Dullsville. Population: All Of Us

I honestly don't remember--and I have a LONG memory. A creepy long memory. A memory that I often wish weren't quite as razor sharp as it is. And if there's a chance that I forgot something General Hospital related, I have eight (!) (!!) (!!!) years worth of archives that I can go through to check my facts--a period of time in which General Hospital was so relentlessly...dull.

There have been periods where it's been AWFUL. Like, all caps, italicized, I talked to people about it (usually against their will) and actually physically foamed at the mouth AWFUl.

There have been periods of fineness and even goodness.

Both of those periods had something notable; something that you could point to and say "CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT [AMAZING OR TERRIBLE THING] JUST HAPPENED?!" and either smile broadly with delight or punch yourself in the face repeatedly as you try to dream up the PERFECT rage-filled nickname for whatever plot atrocity had just been committed.

I long for those days. Even the self-punching days. I hated them while I lived them, but they at least gave us something to discuss. Now? I watched General Hospital twice today (once to watch and once to watch all of the points I had tuned out) and I couldn't tell you anything that happened, except that Ava is horrendous at villainy and Michael Easton tried for the first time in a long time. Other than that, I assume that people talked about stuff and also did things...? I have literally no recollection of 120 minutes of my life.

Is this what amnesia is like?!

We need to make a General Hospital drinking game, to make things even remotely interesting. Suggestions? Please note: we cannot take a drink every time Franco says something irritating. I can't have mass alcohol poisoning on my conscience.

Comments

[MissyLady]

The perfect way to end your day, Mallory, is to read Michael Fairman's latest interview with RC and Kathleen Gaeti!

[stlbf]

God help me. Y&R has been more entertaining lately. GH has returned to Loon Lake era of rottenness. Contrivance thy name is General Hospital.

[Elizabeth K. Mahon]

On the plus side, it looks like Rafe is going to die and Silas will donate his heart to Alice, which hopefully will not turn her into a whining teenager.

[janet]

why don't they just kill off Re-Ron and donate his heart to Alice. I feel for you Mallory. You have to watch this swill, so you can comment ,Myself I have not watched. Sorry But I feel for Rafe , he is just a boy, and no one cares about him. Patrick the neurosurgeon who saved a killer for hire wants to kill a kid for a car accident, and drugs. patrick you were doing drugs and operating? ya you are so much better NOT.

[Trippyjr]

I agree, while I won't miss Rafe, Patrick is coming off as a bit of a sociopath. He's a disturbed, drug addicted kid, and it was an accident. With Patrick's history and lacking malicious intent, um. Way to value Blanket over common sense, morality, compassion and Emma.

How about do a shot for every ReRon car crash? The lights, they are so atmospheric shining through the fog.

[MissyLady]

Rafe said it was not an accident, but did not get to tell Molly why he hit Patrick's car and took off.

[stlbf]

Of, it wasn't an accident. Because when I want a neferious deed done. One that requires precision driving to cause an "accident", I turn to troubled drug addicted teenagers. They are awesome professional drivers who couldn't possibly screw up my deed. Or this could be god awful hack writers desperately trying to tie completely unrelated storylines together.

Rafe causing an accident? Sure. On drugs? Believable, he has had a rotten life handed to him. That as the storyline, I can buy. Now Rafe is performing bad deeds for unknown bad guys? Not buying it. What moron does this kind of stupid hiring?

[MissyLady]

We had Ava and Luke on the phone wanting to shut up Carlos and Spencer a few weeks ago. Carlos took the blame for AJ's death to keep Ava from going after Sabrina, and Luke threatened Emma. I'm sure we will see a "new" flashback of Rafe being told to run Patrick off the road...RME.

[Carneasada]

Like that makes sense either. If Luke wants to shut up Spencer, why would he not just kill him instead of hiring random kids to terrorize other random kids and getting 72 more people involved without actually solving the original problem? I know the answer is he's maybe the second most irritating character on the canvas and Ron loves him almost as much as Obrecht.

[stlbf]

*DING DING DING*

This whole plot is stupid and over reaching to the point of insanity. Absolutely NONE of this sudden Rafe crap makes one iota of sense. It is tripe, hack writing at it's worst. None of this junk was ever necessary.

Rafe? Character was worth saving. Related to a long time PC family. Had a horrendous upbringing. Plenty of story to mine there. Recast and write about his struggles. Not make him ALL about freaking Molly and being a free sitter for Danny. Maybe have Silas and Sam act like the legal guardians they are supposed to be and less like mooning kids.

Spencer? Also can use a recast. That kid is pure ff material to me. And now i'm supposed to believe that fake!luke could've done this to quiet him? What criminal mastermind would trust a screwed up teen to endanger people's lives, living said teen to live to tell? A true sociopath sure as wouldn't just trust Rafe to never talk and would've permanently silenced him.

