April 7-11, 2008

[Wales2004]

I am changing my mind and commenting further because I looked back (which I shouldn't have done).

There happen to be primetime shows that last more than a couple of years. It is very difficult to maintain the same level of creativity for years and some shows happen to jump the shark seasons before they go off the air, but there are some shows that maintain a fairly decent level until they end.

Soaps still have a lot of habitual viewers who may be watching more out of nostalgia than for quality. Even with that, they still lose a number of viewers each year and will continue to do so.

The rushing would change but that still doesn't mean they would produce a great product. Since GH basically features the same three characters every day then why bother balancing that out for a weekly show? IA that it is hard work to be a good soap writer but good is a matter of perception. Soaps are formulaic and nowadays there seems to be a lot of borrowing from movie plots and the results can be noticeably bad.

Not if compared to ensemble casts such are on medical or legal dramas. Characters and story lines have to be balanced and some have managed to do that successfully. If daytime writers are trying to keep it fresh and innovative then they would appear to have a harder time since they have to do this for five shows a week. However, they mostly seem to be following a formula and on GH it's more a series of events than complete follow through on a story all the way from start to finish. That is precisely why the writing is lazy to me. The dialogue tends to be repetitious and there is little to no progress in cases where there should be and lightning progress where more time is needed.

So are you saying there isn't such a thing as the FCC? You do realize that cable tv has more leeway than public tv?

What's good writing to you may seem like poor lazy writing to other people. There are viewers who have watched GH for decades and can't tell you the names of any of the writers. Your theory on hate for Guza would not hold any water with them or explain why some of them have tuned out and will continue to tune out.

[Wales2004]

I may as well respond to this as well.

No, I didn't miss it. Maybe you didn't get the gist of what I was saying. GH is not unpredictable at all. It's pretty formulaic and I don't consider not knowing specifically who is going to die anything mysterious or unpredictable or even spell binding. The only time a death would be shocking to me is if it were any of the three characters on heavy rotation on the show.

I don't think that GH is popular on most boards because of any unpredictable mob events or the writing style. Most of what goes on in discussion on boards is about who is with whom and who people would like to see together or hate for specific characters. If boards were around in the eighties the discussion would probably have been more about the plot lines on the show including romances. Today it's mostly fighting from battling couple fan bases or unified complaining about female characters.

[DaytimeFan]

MAB better get Y&R back into the 4.0 ratings soon. Otherwise B&B might just have a shot of toppling its sister show.

Y&R has just been in a holding pattern that is boring, time to move on MAB!

[shawn Perez]

Wales2004"...sorry i couldn't reply to you sooner. as i was out of town. but it's obvious were not gonna Agree on the subject. so I'm gonna cut this short instead of wasting 10 minutes of my time posting a huge message that will get me nowhere. its' been fun chatting with you and expressing each others opinions. cya next week,.