February 1-5, 2010

[quartermainefan]

I loved that line. That made the whole show for me. I never thought LLC had it in her to be even worthy of the label "ham".

GH did good. They put together a killer commercial, and backed it up with a solid 5 minutes of OTT ham. It seems GH backed the wrong horse. They have been pushing Steve Burton for the last couple of years and it turns out a huge portion of the general audience is still gaga for Maurice Benard.

[quartermainefan]

Good for him if he is. I don't care for Sonny and never really was very impressed with Maurice Benard, but the guy has been working eight days a week for what seems like 15 years. He deserves a little appreciation from the show for his years of work.

[DRW50]

The promo obviously worked.

I know all this is random and fluctuations and all the rest but I do think there are a few lessons:

This is not a balanced storyline, Sonny is obviously the real hero in all this, and the martyr, however, they make the pretense of balance by not demonizing Dante. I am disgusted by the likelihood he will eventually become Sonny's flunky, but in GH terms, this is actually generous, compared to what they did to Ric and AJ and how they have made Jax pointless.

People will tune back in for mob violence, but it helps if that violence is wrapped up in some other drama, like family drama. The violence that was just for the sake of violence and had no apparent motivations in any other direction, like Franco's guest role, were flops.

GH's ratings will rise if they tweak what they have, not reach for what they don't. The golden boy JJ returned to endless fanfare and yet he was greeted with ratings losses, because the story is a one-sided, degrading mess which blithely rewrites the past few years of Lucky's history yet also manages to crap on much of what people enjoyed about JJ's time in the role. Maurice Benard, who has been a tired name for the show for ages now, was given material which allowed slightly different shadings in Sonny and used his past to haunt him, and inspired Benard to sort of give a decent performance at times.

Not that it will cause Guza to stop obsessing over Jason, but it's telling that with the increasing separation of Sonny's entourage and Jason's entourage over the past few years, robotic Jason and his entourage helped drive the ratings to record lows, while the first story in several years which was mainly focused on Sonny got a +2 increase.

[Ann_SS]

GH gained 240,000 and still has fewer overall viewers than Days. GH's demos' increase were the women 35 to 49, but they keep their 18 to 34 women gain from last week.

I agree that the family drama helped bring in the audience, but it is the popularity of aging Maurice Benard that helped attract the audience. I expect ABC will take note and push Guza to feature Sonny more than Jason. This success of story is not the norm and I don't think that it is repeatable. The repercussions for the rest of the show aren't good regardless. There will be even less airtime for non-mob stories as Sonny and his children's drama take over the show even more.

[DRW50]

Yeah, that's one of the reasons I just don't care about Sonny's children, no matter how often I hear about how brilliant the actors are. They seem tired to me, even though most of these actors haven't been on the show for more than about six months. I guess that's unfair, since soaps are supposed to be about family drama, and this is more family drama than having Spinelli and Sam fawn over Jason as he ignores his child. If focusing on them gets better ratings for GH, then I guess there's always some possibility. Frankly I have no idea what they can do with Jason at this point. I would say take away his Jason Morgan persona, but that won't happen.

[me4ryky]

All GH has to do to maintain this bump in ratings is have Sonny shoot a member of his family every week and then feel guilty about it later. He was shooting a cop in cold blood in his own living room. The fact that Dante is his child should be irrelevant, but this is GH. Mobsters gain the sympathy, cops gain the bullets or the liquor bottle. I will be interested in seeing the ratings next week.

[marceline]

Damn GH! Say what you want about Guza the man knows his stunts.

[Jess]

Guza does know his stunts. All the stuff about children and parents seems to be catching on (far more than Franco stuff, which was IMO most interesting when we only knew of the graffiti.) I like Dante and Lulu and agree with those who say it is Dante as well as Sonny who is making the story. I also really like JJ as Lucky.

[Cat]

I wonder if GH realizes just how popular Dante is. All this "newcomer" BS makes me think TPTB still think Maurice is hot sh!t and that Zamprogna is learning at the feet of the Master.

Mind you, if GH did realize what a draw DZ could potentially be, there would be some mighty heavy-handed propping going on and that would be even worse.

I still love Lisa LoCicero even if Olivia is just Ruinsville. Her and her big fake boobs. She had those same puppies in The City.

