GL: February Discussion

[EastMA2]

I wonder if Beth Ehlers and Ricky Paull have yet realized that the grass isn't always greener. They certaintly have not had much success at AMC. She's hardly ever on and he's just playing Gus, but a doctor this time.

They have not duplicated the success they had on GL.

[RoseVioletDaisy]

I don't feel bad for RPG at all. He wanted out, he got to play the core character he signed on for, and is now paying the karmic retribution from being such an arrogant self-promoting ass at the Emmys last year but as much as I came to hate Harley over the years, I really feel for Ehlers. She signed on to play a recast Liza Colby, a legacy character with ties to practically everybody, but within weeks of her signing Pratt was hired and he decided to create a new character for her instead. The problem was that the new character was one-dimensional, poorly fleshed out, and seemed to exist solely to fight with and end up in love with RPG's Jake, who'd barely been around for three months at that point and was nothing like any of the previous Jake's who'd come before him. He was basically Gus with a stethoscope and particularly popular.

Even more mindboggling is that Liza had a lot of history with Jake so if they wanted to put those two in scenes together immediately upon her arrival, letting her play Liza would've achieved that but instead they brought her on as a foil for Jake with no background, no history, and no Plan B in case Plan A failed, which it did. Most AMC fans didn't give two whits about GusH so they didn't care to have another show's couple in a front-burner story whose ending had already been pre-determined. It didn't help that the all of the PR surrounding BE's arrival had her attached to RPG and Taylor attached to Jake and them touting how undeniable and effortless their supposedly amazing chemistry was and people hate being told what and who to like.

The pairing tanked and both characters were shoved deep into the background. Jake is starting to reemerge and perhaps Taylor will soon but she's appeared a grand total of six times since January 1st and is now tied to another newbie character with no town connections but one who is so sympathetic that if Taylor drops him for Jake, Tad, or whomever, the audience will side with him not her.