Fylaki

Or as a Human Being It is almost as if General Hospital is sharing space with another soap. When the roommate-soap was OLTL I was not happy but could live with it because at least the folks in Landview were family and I know they had no where else to go, but these people? Who are they and why are they eating my show? Who is Nina that we should care? If you were so desperate to hire MSt and I am not sure why you would be, have her play Alexis Quartermain or a not dead Dawn or not dead Katherine Bell (Who knows that Fluke is her long lost lover Damian Smith) or Nikki Langston (seeking revenge for AJ's death and with the secret knowledge that Elly Trout is her and AJ's daughter) There were ways to write her onto the canvas, even have her interact with Silas without having her in this mess. If we still had the OLTL folks I could live with it, McBain fit well and I was warming to Todd in PC, but these folks have got to move out and find their own place. I would rather they drop GH to a half hour, give us our show back and start a new spin off with Silas, Kiki, Nina, Franco (maybe call it Port Charles?)

More and more I am freaked out by the Kid story line and Ron's re-action. There is a Prince of Pop vibe, where there does not seem to be a realization as to what is and what is not appropriate for children, and the kid actors parents are caught up in that same web as those kids were, where speaking out will not benefit them (Though I would be like screw it and screw this whole career and get away from my kid before I hurt you muthafucker) That is not saying Ron or anyone is doing anything wrong, just like there was never evidence to prove wrong doing on Mickey J's part, just a very clear understanding that this person had no idea what is and what is not right for children

Holding two conflicting thoughts in my head. Brain about to explode if I become any more confused I will be Sonny

Yes over there they would have, sadly at GH only TG and MB would have the power to do that and Ron/Frank keep feeding those two egos to much. Today was not bad (see episode thread) but some one at Disney is going to need to take control. I have seen reports that GH is actually a pretty low cost show to produce, instead of running a vanity project Ron and Frank need to capitalize on this and begin to tie the show into the greater Disney Community. There have been hints that Grey's takes place in the same universe, roll with that and assume that scandal does as well, why not Nashville if we can't get JJ back as then a guest shot as Avery would sky rocket things. Avery could sing at next's years nurses ball...the resemblance well that is just like Noah Drake and Eli Love. Tie GH into the center of the ABC Universe given the generally unreal nature of the show it is the perfect place to cross-pollinate on the cheap neither Agents of SHIELD, Once Upon a Time nor Revenge would be so outlandish they could not fit into the GH world. instead Ron and Frank write bad fan fiction, exploit children and ruin history all in the name of saving the show

I agree at least MyKill was still clearly a child not an old hag. And why did you tell me not to google it? You know that I HAD to after that. I'm going to wash my eyes out with acid now be back later

Do either Ron or Frank have children? I am trying to be open minded about the kiddie quad and am wondering if it is my prospective as a parent (and soon to be grand-parent). if Ron and Frank have no actual frame of reference for children then perhaps that explains some of the crap coming out of the kid quad. Though, on the flip side TC,LW and BH all have children and so should be inputting how kids act unto their own soap children. A line from Liz where she tells Cam "You are too young to have a girlfriend." (Which I bet that Becky would do in real life) and/or Nik telling Spencer "Stay out of Dad's personal business or I will tan your royal hide." would go a long way. And on the third flip side (?) Tony Geary has no kids and yet when he was playing father to JJ he was amazing. He never let Lucky behave outlandishly despite making a point to raise him to be independent and self-reliant. And JJ was carrying much deeper material then the current quad.

How supervised by the network were he and Frank back then. I tend to agree that when they are "on" Gh is better then it has been in years, but they are like two teen age kids who the longer they are left unsupervised the more they regress.

I am so past concerned for the kid who plays Spencer that I actually wrote Disney. I mean this with respect to the idea that you think he is hilarious and that some others might as well, but he is playing a 40 year old Nathan Lane/Librace/George Hamilton Count Chocula. There is something unhealthy in making a nine year old boy play a role like this. Weather it is on GH or elsewhere kids playing adults is creepy. Take a look at JJ or AT when they were kids, the material was deep but they were always kids, Spencer is not portrayed as a child but as a middle age man (I stand by the idea that he is Ron's Alt). Even KA who is now terrible was better as a kid when Starr was a demon child then Spencer is, if Spencer wants to know how to manipulate his parents lives, he needs look no further than Starr As to humor it belongs on a soap but not like this, this is finger snapping out of living color. They have KS and few do soap humor better. Looking for actors to steal who can do funny get Matthew Asford to come back as Tom Hardy. But please stop exploiting children. TR is fabulous and yes even in the background. The problem is that Ron let GH's TR get away to YnR, the kid playing TJ is GREAT and should be given more to do, but if you want a Fabulous TR...There is only one Robert Fucking! Scorpio.