[Kelly777]

Say what you will but the promo worked! It had 23,000+ hits before it was downgraded on the ABC YT site. I took the time to write and tell them that was the best promo. I watched GH before this story started but I really tuned in after they aired the promo and I've been tuned in since. I love the show and love the mob stories. There is so much gray area in every one of these characters there will be storyline potential a long time out. GH just rocks! I am really sorry to see the state of OLTL. It reminds me of YR when they were receiving critical acclaim for their writing and almost in a split second they lost it. OLTL's writers got a boatload of praise for 2009 and now it is just difficult for me to watch. It is almost like the writers and team get a fat head and check out!

[Ann_SS]

Considering that DZ is featured prominently in all the interviews in the media, I'm sure that ABC thinks that he is hot stuff. He gets a lot of airtime so I suppose that equals popularity, but I don't buy that he is any kind of draw or is particularly popular, then again, perhaps soap popularity is crafted by TPTB.

[Angela]

1.(1) Y&R: Monday: 4.0/5,620,000 (+571,000)

2.(2) B&B: Monday: 2.6/3,587,000 (+129,000)

3.(3) DAYS: Monday: 2.3/3,188,000 (-87,000)

4.(4) GH: Monday: 2.3/3,179,000 (+126,000)

5.(5) AMC: Monday: 2.2/2,929,000 (+190,000)

6.(7) OLTL: Monday: 2.0/2,647,000 (+137,000)

7.(6) ATWT: Monday: 1.9/2,633,000 (-13,000)

1.(1) Y&R: Tuesday: 3.7/5,250,000 (-370,000)

2.(2) B&B: Tuesday: 2.5/3,345,000 (-242,000)

3.(4) GH: Tuesday: 2.2/3,138,000 (-41,000)

4.(3) DAYS: Tuesday: 2.2/3,109,000 (-79,000)

5.(5) AMC: Tuesday: 2.0/2,765,000 (-164,000)

6.(7) ATWT: Tuesday: 1.8/2,562,000 (-71,000)

7.(6) OLTL: Tuesday: 1.8/2,436,000 (-211,000)

1.(1) Y&R: Wednesday: 3.8/5,140,000 (-110,000)

2.(2) B&B: Wednesday: 2.4/3,232,000 (-113,000)

3.(3) GH: Wednesday: 2.1/2,993,000 (-145,000)

4.(4) DAYS: Wednesday: 2.2/2,960,000 (-149,000)

5.(5) AMC: Wednesday: 2.0/2,617,000 (-148,000)

6.(7) OLTL: Wednesday: 1.8/2,337,000 (-99,000)

7.(6) ATWT: Wednesday: 1.8/2,314,000 (-248,000)

1.(1) Y&R: Thursday: 3.5/4,995,000 (-145,000)

2.(2) B&B: Thursday: 2.4/3,413,000 (+181,000)

3.(4) DAYS: Thursday: 2.1/2,997,000 (+37,000)

4.(3) GH: Thursday: 2.1/2,900,000 (-93,000)

5.(5) AMC: Thursday: 2.0/2,718,000 (+101,000)

6.(6) OLTL: Thursday: 1.8/2,549,000 (+212,000)

7.(7) ATWT: Thursday: 1.8/2,523,000 (+209,000)

1.(1) Y&R: Friday: 3.8/5,338,000 (+343,000)

2.(2) B&B: Friday: 2.4/3,362,000 (-51,000)

3.(3) DAYS: Friday: 2.4/3,359,000 (+362,000)

4.(4) GH: Friday: 2.2/3,046,000 (+146,000)

5.(5) AMC: Friday: 1.9/2,571,000 (-147,000)

6.(7) ATWT: Friday: 1.8/2,389,000 (-134,000)

7.(6) OLTL: Friday: 1.8/2,372,000 (-177,000)

[DaytimeFan]

Even I, who swore off GH 3 years ago, came crawling back to see...

"MY GOD SONNY! YOU JUST SHOT YOUR OWN SON!"

[DRW50]

I think that's probably how they sell it to Maurice, whether they feel that way or not. Hasn't he been known to tank storylines in the past if he does not care for what is going on? He also gets dead behind the eyes if he doesn't like a story. Selling this story as being about Sonny and his burdens and Deke and all the rest, after several years of Sonny being phased out of the major stories, has generally managed to bump Maurice out of the complete doldrums and made him give some decent performances. And if the story also happens to be about bringing in Dante and potentially having him replace Sonny, or at least making him more of an equal to Sonny than most characters on the show, then he won't notice as much. At any rate, the dynamics in place now with Sonny's children seem to be provoking more of a reaction than the years where Sonny's main story has been how many different ways you can yell WHORE and TRAMP.

[ohmickey]

Guza or JFP.