We Love Soaps' Take on GH

[Vee]

Oh yes, I was going to mention the Patrick thing. There are things like that that went down on OLTL, but I can't remember one that was that egregious.

[ChitHappens]

You are absolutely spot on, and Vee is really confusing me right now. I thought I was healing.

FrankenRon have absolutely no interest in long standing GH characters. If the character was not created by them, they don't even bother. Its just a matter of meeting guarantees.

[KMan101]

Ding ding ding. Episode guarantees is all it is. And they clearly 'save up' the guarantees and then have the characters on for days and weeks on end, hence them disappearing again. Instead of, you know, balancing them. I DO understand the budget/schedules, etc. but they could do a lot better of a job than they do.

[Vee]

I don't know what you mean, but if it's about the way I view the show I stand by it. They did a lot of good when they came in, and they also did (and still do) a lot of bad. It's not a matter of absolutes, and it never has been for me, and you know that, everyone knows that. You don't have to agree with me but it's how I feel.

And they do have an interest in those characters - the issue is that it's through an extremely narrow lens. According to them and the way they see things, their take on how to utilize those people is the only take that works, their usage of them is the only usage that is available and feasible, and if you don't accept that you are being ungrateful and unreasonable given the state of daytime today. You are expected to accept plot-driven dialogue and story and de-emphasized characters, functional dialogue and more recently, prioritizing a handful of unpopular characters because at least they're giving you Monica/Felicia/Lesley/Kevin/Lucy, etc. on a semi-regular basis.

That is the problem. It's not that they don't care about most of these characters. It's that they have so internalized their way of doing things, as well as internalizing the near-universal praise from the soap press that has put them inside an ego bubble of their own making, that they refuse to acknowledge that there's anything wrong with it. They think they are doing the only thing that can be done, and they are now unable and unwilling to conceive of a better way.

Loving a show to death, loving its characters and feeling you are infallible in how you run that show and those characters can easily be as bad as not caring about them at all. That is the problem.

[dragonflies]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ed-martin/general-hospitals-amazing_b_4981518.html?utm_hp_ref=tw

[Gray Bunny]

I liked the article. It reminds me of Reilly's work: it eventually gets old. I imagine that if Reilly had stuck with DAYS beyond 1997, the SHOCK and AWE stories would've become stale, old, and always trying to out-do the previous one.

P.S. To Mike: Krista Allen stunk as Billie heehee

[ChitHappens]

That's a dated article and that particular stan pulled pieces from an article they had written previously.

The only thing I will touch on is that yet another "journalist" failed to explain why Carly and FrankenTodd are not working. The same people are Todd Manning, Luke Spencer, James Stenbeck, Roger Thorpe, Ric Lansing fans. Why are they afraid to say the writing stinks? Why is that so difficult? A relationship forming after a rape literally saved GH, so I'm not getting this outrage.

[Vee]

The writing does stink. But Franco is also not Luke Spencer, or Roger Thorpe, or even Todd Manning. He's a serial killer who got Carly's son raped. They could have Harding Lemay in an oxygen tent writing the show and that pairing wouldn't work - and he wouldn't do it.

[quartermainefan]

There is no writing that can make Franco work. It isn't just Michael's rape, how about how he strapped Lulu to a bomb and yet nobody remembers or even cares. Luke would have killed him by now (if that was Luke). And why did Sonny forget about the rape?

Plus an actor with a shred of versatility would help.

[ChitHappens]

We did this tango before, so I will just say a despicable man is a despicable man! How can you embrace a man who viciously gang rapes a woman as a romantic lead and yearn for him to be with a woman but struggle with a man who orchestrated a rape? That makes no sense to me at all, Vee.

It's either a writing issue or it isn't. You can't pick and choose because the writing is awful. He's either irredeemable disgusting filth or he isn't. Harding Lemay or moRon Carlivati.

[Vee]

Sure I can, and I'm not the only one. I can and I did and I will continue to do so, but it's not just me - evidently, so has at least 90% of the viewing audience who took to any of those other characters but cannot tolerate NuFranco. When even Daytime Confidential won't back Ron up on that, and they'll back virtually anything, what does that tell you?

Of course [insert soap criminal here - Roger, Todd, Luke, etc.] is a foul person for what they did, whether it's rape or murder or all of the above - there are lots of antiheroes on soaps. But the best of those types of characters are developed and well-drawn, their crimes are measured and weighted against any and all future story choices or future character evolution, how they come out of the abyss or straddle the line - that's why they succeed where characters like Franco fail. So yes, I'll be that hypocrite, and I have decades of company. There's also the issue of what the character's crime is. Franco is IMO a step beyond any of those best examples for a number of reasons, but the biggest is the nature of the character - he is a gleeful serial killer - along with the choice of subsequent story - pairing him with the woman whose son he got raped, whose friends and family he terrorized. It's the nature and the writing.

You can't say it's just a writing issue and that if we had gotten a proper story this thing would've taken off when there's no other serial killer character that comes to mind who has subsequently been paired up romantically on a soap opera, let alone with the parent of the child whose rape he facilitated. It's the writing and the character. It's Franco. It would never have worked. There's a reason even Laura Wright, who can and will sell anything, can barely bring herself to refer to the character as who he is.

[ChitHappens]

Gleeful serial killer vs a gleeful rapists? I can certainly see the difference.

Not once did I say Francly could have taken off, but we will never know because there was no writing to back this pairing up - only chemistry. My point was and has always been is that you cannot distinguish one despicable man from the other. And a anti-hero? You did not go there.

Not finished, so I will be back in a bit.

[Vee]

But I can distinguish between those characters, and I do, and so does everyone else! There's reasons why Luke and Roger Thorpe, Jack Devereaux, Todd, even the '90s Sonny Corinthos, etc. were popular characters and success stories, and why Franco is not. Saying we can't distinguish between any one of them is the same logic that led to GH foolishly re-hiring Roger Howarth to play Franco, who they envisioned as "Todd-esque" - thinking one size fit all.

[Ponds]

Vee, I agree that hiring Roger as Franco was a HUGE mistake. If they had to have him on the show, just bring him on as a new character...we've had that shoved down our throats before.

[allmc2008]

I twitted this for better or worse.

@ABCNetwork @carlivatiron @valentinifrank This sums up why I don't watch #gh anymore: http://www.welovesoaps.net/2014/04/gh-is-general-hospital-out-of-control.html#more …