GH: Classic Thread

[carolineg]

I think the show also made it clear these new meds were experimental, not available to everyone and expensive.  I believe Sonny was paying for them?  It also gave a viable hope Robin would live a longer life.

The testing also paralleled Stone's experience because he tested negative and never got re-tested thinking he was fine.

I really thought the show was going the AIDS complication route.  I remember being in disbelief the show would even consider going in that direction after all this time.

Listen, I'd probably quit acting too if I had to play out that Lisa Niles story which went on at least a year too long.

[Vee]

It was appalling to me but not totally surprising given how grim and dark GH had become by then (although I believe Kim was spurred to quit by a story in the Garin Wolf regime). I'm so glad it didn't happen.

[Dion]

Yes, that should have ended when Lisa kidnapped Robin and Robin fell down the well

[carolineg]

Agreed.  IIRC she was keeping it a secret as well.  I don't even know if there was a proper resolution.  Robin just was able to figure out her meds and everyone moved on.

Exactly.  Lisa just kept roaming around town doing ridiculous, illegal, crazy things and no one arrested her.  Steve even let her keep her job!  Brianna Brown was excellent in psycho mode, but it felt like the show just held on to her too long because she was talented.  Typical GH.

[Vee]

"Our hands are tied!"

[carolineg]

I remember it was more damning Robin slapped Lisa in public.  ROBIN got in trouble for that lol.

[BetterForgotten]

I’m surprised she never really landed anywhere else. BB was very talented in an otherwise thankless role that did go on for too long. 

ETA - I never watched the CW Dynasty remake she was on, and doubt I’ll ever check it out. 

Edited December 4, 2024 by BetterForgotten

[Cheap21]

Haha I loved Lisa on this show

 

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I just rewatched this and I remember it like it was yesterday especially her reading Maxie

 

Edited December 4, 2024 by Cheap21

[carolineg]

I checked Dynasty out for a minute, but it was at an odd time or something and I couldn't keep up.  IIRC, BB was pretty good on the show. 

I have no love for Lisa Niles or would wish a return, but there was probably a way to rehabilitate her for a comeback eventually if the show fired her earlier or gave her any depth.  As far as I could tell her entire college relationship with Patrick consisted of drinking beer and watching NASCAR together lol.

[Vee]

Does anyone know the details or time when Tom and Simone were written out in '96/'97? I assume they never referenced at any point them getting back together.

[Liberty City]

From what I gather: Simone left Port Charles with Tommy Jnr, after she ended her relationship with Justus. And after ending things with Felicia, Tom just returned to Africa. 

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Lisa Niles was a bit too much for me but, damn... Robert Guza Jnr knew how to write the dramatics. And, to think, this was at the end of his tenure.

She did well in the role of Claudia; but it was much less expansive as Pamela Bellwood's Claudia in the original series. And the remake was fairly enjoyable, too.

[Vee]

I know those basics but I was hoping for more granular detail, which we sometimes get in here from more knowledgeable posters than myself.

I was surprised to see Ashford's Tom ask about Mary Mae upon returning to town. I don't remember the prior Tom being on when I started watching in late '93 at all, but my memories of that time are very spotty.

Edited December 6, 2024 by Vee

[carolineg]

I don't recall all the details and my edits aren't super helpful, but I think Simone left town because Tommy wasn't adapting well to Simone's engagement to Justus.  Tom finished out his part in Laura's fake death story and left town quietly to go back to Africa.  Separately from Simone.  

I did find this cool channel that has quite a few Ward/Mary Mae videos I haven't seen.  I couldn't find Simone's departure specifically, but it has some great edits on there.

Link in the spoiler.

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[dc11786]

In the limited, scattered Harlan material I've seen so far, he's not been a character who interested me. I found him more interesting dead, than alive, though there was an odd little story brewing in early 1992, after he died, being told in flashbacks about how Julia was nearly raped as a teenager and the man died with Harlan either taking the rap for Julia or something along those lines. It was during the brief Linda Grover/Norma Monty period. I'm not even sure if it was fully resolved. I don't know where it was going, but it intrigued me. Truthfully, it's hard to overlook Harlan as a member of the consortium. 

For Bill and Julia, I liked them as sorta friendly rivals with each knowing they sorta loved each other but never enough to make it work. Julia's relationship with Sly was also nice, but it became the standard for every Bill relationship that Sly would like the last woman that Bill had dated.

