titan1978

I agree. I’m sad things didn’t work out because the characters finally had personality in their scripts. I see so many similarities to Sally Sussman returning to Y&R. All of a sudden it felt more like Y&R. She just didn’t have anything for them to do except be more in character. No story engine. If someone was paired with them who was a great driver of story, I think this would have ended differently.

I’m bummed that this didn’t work out. The scripts were so much more interesting. The show just needed someone who was better at plotting stories to work with them IMO. I am not certain Korte is in the correct role. But time will tell. Any word on if he decided to quit or was let go? I cannot imagine him staying if he was not getting close to what he was promised or wanted. Makes the rumors of a power struggle seem much more plausible than they did earlier this week.

I’m excited to read your posts about this period of the show!

I was wondering the same thing. But the first photo does resemble the shy, dark haired little girl that played Lulu as a baby. As she got older she barely spoke and seemed really shy to me. Anna telling Carly to be as smart as she (Carly) thinks she is now one of my favorite telling Carly off scenes ever.

Please and thank you! Of all the characters on the show, if Laura wrote an honest book about her life story it would be riveting! Her childhood with the Vinnings and Lesley finding her is already fascinating, and that is all before she starts accidentally killing people and married her rapist.

That’s why I don’t think BTS is the backbiting power struggle these online folks say it is right now. Because he would just walk. This is somebody that was retired and hadn’t even worked on the show in decades. Hell, he spent more time writing at B&B than he did at GH! He absolutely prefers short, plot driven stuff he can chop up inside episodes and cut and paste into other episodes as is needed. More dialogue also means more possibility of errors, which means more takes. He moves the cameras around more than the show did when it was very dialogue heavy back in the day, so I’m sure that is a challenge too. I’m not saying FV loves this. I’m just saying I don’t think there is this epic war happening. Why wouldn’t Mulcahey just quit?

Longer scenes is nothing new to FV on GH. When that hack Jean Passanante became HW with Altman, she slowed the lightning RC pace down. She talked about it in interviews too- the show was going to have longer scenes and more character development. She was a terrible HW, but that team did slow the pace down and the scenes were longer. It seems like a such an online soap complaint disguised as insider information to me. What is the one concrete thing we know as viewers is directly from this HW team? Longer scenes and better dialogue. It’s the only place to hang their hat as being PM and EK’s faults. I have said from the beginning of these changes that Varni is clearly more invested if not also more involved. He started talking about the show more. Roger Howarth was let go. When the Burton coming back stuff started, didn’t he make a post about the show getting back to its GH roots, working to lure back an audience not currently watching enough? The slapdash primetime special was very much more of an introduction to the show at that moment than much of the retrospective we were expecting. PM was shocking, not just because of his retirement but also because he has never been one of Frank’s people. If there is a war going on, that causes the show to suffer. And one thing I know is that Korte and Valentini love GH, neither one wants the show to suffer. What I am seeing is a messy transition, both the stylistic change and the rush to put new writers in place while scrapping months of story. It takes time to get that going, and if they were smart we would be seeing more of characters we love helping this transition along. For instance- I could have enjoyed that Sasha learns to cook episode more if it also had Liz and her boys talking about their lives and the Jason situation.

I agree 100%

Now that you mention that, I would swap them, but have Ava off to the side and she sees it coming but doesn’t say anything, just hides and watches. I would also have Jake at the warehouse finally deciding to have it out with Jason and he is wounded (not seriously). Oh I would do that too. At a concert for the 4th of July in the park with Blaze as the headliner. A Pikeman bomb goes off and the carnage is plentiful. At least Blaze, Finn, Jordan, Cyrus all dead at the scene. Maybe Michael gets a good old fashioned soap head injury and has temporary blindness, recovers a few months later and sees his wife being sexed up by Drew while they still think he is blind.

I would let the wedding go off just fine, and the reception. Play with audience expectations. Then I would have a 90’s style slow motion attack on several people at once- Anna meeting with Jason at the coffee warehouse, Carly and Jagger headed in to the hotel, and Sonny and Ava in the parking lot of the penthouse. Nobody even has to die yet, but it would move the story danger level up a bit. Get the danger flowing again.

Of all the companies listed so far, the one that interested me the most was Jabot. It meant something when Victor took over, and it was incredibly exciting when Jack and Brad took it back. I was invested in those characters and that company more than any soap company. It helped that Jerry was back as John, and Eileen as Ashley. Next up would have been The Banner and The Sun on OLTL. The prestige vs the often tabloid Sun. I also loved Lotus Pointe on Knots Landing.

Lucky should never have been played by soap hunk types. It was a strange fit both times. I didn’t hate Greg, but as you say he had one terrible story after another. It is so strange to read Guza’s manifesto was something like “love among the ruins” when it seemed to me to be about misery. I know it got darker and more miserable after his child died, which is very sad. But the show was just hard to watch.

