titan1978

All this talk about the Riche era has me watching YouTube and bawling my eyes out. I don’t think any story has moved me as much as Stone’s did. I like Lucy best when she is just shady enough. Early Labine was great. The schemes with Damien, fighting with Katherine, the pain over what the bet cost Bobbie and Tony. Missing Serena. They went a little too far with her once she completely changed into a better person for Kevin. This is an iconic scene because of Lois and Katherine, but I also love Lucy and Ned. “She’s all yours pal!”

I do agree that the story was written for Lucky and Luke and involved Liz and Laura. To me the Luke side of it wasn’t a burden, it was that he never felt that he deserved his “angel”, and that he had been found out about just how awful he was. He was shedding his attempt at being the best version of himself, which he did for his love of Laura. When Lucky found out, it brought back all his shame and his attempt at not being the person who has done this for a huge part of his life was destroyed. But it was pretty much only about him, not Laura. It was about breaking him down. If they had even tried to give Laura a point of view, it would have been incredible to revisit this. Instead I was let down once we got to the actual confrontations between the three characters. I thought Lucky was his most spoiled during this story, and kind of hated him when he was with anyone but Liz. Laura never got to truly explain what happened to her to him in a way that was appropriate and the depth of her feelings for Luke then and now. We just got nasty Lucky. I did love her telling him he didn’t own her, and that she had a life before him and separate from him that was hers. But that was one episode. Then it was walking on eggshells for a long time between the three characters. Oh Guza. His entire writing style is deconstruction. The problem is he never builds it back up. But I would watch that year again daily over anything happening on the show now.

I will give her credit though. She learned from that mistake and during her run no other female character was raped. Which was better than another one falling in love with their rapist. I think rape is an important story, especially on shows with such high female viewerships. The stories should reflect what is going on. But soaps have a tendency to sensationalize it and make it a plot for a couple to overcome. DAYS I’m looking at you here. And though I did not watch it, Santa Barbara seems to have been particularly rape crazy for a show that aired for just a decade. Monty would never have revisited that story. She also would not have divorced Luke and Laura. She described her own style as a mix of Hitchcock and Capra. So thrills but also a sense of right and wrong that was close to black and white.

She was truly robbed the year of the fire. I will never forget Luke telling her on the docks, then going to identify Lucky, and lashing out at Luke and Sonny and Jason. Not to mention the week after leading to his funeral. I remember even soap stars from other networks saying how her performance was truly overlooked. Her grief just seemed so real.

And I felt that was kind of sacrilege. I think they broke them piece by piece in a way that I could get behind as long as the end result was to build them back up together. Instead it became pretty clear they just kind of gave up on her character. Luke was still off being Luke and Laura was crying all the time about Lucky. Nikolas, and revealing Laura having a kind of love for Stefan on the island and then Lucky learning about the rape and the fire were really good, character driven reasons for their relationship falling apart. But they should never have been divorced.

There were times when I thought they went too far with Laura in that direction. She could be dangerous, impulsive and reckless just like Luke, and they tried to make her a little too domestic. But at least we saw her growing more anxious with the mob. Lucky was shot, she was kidnapped and shoved down the stairs while pregnant with Lulu, her house was shot up and she killed a man to save Luke all in like a year. It annoyed me as time went on and it became Laura wants to bake cookies and Luke wants adventure. Which did neither character any justice. One thing I will absolutely give Labine- her Laura was both vulnerable but also incredibly strong. And Guza wrote her as a basket case. She had an emotional collapse when Nikolas arrived and had to be sedated. She almost killed herself on the train tracks after Lucky died. She went crazy when she thought she killed Rick. She was just a mess under Guza.

And yet he also did some of his best acting work under her production and teams. Nuanced, delicate work that later got bigger and bigger. As much as he hates it, that early family unit of Luke, Laura and Lucky was really great stuff.

Better than Valentini. Truly. Also, all the stories will have emotional stakes. She was very big on even a big action story having an emotional grounding. The problem is, who writes it for her? Because she can turn excellent writing into a great show (Labine, most of Guza), and mediocre writing into something at least watchable (Levinson and most of Culliton). Sadly, Korte and Val Jean’s brief tenure was boring af, and Whitesell and Iacobuzio and an entire year of Guza was nearly unwatchable. I was so excited when there were rumors she was possibly going to ATWT and again Y&R years ago. I think she would have been a good fit at ATWT.

Agreed. Running Port Charles and GH was a huge mistake IMO, and GH suffered. Guza’s storylines totally collapsed about 2 years into his return from Sunset Beach and the show was a dark mess. When did Frons take over ABC daytime? Because I think that his type of interference was present towards the end of her time there. I know she and Bob were not getting along by that point either.

I love Monty but I also really enjoyed a lot of what happened under Hardy and Kenney. And they were not as demanding as she was, so the cast also had reasons to not enjoy her worst traits. When she took daytime by storm before, she had strong writers for the first few years or her tenure with Marland and Falken-Smith. That was not the case during her return. I still think some of her choices were right, just not the way she implemented them. But I would not trade those Riche years. When Labine got there, the show moved me in a way that it had never before. It was sophisticated for the 1990’s like Monty had modernized it in the late 70’s. Monty would not have told a story like BJ’s heart, and never would have told the story of Stone and Robin.

Part of why they acted so quickly was the vocalized frustration of the actors. In under a year the show lost Robert, Anna, Felicia, and Frisco. The Quartermain family wasn’t being featured, and she rushed her new vision onscreen. By the end of that year things were looking up though. She had repaired some of her own damages.

