titan1978

There would be pockets of good stuff but overall I agree with @Khanthat it is much better when PFS is there. It’s like they stayed number one by flying by the seat of their pants and having an incredibly charismatic group of actors that Monty knew how to showcase. Because the stories were very hit and miss. Once Anna is introduced and Robin arrives, the show does get very good again. It has those same action stories (although tighter), but with some of that heart and stakes that were often missing.

The LSD episode is on YouTube, I’ve seen it a couple of times. I have just never seen Peter confront Heather and his death. I love Brooke Bundy, but Diana is always such a mess and I’m not sure it suits her. I also get Jeff has been manipulated/lied to by one woman after another. But he is always such a jerk!

It does sound really intense. Are those scenes available online anywhere? It is incredible to me how much changed on GH in less than two years and yet the show was compelling enough that they gained audience.

I can’t believe in the year of our lord 2022 I am still looking at these counts and thinking too much Sonny and Carly. I know in the early days this would be Steve Hardy and Jessie Brewer in those top spots, but even they didn’t dominate for what feels like over 20 years. Luke and Laura didn’t either, at least not as long. And thanks to the TG annual vacation we got a break from Luke quite often. Only one missing is Jason lol. Thanks for all the hard work @jcar03and @alexisfan07

GH- when Lesley was revealed to be alive, she eventually regains her life and status as a doctor, and plays a part in both Alan’s addiction storyline (supportive and maybe also the one that holds him accountable at the hospital) and vying for Chief of Staff of GH, causing friction with Monica. Rick and she share scenes but not a reunion, and Mike decides to stay with her and finish up his medical degree at PCU.

I believe we were both on team she’s leaving lol. I think it is incredibly sad that people have to post to their soap audience to be nice to a new actress. I hope she is given a chance, because it’s certainly not her fault we are where we are. And I am all about education. But I also bet if Frank had offered her what she was worth there might have been at least a 2 year contract, enough to play this out some. I really liked her as Trina, I hope the new performer brings what we love and new dimensions to the character.

I didn’t really pay attention to the show as a little kid, but I remember Laura’s return in 1983, I liked the Webbers, and I was sad when Lesley was killed. I really started watching when Felicia was introduced. But I had read about Anne Logan and I knew she was tied to Diana’s murder. Before I had actually seen her, I wanted her to be Liz’s mother. Then I finally got to see her in action thanks to YouTube, and I just think she is the most boring and annoying character. I loved the actress as Barbara on AMC. It’s not the performer. I just can’t stand Anne. She even had two of the hottest guys after her- Jeff and Joe Kelly, and I just don’t see what the appeal was. I do think the show didn’t really write a character for her that had anywhere to go. How long can you crave intimacy and also push it away without exploring what she really wanted from a relationship?

I remember the story to get us here was kind of clunky, but the payoff was scary, emotional, and affected so many people.

Yeah, Heather did a lot of horrific things, I don’t really feel all that sorry for her. I’m not saying Jeff was an innocent, but Heather was perfectly fine wrecking many people’s lives. And I still think she was the original intended killer but Mattson was so good they decided to keep her and change Diana’s killer. Anne might be the most annoying main character ever on GH, but being framed for murder is pretty extreme.

I am sure there have been many harrowing moments from Edge of Night!

They were living under fake identities in Canada and the impresssion I got from the story at the time was that Frank had caught up to them. They certainly knew it was him that had arranged for the truck to be blown up. He had clearly been after them for a significant period of time, possibly most of Lucky’s life at that point from how Laura felt about them getting away from the mob once she was home again. In the years and retcons since, it seems they had some other adventures and time for Luke to run off on his own and have another kid (which absolutely does not ring true to the Luke we met again in 1993, but oh well).

Thanks, I was even watching and completely forgot that happened. Dante is so wasted under Frank’s tenure. I don’t need him to eat the show like when Guza introduced him, but he deserves better than what he has been given. Unless the entire story is retconned to Nina still only having one child, and it ends up being Willow. Shame for them to be twins if we don’t get Nelle terrorizing Willow out of it.

Question- did the show just drop Dante’s brainwashing? Or was that actually resolved? Because it seems to me like they just moved part of that story over to Drew and eventually it will be him that is triggered.

I didn’t even think about all those Jeff mentions possibly being part of this. I hope not!

