GH50: January 2014 Discussion - HAPPY NEW YEAR!

[Dr Neil Curtis]

How is Franco Scotty's son again??

[Cheap21]

Heather told everyone that he was theres via sex back when they were on the show back in the early 80s. She had a DNA test, but no one ran one to confirm if she were lying

Monica doesn't work at the hospital anymore? I thought she just got a demotion

Why do I get the feeling that Anna and Scott are heading for a ONS

if Heather were to kill Luke, I might consider my hate for her

LOL...hate Felix but did like him calling Sabrina out. She says she doesn't want to be like Britt, yet she is lying and messing with a child's paternity, deceiving the father in the process.

[Cheap21]

How the hell does Heather have goons? She doesn't even have money to pay people to work for her. I don't get this contrived bullsh-t. Im ready to drop this show again. Heather's crap infuriates me too much

William DeVry looks like he's aged about 10 year since he joined the show

KeKo is wrong for hiding Franco out in Michal's home

I love how shady Monica is towards Silas.

WTF did Elizabeth come from?

WHAT THE F-CK! Was not expecting that at all.

[Marco Dane]

WHAT!

[AlexElizabeth]

LMAO! Ron is out of his mind with this Obrecht stuff.

[Cheap21]

I just cant and I thought the Heather stuff was contrived. Wait till Ch-t sees this! You watch, Obrecht as CoS and Heather will get a job at the hospital as Head Nurse

[John]

OK given RC's law back ground and I know its a soap But Britt's mom is the new COS? She's a Felon. FAIL

[AlexElizabeth]

I love how Monica got fired because of her murder suspect son but Obrecht is just fine. LMAO.

[ChitHappens]

Not only that, she's a terrorist complicit in kidnapping and attempted murder. All you need is a Twitter positive response and Craptini will find a way to keep the character no matter how ridiculous it is. I fully expect Jerry Jacks to return as the new district attorney.

This is re-inventing GH? BULLSHIT!

[John]

Ughh at fans saying she was never convicted. BS she had her medical lisence revoked for what she had done in the past.

She would never be COS

[KMan101]

I just can't with all this way too ridiculous crap.

[Cheap21]

Wow, didn't even think about it like that. Internatinoal criminals chased by the WSB who has commited attempted murder is perfectly fine

but she wasn't convicted of anything. That part isn't false. With that said, you are right in that she has no place being CoS. Makes NO sense. Legal issues aside, why would the hospital want that bad press?

[John]

Tv Source Magazine is jumpin on me on twitter for calling Dr O being COS.

Dont jump to conclusions, see how they explain it?

Really? Lets see she had her lisence taken away. She is a terrorist. All the stuff she did with Robin. But she gets COS

Monica was duped as COS cause AJ was a Murder SUSPECT but they wont take her back. If they say european law nd uS law being different is why then RC needs a new brain

[Ryan Chamberlain]

Oh hell no. RC/FV would piss me off so bad if they did that.

Today's show was good until the end. Then it was like...what the fu.ck!

But, I have a new nickname for Carly thanks to the raccoon thing. She's now RaCarly.

[Vee]

Crossposted:

With me and Ron Carlivati it very often goes back to one thing, and that's execution.

Obrecht becoming Chief of Staff is something I've known was coming for a while now, and I didn't mind the twist on its face. It's obviously not a permanent state of affairs, but here and now it ties back into more classic GH intrigue with spies and terrorists and such, because it's obvious the only thing that could have gotten an international terror suspect like Obrecht out of custody and placed at GH is some kind of ongoing diabolical conspiracy. The bigger issue is what a lot of these events indicate about the show's overall trajectory, and what it's choosing to prioritize.

