3 minutes ago, Vee said:

Karen Wexler is still dead

I'll take "Cool Band Names" for $200!

Edited Sunday at 05:40 PM3 days by Khan

22 minutes ago, Vee said:

Thanks so much. You always have lovely thoughts. I think the hope under this regime re: DV and Scott must have been that DV would be some ready-made long-running villain, hence the blood ties and Kin Shriner spending months scowling and growling "Bordisso!" everyday, but I never was interested in him and he flopped just like Rex Stanton. I can't remember how or when they got rid of DV.

I have always wanted to see Rachel Locke return to wreak havoc on GH. I'd still want GH to make use of some of these other characters (like Christina and Serena, or perhaps a child of Livvie's) someday, while deftly sidestepping the continuity issues involved later in PC's run. The ambitious but dismal 2013 attempt at such on GH was largely handwaved as being the result of a magic spell anyway.

I do think part of the issue with Bordisso is the timing of his arrival. He is introduced late February, 1999, and Latham is out the door in very early May, 1999. There was a little over two months of set up before Hamner, who was already on the team, took over. I think Latham may have left due to illness, or maybe that was just an excuse to politely fire her. Anyway, I get the general idea of DV being Scott's father, but it just seems to be lacking the oomph. Having watched a bit of Scotty's early 1990s episodes, the relationship between Scotty and Lee was so layered and complicated. This complication didn't really add anything to that so I guess I am just wondering where they expected this to go in the long run.

Bordisso is out early December. Hannan Carrouthers comes in late December, but may not be credited until January. I know she is credited for bringing on Erin Gray as Nicole Devlin who appears in December. Hamner is out in late January. There is no writer in February and Harris arrives in early March. It feels like Bordisso was part of a housecleaning between TPTB. Van Drusen also immediately returned to "The Young and the Restless" as Keith Dennison so it might have been the actor's decision to cut and run. I don't think van Drusen was under contract.

The show definitely lacked clear villains early on. I think that's why I like the messier Frank and Courtney and the slightly unhinged Julie. Julie's reaction to Lee surviving the embolism is diabolically campy, yet slightly enjoyable. Rachel was only a few weeks from arriving in the place I stopped (July 9th, she's there two weeks later).

I like what I've seen of Rachel, but she definitely feels like a smaller scale (yet more effective) villain that what was originally intended. I think her involvement with Julie and later the larger feud with Kevin over Grace was smart. I'm curious if Kimberlin Brown would have stayed another year or more had Harris and Bloom stayed as headwriters. Or if she left, would they have recasted given how integral she was becoming to the canvas by that point. It's a shame Scott leaves after Christina's kidnapping because I think the Baldwin unit was so well developed removing him undermined a lot of that.

During the DV era, I believe they also, for a hot minute, tried to make Victor Greg Cooper's father, which I think would make sense if anyone in the audience thought Greg Cooper had a lifespan outside of a sweeps month.

In another one of my "Port Charles" jaunts this weekend, I was looking for the sequence from 2000 where Claire Wright dies. In that search, I found some very solid scenes with Alan Quartermaine coming to see Karen about her pill problem during the Nurses' Strike. The history between Karen and Alan was very integrated given Alan's connection to Rhonda, the bond Karen once shared with Jason, and Alan's own history of addiction. It's a shame more wasn't done with Monica's ties to the Baldwin clan through Gail, but I thought it was all very good. A lot of the bigger story on "Port Charles" may be tough, but so much of the domestic conflicts are fairly well done.

I did end up watching Kimberlin Brown's arrival. Rachel's introduction was intended as a Friday cliffhanger for Friday, July 23, 1999, but a preemption left it as the Monday, July 26, 1999, cliffhanger with her more in-depth scenes on Tuesday. Rachel is brash and a bit abrassive having been lured by Chris Ramsey to take over Julie Devlin's case from Kevin Collins. During Rachel's consultation with her, Julie is evasive leading Rachel to bluntly ask what it was like to walk in on her brother Buddy after he had blown his brains out. Maybe Rachel wasn't that crass, but it doesn't seem out of the realm of possibility. I had forgotten that little detail of the Devlin family history (Rachel finding Buddy). In the aftermath, Rachel tells Chris she'll take the case and Julie makes it clear that she doesn't trust Rachel (comparing her to the sharks she saw at the aquarium when she was younger).

