I agree with everything except the recast part. If PP had said, "sure, you keep them on your show, and we'll just cast new actors to play the same characters on our show," it would have been a huge mess. Todd is in PC with Carly, but then you flip on another show, and another guy with his name is living a different life in Llanview with Blair? How is that not confusing, especially to people who watch both shows? That never would have worked. If GH wanted the actors, they could have written new parts for them. Heck, they could have made the new characters remarkable similar to the old ones as a bit of a nod to the audience who watched OLTL as well.

It's clear with hindsight that sharing the characters was a bad idea. I'm guessing PP thought that this was a way to keep interest in OLTL alive while they tried to figure out how to resurrect the show, and I'm guessing GH/ABC were operating under the assumption that a reboot would never happen so they could do whatever they wanted with the characters. Whether ABC did anything that amounts to actual sabotage has yet to be proved, but refusing to turn over the shows' URLs and refusing to air advertising for which PP had already paid certainly looks suspicious to me.

Also, there are plenty of NON-online fans that are terribly confused with GH/OLTL already because of the actors playing diffrent characters. Because they don't go online they don't know the reason. The receptionist at my doctors office is an avid ABC soap fan and I had to explain everything to her. Recasting would have been even more detrimental because recasting 1 character is one thing but 3 at the same time is another. It worked for AMC because of the time jump and that the last this Colby is a much better actress. ABC should have just let them go IMO because there would be no way in hell to explain to non-online fans what the situation is even if they wanted to.

Also, Crossovers would have been good beacuse it would help insure the success of both shows. If both shows succeed ABC gets a lot of money if both shows fail they will not gain money. Not saying Crossovers are crucial but it will help insure the success. That said, I like crossovers between OLTL and AMC but GH characters just don't fit in the nixon shows and Nixon Show Characters don't fit it GH. The Nixon shows have a similar concept (Brotherhood of Man/Identifying your own Prejudice/The Coman Bond of humanity) that ran throughout the shows history where as GH had A LOT of diffrent focuses (First it was Medicine then Action/Adventure Then social Issues then the mobsters). Granted the Nixon shows drifted away from the concept but it could be reinforced easily unlike GH were every fan wants it there own way. Too me adding a complex nixon character on the GH canvus is like trying to compare "War and Peace" to "Twilight".

Sharing the characters would have been a nightmare! Both parties had particular love interests for each character, and that was not going to work. Todd pledging his heart to Carly in PC and then doing the same to Blair in LV? Same with John and Starr. I refuse to believe there was some grand story in place where coordination would benefit both shows. PP just wanted to get their hands on the "actors" while they dictated what the characters would be doing on GH. Bad ideal all around, and recasts should have been the plan all along!

Who's to say they would've had love interests on BOTH soaps that's a total misconception.. They could've had Todd be friends with Blair, same with Natalie and McBain, they could've done the co-parenting thing

Also, Crossovers would have been good beacuse it would help insure the success of both shows. If both shows succeed ABC gets a lot of money if both shows fail they will not gain money. Not saying Crossovers are crucial but it will help insure the success. That said, I like crossovers between OLTL and AMC but GH characters just don't fit in the nixon shows and Nixon Show Characters don't fit it GH. The Nixon shows have a similar concept (Brotherhood of Man/Identifying your own Prejudice/The Coman Bond of humanity) that ran throughout the shows history where as GH had A LOT of diffrent focuses (First it was Medicine then Action/Adventure Then social Issues then the mobsters). Granted the Nixon shows drifted away from the concept but it could be reinforced easily unlike GH were every fan wants it there own way. Too me adding a complex nixon character on the GH canvus is like trying to compare "War and Peace" to "Twilight".

Crossovers and sharing characters should not be confused. Crossovers are doable and nothing to argue or sue about. Sharing characters means each and every story needs to be coordinated. Impossible!

Who's to say they would've had love interests on BOTH soaps that's a total misconception.. They could've had Todd be friends with Blair, same with Natalie and McBain, they could've done the co-parenting thing

Funny, how PP could not wait to get TnB back together, so yeah, that would have been a mess!

Had both GH and OLTL been on the same Coast and in an even better scenario, been in adjacent parts of the same studio or neighboring studios in the same city, etc.,I think it could've worked but even given all those 'what ifs', Daytime Soaps have always appeared to be notoriously resistant to cross-overs and doubling certain characters.

The travel complicates things but I think the biggest obstacle is the mindset that these shows embody. They are mostly slow to innovate. We all know this. So even something mutually beneficial to both shows, both shows' producers seem loathe to embrace the change.

Really a shame, a lot of cancelled daytime soaps went to their demise after being to slow to embrace changes (I'm looking at you, ATWT and GL, crossover potential!) and maximize the potential.

Edited September 6, 201312 yr by DramatistDreamer

But it wouldn't be Todd in PC with Carly because PP would have their characters back and GH would wait and create new characters, which is what they did.

