Monday, January 22, 2007

Shadows of the Past


1966 was a important year for THE GUIDING LIGHT.
It was the year that the show's location was switched from Selby Flats, CA to "Springfield, USA." It was the year the show introduced daytime's first "major" black characters ("major" clearly being a subjective term here). There were a lot of cast shifts including quite a few recasts of important characters. Under Agnes Nixon's eloquent pen, the characters were living, breathing humans keeping the show vital as it approached it's 30th anniversary. Nixon would soon leave though to create ALL MY CHILDREN and ONE LIFE TO LIVE (in that order, despite premiere dates) for ABC.

Never in a million years did I imagine that I would luck into any clips at all from this period much less a cache of 16 complete 15-minute episodes. I've researched the show's history extensively and am pretty well versed in its mythology, but until now, names like Robin Lang Fletcher and Peggy Scott were just names and photographs in my GL history tomes. Thanks to a generous donation to the GUIDING LIGHT Memory Project from a member called Alexandra, I'm now able to present Shadows of the Past. Coming in at a staggering 46 parts, it is composed of every single frame from all 16 episodes and it's a really wonderful time capsule of the state of the show (and soaps in general) at the time. These live episodes with their dramatic, atmospheric organ accompaniment and luxurious pace are a completely different animal from the daytime we know today. Absent is the frantic pursuit of shock and spectacle. These shows demonstrate a desire to chronicle the complexities of ordinary human living rather than bounce the characters from one "adventure" to another. In daytime's pre-Gloria "Isn't rape romantic?" Monty years, it seems that an actual attention span was required to enjoy (and create) soaps.

Now to set the stage (for those without my encyclopedic knowledge of GL history):
Bert Bauer has recently discovered her husband Bill's affair with Maggie Scott. Conflicted Bauer son Ed also knows and his disgust over the situation is complicating his budding relationship with lovely young Leslie Jackson (future mother of Rick Bauer). Bill's former mistress Maggie Scott has been blackmailed by husband Ben into remarrying him in order to create a happy home for sensitive daughter Peggy (the future first Mrs. Roger Thorpe!). Ben disapproves of Peggy's relationship with troubled Johnny Fletcher. Johnny's father, Paul, is married to Bauer pseudo-granddaughter, Robin (played by Gillian Spencer, the original Viki on OLTL and later, Daisy Cortlandt on AMC) who secretly blames Johnny for her recent miscarriage. The major stories here are Bill's drinking and the Johnny/Peggy romance, which, since Peggy is the daughter of Bill's mistress, collide toward the end of the clipset in a really intense and surprising way.

So, get comfortable, relax, lose the expectations created by modern soap, and enjoy Shadows of the Past.

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Thursday, January 11, 2007

Goodbye My Friend


"I was shocked, I kept expecting it to be a dream sequence. Or a nightmare that Ed had. Heck even a fantasy of Lillian's. To me, all I remember is disbelief. I couldn't believe that tptb would kill off such an important and well liked character. (I loved Maureen.) ...Afterwards, I remember the tears that were shed by members of the entire town because I was crying with them. I was devastated by Maureen's death. It was so sudden and unexpected."
-- oopsie82, GLMP message board poster

They don't make events much more "watershed" than the death of Maureen Bauer. I had a hard time coming up with material for this blog entry at first, not because my feelings were so deep, but because they weren't. You see I started watching GL in 1993, but at the end of '93. I missed Maureen entirely and by just a hair. This normally wouldn't be a problem for me in composing an analytical piece or even in describing my own belated emotional reaction, but the death of this character seems to defy critical analysis and demand the immediacy of eyewitness accounting, so deep are the feelings of loss and anger that are aroused to this day by the mere mention of the event.