The Devlin family history was very twisted and I could imagine the Bennett / Buddy / Allison (Buddy's fiancee) situation playing out as a sorta darker take on the Alan / AJ / Nikki Langton story. Maybe its a superficial comparison, but it seems that the Devlins seemed to have the foundation to be "Port Charles'" answer to the Quartermaines. I think Chris and Nicole Devlin also had had an affair so the whole Julie - Chris dynamic was twisted as well. No wonder Julie was a mess.

In the other main story of interest (to me at least) in these episodes was Frank's renovation of a bar (maybe the Recovery Room? Whatever it is it sounds like Mary owns it), which leads to a celebration and lots of accolades being made about Frank in front of Karen and Joe. Joe, who apparently has held on telling their mother about Frank's deception leading to Karen and Joe's breakup, finally lets the cat out of the bag and informs Mary of what her eldest son has done. Initially, Mary rejects Joe's claims, but as the conversation goes on, Mary starts to turn. Pat Crowley does a decent job in this sequence with her loyalty shifting from one son to another with an unnerved Courtney fluttering in the background (afraid Frank will be a turncoat and reveal her role in the breakup).

The resulting spiral of confrontations with Frank is fascinating with Frank desperately trying to regain control of the situation before turning on Mary saying she has always sided with Joe (even though moments earlier she cannot believe what Joe said) and then leans into the Scanlons' own twisted family history reminding Joe how many beating Frank took from Pops Scanlon to protect Joe. It's all a well done mirror to the dsyfunctional family history on display in Julie's story.

I think there were also some bits of the psychic spy crap with Victor, previously presumed dead, now alive and helping Eve in a mock up of Jasmine Island or something. It's all not very compelling to me, but, at times, I get what they are trying to do (a psychological adventure story with a more modern twist), but like a lot of the GH stories from the early 1990s, it's not my cup of tea.

I find it incredible that a half-hour soap (that isn't EON) even would attempt a story like the psychic spy story, or any action/adventure-type story for that matter. All you have to do is to look at what SFT did so often with Travis and Liza to know that stories that aren't kitchen-sink dramas don't work in a half-hour format. There just simply isn't enough time or resources to do it well.

(Of course, I always make the exception for LOVING, because even high romance mixed with action/adventure stuff might've helped them be something other than "Dollar Tree AMC," lol.)

Edited 7 hours ago7 hr by Khan

@Khan I think "Search for Tomorrow" is an apt comparison. Joanna Lee spoke about how the half-hours needed to compete with the hour shows by providing the same type of stories, but I think you are right. Those type of adventure plots are hard to achieve because of the necessary resources and story space. I think that the show was trying to figure out what to do with Kevin and Eve as a couple. At some point, Eve is tormented with the idea that the son she had by DV Bordisso was alive. I imagine the original endgame was to have that become the reality. From the weekly summaries from earlier in 1999, Eve was suffering from endiometriosis and there were questions about whether or not she would be able to become pregnant.

Psychiatrist Kevin and his spy father Victor involved in a plot involving both their careers on paper sounds smart, but it's not super interesting. I imagine when you are telling a story about a serial killer being released from a mental hospital, a couple gaslighting a young sexual assault survivor that her boyfriend is a sex addict, and a love triangle involving a father and son where the father assaulted the female leg of the triangle by coercing her into sex during a stint with amnesia, you see the psychic spy stuff as lighter fare. With all that darkness, the show doesn't feel heavy 24/7 because there is a lot of emotional beats around family, friends, and romantic interests.

I think you can effectively do some of the psychological adventure stories on the half-hours effectively. I think you could pare down the Ryan Chamberlain saga on GH from 1992-1993 into something smaller in scale. Rusty Sentell gaslighting his daughter-in-law Liza in order to end her marriage to his son Travis is effective in plotting, but not motivation (Rusty was looking to secure a grandchild to access the General's fortune). Vargas kidnapping Jo was also effective on the same series. I really enjoyed Amy Morris, the crazy babysitter, kidnapping Ryan Fenelli and Maeve Ryan thinking Ryan was the baby she aborted and Maeve was her former boyfriend's controlling mother. I think your larger point about these grand adventures is completely accurate, but I also think that the 1980s style big adventure stories could only be effectively done by a handful of writers, while most writers and their teams can make domestic stories semi-effective mostly until the early 2000s.

The Livvie story a year later seems a more effective use of Eve and Kevin.