While watching the classic GH episode for New Year’s Eve, it struck me just how destroyed Tony was by that point.  And he hadn’t even hit bottom yet.  So I thought back to just how good and amazing BJ’s heart was as a storyline, and how ultimately Tony payed a huge price.

 

GH- BJ’s heart.  You can blame Guza all you want, but Labine set him up to become so angry about the affair and BJ’s death.  He didn’t really have another romance until Carly, and that would set him up for years of character destruction.  We never got to see him build himself back up.  Which is fine too from a storytelling point of view.  But he was never the same and then gone.

 

Any other examples?

Erica keeping Edmund/Maria's baby and pretending it was a baby she adopted from Russia for several weeks/months on AMC

GH - Ethan being Luke's kid really ruined a lot of characters, IMO.  It trashed Luke & Laura's love story.  It trashed Robert & Holly's love story. It trashed Luke & Robert's friendship.  The logical thing would have been to make Ethan the son of Robert & Holly.  But Tony Geary just had to have Ethan as his son.  Sigh.  So much ruined for one actor's wish.

Edited January 23, 20196 yr by OldGHFan

3 minutes ago, OldGHFan said:

GH - Ethan being Luke's kid really ruined a lot of characters, IMO.  It trashed Luke & Laura's love story.  It trashed Robert & Holly's love story. It trashed Luke & Robert's friendship.  The logical thing would have been to make Ethan the son of Robert & Holly.  But Tony Geary just had to have Ethan as his son.  Sigh.  So much ruined for one actor's wish.

You forgot the part about how much Guza enjoyed destroying popular things.  Deconstructing the good things in each character.

 

The Luke of that time period, before Nikolas arrived in PC, would never have cheated on Laura.  It is just stupid to watch Geary’s personal feelings about the pairing late in his career affect the past of the pairing, especially when we saw them together during some of this time.

Yeah back then Luke was so gaga over Laura he'd have NEVER looked at another woman

I would say GL’s Holly for the 1998 Nursery Rhyme Stalker, but I wouldn’t consider that storyline “popular”... 

20 hours ago, Gray Bunny said:

I would say GL’s Holly for the 1998 Nursery Rhyme Stalker, but I wouldn’t consider that storyline “popular”... 

The storyline wasn't popular, especially among long-time fans, but the show was really hot at the time, ratings-wise and soap press coverage.  I believe there's a soap mag cover of Holly and all of the kids out there.  Anyway, I have to admit that the storyline was a guilty pleasure of mine.  I knew that it was character assassination, but I still got some campy, crazy enjoyment out of it.  And this was when the show basically had cliffhangers every single day.  It helped that I had only been watching GL from the late 90s on, so Holly wasn't someone I was strongly attached to since she was hardly on.  Though I did know much of her backstory.  My earliest memories of Holly was of her and Fletcher, if that tells you anything.

3 hours ago, crc said:

The storyline wasn't popular, especially among long-time fans, but the show was really hot at the time, ratings-wise and soap press coverage.  I believe there's a soap mag cover of Holly and all of the kids out there.  Anyway, I have to admit that the storyline was a guilty pleasure of mine.  I knew that it was character assassination, but I still got some campy, crazy enjoyment out of it.  And this was when the show basically had cliffhangers every single day.  It helped that I had only been watching GL from the late 90s on, so Holly wasn't someone I was strongly attached to since she was hardly on.  Though I did know much of her backstory.  My earliest memories of Holly was of her and Fletcher, if that tells you anything.

 

Same here actually. When I started watching GL, Holly was with Fletcher. 

 

I agree in that even though a lot of the stories did no favors to the characters, GL during the late 90's was *entertaining*.  It wasn't until the next year when they focused less on the vets and mostly on newbies Santos family and San Cristobel that it really veered off course. 

After re-watching the episodes on ABC.com a couple of weeks ago, I think Sonny and Carly sleeping together kind of destroyed a lot on GH.  And whether I like them or not, they are a popular pairing.

 

End results- the first time Sonny and Jason have any contention, and ultimately each time Jason is willing to take so much crap from Sonny that he doesn’t from anyone else.  His time with Sonny has been way worse than anything the Quartermaines did to him.

 

AJ further marginalized and then killed twice.

 

Carly has been subjected to one mob crisis after another (Manny, Alcazar, Faith, Claudia) and her kids have been in constant danger.

 

Not to mention the pairing ate the entire show for over over 10 years.

 

The list goes on.

With GL, the actors who knew what they were doing could usually care idiotic material at least for a time. The problem at one point, became even if to some the mob and San Cristobel plots, literally sheared the show too much into sections, isolating people too much in one sphere or another, as they were in too many locations, so cast interaction overall went down.

 

With GH, I agree with you titan1978, I wasn't into Sonny and Carly in the early days, (with Sarah Brown), but that relationship became core, and so much else was put to the wayside. 

On 1/22/2019 at 9:32 PM, pdm1974 said:

I still don't understand why RC and GH went through so much to bring back AJ from the dead just to kill him again. It made zero sense. There was so much story potential with AJ, and he could have been the way to keep the Quartermaines 

!!! Exactly, might be in the minority but I didn't mind Billy W. as AJ

Edited January 26, 20196 yr by ironlion

Some may not be popular but...

 

Y&R: Sheila having plastic surgery to look like Phyliss

 

B&B: Sheila shooting Taylor (2002), whenTaylor came back in 2005 not only had she faded her natural beauty with plastic surgery, the charachter went from well put together to whiney and uuuh...

 

GH: Rick Webber death (2002) Laura went mad, Luke became an uninteresting deadbeat, and Rick Webber became a villain; Tony destruction after sleeping with Carly; AJ destruction after sleeping with Carly; Metro Court Hostage Crisis: awesome event but it lead to Alan's death Monica's major irrelevance 

 

OLTL: Todd manning under Trevor St John 2006+ (beating up Cole, pushing Starr off the boardwalk, helping Jack cover up GG murder) granted Roger Howarth's Todd was evil but that charachter wouldn't victimized Starr the way TSJ did

Edited January 26, 20196 yr by ironlion

On 1/26/2019 at 8:16 AM, ironlion said:

Some may not be popular but...

 

Y&R: Sheila having plastic surgery to look like Phyliss

 

B&B: Sheila shooting Taylor (2002), whenTaylor came back in 2005 not only had she faded her natural beauty with plastic surgery, the charachter went from well put together to whiney and uuuh...

 

 

I believe that Taylor's character assassination has all to do with what Hunter Tylo has done to her face. It's hard to take someone who looks like that seriously as a character.