"First, this didn't seem like a typical soap "death". Because there was a current of realism running through everything that Maureen Bauer did, her death didn't take on the cartoonish aspect of say Roger (falling off the cliff) or Reva (driving off the bridge). It felt more like real loss.
...I have never heard any fans of the show say they didn't miss Maureen Bauer or lament the fact that she was killed off so permanently. I for one miss the character's humor, intelligence, strength, and compassion. She was everywoman, but she was also one of a kind."

---Alexandra, GLMP message board poster

It's events like this, so broadly and so clearly defining eras of the show, that really bring home to me that I'm still a baby viewer of GL. It's different than hearing sories about Robin Lang or Lucille Wexler from the (relatively) distant past. Maureen was a character that was on the show in my adult years, but before I became "part of the family." She feels less like history and more like a missed opportunity, despite the fact that I've gotten to know her somewhat through my Memory Project. Reading the reactions of viewers who loved Maureen gives me a better insight into the "sacrilege" I commit when I announce that Ed and Eve are one of my all-time favorite GL couples.

"This is a difficult storyline for me to discuss since Maureen Reardon-Bauer was my favorite GL character of all-time and I was stunned when she was killed off. Despite my shock and the fact that I believe that killing her off was a huge mistake, long term, the events surrounding her death were beautifully done. The writing and acting of this story was some of the best material of modern soaps"

--- RoseVioletDaisy, GLMP message board poster

It goes without saying (or it should) that the script, the acting, and the direction for every part of Goodbye My Friend is very nearly without flaw. I won't sully it with a rundown of the "highpoints" and "standout performances," except to say that Ellen Parker definitely goes out on a high note.

"I was devastated by Maureen's death. I simply loved her dearly."

---rmw, GLMP message board moderator

Goodbye My Friend

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Monday, January 08, 2007

Hearing Goodbye


The break-up of Abby and Rick is a surprisingly powerful moment in GUIDING LIGHT's history and one that is indelibly burned into the brains of many of the people that saw it. Michael O'Leary and Amy Ecklund's raw, unvarnished performances left little of the emotional damage that the characters were suffering to the viewers' imaginations. Rick's solitary collapse into tears after Abby leaves is such a beautiful and painful image and it really reminds the viewer that O'Leary is capable of great depth and power, a fact usually obscured by the "good time Rick" persona that viewers are accustomed to seeing.

Ecklund, of course, is brilliant as Abby, but it's Susan Pratt's delicious portrayal of Claire that's the icing on this cake. Claire is one of those characters that's usually painted as a villain, but Pratt's unapologetic, commanding performance never fails to let us see the desperate, determined, surprisingly fragile woman underneath, even as Claire slices and dices holier-than-thou, buttinsky Harley.

Speaking of Harley, I need to point out that one annoying thing about this clipset is the seeming need of the writers to make this event about her. I get that they're setting up the eventual co-dependance and resulting one night stand between Rick and Harley, but it just seems a little inappropriate for Harley to come into Rick's house and start talking about her own problems right after Rick's had this deeply emotional experience of loss. Other than that unfortunate intrusion, this sequence is really gorgeous and pivotal recent milestone in the history of GL.
Hearing Goodbye
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Also, I've been generating more "mvids" (read this, if you don't know what an mvid is.) to celebrate the fact that the current GL is a huge and valuable and utterly essential part of any relevant celebration of the anniversary of the show. I'm getting better at this, I think, and faster too. I'm also really enjoying the process of expressing my views of the characters and the storylines in non-verbal, non-literal terms. Plus the music is great.
Enjoy these videos!
What Else Is There?
Dinah and Mallet's stormy relationship set to a dynamic and dramatic song by Röyksopp with Karin Dreijer.

Hurt
My first video by request features Alan Spaulding and is set to Johnny Cash's cover of the Nine Inch Nails song.

Wandering Heart
Maia Sharp's haunting, beautiful tune is the backdrop for a look at the love story of Josh and Cassie.