Everyone needs to look at the throwback Thursday video on the GH site (especially Ron) to get what i am saying. Back in the day, no matter who the writer was, we did not watch a soap wedding we went to the wedding. The audience was a part of the guest list, as dear friends tied the knot. I did not always like Guza's writing and I hated Brenda's last go round and the whole Balkan thing (or was that Wolfe) but even then we all felt Brenda nervousness, would Sonny leave her at the altar once again. Like the people sitting in the pews we waited. When Scott caught the flowers at Luke and Laura's wedding half the nation caught it's breathe. I don't watch soaps for the romance, I like the action and social topics better, but really was their a dry eye in the house when Anna and Robert finally said I do? or as Karen and Jagger rode off on his bike? Now we get Lucy doing weddings. Even the Mac and Felica bar wedding would have been more fun in the old days. The Patrick-Sabrina-Robin wedding was the last time I felt this show. Emma breaking her father and Sabrina's hands apart and rushing towards her mother, the kiss Patrick laid on Robin (Mrs. Fylaki wanted to know why that does not go on around here....when i suggested she disappear for two years..well the couch is comfortable) but then almost immediately Ron forgot who we cared about, oh Sabrina has her fans and we were all a little concerned, but this, this was Robin, we watched her grow up, we watched her struggle with HIV and we watched her die. He just missed the point. Soap characters are not characters from a movie or a novel or a play or TV show, they are family. And there is a consistency with how family acts. My cousin MJ and I do not get along, she is a big brassy loud mouth, kind of Carly like, but if she suddenly began sleeping with a serial killer I would be damn concerned. No one in town cares that Carly may have lost her mind? And we are suppose to accept that a member of our GH "Family" is acting this far out of character just because Ron says so? At least with the return of "Sonny will always be part of my life"-Carly we have something to hope for. But God did you ever want to be in a position where you hoped that Carly and Sonny would get together again?

if this is Ron loving Soaps, then I hope to God he never loves me. I agree totally with the assessment that he needs to have some one in control of his excesses and I am not afraid to state that if some one does not do so then Disney and ABC and the genre will eventually have a problem on their hands that goes far beyond the writing of GH or the cancellation of the last of its soaps. The obsession with the young man playing Spencer and the insistence that he play the character like Nathan Lane in La Cage Au Folle will sooner or later, if not with this actor then with another come back to bite Ron hard, I am not saying that problem will come from Ron In fact I doubt it will but like Paterno at Penn State and a culture that turns its eye something bad is going to happen In terms of writing the story is even worse. Again Ron may or may not love soaps (and the fact that he says he does not want to go to prime time, is meaningless, we all say lots of things to fool people into thinking we like our current jobs) and he may occasionally write well, but currently he is writing a spoof not a soap. You are right to say that he is taking all the excesses of the medium and exploding them out to hit certain marks within the genre. His ego is also clearly out of control, as you say he thinks that without him the alternative is for GH to go off the air. Years ago I worked at a college and like a lot of young people I was trying to change the world, my boss told me one day "The institution was here before you were born and it will be here after you are dead, go on home." A soap writer needs to remember that and to believe it in his/her heart. Weather it is ture or not, weather soaps are dieing or not the writer cannot believe that the soap will end with them, they must believe that soap will be on the air long after they are gone. Maybe that was the mistake, maybe once a writer, Ron or any other has had to preside over the death of a soap they cannot fool themselves into thinking of the eternity of the soap any more and maybe that ruins them for writing them. I think Ron understands this for other soaps, he knew that some where the Aldens of Loving and Corinth were still out there, he knows that Ryan;s bar still seves cold beer at good prices and that Frank and Meave and Johnny are all some where in New York. He knew that Stephen Clay and Lucy Coe were waiting for one last go round. He knew that soap characters live forever even if the show does not. Maybe it was when PP took away his ability to use the OLTL folks, or maybe it was his own ego but I do not think he thinks that GH exist without him any more. Even the fact that half of this show is now taking place off screen and he some how expects us to know what is going on testifies to that. We all have a GH in our head, a thing that character's are doing even when we do not see them, for Ron though the GH in his head is a reality we have to accept,as if the lives of these people were his personal toy and not the communal property of all who love the show. (For example right now in the GH in my head Frisco and Lucky working for the WSB are rescuing Noah Drake from Terrorist in North Africa. Lucky has fallen for the terror cells leader's daughter Layla who use to work at GH many years ago and who Noah's son Patrick once had an affair with meanwhile in Europe Laura is on the run from a rouge group of Cassadine henchmen who are now working for Hutch who without the love of Rose has become a violent eco-terrorist. With her is aging but still spunky reporter Jackie Templeton and Laura's adopted brother Blackie. )

