and I'd suspected it long before that.

Edited May 6, 2019 by Vee

[Planet Soap]

I think I may have minded the paternity questioning of Jessica being a psycho's daughter less, had she not gown up on the show with a decent dad like Clint. 

 

Frank Valentini is another so/so EP.

OLTL was past it's prime (in my opinion) when Valentini took over in '03 but he managed to keep it action packed and interesting through the great 2012 finale. Valentini gave the over used multiple personalities thing an interesting spin when he gave Tess an actual separate life and romance with Nash while Jessica had an established life with Antonio. 

 

But there were too many RETCONs. Malone re-wrote history to have Viki kill Victor Sr. in 1995, only to have him be alive in 2003, only to then insinuate that 2003 Victor Sr. was perhaps an imposer during the 10,000th episode? I liked Roger Howarth coming back but the two Tood's 2011 story line was convoluted and confusing. The time traveling mess to make David Asa's son? Trevor St. John's Todd basically became an abusive overbearing father to Starr, only to have his family continuously forgive him. 

 

I like that Valentini helped heal a lot of Phelps & Guza's damage to GH, and gives the veteran players some screen time but Fluke? Caleb the Vampire? Ava dressing up as her cousin? Redeeming AJ just to murder him again? Redeeming Franco and making him Scott's son? Valentini arguably has more appreciation for the show's history and veteran actors but the Phelps/Guza era——as destructive as it was——was more interesting than today's GH (to me at least). 

 

Edited May 6, 2019 by ironlion

[BetterForgotten]

Valentini has never had any damn vision to me as an EP. Say what you want about people like JFP and Tomlin, as misguided as they were, they had a vision and creative POV.

 

Valentini never seemed to challenge his HW's, and was happy as long as he got to parade male cast members in tight black underwear. 

[Vee]

It was Ron Carlivati who suggested Malone's 2003 Victor was an imposter. They also changed his death date in the Lord mausoleum back to the '70s after that. Almost everything @ironlion describes were not Frank's ideas but Ron's ideas.

 

I think Frank's minimal 'vision' has become more and more clear at GH and the later years of OLTL, especially with Ron gone. The problem is it largely consists of white teens. He had no vision of his own at OLTL beyond that, and he certainly did not create the (horrible) Tess story. That was Dena Higley, who he didn't get along with, not that that is a validation of Frank V., who's made many of his own bad choices.

Edited May 6, 2019 by Vee

[Planet Soap]

 

My fault for shifting everything to him. I guess I'm blaming the EP's for the faults of the headwriter/writers.

 

(Correct me): Dosen't the EP have to sign off on what the head writer comes up with? Could FV have not challenged these ideas or did he agree with them?

 

 

Edited May 6, 2019 by ironlion

[John]

I hated Guza Phelps because they mangled  and killed so many characters and did not find the Jason & Sonny show intersting. If I wanted to watch the Sorpranos I had HBO

As for Caleb that all began on Port Charles under Julie Hannen as EP and James Harmon Brown and Barbara Enstein as HW

No from all interviews Ive read with HW's and EPS at various shows, Stories are signed offby the head of daytime/Network/Production studio heads

[Vee]

The EPs at the ABC soaps were little more than a glorified go-between for Brian Frons and the HWs during FV and RC's run at OLTL. At GH, with Frons gone, FV still facilitated for Ron owing to their long run together, but his preferences for big hires, etc. became more and more apparent. With Ron gone FV is now basically ghostwriting the show - allegedly.

Edited May 6, 2019 by Vee

[John]

Between Him & Shelley thats why its so uneven. Not sure How I feel  about Chris Van Etten as Co-HW

[Planet Soap]

Thanks for the EP clarification. 

 

Yes, the Caleb mess originated on Port Charles but I didn't like it on GH, even if was rewritten for him to be a serial killer instead of a vampire. 

 

As for the Phelps/Guza years....Been a viewer of GH since 06ish so the mob era was all I knew until YouTube and the 50th anniversary marathon, then I realized how degraded the show became during their tenure compared to the better Monty and Riche periods. 

 

(The writers may vary) At the very least we got some decent action packed moments like the Metro Court Hostage Crisis out of Phelps years. 

 

I agree that there was way too much Jason/Sonny/Carly focus. I found the charachters compelling but the issue was their excessive domination of the show. They should have been a part of the show,  not the center, and not at the expense of other characters. Moreover all the often non-sensical mob junk should have had far less prominence on the show. They keep trying to promote Jason and Sonny as "heroes" with a "heart of gold stuck in a bad life" despite the obvious contradictions. 

 

The slaughter of the Quartermaines was also terrible, especially killing Alan and the continued destruction of AJ, until finally "killing" him off. At least FV & RC's GH had Michael finally learn of his mothers past actions concerning Tony & AJ.

 

Edited May 6, 2019 by ironlion

[Emma1420]

 

I think the EP's probably had more power than we think they did on the ABC soaps.  Frons clearly had favorite actors, but then so did Angela Shaprio the previous head of ABC Daytime.  Afterall, she's the one that thought it was a fantastic idea to hire Linda Dano and have Rae infect AMC, OLTL, and GH.  

 

I hated a lot of JFP's tenure on GH.   But, I think she was an EP,  like many, that is really only as good as the HW.   Which is probably why I enjoyed her run, for the most part, on GL.  Who shot Roger was one of the best storylines of the 90's.

 

Although I do think Guza as HW with JFP was a particularly bad combination.   JFP has always skewed towards violence.  She had Eden violently raped on SB, she killed off Maureen on GL, she had Frankie murdered on AW, etc., but typically those things were considered so violent because they weren't the norm.  On GH, there were constant shootings, the panic room stuff, the killing off the Q's, a serial killer every twelve minutes.   There was so much violence during JFP & Guza's run that you became almost immune to it.

 

In terms of GH now, and FV.  Well my biggest gripe about FV is he's more interested in hiring names rather than hiring actors to play characters.  That and I do tend to think that FV has storyline ideas, but is unable to execute them.  So the show is full of poorly written stories full of characters that half the audience barely knows.   However, I think that is pretty much like most EP's with their own agenda.

 

 

[danfling]

Three questions:

 

When Search for Tomorrow expanded from fifteen minutes to thirty minutes, who was producing the show?   Who was the writer at the time?

 

Also, I know that Luci Ferri was producing The Guiding Light when it (at the same time) was expanded and moved.   Who was/were the writer(s)?