We Love Soaps' Take on GH

[quartermainefan]

what sinking ratings?

[AdelaideCate007]

My major problem with GH is that they clearly don't realise or won't accept when something isn't working. Instead they drill it into the audience's heads and have the story on five days a week. Case in point- this abysmal story with Nina. No one gives a [!@#$%^&*] [!@#$%^&*] about Nina. People hardly care about Silas and Ava yet this [!@#$%^&*] is on everyday of the week. No one cares and them adding Nina's non acting brother-cousin, Abby Ewing, Victor, Dr. O,

isn't going help or make anyone care. Why is there so much focus on these people? Nathan has been here three months and already has two mums and a sister. It took almost 6 years to get to Sam's father and and it's been almost two decades and we still have no idea who Liz's mum is. Ridiculous.

When people turn on GH, they want to see Carly or Luke or Tracy or someone in that vain. They don't want to see Silas moping about his never before seen possibly dead wife.

[DramatistDreamer]

Yeah, some of the statements were overly conciliatory, IMO but I don't expect any article that is posted on blogs that rely on interviews with the staff/crew of those same shows to go full on. I expected there to be some soft pedaling and backpedaling during the course of article. I'd prefer that the writer just lay it all out there, though and there are ways to do that diplomatically where no one feels like they're being demonized. Unless that stuff about RC/FV saving the show... is what the author truly believes-- then I've got nothing (*shrugs*).

[jcar03]

GH is the only show with powers that be on twitter. Corday, Bell or Phelps have at least half a brain to stay away from that.

My main problem when I watch GH is they cram a story down our throats for weeks on end then proceed to forget about it for weeks on end. I had forgotten that Sabrina was even pregnant.

[Vee]

No, I think this article is very fair and accurate. Ron and Frank did a lot to re-energize GH and yes, save it from what it had become. They broke the back of Bob Guza's General Hospital. They took out Steve Burton, and I cannot stress how important it was to burn him off the face of Port Charles though it was not their initial intention. I challenge anyone to say they believed any of that would ever happen three years ago, let alone five or ten. They got everyone talking about that show for all of its legacy, not just the last fifteen years. They brought so much back that I have to be thankful for, people and families I thought I'd never see again. They made a huge effort which I truly appreciate, even when it was clumsy, or even when their show is at its worst, as it is now.

The problem is that taken on their own, Ron and Frank are not a cure-all. Frank is tasked with the impossible job of cutting the budget further and further all the time and that becomes a focus in and of itself as opposed to managing the writing or characters - the cast is vastly bloated but it's not seen as a problem because they only write for larger story vs. people, and Frank regularly seems fine with that. And Ron in particular became a victim of his excess, his ego and his own press years before OLTL ended. It's not been about the show for him in a long time, it's about him and how he sees the show through his own lens. If that weren't the case, A.J. wouldn't be dead again while Franco/Fake Shemp Todd walks the earth. They cleared out virtually all of the pre-existing staff that knew how to write for this show and these characters, that delivered relatively sophisticated dialogue amidst Guza's horrible stories, and the talented people they did bring over from OLTL largely write for plot and quips vs. character. They are directed to do that.

In terms of how they shoot, that's the system as it apparently has to be at GH now to keep that show under budget and on the air. I can sympathize with those issues of necessity up to a point, as I did at OLTL. But I've also seen much more, much stronger work done with less, and I know it doesn't have to be this poorly written and plotted. You can tell better story and write for characters on the same amount of money (or less) in the same amount of time. But too much of the soap press is so keen to cling to a lifeline, any lifeline in a bleak future landscape for soaps that they'll say that people who do (or did) anything well are now therefore doing everything well - because to not support their good faith effort means there is nothing else left to support. Well, that's not true and it's also not an honest critique. The show is a [!@#$%^&*] mess today, and it has been since at least around this time last year, immediately following the Nurses Ball. I know that cast and crew work their heart out and give it everything they have but many of these same good people, along with the cast, did the same at OLTL after they purged all the minorities, after they brought in the Ford family and that show was still a miserable debacle with a few bright spots until the last six months or so (and those last six weren't exactly perfection unbound either, lest we forget the Stacy/Gigi story). Just because they mean well - which so few in daytime still do - doesn't mean it's a great show.

