Characters that ATE their Soaps

[Khan]

On the one hand, you could argue that Jax needs to be still in Port Charles, if only for Joss's sake.  But, on the other hand, you could recast Jax (even de-age him slightly!) and I don't think it would make much of a difference in the long run.  That's how superfluous Jax and Ingo have become to me on GH.

[carolineg]

Brenda agrees with you lol. 

ABC could have used about a million different people across age ranges to make this happen without being gimmicky?  Robin Scorpio, anyone?  This was just a bizarre choice with an actress popular on a defunct soap on another network.  Weird..  Genie feels perfect for me as well....  It's a cool idea that was executed with the worst possible choices.

The thing is Brenda/Sonny made him, but no one really wanted to develop on that?  I don't think Ingo is a bad actor or Jax is a bad character from the outside.  Personality of the actor aside.  He's just someone who desperately needs a good female lead to keep him going and it's the shows fault that he kept being put in with women in Sonny's orbit.  It's cute once, but it shouldn't be a weird, stalker pattern

[Darn]

Joss already has a de facto dad in Sonny. Sometimes I forget he's NOT her father. There's zero conflict there. She thinks he's the bee's knees.

To add to the topic, Kendall, Ryan, Greenlee and Zach swallowed AMC whole at one point. They were on every single day in stories that weren't remotely engaging and with none of them being particularly impressive actors. Thorsten Kaye and Rebecca Budig especially did not hide their dissatisfaction with less than stellar material.

Edited May 6, 2022 by Darn

[Khan]

Well, I think they tried that a little bit when KMc appeared for a moment on AMC as part of the Alex/Anna (clusterfuck of a) storyline.  ABC was really into synergy for a season, weren't they, lol?

The whole Linda Dano experiment was predicated on the notion that Dano was so beloved as AW's Felicia Gallant that 1) AW viewers would follow her to ABC and 2) they would also follow her from show to show.  The problem, though, was that ABCD couldn't secure the rights to the Felicia character, which immediately blunted any impact the experiment might have had on their lineup.  Plus, speaking as someone who is mostly a P&G fan, I think it's tough for many P&G fans to feel so strongly for their faves that they'll follow them even to a non-P&G show.  I mean, there is some overlap between P&G fans and non-P&G fans in terms of which shows they follow - like, members of both groups count themselves among Y&R's core audience, for example - but I tend to find that P&G fans stick mostly with the P&G shows, and vice versa.

As for Jax/Ingo: I feel like his one, big opportunity to be relevant outside of Sonny/Brenda was when they introduced Miranda.  Unfortunately, Miranda was so badly miscast, it almost made me wanna cry.  In turn, I think, the storyline, and Jax's chance of being a true lead, was pretty much over before it began.

Next to Susan Lucci, I think, it would have made the most sense to have Genie appear on all three ABC soaps.  You could even have tied in Ceara by revealing that the two (Ceara and Laura) were long-lost half-sisters.  (Maybe Lesley actually gave birth to twins, didn't know about it or remember, and Ceara was sold to the Connors.)  That way, Myrtle still would have been a part of everything, since she was Ceara's aunt.

Then, if you wanted to tie in OLTL, you could have revealed that Ceara herself gave birth long ago to a child whom she sold or gave up for adoption, and Laura goes on a search and discovers that child is now grown and living in Llanview.

Edited May 6, 2022 by Khan

[Khan]

Yes!  Thank you!  My thoughts EXACTLY, @Darn!  It seemed as if Brian Frons would not rest until everyone in the free fuckin' world loved and adored those four actors and characters as much as he did!

[Contessa Donatella]

Noooooooooo, not really? ReallY? What the whut did Alicia Coppola ever do to them or their mother?1 No way. Excuse me. #$#$

[carolineg]

I think the botching of the casting of that was more at fault than anything.  Leslie Horan always looked bored. It wasn't a bad idea but Miranda never felt like a legit rival against Vanessa marcil's 1996 energy.  Even Lilly Melgar had more fire.  LH didn't have the chem with Ingo and it just didn't take.  They had a ton of ideas for Miranda that were immediately cancelled.  I am surprised they never recast and brought her back though.

