titan1978

That long ass list of teases for nearly every character, including a bunch of recurring people. And nothing listed about Elizabeth Webber. It’s pretty shameful how this show treats a longtime veteran who still has fan support and should be center stage.

If they had recast Lucky with a more quirky actor that had a lot of depth instead of two actors who were talented but also more traditional and definitely closer to the soap hunk mold, maybe Lucky would have been as important as he should be, and they would not be beholden to JJ’s schedule. But they also wanted Liz and Lucky to be young adults and in those stories, and Greg fit that better than Jacob Young or Jackson would have at that time. Although I did buy JJ’s Lucky as a cop with Dante as his partner.

Rena did static version of her shot with her nails visible in the current photo montage that mirrored her old shot and I knew it was purposeful and I loved her for it.

I remember Jason after Stone died and before his accident making sure Robin was doing okay, spending time with her, etc. IIRC she visits him in the hospital after the accident and she was one of the few people he was not a dick to, even if he didn’t know her yet. I remember that WLS interview with Labine, and in recent years MVJ has contradicted the Carly part of that timeline, saying she was wholly created with Guza and the staying writers before the official credited change in HW. I tend to believe MVJ’s version of events eve no though I adore Claire Labine. Maybe the truth lies somewhere in the middle. MVJ is certainly a Guza apologist!

In the 1990’s, Jagger would have made a better firefighter than cop, that’s for sure. Complete with the shirtless charity calendar. Port Charles had EMS characters. Wasn’t Frank an EMT?

The AMC one used the format the best. But the GH one was an outlier even back then. It was kind of the theme but you could tell they wanted it to stand out. Stuff like the final cast shot with all the men, many of them long gone by the time that opening stopped being used. And the way the characters were photoshopped in, the Lucky/Emily/Nikolas fades a story that never took off. I do remember that it premiered way later than it was supposed to.

The problem with updating that intro for today is the hospital staff is not front and center, with a vet actively part of those stories. You also have so many recurring players driving the stories that it would seem odd to not include them. I would film a modern speeding ambulance once again by the real GH location hospital, and do a quick updated version of the classic era theme from the 70’s-80’s. But even the original negative image title card from the 60’s would be superior to today’s opening!

When this intro premiered, Felicia and Mac were doing a lot of heavy lifting storywise, and Felicia was solidly a lead character who was front and center in an umbrella storyline, Ryan Chamberlain. I think their placement reflected that for the time. They were both very central and had a slow burn romance going when Riche stabilized the show those few months before Luke and Laura returned. I don’t think he should ever get his memory back. What I resented and still do not like is they treated his feelings about the Quartermaines at that time as the actual truth, instead of showing Jason more deeply seeing the flaws of his dangerous life with Sonny sooner as he grew and developed. The Jason that woke up was kind of a rebellious teenager. The Jason that existed from the time he claimed Michael onward was a young adult that spent too long defending Sonny when he was clearly worse than the Q’s. The entire AJ/Carly story should have played out differently. But I am also not a fan of Sonny/Carly in any version, and think the writers focusing so much on them and propping them destroyed the show in a way it never fully recovered from. To me, the way Jason acted when Alan died (which was a huge mistake anyway), the genuine remorse and things he said should have been a turning point. He had endured AJ being killed, and Sonny’s relationship with Emily, and not long after Michael being shot. The break with Sonny was set up and never fully enacted.

The way it immediately impacted the Q’s feels very Guza to me too because it quickly stops being about them. One thing Labine did was center the Quartermaines, and we would have seen more of Monica and Alan in relation to Jason than him immediately being shifted towards Sonny, Robin, and helping to bring Carly onto the scene. We did see them, but the story quickly shifts away from the family as the focal point.

That shifted pretty quickly because Rena didn’t decide to leave until later on. That whole HW transition is very interesting, because MVJ and Guza both said Labine was very good to work with as far as letting them set stuff up so they hit the ground running. Carly being one thing we now know Labine didn't create. I would love for MVJ to speak about Jason’s accident and Jax, because I still have questions as to who set both in motion and when. Guza had no problem setting things up and tweaking things very noticeably before his name hits the credits on several of his tenures at GH.

He came back as you said, I also remember it. I wonder if he was given an out, and when he was due back Guza was there and had no interest in the character, so they let him out permanently. I know that HW team set up Brenda/Jax trying to make Sonny jealous, and falling for each other for real, and had a roadmap to clink/boom pretty early on.

After the initial couple of updates, they were not always very quick with the changes later on. It was one of the complaints you would see in soap magazines about these kinds of openings (how quaint that sounds now lol), that they didn’t update them enough. Lucy with the eyebrow, and Lois with her nails in the shot are two of my favorites, as was the shot with Robin and Stone turning to camera and smiling. I loved those Puerto Rico insert action shots, Jason and Robin on the beach, the triple L diner blowing up, Bobbie, Amy and Dr Hardy with the gurney. It was great opening for that era. For all the faults I had with JFP, the last few updates looked better than the opening had looked in a long time. Skye has a great shot, as does Dillon. I also loved the overlapping shots of Scotty, Laura, Luke in the later era. Poor Mac and his turtleneck though, he never got an updated shot.

Especially because she was tied to the Laurelton storyline, which was considered a bust. I think she survived because she could do sexy and funny, and was believable as a schemer and the show needed those kinds of characters to keep things moving. Her chemistry with Scotty helped, and various writing teams knew where to use her- manipulative married to Tony, affair with Alan, scheming with Scotty. Lynn was also a very dynamic actor that had chemistry with a lot of people.