PP should have asked GH to change the direction of the characters at least a month before they left and then recast and gradually introduce Todd, Starr and John separately. They chose to poorly utilize their time and energy, so whatever they had to re-write is on them.

who knows that decision may have had to happen because ABC didnt want to share. If they did maybe Carly would have done some OLTL as well and they coulda played the Todd/Blair/Carly triangle

Yeah can't believe GL and ATWT never had crossovers

who knows that decision may have had to happen because ABC didnt want to share. If they did maybe Carly would have done some OLTL as well and they coulda played the Todd/Blair/Carly triangle

We might have foreseen that big storyline RC had planned all along to connect OLTL to GH

We might have foreseen that big storyline RC had planned all along to connect OLTL to GH

Well Jen Pepperman said they wanted OLTL & GH to be bonded. So that was possible I guess

Yeah can't believe GL and ATWT never had crossovers

Yeah, right? Makes no sense. There were so many seamless possibilities that wouldn't have taken much in the way of writing but I guess these soaps were notoriously territorial and in the 1980s when these shows were flying high, I guess they didn't see the potential?

Oh, if I were old enough to have been a writer back then, it would've been so easy:

A medical convention involving Doctors, nurses and Administrators at Cedars and Oakdale Memorial. Or a health crisis (or natural disaster) affecting one of both towns where Oakdale/Springfield's finest convene to problem solve.

A hostile takeover bid by Spaulding Enterprises toward Walsh Industries, etc.

A crazy springbreak featuring the college aged youth of Springfield and Oakdale.

Missed opportunities, one and all. Too bad.

...but I digress...

Well Jen Pepperman said they wanted OLTL & GH to be bonded. So that was possible I guess

Wasn't there a plan to connect Robin's kidnapping with Victor Jr.'s and have Helena Cassadine involved and stuff like that??? But I do agree had OLTL and GH film on the same coast at neighboring studios it would've been so much more doable

Wasn't there a plan to connect Robin's kidnapping with Victor Jr.'s and have Helena Cassadine involved and stuff like that??? But I do agree had OLTL and GH film on the same coast at neighboring studios it would've been so much more doable

That was rumored

I think the bottom line with the crossover dilemma is both soaps and creative teams wanted primary creative control over the OLTL characters in question. To which I say, personally - as much as I thought the transplants were largely successful in Port Charles - these characters are OLTL property, they're needed to help relaunch that show, so GH plays by OLTL rules with OLTL characters. Particularly since GH was only loaned them in the first place. It doesn't matter how emotionally attached Ron and Frank may be to OLTL. It doesn't matter that nobody (myself included) thought OLTL would really come back. All that matters is that it did come back and they were/are now beholden to that agreement. So play by their rules. The other sticking point with that, of course, is the fact that at least one or two of the OLTLers were foolishly signed to multi-year contracts at GH on the basis of that loan.

If I was in charge at OLTL I would've said you can have John and Starr full-time so long as we get them to do a short stint for the launch, and visits afterwards. That was already a huge concession to GH, but it would've been easy to do and would not have hurt OLTL much IMO (except for the fact that the OLTL HWs had apparently planned Natalie's entire first arc around the presence of John). And Todd will do double-duty, but we get him back for launch (much as they did in reality) and then he goes back and forth between the shows from hereonin. Todd had business interests in Port Charles, and he made a fantastic pot-stirrer and troublemaker in that town; he was a shot in the arm for GH last spring. But would I have reunited him with Blair, done that whole bit, yes. Because the fact is that the Todd character is money for OLTL, and so are these soaps' big couples, and the new show needed to have primary agency when it comes to their star characters, their couples - they cannot be beholden to GH's interests as though Frank and Ron are some sort of ludicrous OLTL creative team in exile (like Batista) while they're actually running an entirely different soap opera, anymore than OLTL could've been expected to have control of GH's Carly or Sam or Michael, or whoever else was connected to the OLTL characters. So Todd does both shows. And could you have kept playing on the tension with Todd and Carly as he went back and forth from then on, teasing him being torn between the women - sure, although I would've still kept moving her to A.J. Quartermaine, as they were doing around that time, because that pairing is Carly's destiny IMO.

A crossover setup was doable IMO, but not when there was, I suspect, a lot of pride, ego and chest-thumping on both sides. Nobody wanted to give anything up when it was easy enough for OLTL 2.0 to let at least Alderson and Easton mostly loose - they had apparently been willing to let them walk after brief runs at launch, then doubled back and changed their minds - and I suspect FV and RC refused to accept they couldn't have full creative control either. "We signed them to contracts!" Tough [!@#$%^&*], it was a loan. Make it work.

That being said, I find the Triskelion story on OLTL, slow though it was to get going, a lot more interesting than whatever polyglot of GH and OLTL Ron would have come up with for the Two Todds himself. Judging by the Cassadine/Faison/etc. arc developing on GH right now, it's not all that impressive when put into practice day by day. (Neither was the Irene reveal on OLTL, after the first few days.)

Edited September 6, 201312 yr by Vee

I don't understand the affinity for crossovers. Even when they are well done they are clunky. Anything other than one or two scenes becomes a pointless miasma. They're hardly some magical audience-building tool and in the end somebody gets short-changed.

Edited September 6, 201312 yr by marceline

I hated the structure of the baby switch story on AMC and OLTL in 2003-2004, but I can't deny that from what I've heard, it did very good business. For AMC, at least. OLTL got fucked around with Kevin and Kelly; that thread ended on our show like a damp squib. That was the problem with it for me - while Malone's team played a lot of the drama on their show that summer, ultimately it petered out and in the endgame, OLTL was the afterthought.

Im hoping with PP somewhere down the pike maybe they can do a cross between OLTL & AMC. Have AJ meet the Buchanans. Do AJ & Miranda know about them being switched between families???