Heart Transplant Stories

[Cheap21]

For the longest time GH was pretty original and unique with its heart transplant story involving Maxie and BJ, but over the past decade it seems as if every show has been doing them. Anyone else think its been done to death?. These days it feels as if at least one soap does one each year

Chris/Reid, ATWT

Kendall/Josh, AMC

Laura/Gillian, AMC

Victor/Colleen, Y&R

Katie/Storm, B&B

Viki/Ben, OLTL

Charity/Timmy, PSSNS

Olivia/Gus, GL

Did I miss any? Has Days jumped on the bandwagon as well?

[DRW50]

St. Elsewhere did it first.

Most of them were cheaply done and assumed that a few manipulative scenes were enough to make up for a lack of development. GL did this story twice, first with Richard/Rick and then with Gus/Olivia.

Probably the cheapest were AMC, GH's second time around with all recasts in the roles, and then B&B and Y&R, B&B telling us how noble suicide is and using the story as an excuse to have Katie sleep with her niece's husband, and Y&R having Victor get revenge on people who gave him a heart just because we are supposed to think that fossil stamping his foot is hot stuff.

[SFK]

And didn't OLTL *almost* do it again with Natalie and Victor? Best left forgotten, I know...

[DeliaIrisFan]

Yes, definitely done to death. I guess it's the same concept as Rachael/Steve/Alice on AW being being one of the most memorable stories in soap history, as opposed to all of the other (increasingly misogynistic) stories about desperate women using their uterus to hang onto men that have followed, but since GH's story happened in my lifetime and I remember watching as a teenager, it just feels personally wrong. Especially since these stories get increasingly implausible, not to mention emotionally hollow. Watching Chris's self-absorbed reaction to learning where his heart came from last week on ATWT, it occurred to me that, when a child reacted to this situation with more grace and maturity than a 40-ish doctor, it's really time to retire this story for a while:

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[Bright Eyes]

And now I'm pissed off they fired Robyn Richards all over again!

[quartermainefan]

I know this is shallow to notice, but Kristina Wagner was beautiful in that clip. I think she had to be the prettiest of all from GH. RR was a great little actress as kid. That clip was great.

[Cheap21]

I was just watching the story on YT today. I loved how the acting was when Felicia found out the truth.

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Unfortunately GH no longer has any heart (no pun intended). None of shows that repeat it have the emotinoal resonance that this had

[DRW50]

I don't know if I'm crying at that scene because of how damn good it is or because of knowing how gleefully Bob Guza crucified Felicia, Maxie, and BJ's memory, over and over and over and over.

[Cheap21]

and heres the follow up to that clip

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[DeliaIrisFan]

I guess I should have qualified what I said - Maxie has indeed grown up to be as vapid and obnoxious as any of the heart recipients in recent stories, based on the few times I have watched GH in the past decade, but she had such grace and maturity at the time.

And I agree, I forgot how good Robyn Richards was, even at that age, and Kristina Wagner was lovely. It boggles the mind why the networks cannot grasp that they'd be more likely to hang onto more of the young viewers they're so desperate for, if they allowed the characters those viewers might remember seeing from their childhoods to grow into the matriarchs/patriarchs and interact with with the younger characters who are their children in a believable, relatable way. That's a luxury that soaps have (or had, before they irrevocably got rid of characters like Felicia) that no other competing TV programming has to offer. That makes so much more sense to me than having fading "supercouples" play out the same ridiculous stories over and over again and learning nothing from their past mistakes, sometimes into their 60s, and then summarily dismissing them altogether and expecting new actors who are in theory playing their grown children to carry the stories and have viewers care.

[DRW50]

I really think you underestimate how much Guza hates any part of GH which was not his and does not fit his vision. This type of stuff would probably turn his stomach. Where is the mob? Why aren't we getting scenes where Sonny throws gauze and stethoscopes because the bus crash reminds him of his abuse as a child? Why don't we have scenes of Jason staring into space as various characters tell him how noble he is for being there?

He went out of his way to butcher this story TWICE, first with recast Maxie and Felicia and then with that awful "What if Maxie wore a bad wig and called herself BJ and we learned that Robin was a big failure because BJ had lived" episode.

Apathy and contempt have killed daytime but with Guza and GH it's outright loathing.

[DRW50]

As for these transplant stories, the reason so many of them are so lousy is because they stopped being about families or emotional moments and about cheap manipulation. They became about trying to make us pity very unlikeable, pathetic characters. AMC's story with Laura and Y&R's story with Victor reeked of this.

[DeliaIrisFan]

Oh, I was just speaking in general. Though in many ways, GH around the time of the original heart story was a big part of why I am a soap fan, in the past decade, I've probably watched GH the least of all of the ABC and P&G shows (actually I've probably watched DAYS more, too). That is largely because, to the extent that any of these shows have an individual "stamp" anymore, GH's has been among the least appealing to me. Seeing that clip and then reading people's thoughts on seeing KW and RR, it just suddenly occurred to me that, if Maxie had to grow up to do all kinds of skanky things, I might have at least been more likely to watch if the original actress were playing the role and Felicia/KW were still around and being written in character, and there was at least the pay-off to look forward to of Felicia finding out what her daughter had done and saying, "I remember when you were just a little girl and you had just gotten BJ's heart, and the first thing you said to me when you found out was, 'Did I remember to say thank you?' Somewhere inside of you, you are still that sweet little girl, and I know that if you look inside your heart - BJ's heart - you will see that you are better than this," and that perhaps being a turning-point for Maxie to start finding her way.

I didn't actually think any of that would have ever happened on this show. I'm just rambling.

[DeliaIrisFan]

Also, the Chris Hughes character is almost as much a victim of the trend of children of beloved characters not being written consistently or establishing a rapport with their parents as Maxie on GH. Although at least Bob and Kim have remained on the show, if rarely seen. It's not even so much that Chris has been recast so many times... How many Toms have there been? But for almost 30 years, Tom has been in town and he has tried most of the big legal cases - on one side or the other - and Margo was the love of his life, no matter who played either of them, and the history with Barbara has been referenced and evolved over time. Even in my sporadic viewing, I know that Chris has come and gone so many times, sometimes with a contrived conflict with his parents that ended up being dropped and sometimes with very few scenes with his family whatsoever. As for his love life, I remember probably the last time I watched regularly for as long as I have this summer - it was the summer after I graduated college and was unemployed, when that serial killer married Susan and put Bob in a coma and Allison knew he was up to no good, and Chris, who at that time was really hot and pleasant enough as an actor, was her great love. I know there's been at least one other really hot Chris recast since then, who was also played as Allison's great love. And now we're supposed to buy Katie as Chris's great love, after a few months, while Allison has moved onto another great love, who happens to be Chris's nephew? For me the one of the most interesting scene from the ATWT transplant that didn't involve Bob or Kim or John was when Allison asked to be in the operating room...I kept expecting her to say, "You're my first love, Chris, and whatever's happened, I promise you I'm going to save you like you saved me when Jeff Colby from Dynasty was trying to kill me."

[OLTL_fan]

Thanks for posting that video but Im just pissed off now. Guza suckssss!!!!!!!!!!!!!