Favorite murder mystery or serial killer story?

[Khan]

I'm curious as to what Pat Falken Smith originally had in mind for the Ice Princess storyline before Thom Racina turned it into an Irwin Allen knockoff.

[amybrickwallace]

 

I wasn't even two years old when that story aired, but I have seen clips of it in recent years and couldn't believe how hokey it was. Even with GH's ratings going through the roof, were there fans who hated this storyline? Were there any decent, "real" storylines concurrently running to balance the nonsense?

[vetsoapfan]

 

This what Racina says in his blog:

 

"In 1980, I think, Gloria Monty, the legendary producer of GENERAL HOSPITAL, was scared. A writer's [sic] strike was imminent and her head writer had started something called the "Ice Princess" story with a formula in it, but not much more than that...I showed Gloria (Monty) my novel, THE GREAT LOS ANGELES BLIZZARD, which Erwin [sic] Allen had optioned but dropped, and for the hell of it said why don't we do this? She lit up, and it became the Ice Princess story that aired, where Mikos Cassadine tried to freeze Port Charles in the summer, the first sci-fi for daytime...."

 

So the sci-fi/fantasy dreck was indeed his.

 

I don't recall Smith ever voicing hatred for Monty; she just acknowledged how tough and in charge she was. I believe PFS's first tenure was brilliant, and her later stint somewhat lerss so, but I've always regarded her as one of daytime's legendary scribes. Here best work, IMHO, was her first stint at DAYS and her first stint at GH. She was even great at TGL! 

 

 

 

Me too. All knew know is that she had a title for the story in mind, and a "formula" for it planned, whatever that means, but Racina went his own way and used one of his novels as a basis for the awful plot we ended seeing on-screen.

 

 

The ratings had exploded and gone through the roof thanks to the wonderful, complex characters and human drama that Marland and Smith had given us. Critics who didn't know or understand soaps and their audience blindly announced that it was the sci-fi sh*t that made GH a ratings' success, but it was not. I think that if the show's ratings had still been in their pre-Marland shape when Thom Racina's material started to air, the Ice Princess idiocy would have killed GH for good.

 

And no, nothing else of adult interest was really happening during the IP story. Everything else was mainly filler, with the Diana Taylor murder mystery being the second-biggest plot at the time. (Irritatingly, when the new "writers" took over, they had other characters like Heather refer to the murder victim as "Diane" rather than her actual name, "Diana." Why no one corrected this glaring error, I will never understand.)

[titan1978]

I watched DAYS daily until the near end of the possession story.  I thought the end of that story, Aremid, Lady in a Cage and the Parisian stuff, and much of mid to late Reilly stories hokey, and couldn’t believe it when the ratings just kept climbing.  Especially when soaps like GH, GL, AMC, and Y&R were carefully crafting such dynamic stories that were sophisticated and the ratings were stagnant.

 

From a historical standpoint, GH shot to number one during a key reveal in the Lesley/Rick/Monica/Alan story.  Luke and Laura took it further.  I think the Ice Princess worked for the people that enjoyed it because it introduced Robert Scorpio, introduced the Cassadines, introduced Tiffany, and followed up on the prior summer on the run with Luke and Laura that had been extremely popular.  The Ice Princess has the Quartermaines front and center too, scheming.  I think the fast paced (for daytime) action had more to do with the explosion of the ratings than the Sci-Fi plot line.