Thursday, January 04, 2007

The Chase



Alrighty then! It’s back to business as usual here at the GLMP blog with a clipset from 1980. The Chase deals with the pursuit of Roger Thorpe by Ed and Mike Bauer as Roger drags ex-wife Holly Norris through the streets, beaches, jungles, and caves of Santo Domingo.
I have to say it’s very unsettling to see this brutal, vicious side of Roger firsthand over an extended period of time. People (me included) tend to acknowledge that Roger committed these acts without fully embracing what kind of man does these things. These episodes were written when Michael Zaslow was leaving the show and it’s not only because of Roger’s “death” at the end of The Chase that it seems clear that he wasn’t expected to return. The character seems a far cry from the debonair, troubled scoundrel that charmed audiences in the 90’s, but Zaslow is still possesses the same white-hot screen presence, maybe even more so because of the extremes of the character at the time.
What I also love about this sequence are the location shots, especially once Roger and Holly paddle into the caves. The music and the visuals and those two legendary characters all combine to form a truly dazzling, awe-inspiring moment in clip 11.

As the anniversary of the show rapidly approaches, looking back at huge events like this one is an even more satisfying experience than usual. These stories and these characters and these actors are the stuff that GUIDING LIGHT legends are made of.

And so, enjoy The Chase.

Monday, January 01, 2007

The Best of 2006, part 4

We’re in the home stretch here! Let’s soldier on through the end of the year!
October 5, 6, 9 & 10: The lead-up, reveal, and fallout of the reveal of the Beth/Rick affair was so wholly engrossing partly because it featured longtime characters that weren’t being overexposed to the point of irrelevance. The feeling of vibrancy and freshness and excitement that accompanied the closing montage at the end of the October 9 show with Rick, Mel, Beth, and Alan all shown in various states of despair and/or anger was like lightning in a bottle (a television screen-shaped bottle!). It’s interesting that the intertwining of this story with the drama surrounding the Lizzie/Jonathan/Tammy triangle was probably done because the kids’ triangle story was seen as the stronger, higher profile plot. I find it so interesting because what these episodes very clearly show is that the Alan/Beth/Rick/Mel scenario was the weightier, more resonant, and in all respects better executed half of the material.
The sequence of scenes in this section includes a lot of unforgettable moments: Reva’s pot smoking and subsequent stoned dinner with Alan, Jonathan’s petulant temper tantrum (#1,705,036, for those keeping count of his tantrums) as he scolds the Bauers and Spauldings because Tammy won’t play with him anymore, and the charming Bauer football game with Tammy, but the super-high voltage, standout scenes really come crashing through when the any of the four principles are in scenes together. Beth Chamberlin, Michael O’Leary, and Ron Raines are three of the usual suspects for quality, to-the-bone performances, but it’s Yvonna Wright’s inclusion in this group that turns the chemical dynamic on its ear and lends everything a fresh, vital, and irreplaceable group vibe. Wright is rarely given a chance to really dive into the deep end of the pool with the rest of the cast and she seizes this opportunity with palpable gusto, giving as good as she gets at every turn.
As I was given cause to do many times during 2006, these episodes made me wish that the writing team would really invest in the entire cast.
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October 23: Michelle Ray Smith (Ava) is in a very strange position. She’s relatively new to the world of acting and has, as her first real gig, the job of portraying a character about ten years younger than she actually is. As a result, Smith’s natural talent (but not her ebullient charisma) is often buried beneath her not-always-successful efforts to “play young”. Ava’s story with Olivia has given Smith a chance let go of a lot of the “young girl” affectations that have sandbagged some (but certainly not all) of her performances. This scene from October was a flash of what this girl can really do if given the right material.
Off the Hook