Doing a Laura-style return for Robin this past fall - with action, intrigue and weeks upon weeks of sneaking around - was fine with me provided Kimberly McCullough was locked in for a long enough stretch. Just like Tristan Rogers and Genie Francis and many others, she wasn't. They spent the lion's share of the time they had her to tape with Robin isolated and imprisoned, unable to be with her family. The moment Robin finally reclaimed her husband and her daughter - again, cutting into more of Kim's taping time with the unnecessary deliberation by Patrick - we discovered Sabrina was pregnant. Now the story is all about Sabrina and her pregnancy, again, and that's wall to wall, day to day while Kim is getting ready to go. I may not be Scrubs's biggest fan but I like the couple. I like Jason Thompson, but Patrick has never quite worked without Robin, largely because the stories he has without her either were designed to disefranchise her (Guza) or because the show was holding her back for a return (Carlivati). If the playing field were more equal he might do well, who knows. But that's not what this is. And as it is, Robin and Patrick had exactly five minutes of happiness, and while it's true soaps are about drama, you supposedly can't have happiness, etc. and all that [!@#$%^&*], at this point those old chestnuts have become cliches jaded, tired soap writers and bloggers return to to patch over the holes. The reality is that after everything Robin went through and after how very long she's been gone (and given how mind-numbingly boring the Patrick and Sabrina stories were without her, I doubt even the most ardent fans of the first round will be too keen on Round 2) GH handling her return and parceling out the time this way was a huge error in judgment. And the Obrecht situation compounds that, and here's why.

Sure, I love Kathleen Gati, I think they should use her a lot. (Of course I said that about Robin Mattson and Heather once, and now she never leaves and I can't stand her awful storyline.) And I like the Obrecht twist. But we're dealing with a larger long story now where, after Robin was imprisoned for almost two years by Obrecht and Faison, after she won her family back - Robin is now about to leave again, almost immediately after getting back, while her husband is almost surely about to be dragged back down into a love triangle with the other woman. Meanwhile, Obrecht takes her place at GH and is out scot-free. And Robin? Well, Robin will be back sometime, whatever, but here's fan favorite Obrecht! Coupled with the ridiculous Woes of Franco storyline, it's a bad message to send and a bad tone to set with the show.

And they didn't have to handle it this way. They could have sent Robin, Patrick and Emma off together, if they were ready to finally cut JT loose and let him be a companion to McCullough for future returns; if they want to keep using Thompson, they could have let Robin reunite with Patrick earlier, dispensed with the pregnancy subplot, and then, around February or March, had Robin go off to a medical conference or a family vacation, and had Patrick and Emma return solo while Robin is off on doctor business. No big thing. You can still use Obrecht in this COS role, you're just not grinding Robin down some more to do it. But they misused the time they had Kim, just like they failed to lock in Genie or Tristan Rogers the way they truly needed to. They gambled and lost. They thought they could just keep treading water and that as long as they threw in enough Friday twists and fan favorites, the story would hold and not sag under its weight. Everyone would be distracted, everyone would clap their hands, no one would mind. That's a lazy, bullshit way to run a show. It may not be lazy manpower-wise - I know how hard GH works - but it absolutely is intellectually lazy.

You've got a GH where Robin did a blink and you miss it return to her family, Sabrina is still eating the show, Robin's captor is hamming her way across the hospital and Franco is the most sensitive, misunderstood serial killer Port Charles has ever known. That's a bad message, and a bad tone for the show. It's just a mess of big ideas - some of them good - done most poorly. And it's got to stop.

I don't know how many times situations like the Robert or Robin or Laura scenarios have to happen before people stop excusing the scheduling or the timing or the pacing. Ron could structure and pace this [!@#$%^&*] better with these returning characters and their arcs, he just doesn't. And no one makes him. And you still have most of the online voices out there scared shitless that if they dare to critique it ABC will cancel the show next week. Give me a break. I don't think the man is the Great Satan like some do, I think he has some value, I think he changed GH for the better, and I think the show is a lot of fun, either good or bad fun, even when it often turns to [!@#$%^&*]. But it is [!@#$%^&*] right now, and it's less fun all the time. And people have to say it, just like people do about Y&R. These are recurring, massive issues with this team that have only gotten worse.

I like the Obrecht twist. I do. What I mind is the show it's been brought into, the way the show is going, the way it handles the overall mix. With Ron more and more I come back to Robert Redford chiding Dustin Hoffman in All The President's Men. "I don't mind what you did. I mind the way you did it."