Critic's Review of CAPITOL (1983)
A personal viewpoint
By John Kelly Genovese

 The show has gone through three head writing regimes in one year. Originally it was penned by Stephen and Elinor Karpf, who created CAPITOL with its innovative executive producer, John Conboy. They were replaced by the highly experienced Joyce and John William Corrington, then by Peggy 0’Shea, another accomplished soapsmith. Such quick replacements can mean trouble for a soap, since with each new head writer usually comes a slightly different interpretation of a show’s characters.

  
  The most glaring example of erroneous story-tracking occurred recently, when matriarch Clarissa McCandless (played with grace and perfection by Constance Towers) admitted to guilt feelings about pushing her son Tyler (David Mason Daniels) into the political arena. Apparently the powers-that-be totally forgot one of the series’ very first scenes, in which Clarissa begged Tyler not to run for office and slapped him when he refused to honor her wishes. The latter scene not only lacked meaning – it violated character continuity.

 Other story treatments became convoluted, even to the more loyal and informed viewers. The show’s first plot complication was a coverup involving a plethora of nefarious, seedy characters like Myrna Clegg (Carolyn Jones, now Marj Dusay), her now-sympathetic stepson Trey (Nicholas Walker), now-dead private eye Frank Burgess (Duncan Gamble), now-departed hooker Shelly Granger (Jane Daly Gamble), mysterious imposter Lawrence Barrington (Jeff Chamberlain) and hoodlum restauranteur Danny Donato (Victor Brandt). To begin with, that is a disproportionate population of villains for a half-hour serial (it doesn’t leave us enough folks to root for ). Secondly, the whole mess worsened when Trey and Shelly (who also called herself Kelly Harper) suddenly blossomed into a sympathetic love pair. Granted, Shelly had cut her hair and changed her name, but it still seemed impossible that Trey did not recognize her as the hooker who appeared in the blackmail videotape that he and Myrna had engineered.

 Sadly, the quality of the dialogue isn’t much better. The Corringtons were better in this regard, but more recent scripts have taken on the obvious, ”sledge- hammer” effect of the show’s earlier, corny scenes. Characters declaim gems like, ”Well, well, well... here’s a Clegg sitting with a McCandless!” And one recent scene was downright laughable. It involved Sloane Denning (Deborah Mullowney), who was called upon to whine and yell hysterically to her veiled, reclusive mother about having nailed her (Sloane’s) criminal lover, Kurt Voightlander (Wolf Muser).

 At this point in CAPITOL’s history, it would do well to reevaluate its priorities. Fortunately, it is now putting its more accomplished performers to better use, such as Ed Nelson (always powerful as Senator Mark Denning) and Rory Calhoun, whose Judson Tyler is a wonderfully endearing grandfather figure – a characterization daytime sorely needed since the demises of Papa Bauer on GUIDING LIGHT, Judge Lowell on AS THE WORLD TURNS and Winston Grimsley on THE EDGE OF NIGHT. And though the young performers are getting better, it is still Bill Beyers (Wally McCandless) and Nicholas Walker (Trey) who shine as pros.

 But the play is still the thing, folks. Hopefully CAPITOL will chuck the veil and the harpsichord for the relevance and honesty due its timeless setting.