Can GH go on without Maurice Benard?

[Skin]

GH could exist without half of the characters currently on the canvas. I really want to see what GH would look like without Ron. He has more than fulfilled his purpose that this point. He brought GH back from the brink of extinction and brought new breath into a show that was on it's last limb. Now it's time for a new writer to come in and actually write with a semblance of a coherent narrative.

[Vee]

I agree - or at least a very strong co-writer. But that's never going to happen. Frank and Ron are a well-oiled team, pretty loyal to each other AFAIK. They're cheap, popular with the soap press and have raked in awards. I think ABC is just trying to keep things running in place - and again, cheap and reasonably profitable - til the daytime crew can either save the daily line-up, or it all falls into the hands of the news division.

Either way, I don't think either party at the network has an interest in actively prolonging the lifespan of their soaps. They just want to avoid another costly debacle like the Fronsian replacement plan with those two failed shows. When they can find something cheaper and vaguely profitable to replace it, they will jump on it and can GH. Right now GH is extremely cheap and not a profit loser as far as I can tell. Finding another writer would require paying attention to it or spending more money, when all they want is for it to putter about til they run out the clock.

[DRW50]

It was a good show, sometimes a great show, but it wasn't a show that was against criminals. Claire Labine's spent most of her soap career telling stories about "good" mobsters and "bad" mobsters. People just tend to have fonder memories of it because she didn't let it devour the show the way Guza did.

The show was rotgut before he came and has been rotgut with him. If Good Afternoon America or Revolution had been even remotely profitable, GH would have been gone several years ago.

[Vee]

She was far from the first (or last) writer to do that, though. She wove the underworld element in with all sorts of people from all kinds of walks of life. And as Guza was always fond of saying, that element had also been part of the show to well back in the Gloria Monty hitmaker days. I liked Sonny back then - I think most people did. It was his heyday for a reason. The key to those characters is moderation and a moral scale, which Claire had and subsequent writers forgot.

[DRW50]

Claire did some things that would elicit howls if later writers had done it, like having the town mobster being the savior and hero to someone dying of AIDS. It's just that it wasn't the whole show, and Benard was more charismatic at the time.

GH has had the mob for a long time, but they genuinely were presented as 100% bad people (and the few who were good generally got out of the mob) up to the early 90s. That's when the show truly changed, at least in my opinion.

[Vee]

Maybe we would have howled at other writers doing it, but they didn't - Claire did, and the stories were well-told and are legendary today. Whether we should like the stories is a whole other philosophical issue. I think the problem is more that the later writers wouldn't do it the right way. Under Claire you could recognize someone like Sonny doing terrible things but having their Achilles heel being Brenda, or Stone or whatever. You can say the some of even more complicated characters like Roger Thorpe over on GL, where they teased his hot and cold, dysfunctional romance with his raped wife for the next decade-plus. And under Claire and her team, and Wendy Riche, the show was largely exceptionally well-written.

I don't think you have to present any character in the criminal world as 100% bad people. Luke wasn't, Roy DiLucca wasn't. There were redemptive arcs for a lot of characters. Patch on DAYS, etc. And I think they did some of that with Sonny as well, when he was at his best as a character. For me and I think a lot of people it was GH's last golden age, not the root of the problem. That came, for me, when they gave Guza more and more control.

[DRW50]

The main problem for me with Claire's writing for Sonny and her writing for mobsters in general is there is always some other nefarious mobster up high who gets the real blame for their decisions. For instance, Sonny got physical with Brenda over her wearing a wire. This was treated as a bad thing, but ultimately the narrative focus was on Sonny suffering because he had to marry Lily, daughter of the "bad" mobster.

Roger Thorpe suffered, but he was also fully responsible for his bad decisions.

Sonny has never been responsible. And this was easier to tolerate when he was known for his dimples, rather than being a breathing corpse, but I think it's always been a consistent, dispiriting pattern.

Sorry. I guess I went away from the original point of the thread.

Anyway, can GH go on without him?

Yes.

Will it be any better?

I doubt it.

[AlexElizabeth]

Can GH go on without the stuttering moobster? Of course!

[quartermainefan]

Just like ditching Steve Burton made the show a thousand times better, so would being free from the shackle of Sonny. I was disappointed to see Jason return but since he has a whole new, far more likable personality, it is as if he is a brand new character.

[ChitHappens]

This post cracks me up like you would not believe!

Not seeing a better show, but yes, GH survived Burton's exit.

This! All of this!

[ellabelle]

Not really a fair comparison since it wasn't on TV or in the same format. But since you brought it up, AMC sans Erica didn't last for very long.

That said, I don't think of MB as quite in the same league as SL in terms of fame either. GH aired for a long time before he came along, and presumably would continue without him.

[titan1978]

What TPTB have forgotten over the years is that Sonny doesn't stand well by himself. He had Stone and Luke and especially Brenda helping him along, back when he really displayed his talent. Then Jason and the early Carly 's. When he doesn't have strong acting partners, and good romantic prospects, his stories always suffer. I think he could exit the show, and it would be fine.

This isn't like Laura leaving at the height of Luke & Laura and the show loosing a million viewers over a rough year. Or when Robert and Anna left and the whole show had to be retooled.

I think if this was four years ago, and Jason and Sonny both left, with Guza and JFP the show would have been cancelled. They, and Carly were the entire show for the most part. I'm not a daily viewer of the current GH, but for all the faults of Ron, and there are plenty, more characters have room to breathe and the show isn't 100% Sonny centric all the time. Until lately.

[dragonflies]

I often wonder if they won't try to retool and do another run of Good Afternoon America

[dragonflies]

That was only cause money ran out & not because the she wasn't on the show

[Mr. Vixen]

Who?