It was sudden, and they didn’t know until it happened in 1984. Denise wanted time off, and IIRC a guarantee they would not work her more than 3 days a week. She was pretty much exhausted. From her We Love Soaps interview she said what they objected to was the time limits. They had a huge story they wanted to play with a trial about Mike I think, and they didn’t want the restriction. So they threw more money at her. And she and her agent/lawyer declined, which made someone at ABC above Monty pissed thinking she was being ungrateful. So they stopped talking to one another and she said nobody was happy how it ultimately went down. But she got her time off which ended up being great for her. Tony was there for a couple of months, I think at least 6 weeks, Genie for a couple of days. Which she did as a favor to Monty and Geary. I am sure they were well paid. It also helped set up Frisco and Felicia, it was kind of a passing of the torch to the next super couple. I don’t think they ever landed in PC either that trip. Laura did tell Like she was pregnant with Lucas Lorenzo Spencer Junior, who ended up being nicknamed Lucky before we met him. JER fits more for me at GH more than he did at Y&R! 1987 is a pretty good year from what I remember. I know the Grant Putnam story kicks off, which is in my personal GH top ten.

It’s their own fault and I don’t feel bad about it! What a terrible way to bring her back after they worked hard to ignore her part in Rocco’s origin for years!

We know from Jacob Young there was tension around him as Lucky on Genie’s part. He was terribly miscast to me, as was Coltin Scott. I believe this was also a time period where she was isolated on the show because she had a first out schedule and her character was put essentially on hold in grief when Lucky was presumed dead. They just stopped writing for her. Riche should not have spilt her team and her time doing Port Charles, it did hurt GH, even when Guza returned. And his own mentality had changed, the misery began under his second tenure and was just worse with Jill because she also loves misery.

Valentin is a real drag on this show. I get he has fans because much like Julian Jerome, he was in romance storylines on a show that has a dearth of them. So there is a segment of the audience that loves having him back. I think his relationship with Charlotte is creepy. It’s like codependency training 101. Her history as another stolen embryo from Lulu is gross, and just like Rocco is being glossed over to prop characters that suck. I actually enjoyed Britt when she left. They have really gone in a wrong direction with that story and the insistence of keeping the Rocco aspect of the story alive is such a bad decision. This isn’t DAYS, these scenes were not filmed several months ago. GH should be taking note and making changes now. Even her hardcore fans seem to think the Rocco stuff is bad.

Thank you for posting the link. Funny we were talking about him, Chuck Pratt is in the closing credits in that episode.

They both played a longing for each other, but it was tinged with a lot of sadness. The one two punches of revisiting the Campus Disco and Lucky dying in the fire were the hardcore breaks. Choosing to follow that up with the Felicia affair and Laura sleeping with Stefan didn’t help. Guza didn’t do reconstruction, he broke things down then apart and let the sadness fester. So the natural progression when Lucky was revealed to be alive never happened. And Laura was really not given much to do at that point. She was just there, waiting for them to decide to repair their relationship.

Agreed! And yes, his tenure with Guza was much sleazier than Guza alone.

I don’t know, both sound terrible. Maybe I could see Guza on OLTL, with a greater focus on Angel Square and the newspapers. The only soap I can see Pratt on other than GH is DAYS. He would have loved Carrie/Austin/Sami and turning Hope into a bitch! Pratt absolutely turned Melrose Place into the show to watch when I was a teenager. He’s the one that told them they have a soap, and they might as well take advantage of it. I do think a good writer for GH in modern times should be better at balancing character development and growth with the spectacle and crime elements they are known for, slow it down a bit too! Pratt is too much trash all the time.

If they want him to be so publicly evil they should have him doing gotcha style political interviews like Fox News, so even his work is a ridiculous as his life.

Funny to see Alan with his train set after it came up in the recent stories with Monica’s estate. lol. I think Frons had a simpatico minded producer with Jill. She produced a splashy show, and that was what he was always trying to force onto AMC and OLTL and it just didn’t work the same way because they are all three fundamentally different shows at their cores. Nobody in their right mind would think Pratt would be a good fit for AMC. Cutting vets to impact the budgets is something both of them believed in. The fact that Alan Quartermaine died and then shortly came back as a ghost just reeks of ABC getting cold feet and wanting to lessen the blow, forcing it on Jill. I know Laura waking up was an ABC thing to capitalize on the 25th anniversary of the wedding and also to get Tony and Genie to Super Soap Weekend in 2006. The stuff with treating the women like crap bts, especially over the men was absolutely JFP. Again, Frons had no problem with misogyny, so he wasn’t going to stop her. I also think the overall nihilistic approach to telling stories fits both of them- they both acted like there was no future beyond a handful of years for soaps so they stopped training new bts talent and had no problem decimating the shows. There are many little things that you can add up along JFP’s career and see her fingerprints on stuff that happened at GH during her tenure. But Frons shared so many of the same values that it’s hard to fully tell who made which errors.

It’s one of those times where Pratt walked in the door with a high pricetag and the clout from his primetime career to demand power over the stories, and from what I have heard back in the day Guza got favored nations with him when they came back as a team. Which was very smart on his part. But we know that power was not total and Jill could use the budget to override them. Alan Quartermaine’s death being and example of her vs him. Thanks to MVJ spilling that tea. Same thing with Vanessa Marcil’s contract extension- JFP got in the way there too. I suspect she was more the reason Laura didn’t fully return than Bob Guza too, based on what he used to say about Genie and the fact that he seemed to write for her several times.

Happy holidays all!