titan1978

I thought of another one, which merged several General Hospital specialties into one cliffhanger- the end of show montage set to music, mixed with slow motion mob action. The multiple hit mob shootout in 1995. Laura singing the lullaby to baby Lulu juxtaposed with the slow motion shootings in the Spencer house with Sonny/Luke/Lucky, Robin and Stone in front of the club, and Brenda in the shower in the upstairs apartment. I was on the edge of my seat when the next episode aired, and I still think it was one of the best ones they ever did.

One thing I will always give them is that Bill Bell/Kay Alden as HW knew how to give a psychopath a crescendo and make their ending thrilling. Even in that period in the 90’s when Bell was obsessed with Nick and Sharon, and the show got kind of boring. When they wanted a villain to go, they went out with a bang.

Yes, that moment on the docks still holds impact and was staged really beautifully! @alwaysAMC I didn’t start AMC u til Dimitri and Erica were already married, in the early part of the story with Kendall. I would have eaten that gothic storyline up as a teenager had I seen it!

It’s hard to quantify for me because she has been Carly the longest, and she has also endured the longest run with shallow writing that didn’t really explore her properly. To be honest nobody has ever reached what Sarah Joy Brown did for me. TB was a good recast for what they wanted at the time, but even she was pushed as romantic lead first, with a combative and antagonistic edge. SJB’s Carly was just much more complex, partly from her, partly from the writing, and also partly from the push/pull happening between Riche/Guza. There could be darkness and misogyny during their run, but it was more tempered. JFP leaned into that, and Pratt loves a trashy catfight. So the three of them setting the course in 2002 for several years really sets a tone. With all that said, I also do not see SJB working well now. They are just so different that it is impossible to imagine. I wish they had been more levelheaded when they wrote Claudia, but that just wasn’t going to happen at that time.

I also don’t believe that stuff about her. Do I think she doesn’t take any crap and is direct? Absolutely. She’s been acting in soaps since the early 1990’s so she has seen it all, and I have never seen her checked out. Now I don’t think she has ever gotten to that angry grit that fueled SJB’s Carly, and they never really tried to write her that way because it wasn’t working. I don’t think Valentini likes drama bts, and wouldn’t put up with it from her. Especially now. I don’t think anyone has any real power at GH bts except for Frank Valentini. The days of Maurice or Steve throwing their weight around are long gone.

Sonny was a little different back then, he was still essentially the same Sonny Claire Labine wrote for. He was less misogynistic, more in control of his libido, and he would have tried to keep himself from Brenda. Lily wasn't really the threat, it was the baby. That's why I think Brenda kind of gives up and gives in to Jax, because she needs the distraction and the comfort, and that baby is the one thing she thought would make a vow Sonny would not break for her. And that was just an unborn child, imagine if Lily had more kids and didn't die right away. But Sonny did not love Lily, that was a huge part of his breakdown after she died, and the feelings they both expressed about how wrong it would be to give in at that point. He felt guilty for dragging her into a marriage and his feelings for Brenda are what set up the chain of events with Lily's father having the bomb planted. And Brenda's own actions with the wire had betrayed Sonny so much that Lily was able to slide right in there. To me, the most important and defining line of their relationship until the conversation they had at the end of her last full return was the one about Sonny always leaving her in the rain. Dramatic and overwrought as it was, but that's Sonny/Brenda!

I am also not really able to access the site on my iPhone anymore. It was acting wonky for the last couple weeks, and the last two days all the workarounds have stopped working at all, with both Safari and Chrome. Seems fine on my laptop, although that's not what I use daily. Thank you for all your hard work trying to figure out what the issues are @Errol !

Oh I agree, it’s one of those soap moments you see after the fact and it’s still great.

It’s not that I didn’t like them or agree with you, because I loved them. I had seen Patch before Stefan and they just never feel like the same person, incredible work by SN. In 1996 he and Genie created actual heat, it felt dangerous. My problem was that all that promise never really fully came to fruition. After Lucky was revealed alive the whole thing just fizzled out. They deserved a big finish, not a slow crawl.

Good one. I “met” Roger pretty much after the fact, and all his big moments still worked for me. Minus the silly masked man when he returned. But the hall of mirrors, falling from the cliffs, all the stuff he did to Holly, the Mindy/Alex story culmination. It’s all good! When you watch all his crimes against Holly in his first run though, it’s kind of hard to fathom them sleeping together again like they did in the 90’s. I know they built it up carefully, and Holly is very neurotic, but still. This is the era I got hooked on AMC. My local ABC affiliate moved the show from noon to 3:00, so it was the only soap still airing when I got home from school. The tornado, Julia/Noah, Dimitri with Erica, the original Kendall Hart storyline, Tad/Ted and Dixie, Haley/Mateo/Alec/Arlene, the gay storyline, Kelsey and her teenage baby. Several years of solid stuff!

I hated Lily. But the show was so good back then that when she died it did feel shocking and was I was sad for her. She was no angel, she manipulated things several times while pretending to be the better person. The men were all clueless! In hindsight though, I think Lily was the better choice for Sonny as a wife. She wanted to be close to power but she really didn’t want it for herself. She was manipulative but not headstrong. She understood the game having grown up in it. She would have been a stabilizing influence on him rather than creating chaos. She even accepted his feelings for Brenda with resignation that their marriage would just not be that kind of relationship. Even with all that I think Sonny would have continued to be pulled towards Brenda. Maybe people that didn’t watch back then don’t understand it, but it was very dramatic, toxic, and yet you still wanted them together. They paired all that angst beautifully with a couple of 90’s Chris Isaak songs for their end of show music montages GH used to do so well. Brenda was always complicated when it came to Sonny being in the mob. It’s part of the wire storyline, she made illogical decisions because she wanted to be part of Sonny’s whole life and resented he was keeping things from her. During her last return we saw a Brenda who finally realized that her basically until then unspoken dream that he would give it all up for her wasn’t enough for him. He wanted power more than anything, even Brenda, the love of his life. And Carly was just impulsive, reckless, and volatile and a terrible choice to be that close to danger all the time. Carly, especially SJB and TB were like introducing an unstable element to an already volatile mix.

We barely see Mac so I kind of forget about Cody’s family ties. And yes that was terrible. Ethan/Lucy is also ridiculous.

Thanks for the tag! That whole time period was apparently very chaotic. Monty had said what she said about Genie and it got back to her, so she quit in anger. She then had regrets apparently and Monty also felt bad, and they had the conversation about Monty cleaning up the drugs on set. But from what I have read they may have thought about recasting her, and decided it just would not fly while they were in the middle of doing it. The story was nebulous, they weren’t even sure that Genie wouldn’t change her mind and try to come back. I don’t think there was even much more than a sketch of an idea for Jackie other than they wanted Demi. That also kind of shows in what Stone says. They were casting for type, like old Hollywood, and didn’t always have much of a fully defined story. Being told she had no mystery totally sounds like the GH of the era to me. Monty was moving away from recasting, clearly felt that was tied to the old fashioned soapy things she wanted to get away from. Heather Webber was the last main character recast that I can remember from Monty’s entire first stint. After that she just didn’t do it back then. Maybe even thinking about doing it with Laura soured her so much she didn’t really try again, except as a threat to Jack Wagner. Based on her Soapy interview I think Eileen Davidson was auditioning for GH around the same time and could also have been going for the same parts. Although her casting director was a man.

A ridiculous error with Korte at the top now. She’s supposedly the show historian! It’s not the worst though, because Ric is essentially a retcon anyway. The worst for me was the error with Bill and Holly during Tony Geary’s last big story. They were in stories and a romance together!

Awesome, thanks @SoapDope78