Again, with the LInda Dano IDEA it was poor form to build another huge arc on a great character on a cancelled soap.   Just saying that doesn't make a great deal of sense on ANOTHER network

[Faulkner]

I remember people on the MediaDomain forums LOVED Robin Christopher. They thought she was Meryl Streep, Katharine Hepburn, and Rita Hayworth rolled into one. It was strictly an RC stan zone.

[carolineg]

Why has no one told me about this false RC/Skye love?  I have spent years barely saying I disliked Skye because of this.  And I know, I know, Vanessa stole her emmy**** and so on and so forth, but like if she was that awesome wouldn't she have won another?  It's not like her career was brief..

****don't want to incite an argument about Vanessa's emmy win.  I get it....

[Vee]

The Rae story was worse than that. She was on every soap and literally had no concept of either the age or sex of her child.

She went from every ABC soap wondering if her child was everyone from twentysomethings Eve and Sophia on PC and OLTL, to fortysomething Max Holden.

It was completely ridiculous.

Edited May 6, 2022 by Vee

[Contessa Donatella]

I had NO idea about all of this whooplah surrounding RC! I liked her. I guess I didn't draw any attention to myself from her legions.

But, I just wanted to say one thing & that is that if P&G had amazed everyone & sold FG to Shapiro then maybe they would've been smart enough to buy Cass at least to give the boa lady an appearance of an entourage. But I still think galloping from show to show was the flaw in the plan. The move from Bay City over would be 1 & add as you go & that's 5 moves. Soap fans don't like to move.

 

[Khan]

Agree!  To this day, I wonder who signed off on her.  Was she Wendy Riche's pick?  Or Bob Guza's (even though he was already out the door for the first time when she premiered)?  Or Richard Culliton's (and Karen Harris')?  Just who in the hell wanted that girl anyway!?

If they wanted to build on Dano's apparent popularity among AW fans, they could have just brought her onto AMC or back to OLTL and then left it at that.  Making her the face of Angela Shapiro's "network synergy" concept was bound to fail.

You know, it was both my greatest fear AND my greatest wish to have David Canary pop up on GH as Adam Chandler and say, "Never mind, I was just messing w/ you, Skye.  You're really mine and Althea's daughter after all."  To think: we've watched those two women (RC and LD) travel from soap to soap, retconning the [!@#$%^&*] out of history at every turn; only to learn, in the end, that it was all some big, damn mistake.  I mean, it would have been cruel to the fans, yes, but it also would've been so damn funny.

Frankly, I don't think ABC should have stopped there.  They should have had Dano, as Rae, popping up on all kinds of shows on the network.  Not just daytime, but primetime, morning shows - heck, even "ABC's World News Tonight"!  Just imagine "Rae" asking Peter Jennings for his help in tracking down her son/daughter!

What can I say?  The internet is a lot like high school.

Edited May 6, 2022 by Khan

[Contessa Donatella]

GH was my 1st choice but just 1 soap is the important part. And, another thing, I cannot imagine how much the HWs hated that whole thing. It made me think Shapiro was great at the big picture but pitiful with detail.

[carolineg]

I literally have no idea who signed off on Leslie Horan.  Was Mark Teschner on vacation?  Did they even test her with Ingo?  VM was chewing her up and spitting her out everyday, but I did think LH had some chemistry with Maurice which is weird.  There was just a lot of literal white horses, poems, and overwrought bullshit with Jax/Miranda and I think they were like 18 and knew one another for five minutes.

RC isn't that great, she is a cold actress, and without JFP she'd be nothing...  I feel so free saying that.  VM deserves her emmy on a lifetime of being awesome not so much her 4 months of work in that situation.  And also she's a lead not supporting.  I don't get the emmys.

[Khan]

The same goes for many FOJs.  IMO, JFP often had the worst taste in actors.

Speaking of characters who ate their respective soaps, there always comes a point in reading "Love of Life" synopses where I feel like I'm reading "Love of Bambi (Brewster)" instead.  Like, who was that chick?  Where did she come from?  How did she become so important so damn quickly?  How long did viewers suffer through her trials and tribulations before demanding her head on a stick?

Suddenly, I'm having flashbacks to Patrick and Marty on OLTL and that "Henny Penny" poem he'd recite every frigging chance he got, lol.

Edited May 6, 2022 by Khan