Marland Monday: When Is It Time To Change and Rearrange?
Hey kids, what day is it?
It’s Monday!
This means it’s…
Marland Monday!
In case you’re joining us for the first time, this summer I am saluting Douglas Marland, one of the best writers in the soap opera genre. Many consider him the GOAT (Greatest of All-Time)
Today’s rule is this one, and it’s a doozy:
Don’t change a core character. You can certainly give them edges they didn’t have before, or give them a logical reason to change their behavior. But when the audience says, “He would never do that,” then you have failed.
Let us do what is called a compare/contrast of two characters. Come with me!
Let’s meet As the World Turns’ Barbara Steinbeck, 1985.
Barbara had been through the wringer, like many soap heroines. Put it shortly: she fell in love with the wrong man, had a baby, gave him up, but got the baby back years later, fell for the right man, but he died in a parachute accident. In 1985, she was willing to take a chance again on love with handsome Brian McColl. A small fly in the ointment: Barbara’s son Paul didn’t like Brian. Okay, he HATED Brian. Barbara felt torn between her son and her new romance.
Enter Douglas Marland.
Marland watched the show and thought it was time to shake Barbara up a little. She needed to stop being the Good Girl, the victim. Barbara’s portrayer Colleen Zenk told We Love Soaps this: “I could never figure out what Doug saw. But when I look back at myself at that young age before Barbara turned into Bad Barbara, I can see some of that. I can see how he could say, ‘That girl could have an edge if I gave it to her.’ We didn’t have a young bad girl on the show at that point. I think he positioned me perfectly for that.”
I remember it differently than Zenk though. Marland did change Barbara, but I remember it was a tad more gradual.
First off, Paul went to boarding school. Now that he was out of the way, Barbara decided she was ready for Brian. She went to his apartment, saying she was ready for him. One small problem. There was another woman there. It was the new lady in town, Shannon O’Hara and she was wearing Brian’s bathrobe. Oh, boy.
It was that moment Barbara decided no longer would be a victim. No longer would she be Poor Barbara. She was never going to depend on a man again. Men just let you down, They hurt you in the end. Of course this was a lesson she never really learned. But in 1985, there was a new sheriff in town. And she was ready to rumble.
First off, she decided to change her last name. No longer was she going to be “So and so Mrs. Steinbeck.” (she married two Steinbecks. This was a soap opera) Nope, she was going back to her maiden name, Ryan. Next, she convinced her business partner Lisa McColl to move their store Fashions Ltd to a bigger and better location. No more hiding in a corner for Barbara.
One night when ex fiance Tom Hughes got drunk, she got into bed with him naked. When he woke up, she told him they slept together. His wife Margo found out, then left him. Soap Opera Digest critqued the storyline, but to me it made sense. Barbara wanted revenge on Tom for leaving her at the altar. She wanted revenge on Margo because Margo slept with Barbara’s first husband. Bam! Revenge on two characters that did her wrong. It took months for Tom to realize Barbara lied, but by then Barbara moved on to sleep with Tonio Reyes, who was married. Then she was downright rude to her newfound cousin Sabrina, the love child of Bob and Kim Hughes conceived when Bob was married to Barbara’s mom, Jennifer. (Yeah, I’m tired too, just rereading this) It took a talking to from Kim to set Barbara straight on Sabrina. But here’s what what Barbara did for years, what Zenk told WLS: “Barbara was in the middle of everything — stirring the pot, making things happen, causing grief for everyone around her, making the same mistakes over and over.” Barbara became more fleshed out, more three dimentional.
Which leads me how you can ruin a character. I give you Guiding Light’s Beth Raines Spaulding.
Anyone who knows me knows this: I LOVED Beth from 1983–1986. Beth was shy, sweet, and loved books. She was an artist, nerdy. She went through hell and back (I can’t write everything that happened to Beth, so here’s her wiki) Yeah, she became a bit Mary Sueish, but Judi Evans, and later Beth Chamberlin, always played her with warmth, sweetness, and yep, spunk.
After being gone for several years, new writers brought the character Beth back in 1997. Only it wasn’t the same Beth. While the old Beth wore jeans and was casual in her clothes, this Beth always wore designer suits, even if she wasn’t going anywhere. The old Beth always tried to keep going. The new Beth tried to seduce her ex husband Phillip by wearing a fur coat with only a bra and panties underneath, then when she was rejected threw herself in front of an incoming car. New Beth didn’t draw, didn’t read, she wasn’t my Beth.
Here’s where the writers failed: They never really explained why Beth changed. They did try a little, saying it was because Phillip left her. But that didn’t make sense. Beth had evolved in the eighties, became strong, independent. I don’t blame Chamberlin (who played Beth until 2009 when the show ended) I blame countless writing teams who had Beth suddenly wanting to become a princess, or a CEO, or sleeping with men that weren’t fit, as Anne Lamott would say, to drink her bathwater. One poster in the Soap Opera Network put it perfectly: “…went from a sweet and shy heroine…to a… harpy shrew.” When Beth changed, so many people, myself included, lost someone they could cheer for, someone they could idenitfy with. They failed Beth. And they failed the audience.
A character can-and should-change, but they should maintain some of what they had before. But if a character loses who they are entirely, it has to be shown. Because if someone says “Oh, someone would never do that” man, you didn’t do your job as a writer. And if you didn’t do your job as a writer, then you have to see how you can find a way to fix it. Otherwise, you’ll have many angry readers/viewers out there, wanting blood.
Tune in next week…