[Anne]

I was happy when I thought that it was a random accident that both Ava and Faux Luke exploited. I agree that this notion that either Faux Luke or Ava would hire a troubled teenager when they both have access to professional criminals is stupid. However, I don't agree that the show has never been this dull. It's easy to forget, but during the height of the Drab Four, it was stupefyingly boring. At least now, there are a few characters and stories that I find entertaining, and they rotate around every couple of weeks. Guza & Co had no rotation. I have a lot of issues with RC - mainly his terrible habit of setting up potentially terrific story and then going off in inexplicably disastrous directions, combined with his terrible sense of pacing (Faux Luke has been dragged out since MARCH); but it's still infinitely more watchable on a regular basis than it was during the height of the Guza era.

In my opinion. Naturally.

[MissyLady]

What is the point of a car crash if we're only killing off one person? Why not have several Port Charles citizens out on the road during a storm or tornado and we end up with multiple injured or dying people in order to clear out the overstuffed canvas and put the focus back on the hospita? We could have had a major story dealing with death, organ donations, etc...

[Giugie]

Maybe I'm alone in this, but the last thing I want is more focus on the hospital. I'm pretty sure it was Gloria Monty who took the focus away from the hospital and created a more traditional soap and I believe before she took over the ratings were pretty awful. More depressing stories about accidents, disease, death, not so much for me.

IMO, everything that was wrong about this show during the Guza era is still wrong with it, but now accompanied by painfully bad camp, total lack of character development and no internal logic or coherent plot. It's a poorly done parody of a soap.

[Katie]

Ugh. Yes to all. Just as bad as a Guza years, but boring to boot. And SO MANY dumb new characters.

And a real question - if OLTL is dead, can they bring back McBain and Todd, and do away with Silas and Franco?

[MissyLady]

PP still owns the rights to AMC & OLTL. There is no way that I want to see a third attempt at RC changing the show around in order to bring back Todd, Starr and McBain.

[Katie]

Yeah I guess it would be a disaster, I just really hate these characters and had enjoyed the GH version of McBain a lot. Oh well.

[stlbf]

McBain was the thing that the show actually did well. The character meshed in damn near perfect. Todd could've done even more if they had brought in Blair to stay. Otherwise the Manning family being split didn't really make much sense. OLTL fans just wouldn't buy Todd and Blair not being together for a freaking good reason. And if selling her child on the black market and Todd being a convicted rapist didn't drive Blair away, what would? Todd being some sort of threat or danger to Sam or one of the kids, maybe.

God, I miss Sam Manning. Kind of hoping that Blair, er, Eve Larson on Days has a little boy stuck in boarding school. And Sam can return.

Hospital focus doesn't have to involve death, serious illness and injury to regular characters. Just have the staff talk about cases. Keep it focused on relationships @ work. Have Patrick and Liz talk about a loony case or horrific case they've just dealt with after a shift. Grey's Anatomy can have a damn show and not have to kill off cast members willy nilly. Why can't Gh?Same with ER and all other hospital dramas. Hell, the writers can ease off the hospital stuff and characters and focus on other aspects of PC: the wealthy, the police, teens, business and even the gummy mob(I'd rather not, but whatever. ) can work. Pacing is a big issue this show.

[Silvertone]

You know, while I would never praise Guza, as much as I hated just about everything he ever did, at least he put a tiny bit of thought/effort into all this, far more than Ron. Guza's characters SUCKED, but at least they sucked in a fairly consistent/predictable way, for the most part. Sure, some characters were sacrificed on the altar of the Dread Three, just as now they're sacrificed on the altar of Obrecht, Franco, Sabrina, etc. But the characters weren't generally in this state of suspended animation where Ron needs someone to do something to make the plot go or to facilitate some lame joke and they just pick a character at random to plug them in with total disregard of history or established character traits.

Not everyone likes hospital shows, though. Since the early 80's at least GH hasn't really been strictly a hospital show, if it had been there's a good chance that a lot of soap fans might not have been all that interested. Of course a lot of the cast have always worked at the hospital, and that's fine. And the occasional hospital related story will be seen on any soap. I mean, Night Shift was a lot better than the actual show but it still didn't do that well in the ratings, of course partly because it was on Soapnet but also possibly because a show solely focused on the hospital might have been a little too much for soap fans who are used to more of a balance of focus on different aspects of life in the town. I don't watch CBS soaps, but from what I've seen on the other networks nobody would ever base an entire soap around a law firm or anything either.

[MissyLady]

GH desperately needs a virus that can wipe out some of the characters eating up too much screen time1

[Trippyjr]

I think that's the major difference between daytime and nighttime soaps. Nighttime tends to focus on one workplace--courtroom, magazine, law firm, hospital, whatever. But with larger casts and being on 5 times more often, that wouldn't work on daytime without limiting the audience and getting boring. I don't want to watch 120 episodes of Grey's or L&O every year.

[janet]

The problem with soaps now is not that it focuses on one thing but it doesn't take the intelligence of the viewers into account GH anyway seems to go off on a tangent, and forget to stay on the story. They also hire actors for their looks and not their talent. They insult the intelligence of the fans and they don't show anything they just say it happened off screen. The show bores me to death. They have murders committed, they never solve the murders, they just roll along and think the fans are all dead in their chairs. I am bored and disgusted with the keystone cops. If TIIC of the show is not going to make killers pay for deaths in cold blood, hire someone they don't care about and just solve the crimes and send the perps to jail. Sonny looking AJ in the eye and shooting him. yuck. If they are going to try to say someone in the hospital killed him And Connie. Stick a fork in me,, I'M done. GH keeps killing off characters. FrankenRon are no better than Guza, and his goons. We win than we lose. Like someone said up thread, I watch and I seem to have lost an hour and can't remember what happened. Maybe its because I don't care. My give a damns busted, I miss a day, a week a month. No loss. Sometimes I think they want us to tune out so they can say. The ratings are down , cancelled.!