Both Tristan and Finola were fed up with Monty and burned out. They were originally going to work it out to keep her she was planning to leave but had second thoughts. Then she booked a prime time show on ABC. Monty told her it was her last day while she was filming and didn’t have her finish out the end of her contract on air because she was mad at her. They eventually made up. Edited because I had some stuff wrong lol.

I loved Nick. I was bummed they killed him off. I was just reading up about Nick’s mom and I guess I never put two and two together that Jake snapped after “Angel” left him and started killing people, and that “Angel” was one of Jessica’s alters.

Josh Taylor. I’ve just never liked him. Not as Chris. Not as Jed. Certainly not as Roman. Nice to see his face moving and his lines being easier to understand.

Don’t forget Pat Falken Smith was the head writer then. She may have had plans for Anna with or without Holly. They set up the Anna/Robert backstory and Robin so well. Anna really took off considering how many people loved Holly. I could not get enough of her for her first tenure on the show. I actually enjoyed her relationships with both Dukes more than with Robert (although I didn’t hate them as a couple).

I think he died after Monica operated on him. And was his time with Nikki that kind of started the path to AJ being an alcoholic? I liked that actor as AJ.

She was such a fun character. Plenty of places to go with her, especially with her being the only person on the show at that time that worked in media. But I can’t blame it all on Labine. I’m sure they were expensive, and it was not quite the era of asking stars like them to take pay cuts like it was just a few years later. And Riche could have found something for them. When Luke was being written out, I kind of wished it was Sean behind his troubles. Because Frank should have stayed dead, and Sean was written out after being shot by Luke when he was aiming for some other mob boss. Scully I think.

When Bob Guza and Wendy Riche were in sync with each other, they produced and wrote some of the best GH episodes of all time. I will never forget the end of the episode before this, when she was grabbed off that bench, and this one. Bobbie was such a vital part of these scenes, you almost forget what an important part of the show she was. Ultimately I think they let Lucky go too far in his rage against Luke and Laura. I especially hated that Lucky got to attack his mother for loving Luke and then they just slowly made up over time, without her really getting to tell him her side of things without him insulting her. I would really have liked a scene with her standing her ground that didn’t put her down for the sake of Lucky getting to be angry. Also the entire storyline just became about Luke again. And it should have been more Laura’s story too. For those that watched back during Luke’s rape of Laura- was Laura found in the park afterwards too? I think I read that in a recap once.

My dad, who only saw the show in bits and pieces as my mom and his grandmother watched it used to joke all the way into the 1990’s when I watched as a teen “Is Jessie still crying in the pill room?” In that prime time GH anniversary special in the late 1990’s, I remember Rachel Ames saying Steve and Jessie were the two people that should have been together, but never were. Like many a soap romantic couple, they started to have storylines revolving around their sexy children and then dropped off the storyline map. When you read yearly recaps, it seems around 1976-1977 was Audrey’s last real storyline of note until Ryan attacks her in the 1990’s. While we saw her a lot during Tom Jr’s return and relationship with Simone, it wasn’t her storyline really. They got got remarried in the late 1970’s, Jeff Webber became Steve’s son, and Steve is pretty much just chief of staff after that. I think Jessie’s time of the frontburner ended before Steve and Audrey’s.

Yes, JFP was the EP when we last saw Amy. What I loved about Amy over the years was she was a great nurse. And a busybody. It added some fun, and she played off different people really well. I do barely remember her one storyline (beyond stuff from when she first came on the show), where she fell in love with a boxer I think?

Was Kenney the EP during the Anna kidnapped by Grant Putnam and Satan the dog story? Because I thought the show was great then. Tom Hardy JR came back then too, and the beginning of his story with Simone was then if I’m remembering correctly. Steve and Audrey were much more integrated and present when he came back as an adult.

My time watching the show and really paying attention was well past the heyday of Nurse Jessie. But as a kid I had a fondness for her, seeing her at the Nurses station and admonishing Amy for gossiping. Caring deeply about Bobbie and little Robin. That’s what these people running the shows have forgotten. Seeing those characters does matter to younger viewers.

If you watched back then, Mac drove front burner story from his arrival until about a year into Guza’s first tenure. Then Guza came back and the god awful two Macs story happened. He lost interest in him after that and so did the show for the most part. I didn’t always enjoy him (except when he and Felicia were first falling in love and fighting Ryan together). It’s only by 1996 to 1997 that his placement seemed wrong as far as status. Watching that open makes me miss Rosalind Cash so much. Although anyone writing for her but Labine seems like it would not have gone well. Labine just got that character and actress.

There was something exciting about that ambulance during the action packed Monty era of the show. I loved it. But faces of the heart also just suited the Riche era too. Especially the first 5 or 6 years of her tenure, when the updates were seamless. I still love Lucy’s shot with her eyebrow going up, Lois with her nails framing her face, Stone and Robin’s two shot, Luke and Laura at the mid point two shot, and Felicia and Mac (that turtleneck!) at the end. Especially once the Puerto Rico shots got added.

Thanks for posting! That was a great episode. I’ve seen so little of the aftermath of the rape, I might need to fall into a YouTube hole. So many great Christmas scenes on GH have involved Laura. I’m so used to Bobbie kissing Luke’s ass that seeing her be actually mean and questioning him was great. Because she was allowed to have a point of view in their relationship, which didn’t really happen anymore once Luke became the center of the show. For the most part Bobbie deferred to him. Jeff Webber, Joe Kelly and Scotty are all adorable. Anne is a drip as always. What a waste of so many good men. I wish they would have kept Diana and killed Anne instead, I love Brooke Bundy. And Monty and Falken-Smith are still my favorite EP/HW combo for this show until we get to Riche/Labine.