DC #457: Farewell Guiding Light

I never watched "The Guiding Light" when it was on, but I'm one of those individuals that wanted to see it off, as it's a very important, history-making franchise that I wanted to pay my respects to. (On a side note, I also liked the Grant Aleksander/Phillip Spaulding teasers from months ago...)

Having seen commercials and otherwise knowing of Kim Zimmer (and appreciating her candor as well as the conviction w/ which she tackles roles) I enjoyed what I saw, especially the Reva/Josh parts. There was obviously a lot thrown in to wrap things up, and not knowing these characters for longer than approximately 42 minutes, I was surprised that the last part made me cry (and I'm not "a crier"...). I also loved the run-through featuring the logo/introduction through the years (but this is from s/o who was intrigued by B&B in 2000 b/c their theme song/intro was "so 80s", and stayed for the cheese factor, the storylines, Hunter Tylo's beauty, Susan Flannery's acting, Ronn Moss' jawline... er, moving on...) - that was nice to see/hear.

Goodbye, GL!

Just wondering what is everyone going to watch at 2:00 now that GL is gone? I just don't know if I can get into another soap General Hospital is on that time; but I just can't get into another soap don't know what's going on. There is also Who Wants to be a Millionare and Deal or no Deal; I'm not a gameshow person, I will not watch CBS at 2:00PM had DVR set to come on a 2 to was hard to remove that. I may just do go shooping and run errands after ATWT, have a lot of time for that now.

I do agree that the show was a little too sugary sweet, but on the other hand, the other soaps are so dark that it was good to see some happiness finally on a soap that didn't want to make you slit your wrist, LOL. I feel that Otalia should of made out in front of everyone and some actors should of been back like Harley(BE), Nick(VI), Ross(JVD, Alan-Michael(RH) and others. But this is P&G, they just want to get out of the soap business and move on. Again, never let Ellen Wheeler anywhere near a soap again.

I am so glad this group has the nerve to call BS. I was so excited for the last week of GL, then I watch it and honestly by Friday I was glad this was the end. Everything was rushed even the couples who ended up together. Note to EW the fans do NOT want to watch their characters folding laundry, cooking or paying bills.

You know, this is time I've ever listened to the podcast and I have to say I am pleasantly surprised. It is nothing like i expected. You guys and gals are awesome! Keep up the good work! I will be sure to tune in from now on.

gl was the closiest soap to real life on t v annd was doing good maybe thats why they pulled it there pockets were deap and full so didnt need anymore money and they REALY dont care about the viwers watching it

Thank you all for this podcast. It was nice to hear you all's thoughts.

I have said before that I quit watching GL around 2004. I tuned in this past week to see the final episodes. Overrall I thought it was ok. I enjoyed seeing some of the old faves that I grew up on (Fletcher, Vanessa, Bridget, Dylan) but I was left scratching my head on many things.

Where were the rest of the Spaulding Family? No mention of them when Alan died.

Where were Blake's children? The twin boys and the daughter Clarissa. I mean there was no mention of them.

Where was Rick and Mel's daughter Leah?

I think there was a lot of missed opportunities. Oh well it's all over now but like many the show died for me years ago.

I loved this podcast. GL fans might want to listen.

It allowed me to get angry about the end of GL, especially about how many months were wasted by the writers of GL after the cancellation notice.

Don't get me wrong, the ending moved me, especially Philip's return and Alan's death, Sarah's return to Lizzie, and even Josh and Reva's lighthouse scene. However, I would loved to have seen more of Mallet and Dinah, one last smile from Vanessa, where Fletcher and Alex went and so many others.

What do I do now? Are any of you moving to another soap? Which one would you recommend? OLTL or Another World?

I mean ATWT, not Another World.

Thanks for putting that finale on blast, guys. I feel very vindicated.

@ kgbmc...Without question watch OLTL...it is the best soap on daytime. Y&R is good, but it doesn't come close. If you watch only one soap watch OLTL.

Um, Jase, everybody didn't put the finale "on blast." If you actually listened, it received mixed reviews per person. Just sayin'...