No, she is too polished and has more of a quiet energy. Lois needs to be all heart, right there on her sleeve. I think it would be interesting to have her be part of the five families on GH though, and really give Sonny a run for his money. I bet she would have fun playing ruthless and dressed to kill as well. I remember someone around here mentioning Brianna Brown as being a potential Belle replacement on DAYS and I thought that would have been great.

I think Liz might have been the most destroyed character during Guza and Phelps decade at the show. I think she even had it worse than Emily, and they killed her off. It is flat out amazing that the same writer who wrote incredible material for Liz in an earlier stint did all that plot driven dreck to her. And now she has been forced into pairings with two of Frank’s BFF’s, when there is a Lucky sized hole and place right here on the show.

KS as Maxie is such a strange case. She was great as a new Lucy- a mild schemer with a somewhat bitchy personality. She fit in well with JMB’s Lulu working for Kate and sniping at each other. And then as they slowly dismantled/killed off every other woman on the show her age, she got stuck with all the stereotypical heroine stories. And it just does not suit her and was a waste of the fun they could have been having with Maxie. And now she is being forced to try to make RH’s new character work. Yuck. There were times I felt an entire episode went by and other than maybe Starr and Cole, all I saw were the likes of Fords or Rex/Gigi or McBain or all of the above and nobody that was OLTL to me. But I will admit that I felt even the Ford brothers were more successful than these GH characters. I know some of that was Frons.

I agree about Julia and Sly. And I remember thinking that during Valentini’s OLTL too- so many characters just not tied to anyone I would consider core. And a plethora of characters that could have been tied seamlessly to earlier, more iconic periods of the show. And yet they never went there.

Part of Tony’s anti Luke stance when Bill was created was because back then he didn’t want to do Luke unless Genie was Laura. And she refused to return for at least a year after ABC terminated her contract on AMC, and told her they would prefer she return to GH as Laura. I remember Bill being a ridiculous failure because of all the work they did to try to make him work. Every struggle was right there on screen. I didn’t even hate the final version, the dark, selfish character he was by the time they killed him off. It was just a long winding way to get there and it wasn’t good television. I think Bill being Fluke not only made more sense in the story they were telling, but also would have been more fun overall. TG can be incredibly annoying, but I loved the shade he threw on his way out the door. I remember him saying how stupid Ron’s Frank Smith story was. He even said something like Frank was old even back in the 70’s, him being alive at that point was beyond ridiculous.

I loved Karen. That was my first soap teen scene when I was a teen and I loved all those characters. In hindsight, Karen could be very annoying. I still think it is a shame they killed her on PC. I liked that ultimately she and Brenda were no longer rivals. They may not have been best friends, but a lot of growth happened, especially when Brenda figured out that Karen had been molested. I give Vanessa a lot of credit for playing into more vulnerability than just going vixen which is where the show tried to put her back then.

Sutton and McCullough also credit John Homa for helping them grow tremendously as actors. I think I recall Jonathan Jackson thanking him at one point too. Pretty sure he was hired by Riche due to the depth of the material the Stone storyline was going to require. Maurice may have helped (at least according to all three he did), but I am sure Homa did quite a bit. No soap story has even broken my heart more than Stone dying of complications from AIDS. And those actors are a huge part of why.

I watched quite a bit of the early Essensten/Brown era, some of Labine, and I loved what Culliton and Taggart were doing. Loved it. And then Conboy came in and dismantled all of what I was enjoying. I never got back into GL again after that, until I saw most of the Curlee era online.

It was awful. And a waste of a great set of characters that I was enjoying for disgusting shock factor. I wasn’t a longtime fan of GL but I had been watching for a bit and was really enjoying the last part of Rauch’s tenure before Conboy.

Like a lot of these types of things, it depends on how good they tell the story and the characters involved. I could believe something like let’s say Victoria or Nick Newman having a long lost friend from boarding school back in the 90’s when they were all young, and that leading to story when they reappear, maybe even some mild secrets of misspent youth while the new character is actually here for revenge for some perceived slight. I am less likely to believe either one of them killed someone while offscreen or had a baby. However, I would totally believe that AJ could have gotten someone pregnant on GH while at boarding school, but he’s dead so no point now. It’s all in how well does it fit them when we met them as SORASed characters and what they do with the opening.

Really good example. He certainly had talent and charisma, but that story really went very deep and nobody dropped the ball, him especially.