October 25: One of Reva’s many, many, many, many, many ITL’s dealt with a party that she threw for herself before her intended suicide. This particular ITL of hers was special because it took Reva outside the bubble of the exact same five scene partners that she’d been dealing with all year and reminded us (or at the very least, created the illusion for us) that Reva was part of a community of characters and not the star of her own private show.
Having said that, the two best things about this episode are the exceptionally tender and sensitive performance of Jordan Clarke (Billy’s karaoke scene is absolutely heartbreaking!) and the beautiful montage at the end with many of Springfield’s residents laughing and singing and dancing together. Zimmer also gives an eminently capable and committed performance.
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October 26: Kim Zimmer and Tom Pelphrey serve a certain function on GL. They deliver very big, deeply committed, crowd-pleasing performances that illuminate and humanize their rather difficult characters. They share a chemistry that fairly leaps off the screen as they feed off of one another’s seemingly limitless energy. That energy, commitment, chemistry, and humanity are all on display here as Jonathan says goodbye before Reva’s suicide.
Howling At the Moon

October 27: Caitlin Van Zandt strikes again, bringing light onto GL’s sometimes too dark storyboard. Here, Ashlee decides to give Olivia, Buzz, Ava, and Coop her take on their situation.
My Dinner With Ashlee

November 3: The final segment of this episode was pure genius on every level as Josh, Cassie, and Billy huddled by Reva’s bedside as she seemingly lost her battle with cancer and Lizzie and Jonathan saw their unborn baby for the first time via a 3-D sonogram. The action cut back and forth between the two settings, highlighting their inextricable interconnectedness with phenomenally good performances from everyone involved. An absolutely perfect moment in these two very long and often frustrating stories.
Circle of Life

November 14: The blogger storyline was filled with holes and suffered from an embarrassingly obvious and inexcusably conspicuous lack of any real commitment from the writers (Hmmm… No Reva and no Jonathan and the writers don’t seem to really care about it for any length of time… Where have I heard that before?), but the scenes of hospitalized Blake explaining her reasoning for her actions were surprisingly effective due to Liz Keifer’s disarmingly vulnerable work in the scenes.
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November 22: Alan’s Thanksgiving ITL was a great hour of television because it gave Ron Raines a wonderful opportunity to stretch outside his comfort zone and show quite a few new colors for his character. It was a real pleasure to get a look at the holiday dynamics of the little seen Spaulding family as a group. The second half of the episode that took much of the focus away from Alan and his family and mainly showcased his reactions to (wait for it!) Reva and Jonathan was a little less satisfying, but still entertaining. Alan’s joke telling to the servants and his suggestion of the name “Gasolina” for a spawn of Jon are highlights!
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November 29: To say that the Olivia/Ava/Jeffrey story has been up and down in quality is an understatement of epic proportions! All of the actors are wonderful (although it wouldn’t kill Justin Deas to dial it down a hair or three), so it’s not their fault. It’s the plotting of this Byzantine and, in certain respects, openly offensive story has often been far-fetched, muddled, and rushed. As I said, it’s not the actors that are at fault here, as this heartfelt, powerhouse performance from Crystal Chappel during Olivia’s most recent ITL.
The Persistence of Memory

December 15: One of GL’s most often overlooked treasures is Tina Sloan. 2006 saw her screentime increase dramatically as Lillian returned to more of a prominent place on the Springfield canvas. This incendiary confrontation between Lillian and Alan is an eye-opening reminder of Sloan’s power and presence and untapped ability to make Lillian a lot more than she currently is.
Try Me

And that’s it, gentle readers! My take on the very best that GUIDING LIGHT gave to us in 2006!
Feel free to respond to this entry with your own choices. Tell me how wrong I was or acknowledge my inherent brilliance as you see fit!

Happy New Year! Keep the light shining!
We'll return to GL from yesteryear with the next entry!