KGBMC

I just began watching OLTL about 4 weeks ago. I truly enjoy the show. It's great. I watched OLTL briefly during the summer of 04 or 05. I remembered some of the characters but there are a lot of new faces on the show. I know the DC game says its the best but I am biased to Y&R. That in my opinion is the best soap on the air with OLTL coming in second. I only watch Y&R, OLTL, and B&B so I only view a small amount of soaps. I have found my reintroduction to OLTL going well. I like a couple of the stories but beware there are some turkeys on the show. I would recommend checking OLTL out over ATWT.

Oh, I listened to the podcast. I was just nodding in agreement with most of it. I've made no secret of my appreciation for a couple things, like the Spaulding stuff, but it's nice to know I'm not crazy for feeling as I do about the final week and much of the final months - it was lazy, slapdash and I felt showed the viewers and what they wanted very little respect, simply going through the motions of satisfying fans (as someone on the podcast said, it was like a checklist). As many of us have said, they had five months - what were they doing? The point is, I think we can all agree it was a mixed bag at best and I appreciated the diverse viewpoints.

Great podcast guys!!

Joan76 I hope you give GH a shot. The show is really good right now. The show is featuring a lot of romance right now with the Spixie Wedding coming up (Scrubs are also in the wedding party) the reunion of Jason and Sam, the start up of Lulu and Dante, and the birth of the Carly/Jax daughter. We also have a lot of plot payoffs right now including the fallout of the Zacharra/Corinthos war, the Michael coma story and the roles Jax and Claudia played, and the Teen dating abuse storyline. The dialog has been better than its been in years and the show just went HD so everything and everyone looks especially wonderul. Plus TPTB are truly committed to GH so I suspect that for ABCD it will be the last soap standing.

I recommend OLTL its very well written and uses its vets well. I'm going to watch Days when CC debuts and I have heard ATWT is getting better (don't watch so I can't really tell you my opinion) for me GH is like an abusive relationship yet I continue to tune in, if your into mob stuff thats the show for you.

Like everyone else I was left with questions about the logic of the last episode.

HOWEVER, Tina Sloan made the week for me. When she said that she was always "Beth's Mom" and never thought that she would find love, I cried my eyes out. It was an excellent example of really ending a character, there had been an arc about her and her abusive husband, how she turned a blind eye to his abuse of Beth, and how that effected her decision of sexualizing her friendship with Ed, which lead to Maureen's death etc etc, and in the final week all of those pieces were put together and it finalized the arc.

ON THE OTHER HAND, Josh and Reva's story ended for me after their 3rd marriage 10 years ago when everyone gathered and Dylan came back to sing them a song. If only they hadn't had their honeymoon on St. Cristabal that story could have ended there and been OK by me.

Josh and Reva was the best way to end the show, I was over the moon with that, personaly.

I think soaps need to advertise in primetime like they used to, the networks need to do that, but they won't. Remember back in the day when Days and GH, even OLTL use to air primetime movies, or when abc use to have these movie like promos for their shows that use to air on primetime and as trailers in movie theaters. ABC had great promos with Sonny/Brenda with the rope, Jason/Robin or even when Vanessa Marcil came back, they had some great promos with her and Skye. I watched some of those promos at the movie theaters, my favorite was the Jason/Liz/Zander pool playing promo. (I was a Liz/Zander fan.) I remember when primetime shows would use daytime as a selling point. Alias use to run their promos with the tag line, a triangle just as hot as Sonny/Brenda/Jax on GH. Promoting the shows on radio, magazines, comercials is all but dead. Great primetime shows that fail because nobody watches them is because they don't advertise them at all. Daytime needs to advertise more, outside of the the comercials inbetween other soaps on there network.

Or promote them online. You know that it is probably cheap and more people are watching online and DC and other soaps or mainstream sites like Perez Hilton or star.com or other popular sites.

