Members frequentsoapfan Posted September 26, 2012 Members Share Posted September 26, 2012 Since when have prolonging secrets worked on any soap in recent years? No story should be lasting a year. Viewers lose interest. Stories shouldn't be lasting any longer than 3 months tops. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members ChitHappens Posted September 26, 2012 Members Share Posted September 26, 2012 Not to mention, no scribe today has it in them to give a payoff for the time invested. Payoffs just are not a priority now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members VirginiaHamilton Posted September 26, 2012 Members Share Posted September 26, 2012 Herein lies a major reason why soaps have fallen in quality - because of TIIC's need to cater to this fast-food mentality instead of the old-school viewers who savored the supposedly unneeded prolonged stories. One need look no further than the asinine complaints that I'd read about GH episodes 'being too slow' when they aired the 90s reruns. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members frequentsoapfan Posted September 26, 2012 Members Share Posted September 26, 2012 Times have changed, viewers have changed, people expect faster paced stories when they have many other options for viewing. Part of the problem with soaps is they never adapted with the times. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members DRW50 Posted September 26, 2012 Members Share Posted September 26, 2012 That depends on what year these reruns were in. If they were from the late 90s, or 1995, then a lot of viewers at the time said the same thing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members frequentsoapfan Posted September 26, 2012 Members Share Posted September 26, 2012 Whenever GH shows 90s reruns they are usually from 1998. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members DRW50 Posted September 26, 2012 Members Share Posted September 26, 2012 I also don't think any prolonged story Ron Carlivati has ever written can compare to any old school quality stories. Can "David is Asa's son, let's talk about this for a year and remind people that he tried to kill Renee when he was a baby - oh wait, he's actually Bo's son, never mind, PAPAPA STEPNORA PAPAPAPA oh my sides" compare to anything good, ever? 1998 was OK, by Guza standards, although the last half did drag. 1995, 1997, and 1999 all dragged severely. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members VirginiaHamilton Posted September 26, 2012 Members Share Posted September 26, 2012 What people/viewers? Certainly not me and others that share my preference for 'unneeded prolonged stories'. If that were the case, then plenty of primetime shows that I've enjoyed for years wouldn't be on the air as we speak. As it stands, they are, which is why your opinion isn't factual in the least. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members frequentsoapfan Posted September 26, 2012 Members Share Posted September 26, 2012 I loathed Cartini's David. He had the mentality of an 8th grader. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members ChitHappens Posted September 26, 2012 Members Share Posted September 26, 2012 Of course I don't agree my friend. Are the "stories" being drrrrraaaaaaggggggeeeeeedddddd out because there is more story or are we stalling? And if there is mileage left, it should not be retconned to death. I certainly don't have a ff mentality, and I am absolutely certain others don't either. We just remember what good soap was. Cartini never knew. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members VirginiaHamilton Posted September 26, 2012 Members Share Posted September 26, 2012 Not me or anyone that I knew that was watching at the time. One of the reasons why I became a fan of GH (as well as soaps in general) was because of the time and care that they'd taken to develop characters and their stories so that their actions - whether satisfying or heinous - were must-see television. That changed with TIIC decided to cater to the viewers with an attention span of a gnat, which is a major reason why longtime viewers left the soaps in the dust. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members ChitHappens Posted September 26, 2012 Members Share Posted September 26, 2012 Spencer Truman! The year OLTL died, IMHO! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members frequentsoapfan Posted September 26, 2012 Members Share Posted September 26, 2012 Priemtime shows do not run all year long they only run parts of the year for a certain number of epis. And what primetime shows currently are still dragging the same lame secret for years? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members VirginiaHamilton Posted September 26, 2012 Members Share Posted September 26, 2012 Honestly, it's both. And while the dragging-as-a-stalling-tactic was one of the main reasons why soaps were always spoofed, I gladly embraced it (well, with the exception of Passions, because that was just ridiculous) because I knew that I was in for a satisfying conclusion and would end up getting to know and love (or love to hate) characters in the process. I'm well aware of what good GH soap was and whoever wrote for this one post-2001 was the opposite of that. There's a reason why I hold the Riche/Labine regime in such high esteem and it was because they knew how to write characters and good story while providing viewers plenty of reason to care about PC happenings. That quality died a permanent death once Riche was fired and has never recovered in spite of Cartini's GH being a lot more watchable than the shitastic decade-plus that was Guza's reign of terror. Don't know about lame, but there are plenty of yet-to-be-resolved story lines in primetime - the likes of which keep folks like myself tuning back in every season. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members DRW50 Posted September 26, 2012 Members Share Posted September 26, 2012 That's also one of the reasons I became a soap fan. I just don't think soaps were doing any of what you describe by the late 90s. I always go back to the aftermath of Carly being revealed as Bobbie's daughter - a year and a half of story, resolved with Virginia Benson dying, Carly obsessing over Jason, Carly having little to no contact with anyone in the Spencer family aside from Bobbie, and Bobbie having very limited scenes where she tries to tolerate Carly as best she can. I was hugely disappointed and that told me to never trust Bob Guza. Riche/Labine were better, but by the end, if you take away the Stone story (which was very good), you had the weird Bobbie/Alan stuff, boring Miguel/Brenda and Sonny/Lily, Laura gone half the time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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