---ivnkplng

The Best of 2006, part 3

Happy New Year!
Boldly onward into the second half of 2006 we go!
July 4: This year’s Bauer BBQ got a lot of flak for having no Bauers at it, which was weird to me because there were four of the show’s five Bauers prominently featured in the episode, plus (admittedly one-sided) telephone conversations with Ed and Michelle. I thought the episode was just fantastic, especially Rick and Mel calling Leah’s bluff at Cedars and Beth’s astonishment at Leah’s age (“Leah? Look at you! You’re all… grown up!). I loved Blake’s acknowledgement of her status as a pseudo-Bauer and the tenderness between Josh and Cassie. I could go on because there was a whole lot to love about this episode. Group events like this are so important and such a meaningful pleasure for soap viewers who spend so much time with these characters.
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July 13: We don’t get enough cross interaction of characters from different stories and the preparations for Dinah’s wedding showed us what we were missing. The mini-catfight between Harley and Olivia was truly hysterical as they poked fun at the alarming excesses of their soap heroine lives. Also interesting is the Blake section at the end of the scene, setting up as it does her actions later on in the year.
Battles

July 21: It would be the understatement of the year to say that there has been considerable backlash to the pairing of Josh and Cassie and that’s a real pity too because all the backlash in the world can’t take away from the effervescent chemistry between Robert Newman and Nicole Forester. Newman is brilliant in these scenes where Josh unburdens the pain and frustration that his relationship with Reva brings, communicating the heartache and helplessness of his character as he reaches for the happiness before him. As many of the couple’s best scenes were, these too were sabotaged by being directly juxtaposed with Reva suffering in the hospital, creating for many viewers the erroneous impression that Josh and Cassie’s love was a direct byproduct of Reva’s pain.
This episode also contained one of Jordan Clarke’s many standout performances as Billy discovers that he is ineligible to donate marrow to Reva because of his past with alcoholism. Clarke is a master of a naturalistic style of acting that appears completely effortless and utterly unlike “acting.” One of the best things about GL in 2006 was the effect of Jordan Clarke’s Emmy nomination and win on Billy’s profile on the canvas.
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July 25: Dinah and Mallet’s engagement party was noteworthy partly because of the fact that it was big group event featuring really satisfying scenes with Vanessa /Olivia and Blake/Jeffrey, but the main reason that this episode stands head and shoulders above a lot of the rest of the year is because of Gina Tognoni. Her portrayal of wary, weary Dinah dealing with a crippling betrayal from Mallet is so gripping and visceral and arresting. Tognoni is a master of making her character into a total human and really dragging the viewer heart-first into Dinah’s reality and at no time this year was that on clearer display than during the boathouse scenes with Rob Bogue’s Mallet. It bears mentioning here that the often-overlooked Bogue does very good work here as well.
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August 17 & 21: The section of the unpleasant, unsatisfying, illogical, and never-ending “Lizzie’s baby” plotline where Lizzie shoots Alan brought the story (briefly though it was) squarely into contact with the rest of the show. (What? There’s more to the show than Jonathan and his harem? Surely, you jest!) For way too short a time, all (well, most anyway) of the people who should’ve been caring that Alan was trying to take Lizzie’s child from her suddenly did after she shot him in her Beacon hotel room. The shooting event and the run-up to it brought people out of the woodwork, like the often inexcusably absent Alexandra. The immediate fallout from shooting saw no less than 10 characters (11, if you count Jon and Billy’s surprisingly hilarious phone conversation) interacting at Cedars advancing several different plotlines in ways that mattered. Placing Lizzie’s story in context to the rest of Springfield instead of its usual spot in Teen Island Hell gave it more weight and quite frankly, it about quadrupled its entertainment value.
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August 21: Also from this date is this wonderful performance from Crystal Chappel as Olivia tells Buzz the story of how her mother died. This clip is also worth mentioning because of the appearance of the lovely and charismatic Alice Kremelberg as Young Olivia.
A Shadow Behind Her Eyes

