General Hospital: May 2023 Discussion Thread

[dragonflies]

Yeah I remember Thorsten commented something like Susan didn't like the story they pitched that's why she turned them down

[titan1978]

Things really changed onscreen after the story where Laura first wakes up from her coma.  Geary plays that whole story like the Luke we knew, his emotions for Laura are all on display, even if he does care for Tracy.  He soured on it completely after that. I wonder if it was at all related to the constant questions he got in interviews about Luke cheating on Laura in regards to Ethan. He hated people telling him how Luke would react or behave.

I think several of us agree he morphed Luke into Bill Eckert over his last decade on the show.

Genie is where she belongs now- in the center of the action.  We just need Lucky and Lulu back to cement it. Nikolas can stay in a coma for a bit.

I can’t imagine anyone enjoying a pitch by Higley.

[Vee]

That was my impression on why Susan Haskell said no, based on her interviews at the time a year or two later. I think it may also have been why Sarah turned it down, lol.

I think they were tearing Luke and Laura down in the scripts well before Genie's '08 return, though I may be wrong; it's been a long time. Her returning as a clueless coma patient in 2006 too dim to be told the truth about her condition did not help matters for me.

I wish I could find the transcript or episode date for when exactly Luke or Holly told the full story of their affair in the '80s. I have never been able to find it. I do remember some anecdote Luke told about how he came home to Laura and she just 'knew' in her eyes what he had done and supposedly accepted it.

Edited May 6, 2023 by Vee

[carolineg]

Someone does have Holly's full 2009 return up on Youtube, so it's possible it's in there somewhere.  

I liked Tracy/Luke just fine, but I hated the narrative that Tracy allowed Luke to be himself.  It falls along the same lines of Carly is the only one to understand Sonny.  They are both just allowing them to be crappy people.   It's like Guza and even FV think it's shameful for woman to want their spouses or significant others to be the best versions of themselves and not do bad things and treat people poorly lol.   But, no, that old bore Laura just stifled Luke's ability to cheat, drink, steal, and lie. 

[Vee]

I've tried digging around in that era. It seems like the story got told before Emma actually appeared onscreen but idk. I'll look again.

[Khan]

I think this is the best that Laura has been written since the end of Douglas Marland's tenure on the show.  For the first time as a GH viewer, I feel like I understand her.  Furthermore, I think GF is finally being vindicated after decades of behind-the-scenes mistreatment, and I love it.  GH could survive without Luke or Tony Geary, but it can't without Laura/GF, and this current storyline proves it.  I only wish Laura had a more interesting husband/love interest to play off of.

I also think this is the best that Holly has ever been written.  I never understood why people loved Emma Samms so much -- and that includes when she was on DYNASTY and THE COLBYS -- but now I do.  I wish there were some way to keep her around permanently and pair her with TR/Scorpio for good.

[Vee]

I'll be damned!

[Khan]

Similarly, I hate the retconned narrative that Lesley knew that Rick was a serial womanizer and just looked the other way.  We saw that Lesley was too destroyed by Rick and Monica's affair to be that passive about his alleged, multiple, other affairs.

All in all, I don't look at any of Bob Guza's three tenures as a "golden era" for GH.  I think Guza and everyone else involved shared a very corrosive view of women that ran counter to how GH (and ABC soaps in general) had regarded them in the past.

That's why I like the Ice Princess storyline going on right now -- which, in the History Repeats Itself Department, is climaxing as a real-life WGA strike is underway.  Chris Van Etten and Dan O'Connor aren't terribly creative writers, but they get that soaps are a female-centric genre where women should be allowed to take agency over their own fates.

Edited May 6, 2023 by Khan

[Vee]

We've all three been over this before, but I liked the idea of a storyline that dug into the seemingly-idyllic past of Laura and the Webbers, and utilized the fact that at that time, the Webber house had survived generations and many creative regimes to still be in use by Mac and Felicia and their kids. That alone gives you a real sense of history and place on the show, and the painful loss of a lot of these homes is something we've all dissected ad nauseum in recent GH threads. (The GH fan wiki is actually really impressive for tracking this stuff - whoever runs it keeps extremely on top of these minute details.)