Exactly I am an admitted Luke fan but the character's finest moment IMHO came when he had to talk with Lucky about his rape of Laura. Watching this man, who was (despite what subsequent writers want us to think) an extra-ordinary father have to tell his son his darkest deed, was moving in a way that we no longer get to see. You felt as if this were a real father and son dealing with a real issue. Sonny could have been a Todd or Luke type character, but neither Guza nor Ron nor for that matter MB cared enough. I cannot imagine anyway that Sonny walks away from the cold blooded killing of AJ, Ron took out all the ambiguity and all the hope of redemption. When Guza hung AJ from Sonny's meat hook at least AJ walked away a live, there was the illusion that this could even out, but unless AJ is some how alive (and even then Sonny still shot him) then Sonny is done as a character. I can think of a dozen ways for Julian to redeem himself and come back from the Ric thing. Rape for Todd and Luke were almost impossible to come back from. I cannot think of any Soap character who has come back from cold blooded murder. Ron's inability to realize that for the purposes of a Soap Sonny is a real person, with children and grandchildren and consequences for his actions, has placed a long running and highly popular (though not with many of us) front burner character in a situation from which he cannot return. Ron because he is writing a spoof forgot that Fasion can do awful things and return because he is not a central character but Sonny cannot. Soap villains are designed to come and go. Despite all the Cassadines we have seen no one has ever revived Mikos, Why because his deeds in freezing the planet placed him beyond the ability to return. I think that it is fitting that shortly after the murder of Cassandra (whom no one liked BTW) Helena was finally killed. David Gray has never come back. Villains are designed to leave. Sonny was never meant to be a villain nor was he meant to be a hero, like Luke and Jason Morgan and Todd Manning he was a monster for whom there were glimpses of redemption. I agree with the assessment that Jason was a serial killer but I can also live with the conceit that he only killed those who "deserved it" . Sonny does not have that out with AJ, especially now that he knows that AJ did not kill Connie. By failing to recognize that soaps and soap characters have to move forward Forever. Ron has written himself into a corner and his only way out will just hurt his reputation, the show and a genre that does not need any more bad press. Writers who do not think long term are hurting soaps across the board. It is why there are food channels, reality channels, cartoon channels and not one soap channel any more.

Part of this may be the networks misunderstanding of what a soap is. It is not episodic TV. GH is not the same as Friends or Scandal or even Grey's. They can call night time dramas Soaps but they are not: The main reason is no one expects them to be on more then 10 or 15 years (look at all the talk of how Grey's is winding down) Good episodic nighttime TV has an endgame. Look at Lost, love the ending or hate it, it was an endgame. Same for the Sopranos and others. Someday there is an endgame for the Walking Dead. Soaps have no endgame (even if we talk about it) because for the genre to work the conceit must always be that these are real people with real lives and that like "sand though the hour glass so are the days of our lives." As long a a single baby is born on a soap, a soap has no end date. The soap greats like Agnes Nixon and The Bells knew this, they planned generational television. My middle son (because like a good soap family I now have an older step son so my former oldest is now the middle) was nicknamed Lucky by me for years (it turned to Smallville when he moved to Kansas) why because he came into my life the same month that Lucky Spencer set out from Canada to PC. Soaps characters are "real". Guza, Ron and other modern soap writers make the mistake of thinking that they are writing episodic TV that there is an endgame for their soap. But it is not their soap, without getting insane, it is these people's (the character's ) lives. Writing a soap has more in common with playing a SIMS game then writing a sit-com,

She slept with Colton, Ryan and Luke and spent decades thinking Frisco would settle down....so huh yes.

