'All My Children' creator on cancellation of 'As the World Turns' and 'Guiding Light': 'could have been saved'

I quit watching soaps in the 90s, simply because I didn’t have time for them anymore after I returned to work when my son started school. Honestly, I didn’t miss them, either. Even though GL and ATWT were probably at the top of their game, story and writing-wise in that era, their stories were trite, repetitive and increasingly ridiculous. Come to think of it, so were most of the characters. I guess I simply outgrew the genre.

But the very bad writing is what i can’t forgive. A few years ago, I had to endure AMC when some of its fans commandeered the TV in the company break room. One of my least cherished memories of that time is when Jackson and Erica were suffering a particularly vile long lost daughter who seemed intent on breaking them up. Then the twit barged in on their wedding. Fine, she tried to disrupt things, but you know what normal people do in that situation? They throw the witch out, and go about their business. But did that happen? Of course not. This smug little bag of pus kept going on and on and on, and everyone just stood there and let her. Come on! That’s just stupid. This show used to have top-notch writers who turned out compelling, believable scenes within a compelling, believable storyline every single day, year after year. Not anymore, obviously.

I blame Gloria Monty for vomiting the Luke and Laura bile onto the world. Soaps got away from focusing on the interactions between characters, and became badly told James Bond ripoffs. Did it ever occur to soap writers that if someone were interested in seeing Dr. No Meets Gidget, it would have been done. Sheesh.

Nixon bugs me in that she’s such a huge booster of AMC, but says little of OLTL. I know that AMC is her “real” baby, but OLTL has stood the test of time and needs her support, especially right now. It’s a better soap than AMC, and has been you several years.

Funny that Agnes blames GL’s demise on bad writing, and AMC just hired one of the writers who put GL in the grave.

Over the years, I have watched every single soap still on the air and the ones that have ended since the 90s. I am a soap opera junkie. I had to quit watching AMC a few years back because of how little character building there was and how ridiculous the stories were (not to mention the rip off reveals such as long presumed dead characters being murderers with hyped up mysteries about them and such). I literally couldn’t take the terrible stories and even worse acting any longer. So for Agnes Nixon to make the subtle digs at the writers of GL and ATWT was ridiculous and highly unfounded. There is a reason I spent the last full month of GL crying during every episode. Those characters were given actual character building and I cared about them. As with ATWT, sure, it has its hokey storylines but it has its great ones and some great writing (The death of Brad and how it impacted Katie, Paul and Emily finally getting together, Carly’s alcoholism). It sounds to me like Ms Nixon needs to get off her high horse and take a closer look at her show before insulting the writing of others.

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