Guiding Light
April 5, 2009
- Along with other Guiding Light fans, I've been working my way through the five stages of grief. I actually got a head start. While I held out a tiny glimmer of hope for GL's future after I read through last December's reports from Peapack, in my heart of hearts I knew it just wasn't going to happen. So, I skipped over denial and bargaining and began with a few weeks of profound sadness (don't ...
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April 1, 2009
- If you're reading this, you've probably already heard the bad news. and, no, sad to say, it's not an April Fool's Day joke; but neither is the good news: NBC and DIRECTV announced a two-year pick-up for Friday Night Lights.This is particularly good news for me: the pick-up of FNL and cancellation of Guiding Light, rather than As the World Turns, means I won't have to rewrite my chapter for the ...
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March 31, 2009
- This morning I was writing when I noticed I received an e-mail. Taking a look at it, I noticed it was a forward e-mail. At first I thought oh geez, don’t be an e-mail where I have to forward it to ten friends and I’ll get lucky. No, it was Entertainment Weekly confirming a story that’s been in the air for days: Guiding Light, the oldest soap opera on the air, ...
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March 30, 2009
- Really, you do. In a 1972 New Yorker piece titled, "Afternoon Television: Unhappiness Enough and Time," Renata Adler noted that Guiding Light had been "one of the most watched programs in daytime television. No more. The Doctors was just a better-written, better-acted epic of despair." She didn't explain why. And while I was watching both shows back then, Lord knows, I don't ...
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March 23, 2009
- while it would be so very nice if every soap opera episode could be as great as one life to live was last wednesday, i could live with what i got today. each of the three shows i watch regularly -- oltl, guiding light, as the world turns -- had some nice, relatively quiet (which is to say not too over the top) moments between characters that gave voice to the inherent ambuity that is life. i've ...
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March 9, 2009
- Over the past few months, I’ve been thinking about a conversation I had with the late Benjamin Hendrickson many years ago. He was telling me about his early days playing Hal Munson on As the World Turns. Since he came on the show for what was supposed to be a one-day gig, there wasn’t much for his character to do other than hang around the police station with fellow cop, Margo Hughes. So he ...
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February 16, 2009
- I keep looking for the logic. How is it that Guiding Light ended up with a new production model and As the World Turns with a new narrative structure? Did TPTB figure that GL was so far down the shit chute that as long as Executive Producer, Ellen Wheeler, stayed within her paltry allowance they would stay out of her way? And because everyone knows that audiences complain about stories that drag ...
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February 15, 2009
- If you asked me a month ago - hell, a week ago - which of the two P&G soaps, As the World Turns or Guiding Light, had the better chance of survival, I, and astute soap observers going back more than ten years, would have said without hesitation, ATWT. GL has never fully recovered from the capricious decision to squander the show's history by killing off tent pole character, Maureen Bauer, in ...
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January 26, 2009
- Isn't that what soap opera is really all about? Anticipation of an event and its aftermath, then watching where the next story leads. A couple of weeks ago when I was complaining about the lack of story on Guiding Light, I mentioned the evolving relationship between Olivia and Natalia:Two heretofore heterosexual women, one of whom is devoutly Catholic, fall in love. The relationship between ...
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January 1, 2009
- a quick happy new year to all. i'm in the midst of the final revision of my essay for a forthcoming book on soap opera, not to mention, i'm still digesting the voluminous postings generated by a group of bloggers who visited the guiding light production site in peapack, new jersey last month. hope to have a post up on that soon.but i did happen upon two items that please me greatly. somewhere in ...
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