Years ago under another name I drew the ire of Liason fans by pointing out that Jason was too old for Liz, these same fans then came down on me that Robin was too old for Lucky. I just kept shaking my head. Rocky would be so soapy awesome. If Patrick does divorce Robin then maybe the endgame can be Patrick and Anne Logan's long lost daughter (she was a virgin but still had a child...dont laugh this is apparently an actual show on the CW this fall) and Robin and Lucky

See I am putting this at his door. He knew AG was going to be out for a long while. He could have moved up the revel, brought on an actor to play Damian Smith (who MUST be Fluke) or David Gray or whoever Fluke is (cause it cannot logically be Bill) and moved the story forward. Then he could have built a story on the search for Luke: Anna, Sonny, Lulu, Dante and even off screen references to Lucky, Holly, Ethan and Robert could have made this an exciting time. Especially if he used the few scenes he did film with Tony to show us Luke in danger,instead of Fluke on the phone (though the Luke/.Fluke meeting was good...right till he blew the landing) Ron needs to remember that he is writing a soap, which involves actors he needs to be flexible and to change, it's not novel, its a play ARRRRGGGGGG Sorry i am better now. I will be so pissed if he takes the lazy and totally out of character way out and makes Fluke Bill (especially if he cannot come up with one good reason for Bill to hate Sonny: Hating Luke for getting him killed Okay, by Sonny?)

I can feel the "not Guza" idea, while it was not Guza who destroyed Jason Q, it was he that elevated him to sainthood and did so at the expense of what IMHO should have been the shows main character Lucky Spencer. And the murdering of legacies characters was out of hand and out of line........ But, and don't hate me, I always felt that Guza liked the show, yes he liked his show, but he liked the concept of GH, the fact that it was a Soap, filled with melodrama and pathos, fueled by character and history With Ron, maybe on OLTL he liked the medium but now, now he writes the show like someone who does not understand soaps, but who accepts all the cliches about them would write it. Back to a comic book example. Batman in the comics is a dark brooding figure of the night, borderline insane. Each writer brings something to Batman of their own, but each also respects the core of the character. if some one came on board and began to write the BAM POW Batman of the TV Show, he/she would be writing a character that is a spoof not a hero Ron is writing a spoof of a soap. Not a soap

Rocky 4evah. Once they SOARSed Em, Nic and Lucky I never saw the age difference that much. In fact GV as Lucky looked older than Kim and his Lucky was shown to be a contemporary of Jason's (hence the Liz sharing) There was a moment when Robin was looking to find a baby daddy (okay that was god awful storyline) when she and Lucky had dinner and she talked about how there father's had been friends and suddenly it clicked in my mind that this was where it was suppose to go: Lucky as the brave hard working cop, Robin as a forensic scientist and Nic as kind of a Stefan DiMera (sorry DOOL fans my spelling is off) I was even hoping last year that a now WSB agent Lucky would be the one to rescue Robin, though having Nic be part of the rescue rangers came close I recall those but I don't think he ever verbally attacked the fans the way Ron does.

I agree and yet I find myself liking Guza more, than Ron. Was he as defensive as Ron? I don't really remember.

But what is it you like? Those criticizing the storyline point to specific things: Characters that do not work Levi/Kiki/Nina, if you think they are working then how? Where do they fit into on the show? What makes them work for you? Plot lines taking place off stage: Lucy/Scott/Bobbie/Kevin, how does a show that we do not see work? Characters acting out of character: Tracy and the suddenly stupid: How did this happen (This one is actually easy to explain but I want to hear your opinion) Spencer and the nine year old gay-vampire attitude, do nine year olds act like this? Carly being with the man who had her son raped. We spent too many years with Guza telling us that Carlyisthebestmotherevahwholovewithallherheart to buy her sleeping with the man who had her son sodomized in prison, how do you then enjoy this. I am not being scarastic I really want to know. Like I said soaps are weather Ron likes it or not a collaborative effort, so if there are things you like, tell us how and why. And Yes there are some things likable. I meant what I said about there actually being diversity, that is a good thing. I like the Jerome's and even Sonny/Ava/Morgan story is not bad since it is kind of a standard soap thing. I love Anna as Police Comish and like the beefing up of the PCPD with Dante, Nathan and eventually I would assume Jordan. I love Scotty as DA and would like to see Flea as mayor But to simply cosign everything Ron does is hard to swallow. I do not think at any single point does anyone love everything. I think the point is for many of us the bad outweighs the good and Ron makes it worse by being defensive. BTW these are the questions Ron should answer instead of getting annoyed. Like I said people love this show I think that loving a soap is like loving your wife not your girlfriend, You can love your girlfriend today and find a new one in a few months when you have grown tired of her. With a wife (or husband...I just happen to have a wife) you need to find a new reason to love her each day forever, and that is built on your past and your history. I don't always like everything about Mrs. Fylaki, I dont have to, but I do need to love her at her core....The same is true for my soap. I may never love Scrubs (in my mind it was always suppose to be Robin and Lucky with Nic as the spoiler) but I need to love the core.

