GH50: Discussion for the month of July...

[Cheap21]

Those are the new Quartermaines? Blah!

[rhinohide]

You asked for the Q's to be returned!

Xoxo

Ron.

[cassadine1991]

yeah... Ned, Dillon, Brook Lynn, Maya, Faith, Jimmy Lee, Celia... those are the Q's we want

[rhinohide]

Damn. I didn't see all that in the recent article. AFAIC OLTL is using Tood pretty much the same way GH is using Franco. Pervasively. But considering bloggers seem to favor a writer who casts aside iconic characters grounded in GH history like Duke, Mac, Felicia, Lucy, Kevin, Anna, Monica, Scotty and Laura while focusing on questionable newbies, I'm not surprised they aren't enjoying OLTL. Bora and DnD and TnB are getting way too much screentime for their liking.

[Vee]

Podcast.

[cassadine1991]

this podcast is just like the other a total Prospect Park bashfest

[rhinohide]

Oh.

I. Just. Can't.

[KMan101]

Does anyone else think podcasts are getting old and overrated? I don't really need to hear these people. A simple article suffices.

Anywho ...

WHERE is Monica? Seriously!

And Tracy has been anywhere BUT the Q house. Same for AJ. The um ... actual Quartermaines!

It's ridiculous.

Duke, Lucy, Felicia, Mac, Anna, etc. they're all just dayplayers at this point. Yet we'll get the off-spring of some of them down the road. Oh joy. Are they still bringing on Lucy's kids? What about Sean and Tiffany's daughter? Tommy Hardy? Were those all just rumors? Not that it means any airtime for anyone connected to them. Took 'em long enough to even remind us Carly was Morgan's mother.

And how fun we get to hear about Bobbie and Noah back together but yeah, we won't bother actually showing you.

Sigh. I feel like I'm in a GH nightmare right now.

[DRW50]

I've never listened to podcasts. It takes all I have to listen to DVD commentaries. And I would rarely listen to them with fans. I don't want to hear fan hyena cackling and hear 40 year old people trying to act like they're 12. Not to mention the "more fan than thou" purity garbage you get with that stuff. I just don't want to deal with it.

[rhinohide]

Sniff! Sob! Hugs.

[Vee]

At one point I thought they made good points. Now it's more of a sociological study for me.

[KMan101]

Aww. Haha. Thank you.

It's not THAT upsetting to me lol, but the whole show just feels bizarre to me anymore.

[Vee]

Well, it's not just you. The show's in a very bizarre place at the moment, with several of the frontburner stories.

The truth is this didn't have to happen. I would've been for the crossovers for most of the characters, on a limited level - I think it would've been good for both shows for Todd to pop up on GH from time to time, for John to go back and forth or whatever, for Starr to visit home once in a while. But it seems as if GH can't have it all they don't want anything. Franco is a disaster, Silas is just sad and boring and somehow Kiki/Lauren is the least objectionable character, but that's just because she's nothing but Brunette Starr. This has only made things far worse for GH.

But it's far from just about them. The Patrick/Sabrina/Britt/etc. mess has utterly curdled post-Nurses Ball and they've become unwatchable and creepy. The Maxie/Spinelli/Ellie baby saga will never end. The Robin mess has officially gone on far too [!@#$%^&*] long. And Luke, Laura and Scott are basically dayplayers half the time. Then there's the teens, and Sonny, and Shawn and Alexis, and Morgan/Michael/Kiki.

The whole show's a real mess these days. And a lot of it had to do with them overhauling the entire show to try and make those three work, but it started with their refusing to wrap up some key preexisting GH stories. It reminds me a little of how apeshit OLTL went in 2010 and 2011, with the Fords, etc. Almost overnight the show would become both dramatically different and bad in whole new ways. GH with Franco, SIlas, etc. is the same.

[DRW50]

As with OLTL, the idea from "Cartini" is likely that people are watching for them, not the show itself. Or that is probably Ron's idea, anyway. He's been told he's awesome for six years running, that he saved daytime, that only he could write OLTL, that he is the new Doug Marland, Agnes Nixon, et al.

As with OLTL, the show basically stumbles forward, half-drunk, between one poorly acted and loud stunt to another. Those stunts will be grasped at as the best ever in soap opera, while the bad patches are ignored or dismissed as hey, someone else was worse, somewhere.

They're very lucky, because a lot of vocal people would watch Roger Howarth sing the Jem theme song for an entire 35 minutes a day. You will see more and more talk about how Franco isn't so bad, and isn't he so hot and funny and crazy, and so on. Just as when Michael Easton bothers to make a facial expression, you'll hear about how wonderful this is. The material itself is an afterthought, to many fans, to the actors, and to the writers and producers. You are basically watching the last few years of the Little Rascals shorts, where most of the kids had no idea what they were doing and the few who did looked like they were being held hostage.

If Ron Carlivati knew how to balance tone, if he knew how to write emotional beats, if his writing didn't have contempt for women and minorities, if he had any ability to create new characters, then they wouldn't need to rely on the exhaust fumes of Gloria Monty nostalgia and Brian Frons-era stubbled mannequins.

[rhinohide]

We will never agree on this. The best thing that ever happened was PP taking complete control of their characters and completely removing cartooni from the equation. Sorry Ron is such a ridiculous fool that this is his great plan to keep the actors. But I will never not be thrilled that he can't touch anything OLTL ever again. OLTL is better off.