I believe that was the shaky foundation they laid for Diego’s motive. It certainly helped. You could root for her because she was so damaged, and yet people like Tony, AJ, Monica and Alan had very justifiable reasons for their disdain. And you had Bobbie trying to build some kind of relationship with her often hysterical daughter. Complex!

I do not deny enjoying him for his looks. A well worn soap tradition to have a hunky, mostly good guy. I know that is the story on Duhon, but it must have been Guza he pissed off, or he was simply tired of Logan. JFP/scab Wolf changed the ending of the text message killer story and essentially spared him being revealed as the killer and disposed of at the climax.

I will die on this hill. GH had a great group of younger characters (though severely lacking in diversity) and they blew it all up. IMO it was the kind of group that would have been perfect for the next generation to lead the show- Georgie, Dillon, Maxie, Spinelli, Lulu, Logan, and Cooper should have been invested in and not dumped. Don’t even get me started on Diego Alcalzar being the text message killer.

Today was pretty good as far as moving pieces in to place. Carly absolutely would be stupid enough to go see Pikeman. Jason confiding in Anna, now we know what the evidence is against Carly. Are we going to uncover which mob leader made the recording of Carly from that meeting? Selena Wu would certainly be a fun twist, didn’t they kill off the other family heads? This show confounds me. We have a canvas full of popular characters that are just languishing. You want to drive up the ratings? Maybe put Liz on my screen more than Sasha in an actual story. Same with Anna. Why is Laura second fiddle to Heather Webber? Except both of them were hotter and had more charisma and personality.

I liked what it ultimately lead to, which was people having jobs besides being former spies and cops or the hospital. We had Mac and Felicia opening the Outback, Jagger boxing at Marco’s gym, Sonny’s seedy strip club, the Charles street stories, characters living in modest means again. It helped to reestablish the Quartermaines as the haves in Port Charles society. It opened up possibilities. Riche took what Monty was trying to do and actually did it, even with Levinson it was better than Monty’s first 6 months.

Mac was definitely at least a B level lead during Monty through the first couple of years of Labine. I feel he slipped more into supporting during the Stone storyline, and while onscreen wasn’t really a lead again after that for the most part. The show put him front and center during the Ryan/Felicia storyline. And before that there were times I felt he was a newbie shoved down viewers throats. AJ barely had a story of his own other than alcoholism. I would say up to 1995 Mac was B tier and AJ was C.

He was replaced because he looked too young for the rape story. That was the official company line. He always came across as possibly gay (except with his sister which was also strange), and I wonder if he was replaced because they couldn’t have his possibly gay Michael raped. So taller and more masculine Chad was hired. One bit of context about Vanessa returning for the fans- soaps were circling the drain. I believe her when she said that was her reasoning, to give fans that romance. Guza and JFP were creating such a dark, miserable show and it felt like they didn’t really see much of a future so they just kept running it into the ground. I was not surprised when she didn’t renew for another year. I was also not surprised that Jonathan Jackson quit because he was miserable and they were ignoring his wishes to rebuild him and Liz.

I’m sorry, what? That is wild, and bad beyond imagining.

We saw a very pregnant Jenny once after they had been gone for a while, and IIRC Sly lived with her offscreen after Bill was killed and he was friends with Lucky. I think the mentions, especially when RC was the HW were deliberate.

Finally watching Thursday and Friday. Who are all these children? And why are they all on the same day and at the Q mansion? I’m not really one to trash a child, but Violet has got to go. She really stood out in the wrong way around these other kids, some of whom were actually charming.

Monty loved those nurse’s uniforms with the hats. As we have discussed before, I think Monty had the right idea. A more grounded GH with socioeconomic differences was the way to go. She just didn’t invest in strong enough writers to accomplish what she wanted. Which was a repeated flaw on her part. I felt her GH during her original run was stronger during Marland and PFS’s two runs than it was with lesser writers. The constant departures did not help- some she pushed through, and some were people just wanting to leave. And as embattled as she became, she lost her two biggest stars with Finola and Tristan being tired of the grind and her. Riche and Levinson took those bones and made something more watchable out of them, and it really takes off with Labine.

@Khan Critical analysis should always be welcome here. We are clearly fans of the genre here, not just specific shows anymore. I love GH, but I have felt the lack of emotion onscreen for most of FV’s tenure. I have been commenting for years that it feels like FV is almost ashamed to let the show be a soap. It is often produced in a way to avoid passion. And it is hard to overstate how damaging recasting ME and RH several times instead of trying new actors has been for the show- maybe those characters could have worked without the shadow of using the same performers over and over again. Instead we have dead zones where they tried to reinvent them every few years. The last writers had several stories that should have been better onscreen and I felt the production failed them many times. Ryan Chamberlain being back and killing people being a prime example. The stop and start of Trina/Spencer being another, especially when you consider how much the actors did in the moment to make something come alive (Trina jumping into Spencer’s arms comes to mind). Shelly Curtis learned the right lessons from her showrunners. I would welcome her back in any capacity to GH.

Not to my knowledge. He was seen frequently though from what I have seen, and the exposure made him a national sensation.