Spin-offs always hurt the mother show. Just as Somerset and Texas hollowed out Another World, Port Charles hollowed out General Hospital, taking away rich characters and history, making it so much easier for GH to go mob centered and focus on a handful of mob characters in the early 2000s, since so much of the hospital stuff was on PC.

If GH needed a spin off, ABC should have gone with the Claire Labine one. At least that had stronger writers involved and only would have taken one character who was on GH at the time, Ned, as Lois and Tracy had left by 97. But ABC went with the more budget conscious option.

Edited Thursday at 05:40 PM1 day by Jdee43

On 2/26/2026 at 11:34 AM, Jdee43 said:

But ABC went with the more budget conscious option

And I get that decision. I just think they should have maybe let Wendy Riche put it together and get the creator credit, but then turn the show over to another EP and Wendy could consult, be a supervising producer credit from airing day one after the pilot. She knew from her first year at GH that she needed strong writers with a vision and they did not do that with PC. Culliton had already not been working on GH.

As trashy as he was, Levinson would have been better. At least he would have made the show gritty and sleazy instead of bland. It was pretty well cast and I loved seeing Lee and Gail again thanks to Scotty and Serena.

Edited 8 hours ago8 hr by titan1978

7 hours ago, titan1978 said:

And I get that decision. I just think they should have maybe let Wendy Riche put it together and get the creator credit, but then turn the show over to another EP and Wendy could consult, be a supervising producer credit from airing day one after the pilot. She knew from her first year at GH that she needed strong writers with a vision and they did not do that with PC. Culliton had already not been working on GH.

As trashy as he was, Levinson would have been better. At least he would have made the show gritty and sleazy instead of bland. It was pretty well cast and I loved seeing Lee and Gail again thanks to Scotty and Serena.

For me, the ideal team would have been Shelley Curtis as EP (w/ Riche as Executive Consultant) and maybe Sheri Anderson and Thom Racina as HW's.

In it's first year, Ryan's Hope faced the major challenge of rewriting the main storyline when the network insisted that Frank Ryan not die as originally planned.

And they were stuck with an unreliable actor in that role until they bit the bullet and recasted.