@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.
By
dc11786 ·
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.