GH: Leading Man Out

[Faulkner]

Soap operas can offer a good, stable life, so I totally get it. But, like you say, Roger is gifted within a narrow range and he can’t spin sh!t into sugar, especially when you’re miscast or the characters are just poorly defined. When RH starts mugging (which is most of the time), you know he doesn’t have confidence in what he’s playing.

[Vee]

I actually don't think he mugs nearly as much as he did on ATWT (I remember his first weeks - dear God). I think he came back to ABC very committed to making an effort, and did so with Todd. In a lot of 'normal' scenes on GH I think he's very earnest - sometimes too much so. But after a certain point with these two characters, all that trying with the wrong roles and bad writing leads to a succession of pulling faces, standard weepy voices or ill-advised improvisation and humor, and overall poor if limited choices as he tries to make it something worthwhile. And instead both he and the writing would often embarrass themselves. He's not trying to tank it like he did back in the day, but he's got no good options and no one telling him no.

Edited November 21, 2023 by Vee

[Contessa Donatella]

I think that one thing we should all be able to agree upon is that RH was not well-served by the character Austin or the writing for it. Better could have been done. 

[j swift]

Here's a link to the podcast I think @Vee is referencing (worth a listen)

Podcast:  https://slate.com/podcasts/decoder-ring/2021/06/one-life-to-live-todd-manning

and the transcript : https://slate.com/transcripts/aVpLcjE1dXdHVmRQdmV1aVFlOXZFWGJ6aEN5eGxXeE9DNERYN05oWWZMaz0=

Edited November 21, 2023 by j swift

[Liberty City]

Wasn't the writer the head writer? If so, that's all we need to know, given his on-going history with r*pe storylines.

[Contessa Donatella]

The writer was the HW, yeah, but for some reason I don't know who that was. Drawing a blank ... 

[Khan]

Didn't ATWT end with Paul and Emily reunited?  I remember hearing about that and thinking, "You know, if it were still 1989, I would be all for that.  But Paul and Emily had been through so much separately and together, and they had CHANGED so much, that it doesn't make sense now to put them back together."

Frankly, I was appalled at how Marty had devolved by the end of Susan's second run on the show.  Here we had a rape survivor who had grown so much in the years since, and now she's plotting against the likes of Natalie for John McBain like some garden-variety psycho.  It was gross and demeaning - not just to Marty, but to rape survivors everywhere - and I wasn't even a fan of hers!

[Vee]

It was terrible. And Susan left furious with the show.

I'm pretty sure they ultimately parked Paul with Emily bc it was the only one of his pairings that had any mild audience support at all. It was a sort of surrender, even though they'd always been a mid-tier couple at best with Hensley in the role IIRC.

Edited November 22, 2023 by Vee

[Khan]

And I think that (the audience support) was due more to nostalgia than actual chemistry.  I could be wrong, and I probably AM wrong, but I think the audience just liked to pretend it was still Andy Kavovit and Melanie Smith playing Paul and Emily.

I don't blame her.  It's as if Frank and/or Ron took a giant dump on Marty's legacy.  The only thing worse would have been if she had raped John, or if she had faked another assault in order to steal him away from Natalie.

[DRW50]

Or the John Howard fans...

Seriously, I was a fan of AK/MS era and what became of Emily and Paul after that, especially Emily, made them feel like strangers to me. I will give KMH some credit for keeping a job through nearly twenty years of terrible writing.

Edited November 22, 2023 by DRW50

[Soapsuds]

Raises hand.

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Melanie Smith was surprised Paul and Emily ended up together at the end of ATWT run.

Model Paul

He was hot!

Edited November 22, 2023 by Soapsuds

[Vee]

I imagine that was part of it. But I think it was also very much the Roger Howarth stans leaping onto any port in a storm frankly - Paul and Emily Part Whatever got a lukewarm response from the general audience vs. all his other stories tanking, and like the Franco and Liz story at GH (where some but not all tired Becky Herbst fans were just happy to see her in a romance with a lead the EP was actually invested in), the Howarth stans didn't buy trouble and just said 'we'll take it!'

Ironically, while the recast never worked I do think Roger had the most chemistry of all with Martha Byrne when he first arrived, but that always had an expiration date (Rose's death). And he did have chemistry with Cady initially. But when they put them together for real the following year in an overly schmoopy conventional love story, it was execrable.

I do hope she speaks on it someday. The few tidbits Jeff Giles mentioned about it while discussing his oral history book (saying Susan had gathered the cast BTS in her last days and said she'd never been treated so poorly in her life) were something else. And we know Thorsten Kaye flatly refused to return as Patrick when asked to exit her character because of it. At least we know thanks to offhand mentions by Nora and Kevin on GH in recent years that "Dr. Saybrooke" is doing well, so I'm just going to chalk that whole mess up to the same tattoo cult drugs Ron Raines gave Clint on Hulu! Ah, soaps.

[Khan]

I agree, lol.

I have my favorite actors just like we all do, but I don't think I would want any of them paired up with anyone, regardless of chemistry (or lack thereof), just because that might guarantee more screen time for them.  

[titan1978]

 It was beyond gross. Add in having to watch Marty basically be in second position  of importance behind her son Cole. Puke.

[John]

She would have been better than Christina Chambers

ATWT did ask Kevin Stapleton (Kevin buchanan on OLTL from 1997-1998) but he turned them down