And in a number of cases I don't think Ron really does mean well anymore. He does love soaps - he loves GH, he grew up on it like the rest of us. But he has a very narrow view of what soap opera can or should be, or at least his taste is far too broad and campy and questionable for him to go it alone anymore - and I'm saying this as someone who loves good camp and enjoyed a lot of his comic storylines on OLTL. His roots are largely in the Paul Rauch '80s, and that was a specific tenor. And today, no one tells him no, no one writes for character, no one says let's step back and take a beat, which they did even back then. Most of the time these days it also comes off like Ron's writing for himself, not so much as a fan but a severely aggrieved auteur, and for his ego, and proving something to somebody who could be anyone or everyone or no one out in the audience, online or off. Writing angry only goes so far, especially when your own talent has limits. He has reached the upper limits of his. He patterns his work after the writers and eras he admired, but he doesn't fully grasp the depth of character and pacing that drove those eras and that's why he fails.

I'm glad WLS had the balls to run this. I eagerly await the J. Bernard Jones rebuttal.

[KMan101]

Addie did I read that spoiler correctly. OMG. WTF. OMG WTF again. Do I even want to know what other gems he has planned? He thinks he's just so [!@#$%^&*] brilliant. And yeah, people want to see the GH characters but when he actually does "write" for them it's like he's forced to so he writes them as unlikable as possible as a big ole middle finger. I remember fans complaining about Liz not having airtime so then he had Nikolas and Liz suddenly as this great love and them panting after each other. He just won't drop that.

And jcar, it's very much true about the storylines. Shoved down our throats and then forgotten about. I forget about characters on this show all of the time.

[Vee]

There's a great comment at the WLS link too, which I will excerpt:

The bolded part isn't just something coming from Ron and Frank - it is all but explicit from most of the soap press, most specifically Michaels Logan and Fairman and of course Daytime Confidential. I don't need to be lectured on how or why I feel the way I do about GH when I've been watching longer than some of those kids whose favorite era was 2004. So long as some of these people got to watch Tamara Braun genuflect to Sonny and Jason run around with a gun they were happy.

[KMan101]

Excellent posts as usual, Vee. And I agree with the bolded as well.

[DRW50]

A very fair article. They had to offer the praise at the start as they will be torn apart for that critique, from the DC jackals and by Ron himself, most likely.

I had to laugh that someone got upset because the article got a name wrong. If you want continuity, then why are you watching that shite?

[KMan101]

Some of those people need to read Laura Wright's interview with that icky Fairman. Even SHE admits (without really admitting) there was no story with Franco and Carly and she can't even justify it really. That basically sums up the entire show. No story and forced, ridiculous explanations that are viewed as "amazing plot twists".

[ChitHappens]

Becky Herbst had the same complaint. She said she read the script one day and the outline was telling her what the character was feeling. She felt nothing onscreen previously filmed justified it.

[Vee]

There is a lot in the OLTL tome by Jeff Giles about this sort of thing, especially from people like Hillary B. Smith (Nora) and so forth. They said she'd be taping stuff from "let's say, show 50 and then show 85" on the same day with little to no context or background. Reacting to events they have yet to shoot.

[KMan101]

Oh I missed that. I love it.

And does anyone else agree with my point that it feels like the regular GH characters get "punished" because Ron HAS to write for them. It sure comes off that way to me. Like a big old middle finger to the fans of GH who complain about not seeing their favorites, or not liking what they are currently doing.

I'm amazed I still like Dante. And he's about the only one. Go figure.

[Vee]

I think Ron likes writing for most of the GH regulars. But most of them are slaves to plot, and his mind he is doing them right with his great plotlines vs. writing for their characters, so even if their characters aren't serviced for who they are, 'hey, look at my great stories!' Then there's the ones he just doesn't give a [!@#$%^&*] about, or who he is filling time with until he can get something else for them that he prefers instead (Liz, Nikolas, etc.)

Dante in particular has no real character anymore beyond what poor Dominic Zamprogna struggles to bring out of the functional dialogue. He is there to be a clueless male among many other clueless males, at the mercy of schemers and campy villains. He is a 'hero' and is written as one, and to support his other family members, but that is the extent of the time they take for him as a character.

[ChitHappens]

But in the case of GH, those events never happen. Remember Patty was a drug addict and healed OFFSCREEN. JT said he read the script and was shocked because he had no idea the character had a drug problem.