Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Spooky Owl!" data-source="post: 72117" data-attributes="member: 57984">I haven't watched GREY'S in years, so I can't comment on its continued quality.But every show for the last twenty years has an entire sea of producers to brainstorm over every aspect of production to enhance the chances that a good, hit show remains good and a hit as long as possible (although, obviously, even that doesn't always work).With the big four '80s wealth-based soaps, production staffs were still much smaller. DYNASTY was one of the first shows to have a gazillion producers and was "very organized" but that still didn't help because they had drunken chimpanzees running the story department who flung their feces against the wall to see what stuck -- and then used what didn't.We've had these discussions before about why the '80s soap went into a death spiral midway thru the decade and midway thru their runs. If they'd ended in the Spring of 1985, which they almost seemed to cry out for, such a sense of finality there was to the cliffhangers that spring (DALLAS' death of Bobby, DYNASTY's Moldavian massacre, the return of Val's babies on KNOTS and the only time that show ever hit #1 for the week, and FALCON CREST's apparently delayed earthquake cliffhanger which was put back a year, until 1986, when the nazi plotline was dropped on the demands of a CBS executive) then perhaps it would have been for the best.But I'd hate to have missed S10 (per DVD count) of DALLAS, or S9 of DYNASTY -- thanks to Paulsen, in both cases.What caused them to tank? As almost my favorite genre, it rather hurt my feelings that all of them (except for KNOTS) collapsed as they did, and in the ways they did. People often chalk up the revival of sitcoms in the mid-'80s as to why, but that doesn't explain why DALLAS/DYNASTY/FC all started to suck donkeys of their own accord.To me, these shows began as essentially family dramas focused on character, but perhaps thanks to Aaron Spelling and his turning DYNASTY into a lifestyle, all the shows seemed to shift into attempting to "impress" the viewer -- whether it was with glitz or outrageous events or whatever. But all of them lost any sense of identity from that point forward and a tackiness took over. They just became unwatchable even for hardcore fans like me.Except, as I say, for KNOTS. KNOTS had its creator, David Jacobs, an objective dramatist, running the show, so its creative survival made sense. Post-'WhoShotJR?' DALLAS couldn't tell a tale without David Paulsen, but he only had whatever power on that show that Lenny Katzman or Philip Capice gave him -- and when Peter Dunne arrived and then Art Lewis returned, Paulsen took off. FALCON CREST's most inspired show-runner, Robert McCullough, was fired after three great seasons because a Lorimar executive didn't seem to like him. Show over. And while DYNASTY's Esther Shapiro was a capable producer, she was, like Spelling, a cynical businessperson at the end of the day, and turned control of the show over to pals who simply weren't up to the task.Who knows about GREY's ANATOMY?, but  it's a different era in TV series production today -- one where shows never seem to be quite as well-conceived or cast, yet the productions are far slicker and the result of a more highly-competent assembly-line process.And, of course, a much, much smaller audience is required today for a series to still be seen as a hit.<img src="https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/8a/d5/78/8ad5782ecdfaec0ce1b62a6966899248.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /></blockquote>

Verification: Who played Sue Ellen in Dallas?

Poison your name this Hallowe'en

There's plenty of time to choose your spooky October username

Click here for more details

Reply to thread