GH: Classic Thread

[amybrickwallace]

Yes. His all-time best screen partners were Genie and Jackie Z.

[Liberty City]

He did fairly well with Finola Hughes during their very short-lived romance... which felt really weird to me. It's almost like Ron Carlivati said: "Y&R put Genie and Tristan together, so let me put Anthony and Finola together!"

Edited July 12, 2021 by Liberty City

[amybrickwallace]

And, of course, every time he squared off with Kin/Scott was worth watching.

[Vee]

I had wanted to see Tony and Finola together for years - with the dialogue team Guza, Labine and co. had had in place for many years. They were almost all let go by Frank Valentini, or gone not long before. When it actually happened in 2012, the pairing was extremely poorly done by Ron and Frank. I didn't care at all.

The writing would not have helped. He first came in with the Guza team still fully in place. Jacob Young was a very bad actor back then. (He also hasn't necessarily improved much vs. simply gotten very hammy and begun playing to his strengths instead, but people don't want to talk about that)

Edited July 12, 2021 by Vee

[carolineg]

The writing for Emily was poor, but it got so much worse in general as the years went on Emily does not seem so bad.  Emily is missed on this show.  Maybe not NL, per se, but Emily being dead was and continues to be problematic.   And her romance with Sonny was such a tiny blip on the radar does it even matter anymore.   

In the same way Georgie being killed was idiotic and so short sighted.  She is very missed on today's show.  Why were they killing off so many young, legacy heroines?  Hell, as hated as Courtney is/was she could actually be used very well on the current canvas.   And all 3 of them appear as freakin ghosts all the time they would probably having been willing to come back later down on the line.

I am not defending JY, but the writing was horrible for Lucky.  He was awful to Liz, hooked up with Sarah, then weirdly kept lying to Liz's face about wanting to get married.  And let's be real, the only chemistry he had with anyone was his onscreen brother.  So I think it's a mixture of bad acting and awful writing, but I didn't think JY even knew what to do with himself in the role.   Just miscast

[FrenchBug82]

Right but as Vee said, he just wasn't very good on his first B&B run either. He just wasn't a very good actor. He was VERY green when he first joined B&B and was cast mostly on his looks. Why GH thought he was an appropriate successor to JJ is weird to me; he certainly was miscast.
Then with a mix of getting older and better (maybe as a result of the blowback he got from his Lucky performances) and JR being a better fit for his strengths, he did well in that role - not always as good as another better actor would have IMO but good enough.
And then when he returned to B&B the second time, the writing for Rick changed to get Rick closer to a softer version of JR and it kinda worked.

I am going to put my hand up and say I also liked his chemistry with Skye. He was very relaxed by then and RC could keep up with him.
The romance aspect was weird and obviously noone was fooled into thinking this is was an endgame romance but their flirtatious banter is one of the few things that I found tolerable from him in his last decade or so. I mean, the Tracy stuff had moments but when the Skye scenes were light-hearted and he was much better when he was not trying to ACT.
This was material he could just show up, be himself and cash the paycheck which is really all he wanted by then so these made him visibly happier and in turn it made him better.
 

I have been preaching that Georgie point for years but I fully agree. Courtney was expandable but maybe with better (more balanced) writing she could have done something more interesting - I didn't personally hate the actress. 
And Emily is someone that Helena should have put on ice to get her away from Nikolas and she is not really dead or something. She has too many ties to various sides of the canvas.

 

Edited July 12, 2021 by FrenchBug82

[Vee]

With JJ gone, ABC wanted a hunkier Lucky and JY was hot at the time from B&B. The network (and perhaps Riche) didn't care about anything else. I would love to know who else auditioned back then, I know it was a contentious process and that GF didn't want Jonathan replaced at all while TG drove a hard bargain as well.

The J.R. role on AMC ultimately played to Young's strengths - he could be loud, arrogant, boorish, etc. And he has improved as an actor a lot since his GH days, to be fair; he's come a long way. But he was never exactly subtle, and that did not change at AMC or later when he returned to B&B.

As for Georgie, both she and Emily were terrible mistakes to kill off. They could both easily be resurrected and then sent off-canvas til needed.