Bless Marcil because Levinson's Brenda is way too often paper thin and rarely given any depth. Maybe Harlan would have generated more empathy for the character, but Brenda is such a hostile character in that first year without much softness or heart.

The Cates family situation is how I remember it with mom abandoning them with Jagger before running off with her new boyfriend. It was told with one of those sepia flashbacks I think. I don't remember any references to the father, but I'll be curious to see what is said when Ray Conaway arrives and is given more story space than some of the other adult males in the younger set stories. 

I agree. The Nikki / child story would have been a retread after the Carly / Michael story. In a more nuanced version of Levinson's "General Hospital," Nikki could have continued to play A.J. and Eric Simpson against one another while continuing to build a relationship between Eric, Monica, and Alan where A.J.'s animosity towards Jason's success could have been transferred to the preferred pseudo-son Eric. Then, when Nikki returns with a kid, she could claim it was A.J. even though it was Eric's, and A.J. would know because he is so obsessed with her that he just lets it slide only to have to have his own personal reckoning when it happens to him later with Carly and Michael. 

Jenny was establihsed as a virgin in January, 1992. It was in a scene where Ned tries to initiate sex on the couch in the apartment Jenny shared with Amy, Sheila, Meg, and Eric. I know Jenny isn't one of your favorites, but here is the scene:

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The Kensington stuff doesn't start until September/October, 1992 so that nearly 9 months, an EP, and 3-4 writing teams later. My guess is that when Levinson and/or Thoma pitched the story, someone remembered Jenny claimed she was a virgin and then they addressed the potential continuity error. 

When Ned confronts Jenny, Jenny tells her mother Angela, popping in on one of her recurring visits from this era, that Ned was more mad about the lying saying she was from a family of liars, basically referring to Bill though Levinson's Angela is a manipulative matriarch with social ambitions behind her own modest background. That scene can be seen her if, again, you have morbid curiousity to see your favorite Jenny:

  

I think I first heard about this in Riche's interview with WeLoveSoaps. I'll include the excerpt less for you (who have probably read it), but for others who might not:

I wanted to do a story about AIDS when I first got to GH.  AIDS was on the rise, a non-discriminating disease that didn't care who it attacked.  I felt it was an issue of great importance and wanted to find a way to interface many of the characters of Port Charles with the hospital.  At first, I thought it could be a story for A.J. Quartermaine.  I thought, what would happen if A.J. had another drunken night in college, one of many, and explore what would happen when a friend, a male friend, from college shows up at the Quartermaine mansion wanting A.J.'s help since his family threw him out because he had AIDS.  And A.J. doesn’t remember who had sex with who, and what he did during so many drunken orgies.  They could have both had sex with a woman who was a drug addict. The intention was not to make them gay, but the implication might have stirred up a lot.  We could have asked, “Why does everyone care so much if he was gay? Why does he care? How would Edward Quatermaine react and what would Lila do to bring the family back together?” We could have looked at it all.  But it wasn’t about being gay, I didn’t want to be, “Oh those gay people, of course they screw around so much...” of some B.S. like that.   AIDS is a non-discriminating disease, it doesn't care who you are are or what your sexuality is.  If you do stupid things, have unprotected sex, you risk getting it.  If we had done it with a gay character we would not have gotten the message of urgency across. 

So the intention was to have a smart person who was not gay but made stupid choices get AIDS.  I didn’t have Claire at the time, and I don’t know if Claire would have even wanted to do it that way, but the network did not want to do that story. They didn’t want A.J. to be in question of having AIDS, or maybe not being 100% heterosexual, they just didn’t want to go there because he was a Quartermaine, which of course, is exactly why I wanted to go there.

I believe Tom is written out in May, 1997. I remember looking it up when I was pondering whether or not they could have used Tom and Simone to launch "Port Charles" as it would have given more viability to having Rachel Ames appear over there. 

[titan1978]

There are times her first year I felt like Marcil’s natural instincts drove her to play against the writing, and I think those displays of vulnerability are why she survived just being a carbon copy vixen or even written out altogether. Levinson was really writing a rough, pretty nasty and selfish vixen and Vanessa downplayed the vixen and upped the lost woman looking for love aspects before Labine really invested in her. She does some awful things to Karen, heinous. But I remember her putting the pieces together about stripper Karen and how she would often have facial expressions that didn’t match what she was supposed to say from the scripts quite often.