Unpopular opinions: cancelled soaps edition

[j swift]

1. Certain unnamed podcasts created an unfounded idea that plots and pairings were personal, as if a single actress or writer could create a storyline without going through the vast infrastructure of production and network executives it takes to get a soap on air.  Jokes about stealing a parking space became conjecture about disliking a costar being a reason for certain storylines.  One is willing to bet that producers who have worked on multiple soap sets over the years don't care about the rumblings of some ingenue who can be replaced and forgotten within a few weeks.

2.  It doesn't make you an "insider" when you speculate on how an actor's social media profile (that is probably managed by a PR source) effects their storyline.  It just means that you are naive enough to believe everything you read without question.

And 3., far too often we accept the exit interview of an actor who is mad about being fired as gospel.  Actors are notoriously narcissistic, and just because their egos were bruised by their dismissal, doesn't make their rationalizations true.

Edited September 27, 2021 by j swift

[Mitch]

On GL I have to add that I LOVED Brent/Marion and I thought the switching HIV test results was a good use of an old trope. I thought that he should have killed Fletcher or Buzz instead of Nadine but... I also liked the Nursery Rhyme Stalker...Holly didnt do anything that would make her irredeemable and it was fun to see smart Holly running around in her sexy stalker gear..plus it was funny, soaps have NOTORIOUSLY bad mothers running around.

[Chris 2]

I always heard great things about Gillian Spencer on OLTL and her chemistry with Lee Patterson. What a shame that most of her episodes were taped over.

Edited September 27, 2021 by Chris 2

[Craigger]

Ellen Wheeler and Chris Goutman are under appreciated. Ellen kept several hundred people employed for a year and a half longer than CBS wanted. 

[AMCOLTLLover]

Guza and his team on General Hospital did a better job than Frank Valentini and his crew!

All My Children 2013 - Online Reboot was a good and refreshing comeback.

[Frank2803]

To jump in on the Erika Slezak opinions 

She doesn't get credit for the light hearted and comedic material 

If you need any proof look at the trading places OLTL stand alone episode 

[Planet Soap]

This is a fact.

[ReddFoxx]

The 80s theme song to Another World was annoying and loud.

[BingCherry]

I prefer Sally Sussman Morina's Days to JER's.

2021 has been GH's best year under Valentini.

 

 

[Liberty City]

I think changing the character of Reva to suit Kim Zimmer more was a mistake. Her years, pre-return from the dead and clone, were different for me. But they kept changing who Reva was at the character's core, and that did Zimmer a disservice. But I do believe she still turned out amazing work.

I wouldn't call Alex Connelly and Susan Walters superior performers over West. West is top tier in acting. She can and has tuned sh!t into gold, and her stint as Diane proved that.

Victor is an abusive pig to Nikki. Plus, Peter Bergman (Jack) and Melody Thomas Scott (Nikki) hold better chemistry. When they paired Billy & Victoria, I felt as if it was the modern day take on trying to re-create Jack & Nikki, but not as powerful. Writers always take Nikki away from Victor and when she finds happiness, they swoop Victor in and put them back together. Jack & Nikki's blink-and-miss remarriage was a disappointment. I wanted that so friggin' bad, and it just ended.

Amelia Heinle worked as Victoria when they recast her, but the moment they made her a mother and re-wrote her character's core is when Heinle began to fail. In what I've seen, Heinle can still pull off the business-type personality Victoria always had, but she's gotten comfortable working as the meek mother who fawns over a man for support.

I don't loathe Jill Farren Phelps. She, like many other executive producers, has her high points and her low points. She ran a business, and that's how I have to look at it. Soap fans look at soaps as a fan-driven point of view, and I understand that. But, we have to remember, they're a business and should be run as such from time-to-time. She did make some solid decisions during her time, but I also believe CBS/Sony Pictures Television were pulling her strings. They brought her in to change the things she did change.

This reminds me of the excessive of hatred the Rosales family got on The Young and the Restless... and it was very racially-driven.

I will say this: I still believe One Life to Live is a boring and uninspiring soap opera (as I previously mentioned), but, in watching clips from the 1980s and 1990s, it was an improvement from its final years under the pen of Ron Carlivati.