That being said the actual story was pretty clearly a ripoff of Alison on Melrose Place from the jump, and whether it had been the young Bobbie in Rick's arms as was rumored to be an option at first or someone else (or an actual molestation angle, which Genie is rumored to have vetoed) it didn't really work. There was something decent I'm sure you could have done with that setup - and the angle where Rick had apparently returned as part of a consortium looking to take over the hospital - but they didn't do it.

I do like that they have dug into Laura's pre-PC past by adding MEK as her brother (and I think they could do more with him), but I still think there is more to tell overall. Namely about her commune days.

As for Kevin and Laura, as I've said before I know they have a fanbase and supporters, especially Genie and Jon Lindstrom themselves. And I would like to see them have real material that digs into both their troubled, traumatic childhoods and I would play out that relationship before ending it. But I still don't think it can really hold a candle to the Luke issue which will eventually have to be dealt with, so I will simply reiterate my wish to give Laura a real rival to Luke for her romantic future without him, a dashing British WSB agent, maybe a relation to the Wards. And Kevin and Lucy can reunite as the cosmos have always intended.

I do like Tabyana Ali basically being in Laura's old role as the young heroine. I just wish I could shake the sense that when they all get back to the States this is going to culminate in "Amnesia" Esme sliding into Spencer's bed like his father's before him, and that will be the stumbling block for a major young couple I still feel the show has issues with.

[Khan]

TG didn't believe that Claire Labine understood who Luke was, but I think she understood him better than anyone (save, of course, for Douglas Marland).  When she wrote for him, he wasn't the bitter, child-killing drunk who blamed Laura for his own miseries; or the low-level hood who spouted corny dialogue straight out of a Jimmy Cagney movie; or the queasy action-adventure-sci-fi hero who was dealing with weather machines and mythic swords.  Luke was simply a husband and dad who'd grown up on the streets, and now was doing his best to raise his son and daughter not to turn out the same way.  That's real, and relatable.

[soapfave06]

All I remember of CC Marty is her clashing with Todd and Blair and an aged Cole going to school with Starr, is that what SH turned down? That couldn’t be worse than the rapemance.

I just moved and can’t wait to get the WiFi hooked up, I’ve watched some scenes on Twitter and this is the most excited I’ve been to see GH since maybe early 2019. 

[Vee]

Yes. I also suspect she was sold a bill of goods about the rapemance pitch tbh, but that's a discussion for the cancelled folder.

[Khan]

I wouldn't mind seeing Laura tied (for lack of a better word) to a new family, the same way they originally tied the Quartermaines to Monica through her marriage to Alan.  GH could use a new, core family, preferably one with ties to the hospital.

MEK has proven to be a worthwhile addition to the show.  I wish I could say the same about James Patrick Stuart and Valentin.  I know from watching AMC for years that JPS can do menacing if asked.  Killing off Will Cortlandt might have been fool hearted in the long run, but we got good work from him in the meantime.  I think the problem is how the show sees Valentin.  They want him to be like Stefan, when he should be more like Stavros.

But I'm even more sorry that Kim Delaney's grand return to soaps in Demi Moore's old role turned out to be a nothing-burger.  I saw TR/Scorpio in scenes with CH/Diane and I thought, "He should be doing this stuff with Kim as Jackie."

[Vee]

I am not going to go back over my many, many roasts of wimpy Billy Joel Cassadine, but suffice to say that yes, I find him and his mutant spawn unwatchable. I know Finola loves the pairing and that they again have something of a fanbase, but that doesn't make it right. Valentin is an absolute cornball. What's crazy is that they islanded Finola, Lynn Herring, to an extent Kristina Wagner, etc. for months in story hanging around that one house set with Valentin while waiting for JPS to return, as he's frontburner on recurring and FV is willing to skew a good portion of the show around his availability like this is ATWT in the early 2000s with recurring stars like Cady McClain, etc., or like Stuart just left AMC and is a hot commodity.

[Khan]

As a character, Brenda is too savvy and resourceful to be a heroine, and not cruel enough to be a bitch or vixen.  In these days, when characters on soaps tend to be one-note, that makes her a difficult character to write for.  So, I wouldn't want VM to return under the present circumstances, because I don't believe the current regime would know how to write her in a manner that wouldn't make us hate her in the end.  (Look at how they've reduced Tracy to little more than Tallulah Bankhead without the dry martini.)