I was once a fan of Guiding Light oh so many many many years ago. I started watching sometime in the 1970s (just a tyke I was) when the Bauer family was front and center with Charita Bauer (as Bert Bauer) with her two sons, Mart Hulswit (Ed Bauer) and Don Stewart (Mike Bauer), Roger Thorpe and Rita; and I last watch when Joan Collins stepped into the role of Alexandra Spaulding and prior to then it was when Michael Zaslow's character Roger Thorpe was last on the canvas. I made a point of watching GL during the finale week and I have to say it was just excruciating to watch, actually forcing my eyes and attention on this train wreck of a show. I'm just going to say it was horrible (am sorry all you ardent GL fans). But you know we've lost soaps before the last one being Passions and prior cancellations have been the great Santa Barbara, Another World, Generations, Search For Tomorrow, The Edge of Knight and the list goes on. Did we lament the loss of those soaps in the same way as GL? Granted GL has been around for some 72 years and was the granddaddy of this genre - so that's saying a lot - but still I wasn't and am not all that emotional about the loss.

This podcast is very disappointing. Can't we just enjoy this show and let it go out in piece instead of bitching about it, and finding every little pissy-anny thing wrong with it for the555-555556th time in 2 years? I mean, really. This is disappointing. This industry is suffering, and the oldest dram on tv just went out, and all that gets done is bitching and finger pointing. Ugh.

CGat, now you knew you weren't going to log in here and find us singing around a campfire. I don't think pointing out that the only popular couple Ellen Wheeler managed to manufacture in the last year weren't even allowed the same courtesy that couples who got together last week (Mel and Cyrus, Blake and Frank) were afforded is us "pissy-annying it". Nor do I believe discussing the true merits of GL's paint-by-numbers ending was in any way a disservice to this show's legacy. If anything, the majority of us felt a show with such a legacy deserved much better than a sloppy ending style, generally utilized by sitcoms who were cancelled without any notice. I am sorry, Ellen had five months to wrap this show up and this is what we got? No one even knows what happened to Jeffrey and Edmund! Not that I care about either character mind you, but some do. You're right, the industry is dying, because of things like what transpired at Guiding Light, and that's what we do here, call the indistry on their bull. We praise the industry, sometimes to the point of gushing, when they get it right, but when they get it wrong. Horribly, show killingly, wrong. We yell it to the rooftops. Ain't nuthin' changed just because Ellen finally killed the show.
 

There were people missing from the finale, but it had a good feeling to it. I enjoyed it more than the Another World final episode. I had only watched AW the last four years and have watched GL a lot of its last 14 years. That might make it seem better in some ways.

I love your podcasts and I love listening to them.
In this podcast, I wish you had talked more about what happened to Jeffrey. It did not make any sense for the show to drop like that and not to give a proper closure to the couple - this would have made Jeva reunion more magical. I wish you can discuss about it a bit in your future CBS podcast.

Cgat, the questions posed to us was, what WE not fans DC PODCAST CO-HOSTS thought of the show. You've been around here long enough to know we're not going to sugar coat anything just because the industry's dying. We always speak the truth on things even if it costs backlash, EW did kill the show off and I'm not about to let that go because GL's off the air and some fans don't like it.

Yes I know about Ellen Wheeler, god forbid, I sing the same song you do about her. I just wanted to listen to the podcast and hear some positive points and some good memories about the finale, which to me was seemingly bittersweet and enjoyable, instead of it being picked apart and shot down. Maybe I love Guiding Light so much and am so connected to it that I didn't see the bad in the finale, but i don't know. I guess I feel like one of my dearest friends has passed on, and someone's spitting on their grave in a sense, lol. But oh well. We can't all get what we want. I mean, people in hell want ice water. I am just glad for Mel and J. Bernard for all their wonderful wisdom and love for GL. Thank you guys for making saying goodbye a little less painful. For the record, I was very pleased with finale week, and I thought it was nice to see a happy and lively Springfield for once in the reign of that biatch that killed GL. Ahh I really wish there was another soap that was as great as GL. Too bad there just isn't any that compare.

Cgat if you liked the ending that's fine.. That's YOUR OPINION and your right. I can't take that away from you or get mad at that. Again when asked, I gave MY TAKE on things... Sorry if you didn't like it, I'm not one to lie about things when I'm asked what my thoughts are on something.

I mean I wasn't attacking anyone or whining about anything. sorry if it came off that way. I was just stating MY OPINION. I wasn't making a big scene about anything, just saying how I felt, okay?

Jillian, you are right, they need to be put on blast for the shoddy treatment of the actors and the mismanger of the Otalia s/l. The show had five months to wrap everything up and they didn't and EW needs to be put on blast for the crapping ending and not tying in up loose ends.