Edited July 12, 2021 by Vee

[FrenchBug82]

This stays puzzling to me
For B&B to cast him on looks wasn't absurd. I mean, it fit the role and this was supposed to be a teenager anyway and the material wasn't Shakespeare. He was going to play besotted by Amber and then bamboozled by her pregnancy lies. Not needing to be the best actor to pull "being dumb" off.

But Lucky? JJ had made Lucky an extremely popular character based on his very strong acting work. It would have been insane for them to think "hunk" without worrying about the acting factor. It is not like they couldn't find a good-looking "hunk" that could act a lot better than JY could at that time and could take the ball where JJ had left it.
Heck, at least find someone with good chemistry with RH.
It still boggles my mind to this day. There are plenty of bad recasts that don't work because of untangible things but that made sense enough on paper. This was doomed from the start in a very conspicuous way that anyone with half a brain could have told them before he even started airing.

[Vee]

Soaps have cast for abs over talent for decades. It's not shocking.

[FrenchBug82]

They didn't cast Jonathan Jackson or Tyler Christopher based on abs. That very same year they cast JY, they also cast Chad Brannon.

So, yes. In some circumstances it is shocking because, contrarily to popular belief, it is not how they cast most of the time and, for some roles, it is particularly absurd.
You can take the risk of leaning on looks when casting a rando role with no ties to the canvas. As I said, B&B casting him on looks wasn't a big shock.

However recasting the son of your most famous couple, that had just been played by a celebrated young actor, based on abs is particularly puzzling, no matter how low your opinion of soap standards are. I stand by that.
 

[Vee]

GH cast JJ at age 12, lol. And by the time the recast came along in 2000, the network was taking a much firmer hand in things. They would not have cast Jonathan, at age 12 or age 18 or age 21, in the 2000s. My opinion of soap standards being low is backed up by over two decades of them being low. But even when they were good, they still cast for T&A over talent often in the golden years. There is a reason Ryan's Hope blew through umpteen recasts and lost good people, among so many other shows.

Edited July 12, 2021 by Vee

[carolineg]

I actually did sort of like Skye and Luke and completely forgot they happened.

 

Listen, Emily and Courtney probably both needed a rest and I was thrilled when they killed Courtney off.  But I think they easily could have shipped them both out of town for awhile.  I just think all of Georgie, Emily, Courtney could be used effectively today.  It was a short term ratings grab for Guza, but long term stories weren't thought about.   Deaths like Stone, BJ, Lily etc had points and long term ideas.  None of these deaths did.  Even killing off all of Maxie's boyfriends, Logan, and Zander all seem so silly to me.  

I agree JJ was unlikely to be cast after he was a child/pre-teen.  I would say the same for Amber Tamblyn.  But is JY really that hot?  He is no Greg Vaughn. Tyler Christopher was smoking hot, maybe not hired specifically for his abs, but c'mon he was pretty gorgeous @FrenchBug82

[Forever8]

I would've sent Georgie off to Johns Hopkins since she was studying to become a doctor until she was needed on the canvas again. 

[Liberty City]

I'm speaking in terms of his second run as Rick. His first was a mess. 

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 And, to be honest, TPTB at General Hospital never recast with Jonathan Jackson in-mind, which is why when Jackson returned, he didn't feel like a cop to me.

I completely agree, especially since I am not one to speak highly of Anthony Geary or the character of Luke Spencer.

Which is unfortunate AF, and why I do miss the New York soaps, which cast more or less for talent. But stereotypes have played more-so for casting male soap stars, and I do wish it would change... even though it won't.

Emily easily should have been written off-canvas, and either brought back with Natalia Livingston or recast with someone else.

[Faulkner]

JJ was never going to win any pose-offs, but he’s dreamy and tortured in the Christian Slater/River Phoenix mold. He’s a great-looking guy to this day. He was so singular and idiosyncratic that it was harder to simply slot him (or an actor like him) into a generic B-list leading male role to fit whatever narrative the show wanted to sell at any given point. Jacob Young and especially Greg Vaughan are much easier to use as Play-Doh. Lucky *never* made sense as a cop to me based on his history. GV felt like an entirely different character.

JJ, upon his return, was such a soulful actor that he almost made it work, but he returned to a very diminished show, which catered to a lot of his worst actorly instincts.

Edited July 12, 2021 by Faulkner