It could be argued that once they revealed the Ice Princess was a weather machine, the line in the sand was drawn. It’s not like supernatural stuff hadn’t existed before, Dark Shadows was there. And The Edge of Night was also there, a non traditional soap with a long history of murder and other crimes, trials, and some sensationalistic elements. But the Ice Princess was outlandish and it’s also kind of stupid, and following it up a year-ish later with the haunted sword was not good.
But before that the partnerships of Gloria Monty and Marland/PFS were still rooted in modernizing tradition, and their better writing and plotting made a stronger show. They were still telling character driven stories, even if Monty had upped the pace and style/settings.
The real problem for me was everyone trying to do their version. I think daytime as a whole would have been stronger if everybody had not tried to do what Monty was doing. As we have discussed in the classic thread before, she intimately knew the traditions of soap opera from her long tenures at other shows. She was a talented director and had good dramatic instincts, and was accomplishing something on GH that was kind of singular and probably should have remained that way.
I think the ultimate near fatal blows to the genre was increasing network driven story approvals and notes, with people in those positions that didn’t understand or value the genre. Riche and Labine pitched the HIV story directly to Pat Fili-Krushel and it was approved on the spot. She called Labine near the climax and asked does Robin have to be HIV positive, and Labine said if she isn’t then what’s the point? And Pat agreed, and added something along the lines of this is breaking my heart, which made Labine happy because it was supposed to move the audience. That was a network exec that didn’t come up under soaps but got it. Brian Frons did come from a history with soaps and was clearly ashamed of them.
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titan1978 ·
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