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 February 26Feb 26 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 February 27Feb 27 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.

On 2/26/2026 at 6:34 PM, Jdee43 said:

Spin-offs always hurt the mother show.

Spin-offs only really work when they're not just an extension of the mothership. Early on it just seemed like Port Charles was General Hospital Pt II, so essentially an attempt at a 30 minute extension without directly tagging it onto the mothership (as AW had shown, that experiment didn't end up well). You could argue something like The Bold and the Beautiful is a de facto spin-off from The Young and the Resless, even down to similarish names. But still different enough to be interesting to be separate entities.

The best example of a year 1 of a soap being full of growing pains is none other than Dark Shadows.

Episode 1 of the series sets the series up nicely with the arrival of Victoria Winters to take a job as governess for a family she's never met, but suspects might be connected to her past.. a past she isn't aware of. Contrasting her arrival as a woman literally in search of her identity is Burke Devlin, a man that has an identity given to him based on being frame for a crime he didn't commit.. and is determined to take revenge. A gothic soap with typical soap opera plots with the two arrivals in Collinsport being inspired by classic novels Jane Eyre & The Count of Monte Cristo.

After a very strong premiere episode, the show is bogged down in the typical slow moving pace that daytime was known for. While the show was filmed 1 to 2 weeks in advance, there at least 40+ scripts written before filming started.. so changes didn't start to occur till after the first 40 or so episodes with the unplanned murder of Bill Malloy.

As the murder mystery commenced, the hints of the supernatural started to become confirmed with objects moving leading up to Victoria Winters encountering the ghost of the murder victim... and it being revealed to have not been a dream.

As the show employed more supernatural flourishes, ratings started to perk up especially with the climax of the bill Malloy murder case involving supernatural forces. The supernatural bent continues with the introduction of the woman Burke and Roger fought over Laura Collins... who doesn't seem to be quite herself... and you have a strong 70 episode supernatural arc that continues the ratings rise enough to where the show gets a 26 week pick up with an order to raise the ratings even more or else be canceled after the 26 week pick up.

Enter Barnabas Collins about 9 to 10 months into the show's run and the rest is history as they say.

The show literally shifts within the first year from being a gothic soap featuring an ingenue searching for her past and future (like all soaps) to becoming the lead vehicle for a vampire with the ingenue becoming a strong supporting arc instead of the lead moving forward.

I frankly don't think Labine's Brooklyn spinoff would have lasted. Rena Sofer was not going to stay on daytime forever (she became ubiquitous in primetime in the last '90s and 2000s), her relationship with Wally Kurth imploded soon after and they were supposed to be the linchpin of that show. It was a lovely idea I would've liked to see, but I don't think it had long legs. The issues RH had as a homespun NYC soap would've persisted.

I think PC as a pure concept (the young doctors of General Hospital) worked. But it was rushed out of the gate so they could get a spinoff, any cost-effective spinoff cheaper than Claire's on the air ASAP, and Riche overextended herself and got involved more than she probably should have with a pretty weak setup and stories. It didn't fully coalesce onscreen for several years, and then only briefly for small periods; the talented veteran cast and GH stars/past soap stars like Lynn, Jon, Kin, Debbi Morgan, etc. held it together in the meantime. It could've been much more. And I say that as someone who liked a lot about PC and would happily reintroduce some of its characters to GH (like Kevin/Scott and Lucy's adopted daughter Christina, or Rachel and Livvie Locke, or even Chris Ramsey if Nolan North didn't hate daytime).

On 2/27/2026 at 8:24 PM, Khan said:

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.

That's an image! What kind of PC are you envisioning there?

Before they're both gone I want someone to pick the brains of Racina and Susan Horgan and get them to tell us what they had envisioned at OLTL 2.0. Rewatching some of GH '81 or DAYS in that decade you can see traces of the Triskelion tattoo caper on the more recent streaming show which seems very much his style. We know they had more scripts than were filmed, per the actors.

Edited 5 hours ago5 hr by Vee

1 hour ago, Soaplovers said:

The best example of a year 1 of a soap being full of growing pains is none other than Dark Shadows.

Episode 1 of the series sets the series up nicely with the arrival of Victoria Winters to take a job as governess for a family she's never met, but suspects might be connected to her past.. a past she isn't aware of. Contrasting her arrival as a woman literally in search of her identity is Burke Devlin, a man that has an identity given to him based on being frame for a crime he didn't commit.. and is determined to take revenge. A gothic soap with typical soap opera plots with the two arrivals in Collinsport being inspired by classic novels Jane Eyre & The Count of Monte Cristo.

As someone who was part of an abortive project many years ago covering DS Year One in depth, what I would say is that the trade-off ultimately was how much character depth, layerings, etc. the show really lost after that first year or two. Roger, Vicki, Burke, Sam, Carolyn, Liz, etc. are all much more rich and nuanced characters in '66 than they ever were later, where many of them became largely foils and fools for Barnabas, Julia, Angelique, etc. Especially Burke Devlin, who as originally presented with Mitch Ryan (who didn't help himself with his alcohol issues BTS) was a charismatic and powerful force on the canvas too big to be duped by a vampire. It's night and day re: who most of them are in that first year vs. who they were left as later. The intensity of the show in that year was all much more not just about the gothic atmosphere and vibes but in the oppressive focus on the characters and their inner lives and contradictions. It was only the talented actors and the thumbnail sketch of who the characters started out as that gave most of them life and spark in DS' later years.

And I do think the show fundamentally erred in shifting too much focus away from Vicki (any Vicki) as opposed to letting it be both Vicki and Barnabas.

On 2/28/2026 at 5:36 AM, te. said:

Spin-offs only really work when they're not just an extension of the mothership. Early on it just seemed like Port Charles was General Hospital Pt II, so essentially an attempt at a 30 minute extension without directly tagging it onto the mothership (as AW had shown, that experiment didn't end up well). You could argue something like The Bold and the Beautiful is a de facto spin-off from The Young and the Resless, even down to similarish names. But still different enough to be interesting to be separate entities.

Funny you say that cause I remember the early promo's for it calling it GH2, glad they changed it. I remember it was supposed to be with Ned and Lois too not Kevin, Scotty and Lucy originally

3 hours ago, Vee said:

That's an image! What kind of PC are you envisioning there?

Pretty much what they (and Al Rabin, Leah Laiman and others) brought to DAYS in the mid-'80's: stories rooted in romance, but with an added focus on medical drama.

I don't believe you would've seen the sort of sci-fi, action/adventure stuff that you saw on DAYS, because, frankly, PC was a different show at a different time (and with a much smaller budget), but everything else would've fit into the PC/GH wheelhouse.

Edited 1 hour ago1 hr by Khan