Plus if we look at this, during their years on ABC, All My Children had nine executive production teams and thirty-three writing teams (including multiple non-credited writers), while One Life to Live had ten executive production teams and thirty-three writing teams (including multiple non-credited writers). Both changed the guard of writers thirty-three times, while the latter had one more executive producer change.

I think it came down to type of story and character. One Life to Live, in my view, got overrun by characters that either did not belong or suit the canvas, while All My Children did a far better job in integrating their newer characters, and if they did not work, they did cut them.

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I'd choose Chris Goutman over Ellen Wheeler any day of the week. Ellen Wheeler, to me, played her hands far too much with Guiding Light and was not the right person to take Guiding Light to its new format, and it could have been handled better in the hands of someone else.

YES! After watching Hollyoaks, the online reboot of All My Children felt very British in its production model, and I loved it. The stories were cutting edge and while [some] casting decisions were slightly questionable, I do believe a second season would've shaped things back into order.

Frank Valentini and Dan O'Connor & Chris Van Etten are the best General Hospital team in over a decade... and are the best team in daytime currently. Yes. I said it.

[FrenchBug82]

Indeed. 
On a similar note, one of the worst moments of Y&R history for me personally, that got almost no attention at the time and is completely forgotten now, is when Victor PUSHED Diane out of a moving ambulance. And they treated it as high comedy with Adam and Jack giggling at Diane's telling them of her "misadventure" 
They had at least had the good sense of making Victor's abusive behavior towards Nikki purely verbal and behavioral - not better by any means but it gave them plausible deniability. But they literally had him put his hands on a woman and they thought it was funny rather than the character-destroying moment it was for me.
And I still cannot believe it was not more of a thing among viewers. What a vile moment that was, regardless of how one felt about Diane .

[MichaelGL]

Margaret DePriest's time on The Doctors was the last time I was heavily engaged in watching the soap, since the height of the Pollacks tenure. Despite a few missteps, I was enthralled by Ann/Paul/Scott and their manipulations over everybody in Madison. Everything after that was hit or miss. DePriest should have stayed longer, and later on Marland's tenure was a snooze fest. 

I didn't find Sarah Dancy all that bad, she just lacked an edge about her. I liked the original actress better.

I enjoyed Lloyd "Lucky" Gold's tenure on GL, things were actually happening under him compared to his predecessor (cigarette girl, Blake becoming a joke, and mob shootouts in the Bauer kitchen.) With the exception of the time travel storyline, I enjoyed it. The show only got better when Taggart joined, and later Carolyn Culliton. Things got worse when Conboy/Weston's episodes started airing. 
 

[Planet Soap]

@Liberty City what I meant to saw was Walters and Donnelly were superior in the role of Diane, rather than a commentary on who was a better overall actress. Awkward phrasing on my part.

I would say 2012-2014, specifically the 50th anniversary year 2013 was Valentini's best year. The show felt fresh again with vets returning.

Totally agree! As I've said before the Guza/JFP era despite all of it's faults had better production, better dialouge, better disaster plots, more suspenseful mob violence, and Sonny/Carly/Jason/Sam were more interesting under Guza/JFP than Frank V. Frank's GH could not pull off contagion, the train crash, PC Hotel fire, the Metro Court hostage crisis, Carly in the panic room, etc... 

Edited September 28, 2021 by ironlion

[Mitch]

Well Loralie was pretty stupid..not an alter but that anyone would think that this woman who looked exactly like Beth was any thing other then...Beth. Never understood the decision to just have her return a few weeks later with her alter in charge and no one knows. But it was a step in the right direction in terms of explaining why the character of Beth ran from simpering victim, to vixen, to out right bitch, to heroine and anything in between, but it wasnt followed up on. I do think Gold had a difficult period in that he was transitioning from San Crud, and while resurrecting Carmen..made the mob less prominent..he did do more with family stuff and little character things and used Aunt Meta well.

Edited September 28, 2021 by Mitch

[Liberty City]

Him pushing Diane out still infuriates me. Absolutely infuriates me. Filmed for comedic purposes and it was disgusting. Victor has been abusive since the character debuted. Gross.