August 30: One exciting thing about GL in 2006 was the return of the location shoot. As might be expected, every single one of them was used to feature Reva (Umm… okay…) and this one was no exception, although on this particular shoot, some other people got to come along (!). This ITL centered on an honor being given to Josh aboard the USS Intrepid in New York Harbor. I’m a sucker for outdoor shoots (especially on cash-strapped GL where we get so few of them), so I really enjoyed the scenes on the ship, but it was the indoor Springfield scenes in the “regular” part of the episode that qualified it for this list. Robert Newman, once again, delivers the goods in spades in a difficult scene where Reva attempts to justify breaking Josh’s heart for no apparent reason. Newman is Kim Zimmer’s equal in every way, matching her wall of emotion step for step with his underplayed, intricately layered strength. He follows this scene with an incredibly touching, romantic, and well-written exchange with Nicole Forester’s Cassie (herself the picture of radiant vulnerability). It was this Josh/Cassie “goldfish scene” that irrevocably solidified the couple as the rooting interest for me in the cancer story.
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September 7: The 15,000th episode… Yeah, how about that 15,000th episode?
Let me put it this way: For inclusion on this list, I edited it down to just the enjoyable parts. I was left with 4 minutes. Marj Dusay is amazing and hysterically funny as a fractured, Southern-fried version of Alexandra and she is, far and away, the very best thing about this travesty of an episode. I’m at a complete loss to explain why we don’t see this phenomenal actor more.
15,000th episode

September 13: The ITL containing the aborted wedding of Dinah and Mallet was nothing short of amazing for several reasons. It was a veritable rollercoaster of different styles as the episode transitioned from beginning to middle to end. The first parts of the show are hysterically funny with Rob Bogue and especially Gina Tognoni bringing all the funny you could want as Mallet and Dinah are forced to honor their reservation for their canceled wedding reception at Towers. The middle sections where Dinah and Mallet make up and resolve to get married after all are touching and genuinely romantic to a degree that is rarely seen in daytime (or anywhere else, for that matter) these days. Finally, the end segments where the wedding is called off again and the aftermath are crushing and profoundly heartbreaking thanks to truly brilliant performances from Tognoni and Bogue. A captivating episode on so very many levels, this is among the best of the best.
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September 14: A Spaulding event! There were precious few of them in Lewis/Cooperville this past year (especially ones where they weren’t depicted as the most evil people imaginable) and the brunch attended by Alexandra, Beth, Lillian, Lizzie, Rick and Jonathan was a rare and welcome treat. The incomparable Marj Dusay was on glorious display as Alexandra interacted with Lizzie’s self-satisfied, obnoxious new husband Jonathan. Also great viewing is the example of surprisingly good scene partners Beth Chamberlin and Tom Pelphrey in scenes relating to Jonathan’s blackmailing of Beth, but it’s the group dynamic that’s the star of these clips.
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September 19: This is a standout episode full of standout scenes with lots and lots of characters. It’s not really a huge “event” show (although plenty happens), but practically everything is incredibly well done, from the hilarious scenes of Blake discovery Dinah coming out of Jeffrey’s bathroom in the morning to Cassie’s attempts to find a partying companion and eventual impromptu “girls’ night” with Dinah, to Josh and Reva’s beautifully played goodbye scenes at the lighthouse, to Olivia’s manic, desperate breakdown and attempt on Ava’s life, to Josh’s sad, lonely phone call to Marah, just about everything about this episode clicks on all cylinders.
It’s worth mentioning here that Nicole Forester delivers a fantasticly strong set of performances, transitioning Cassie seamlessly from comedic to dramatic situations with Mallet, Frank, Dinah and Reva. Forester proves without a doubt that she stands shoulder to shoulder with most adept of GL’s phenomenally talented ensemble.
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September 26: Another wonderfully understated set of GL’s “small” scenes finds Olivia and Billy crossing paths on Main Street. No bombs go off, nobody cries or yells, no great belly laughs. Just the lovely, slice-of-life, naturalism that makes GL GL.
Checking In

And that, readers, is part three! If you’re still reading (and congratulations to you if you are!), part four is coming very soon!

---ivnkplng :)