[Rene]

For the first time in 33 years, I have three days of GH episodes recorded I haven't watched....because.....BORING BORING BORING BORING.

[stlbf]

I don't mean to say that the show needs to be completely focused on the hospital aspect. But they can do more with the hospital than a place to just kill off characters. And they do have police officers, criminals, lawyers, spies, teens and businesses (big and small) rotate in and out. The police, unfortunately haven't been able solve and get a conviction an actual crime case in years. Hell, even military veterans on GH have turned out to be criminals. Shawn is a horrible hitman enforcer for the Gummy Mob. And remember Connor? He became a rapist.

The writers need to remember that criminals aren't heroes and good people. Fun to write for? Sure. But they are still aren't people viewers need to be actually rooting to go on for them go out and do their crimes.

And yay. Looks like today we get to watch SONNY threaten to murder yet another person he doesn't like.

[Nancy]

I agree that criminals should not be the heroes of the show. Even Luke, who originally came into PC as a thug ultimately changed his ways and defeated the main mobster Frank Smith. He became someone to root for and for Laura to fall in love with not because he was once a criminal but because he changed his ways. Of course, the Luke who exists now is not that guy, but that's another gripe of mine! But Sonny is an unrepentant thug who kills and always gets away with it, and is considered a romantic lead and good father. It's ridiculous and insulting to fans.
Shawn is just another example, and substitute for Jason, the lovable, brave hitman. I wanted Jason to become a doctor like his parents and actually save lives. You just cannot keep asking viewers to look the other way when the main characters do despicable things. I am talking to you too Carly...how can she protect and lie for the guy who killed your son's father, and then claim you love that son. He had a right to know and love his Dad, however flawed he was. Sonny executed AJ while he begged for his life. It was sickening to watch, and even more sickening to see Sonny threatening a pregnant woman and anyone else who "crosses" him. Enough!!!!!

[MissyLady]

It is way past time for Sonny to do a stint in prison and he can take Franco, Dr. O, Heather, Shawn, Nina, Olivia, Livi, Felix, etc....

[Nancy]

I agree MissyLady....ship 'em all out of town and bring back some vets, even ones who died. AJ, Alan Q., a new Jason who wants to be a doctor. Let the Q's rise again. Bring Laura,Leslie, Bobby, Scott, Sean and Tiffany, Felicia and Georgie (not the baby) Kevin and Lucy...yah that would be a better show.

[stlbf]

There seems to be absolutely no long term plan for the show. Just whatever is shiny and catches the writers' attention for the moment. Why make Franco, Scott's son? Hell, why did they even bother with Scott, Lucy, Kevin and Laura? They have almost completely disappeared. Lucy and Kevin having marital issues and then she cheated with Scott. Would've loved to have seen Kevin insisting on seeing couples therapist from the moment they decided to reunite after the vamp stuff. Scott and Laura were engaged longer then they were married.

Killing off Rafe is just short sighted. He was a legacy kid. But the writers are hacks and can't think of anything but quick splashes and protecting their favorites.

Nice Carly. Sonny can murder anyone but people you have feelings about. NULOCH Forever!

[TIsh]

I watched GH since 1977 that was before "The Golden Years" of Luke and Laura-- watched on-off (mostly on) until last year. I read the reviews and I don't even know who the characters are anymore. I was excited when SK came back as AJ-- thought AJ and Liz had some great chemistry but the coupling was quickly tossed away. I was never a Carly fan but I can't believe she is with Franco, can't believe Jax would willing leave his daughter. Don't like Silas --nor Kiki -- oh well -- still love Mallory's take on GH

[stlbf]

Wow. A Lucy sighting. Someone to bawl over Rafe. Which, in true Lucy fashion, ended 30 seconds later she walked into the bar. And she was really crying 'cause everyone is justifiedly furious with her selfish decisions. Kevin is done. Serena won't talk to her. Scott is locked up somewhere, doing things not concerning to Lucy. Mac is pissed at her. Luke doesn't seem to a friend to her anymore. Rafe is dead, she dropped him like a used tissue after all of promises and he was left with was Silas(a man no one really knows), Sam and Molly. A kid, a kid see proclaimed to be family is dead, but Lucy is just using the event to cry about how awful her life is right now.

Wow. Just wow.

Can not possibly care less about Maxie the case of the two schmucks. Everyone sucks in this craptastic plot.

Oh. And this is the best paid writers can come up with for Nik/Liz/Britt? Sad. Truly pathetic. I don't buy the Liz/Cam hate from "Spencer". Liz has helped raise the boy. Cam and Spencer had a pretty close cousin relationship.