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Greetings! Welcome to yet another fun-filled installment of Snark Weighs In. The column is loaded, and ready for aim this week. So, let’s jump right in, and start hitting those targets!
In the latest edition of Soap Opera Weekly, reporter Linda Susman interviews GL’s former head writers, Barbara Esensten and James Harmon Brown. Esensten and Brown, you’ll recall (try as you might to forget), were writing GL for three years, until they were released (READ: fired) recently in favor of Claire Labine and her writing team. Of course, E&B didn’t spring up overnight. In addition to being scriptwriters during GL’s acclaimed run of the early 90’s, they were also Headwriters during such daytime milestones as Dynasty’s final season, the last several months of Loving, and the entire 16 and 1/2 month run of The City.
Don’t laugh. E&B don’t want you to laugh at them. They want you to understand that they too have thoughts and feelings. And that there’s more going on behind the scenes than you know. The following are excerpts of the E&B interview, accompanied of course, by my commentary. (It is MY column, after all.)
In this portion, E&B are discussing the recent leukemia story which proved to be their last major story for the show. In it, Phillip Spaulding is stranded on an island with ex-wife, Beth. Both are trapped after being caught in a blizzard. (Yep. Ablizzard on an island.) Phillip and Beth, thinking they’re about to die, do what anyone would do--sleep together. Phillip is married to Harley; Beth is involved with Jim. Of course, Phillip and Beth are rescued. Of course, Beth becomes pregnant. Of course, their other daughter, Lizzie develops leukemia, necessitating the revelation that Beth and Phillip had a one night fling.
Barbara Esensten: I think those in power are worried and tend to pull the switch more quickly than they did in the past. Jim and I and our writing staff knew the leukemia story was so good.
James Harmon Brown: It's the best story we've done since we've been there. There's no denying the numbers were down, and however strong the fan mail was there would be some discussion on the Internet, the five or six people who would get up and slam you about it. But the bottom line was that as the story was playing in its early stages, the numbers were down. Is that because of the story or other factors related to the show or CBS in general or daytime in particular? We don't know.
There are some real puzzlers in these comments, particularly from JHB. He mentions that fan mail was strong, and continues to trot out the same old tripe about 5 or 6 people slamming the story, but then admits that the numbers were down. Why were the numbers down, Jim? Could it be that the storyline, as well as other storylines going on at the time were not as good as you think. (Despite their attempts to prove otherwise, the leukemia story was not the only one on GL this year.)
BE: The irony is that [P&G] didn't pick us up (as writers), and then the ratings went up.
The ratings went up momentarily. This occurred during the two or so weeks when the plot reached it’s climax, and was actually featured center-stage. The ratings peaked at 3.7, which was less than the all-time high of 4.3 E&B achieved in 1997. Of course, it was better than the 3.2 GL had just hit a few weeks earlier. GLalso hit a 3.2 under E&B’s predecessor, Megan McTavish. Shortly after, McTavish was out of work, and E&B were hired.
JHB: I think what happens is our solutions to things don't resonate anymore with the powers that be. They look for new ideas and new approaches and quick fixes because that's become the mentality not only of this daypart but of network television in general.
It’s amazing how Brown combines new ideas, new approaches, and quick fixes in the same sentence. They are not the same thing at all. The first two are desperately needed in daytime; the last one is what daytime has been trying for a decade. Yet, Brown combines them all and speaks of them negatively.
BE: Instead of following the problem as a team, we tend not to do that in our business right now. The network will meet and then the writers will meet and we don't get to meet with the directors. There are no intensive meetings to see what we can all do to make it better what do we think is going wrong.
JHB: It becomes adversarial. When the good times are rolling, it's "Ain't we great," and when the bad times are rolling, each pocket tends to grow inward and draw a line in the sand. In the old days, before the Internet and cable and salacious daytime talk shows, there was more of an opportunity to ride the rollercoaster and know that if there's a dip in audience interest, you have time to correct it. There isn't that luxury anymore, and what happens is you end up changing the team and bringing in new people.
Amazing. On one hand, E&B preach unity, and on the other, they’re blaming internet fans, their bosses, the lineup, and cable--mercifully Ms. Susman cut the part where they blame a partridge in a pear tree. The first law of E&B land, is that nothing is ever their fault. And while I would normally agree with Brown that soaps have a lot of turnover, the fact remains that he and Estensen were the head writers for three and a half years. It has NEVER been commonplace to allow writers that long to get things right, work out the bugs, etc. Under E&B, ratings peaked in late 1997. They’ve been on a downward spiral ever since. How much time is needed?
Next, B&E admit their mistakes:
BE: Jim and I have had an opportunity to step back and take a deep breath and a look at some of the mistakes we made.
JHB: Like trying to badly what prime time and movies do well- mayhem and explosions- and getting away from what daytime traditionally has been about: family conflict, romance. And that's the core of what it should still be about. When every new set of headwriters comes in, including ourselves, everyone says,"We're going to do romance."
BE: "Character-driven stories."
JHB: "Back to the core family," yada, yada, yada.
BE: And we all try.