What's it called? I am thread challenged (hmm does that count as diversity?)

At the Port Charles Hispanic Festival (maybe Sonny will even be there), which is held right outside the Asian Quarter (where no one lives anymore) near Charles Street which was an African-American neighborhood till Luke and Laura moved in and all the black folks (except ShhhYAWN, TJ and Jordon) left town and it became kind of the Port Charles Greenwhich Village Okay we really do need more diversity here....But points to Ron in that at we have characters across the spectrum now. See when he does good we tell him!!

MSquared I think you are VERY right in that Ron and most current writers on all the shows don't get the communal aspect of the medium. What is really strange is that over the years as social media has risen, the respect for the input of fans seems to have declined. I am not sure why. (And Yes moderators I know this may need its own thread LOL) You are right that it is Ron's sand box right now but the fact remains that if he does not let us play with him then sooner or later Mommy ABC and Daddy Disney are going to take the sandbox away from him. Ron needs to understand that YES we need him to write the show, but HE needs us to watch. If GH got canceled I would be sad, very sad but Ron would be unemployed very unemployed. We all kind of need each other here.

I think the point may be that everyone on this board actually LOVES this show, that is why we snark, that is why we complain, that is why we want to hold Ron to a high standard. If the people here hated GH they would be on some other board. I am 51 years old same as the show, I watched it as a child on my Grandmother's knee: I remember when Mark Hamill was the show's troubled teen, I knew Laura before Luke did and Scott before Laura did. That applies to a lot of people here. Has some of Ron's stuff been good? Yep I love the poisoned water with Jerry Jaxs and McBain. I loved General Espionage when Anna and Robert saved Robin. I was in a big minority in enjoying the brief Anna and Luke pairing. I liked the return of the Jerome's as a crime family that could stand on equal footing with the same shades of gray as Sonny. The problem to me is that this was all a while ago and here lately Ron seems to be spinning his wheels and stripping his men. He also has become to married to the camp and to the "Big Name": Nina was Not needed on the canvas and was brought on just so that MSt could become a GH actor, but she could have been brought on as a some how alive Alexis Quartermain, some one with ties to the canvas that are not as tenuous as Silas'. Ron also keeps characters that have failed long past the time to cut the loss: Kiki and Franco will just never work. RH could have been a great Steven Lars but that is a ship that has sailed. It is time to let them go. The other thing that Ron needs to somehow deal with is that weather he likes it or not Soap Writing IS a collaborative effort with the fans. He and any soap writer needs to be ready to take a turn when the majority of the people watching the show do not like where the plot is going. He may think he has creative control over the characters and that they are his but they are not: They are GH's and GH only exists as long as we watch. If Ron wants to write a vanity project go write a book. Soaps are communal property. I use the comparison a lot to comic books but the idea is the same. The Authors of Spider-Man had an idea in the 90's that lead to the infamous Clone Saga, most fans hated it and they changed course in mid story. Ron needs to learn to do the same. The problem is not that we do not love the Show the problem is perhaps we love it too much to see it fail.

Whenever I read the board before I watch the show I end up deleting it

Okay I can't argue that one. I am still holding out hope that it is Scott who actually figures this crap out and rescues Luke. I can see the attitude from both of them now. I will never understand why writers (not just Ron this time) don't play to the strengths of their actors: Of the people on canvas right now KS, TC and NLG play the best off of AG, why not use that? Felix is really only decent with Lucy. LW and JZ play a good mother/daughter. we keep getting pairings that are just off. Like putting KA with AG, all that happened was to highlight her inability to act. TC may be the only not great (good but not great) actor who Geary is kind to, any one else he just eats. FH plays well with JT but we get one crappy scene every four months or so. It just makes no sense BTW when RH was still Todd there were hints of he and Luke having a story line. Now that he is Franco that has been dropped and that is a shame. RH and AG are (or maybe were) giants in the soap business and I bet the two of them would have found a way to step it up if they had to play off of each other.