SERIAL SCOOP: SOAP OPERA HISTORY: Bill Bell & Claire Labine on Writing Daytime Serials (1997)

[cuzIsaySo]

Its kind of unfair to blame Claire LaBine for what subsequent regime did with the characters she handled. Sonny was never a fave of mine but his first few years on the show at least managed to humanized him.

I would dare say that even under Guza (as supervised by wendy riche) Sonny was somewhat likable but JFP totally destroyed whatever WR/CL had managed to do with sonny. Gone were the complexities and the layers.

[titan1978]

Sonny did want to be in the mob though. Labine's storylines slowly showed his ascent. First Frank Smith, then Scully, then his involvement with Rivera. He and Luke slowly killed their way to him being the local guy and Luke felt comfortable with him compared to the alternatives. His lying about his business threatened L&B Records, and it led to Brenda's decision to wear the wire.

But the other characters were allowed to have a point of view and challenge Sonny without seeming like he was the hero of the show and everyone else was the villain. And his violent world had consequences for himself and the people in his life.

She also could have written out the mob element in GL easily, but had a shootout on her first show with the very hott Jordi.

[quartermainefan]

There have been multiple posts over the years and topics where people say in hindsight how Gloria Monty changed soaps for the worse and how she got away from this and that and how all the people who followed her were influenced by her, so on and so forth.

Where she could have just as easily written him out for drug dealing and what have you, she decided that what she would do is spend the next two years showing his romantic side and his fatherly side, and glossed over his criminal activities completely. FF to 2014 and Sonny is still here. I don't know of any other way to look at it. Sonny is still on GH because she didn't write him out. The character damaged the show, her writing of him was atrocious in the way she made his criminal activities some sort of moral calling, and neither Stone nor Brenda change that.

[Vee]

It's Labine.

[cuzIsaySo]

Seriously?

[Vee]

Seriously.

[John]

I guess we can agree to disagree because IMHO Sonny was his most human when Claire was HW. Maurice did leave in 97 but I know Guza was a big factor in Maurice's return in late 1998.

Ultimately I see it as Guza the one who turned Maurice's Sonny into this untouchable Mob kingpin who always won. Guza destroyed Sonny for me

I can say this for Cartini as least Sonny has Humor again. That has been missing for over a decade

[titan1978]

I don't blame Monty for her success, nor do I blame her for other soaps trying to ape her to varying degrees of success. I think she was the right person for a show like GH, a non traditional soap to begin with. The family on the show was the staff of the hospital, not 4 core families mixing it up.

Labine did make Sonny a featured character. First as a sidekick to Luke, then on his own with Brenda and Stone. Robin and Stone often told everyone what a good person Sonny was. As did Brenda. But he wasn't made out to be a saint, and he wasn't always right at the expense of other characters under Labine. That really started under Guza. I can't blame her for what Guza did afterwards. I can blame Riche, but again, things got worse once she was gone too.

Bill Bell had his clunkers too. But I can't blame him for introducing Phyllis and then after he is long gone he shouldn't get the blame for her devouring the show.

[cuzIsaySo]

Guess where I SERIOUSLY want you to shove you spell-check

[Vee]

It's not a typo. It's just not LaBine.

[ghfan89]

I do remember after the wire incident that Brenda got the bulk of the blame from others. Sonny, not so much.

[BetterForgotten]

I'm not blaming Labine for what Guza, Riche, and JFP later did, but those glossy mob-related shootouts and montages really became an integral part of the show under her watch first and just continued after that.

Maybe it was Riche, but who knows...

[Khan]

I think Labine and her team saw the mob-centric stuff as PART of GH and not GH itself. At least that was my impression while watching. For every scene with Sonny, Brenda, etc., you also had a scene with some hospital drama, a scene with some kitchen-sink dramas involving Mary Mae and Laura, and a scene with some comedy, usually involving Lucy or Edward Quartermaine and those damn dogs.

[John]

yes GH was character driven and balanced with Labine & Riche

[Khan]

It was also very depressing, according to some. Between Monica's breast cancer and Stone's AIDS, many viewers, and even the network itself, complained that there wasn't enough levity on the show -- which is ironic, when you consider how dark and depressing the show became AFTER Labine had departed. I don't know, though, would everyone here agree to that assessment? I, myself, felt there was a fair amount of humor injected into the show -- not all of it my taste, of course (I could have done w/o Foster, Annabelle and Sigmund the Duck -- or did that happen before Monica's and Stone's stories) but I didn't see GH as being humor-deprived.