JHB: But again, because of the pressures of the numbers, we all tend to go for the figurative edge-of-the-cliff type of incident that isn't really what we do well.
Basically, E&B admit that when they and other writers say that they’re going to get back to basics, they’re lying. Is this supposed to endear them to me? What if (God forbid) they get another writing gig? Am Isupposed to believe another word they say? They certainly can’t fall back on the old yada, yada, yada. But, I should feel sorry for E&B. After all, their bosses are demanding that they keep GL’s ratings above cancellation level on a consistent basis. Petty tyrants.
Next, E&B discuss storyline blunders.
JHB: Josh being zombified by aftershave lotion would be No. 1 with a bullet on my list. And the clone story. Because I've had some time to reflect on this, I think it was the wrong story for Guiding Light to do at the time. I thought we did it as well as it could be done, except for the growth serum. That was always sort of wonky.
BE: The clone story was something the network actually had suggested, and we sort of joined hands and said kumbaya, we're in this together. They never backed off from that. Even when we got lots of criticism, we got a lot of support from Procter & Gamble. We were all trying to do something that would capture more daytime audience; it just wasn't the kind of story for our audience.... It was a valiant effort on all our parts, but it should have been more of a lesson to us that that kind of story really doesn't work.
If Josh being zombified by shaving lotion was a bad story, why did they do it? Did CBS or P&G really say that Josh must be mind-controlled through shaving lotion? Or did Jim, Babs, and the writing staff just know that story was good too? Again, poor E&B were strong-armed by the network into going along with the cloning story. I have no doubt that it was CBS that pushed for this story in order to grab the DAYS audience. (Remember when DAYS was significantly higher rated than GL?) But, compare BE’s comments above with her comments in an April 21,1998 interview with SOW’s Mark McGarry, in a piece ironically entitled “Double Talk.”
Mark McGarry: Have people overreacted?
Barbara Esensten: This is a controversial issue...It’s certainly the first time a clone story has been done, but what we tell our viewers is that Jim and I love Guiding Light. We opted to come back because we love the show, and we would never do anything un-Guiding Light-like.
MM: What more do you want to say to the viewers?
BE: We may be making a mistake. We don’t think we are. It is a Guiding Light story. It really is.
Finally, JHB finds one more source of blame, after he and Babs have made some favorable comments on Soapnet.
JHB: We think these shows need to be promoted differently. There are kids out there who have grown into teen-agers, young females who are our audience of the future and who have grown up without knowing we exist. They didn't grow up with mom and grandma sitting by the tv watching our shows? How do you get to these people? We need to be as creative in promoting the shows and marketing them as we are in telling the stories.
God forbid. The marketing people are far more creative in promoting the stories, than those creating them. This interview was titled State of the Art, but it would be better titled Portrait of Two Hacks. Here we have two (and I use the term loosely) writers who will pass the buck to anyone and everyone. They will say whatever is necessary to suit their goals, chief of which is staying employed. They are among a growing number of hacks who are willing to do whatever their bosses tell them to do, and smile while doing it. Do I think everything that’s gone wrong with GL over the past 3 and a half years is their fault? No. Do I have any sympathy for them? No. They’ve been around long enough to know the game. And given a chance, they’ll play it again.
Don’t give them that chance.
Speaking of past Headwriters...All weekend long, Soapnet has been airing a special entitled The Teen Soap Scene, a blatant infomercial that alternately begs and demands that viewers get used to the youth kick daytime is on right now. (The special claims that All My Children hasn’t focused as much on it’s young characters in the past few years,and that’s going to change. Huh? If AMC’s focus got any younger, it would be All My Infants.) I could go on and on about how the special praised the relevancy and effectiveness of OLTL’s teen pregnancy plot (and glossed over the baby’s death), and how the segment saluting successful teen characters of the past showed snippets of OLTL’s Todd and Marty.
But, there’s just one thing I can’t let slide. In a segment on how MTV is developing soap-style fare, much attention was focused on MTV’s Undressed. Following the segment, OLTL’s Erin Torpey (Jessica) said the following:
“Did you know that Undressed consultant Pam Long was a former head writer for One Life to Live? Way to go, Pam. It’s great to see you back in the saddle again.”
I didn’t know ABC/Disney, which owns Soapnet, was in the habit of praising former writers that work on competing programs, especially writers who have widely panned tenures and resign in disgrace. Interestingly, Port Charles former head writer Lynn Marie Latham is a consultant to MTV’s new drama, Live Through This. Where were her props?
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The next day, Mary is watching Soapnet when a voiceover announces that a Ryan’s Hope marathon will run from September 4-10, and will air all the important episodes that new subscribers have missed. “Why?,” the announcer says. “Because of Mary.”
Sure, it’s impractical, cramming 110 episodes (that’s 55 hours) into 7 days. But it’s the thought that counts. And who knows? Perhaps I’ll be watching one day, and hear the announcer say, “Why are we repeating Daytime’s Greatest Weddings? Cause Snark asked us to.”
Do you think James Harmon Brown could create a storyline as clever and funny as that ad?
So ends another column. If you want a piece of me, my address is still the same. snarkieposter@yahoo.com