GH History Lessons: Because History is Always Repeating Itself

[Chairperson Meow]

Technically,  Christina has four-  Scotty, Frank, Kevin, and Chris Ramsay.   

[TeeVee329]

Eh, Chris was her namesake, but I wouldn't really count him as one of her dads.  Though I guess he did want to marry Julie.

But hey, if he wanted to show up and stake a claim, have at it!

Edited May 19, 2016 by TeeVee329

[jsbt]

Chris did want to raise her, it's true.

Is Frank dead? Or just another fucking vampire?

[TeeVee329]

I think Frank is dead.  I recall he got possessed by...a demon...or something?  He called himself the Avatar.  And I think he also fathered a baby with the evil Livvie?

[jsbt]

Oh, God, that's right, he was a superhero. Remind me to tell you the time I wanted Matthew on OLTL to rip off Kick-Ass. It would've worked on that show! But I thought they vamped Frank by the end, like 99% of the cast.

[UYI]

7 hours ago, jsbt said:

Christina has always had two dads. Three, actually, IIRC.

 

I was making a My Two Dads joke. You may have realized that, but just in case. :P

Hell, you could argue she had four. Frank (her bio dad), Chris, Scott & Kevin. Five, even, if you count when Lucy was with Ian.

 

ETA: You guys beat me to it! 

Edited May 20, 2016 by UYI

[TeeVee329]

Ew, Lucy and Ian.  That's one part of "Port Charles" history that can stay buried.

[Chairperson Meow]

I liked Ian.   Thorsten Kaye was hot then.   No long hair,  no scarves, no poetry.  Sold me.   But Jamal?   He was mega hot.   Does anyone remember him?  

[Ladybyrd]

4 minutes ago, Chairperson Meow said:

I liked Ian.   Thorsten Kaye was hot then.   No long hair,  no scarves, no poetry.  Sold me.   But Jamal?   He was mega hot.   Does anyone remember him?  

I didn't hate Ian, but I hated him with Lucy. That pairing brought out the worst in LH's acting tics and it was just terrible the way Kevin's character was destroyed.

Jamal, though, was super hot. I especially liked him with Allison, until show ruined that too.

Port Charles had so many great characters and actors, and TIIC made such awful choices with most of them.

[jsbt]

I liked Ian with Eve. Ian with Lucy was an incredibly bad idea that ruined so many characters, and I have no fucking idea why they did it. It was clear, though, that the show was sidelining and trying to bury Kevin. I had no problem with GH ignoring it all.

What they did with Jamal was also shameful but typical of soaps. I did love the show in that interval post-General Homicide, though, when I think Karen Harris was running it? The nurses' strike and all that, and the early Rachel Locke stuff with Kimberlin Brown, though I think that may have been Brown & Esensten writing that. Also they got rid of Ellen Burgess around that, but nothing is perfect.

Edited May 20, 2016 by jsbt

[TeeVee329]

Yeah, echoing the above, I liked Ian fine with Eve (I'm still kinda shocked Eve was the one who bit it at the end of the angels arc), but the pairing with Lucy - and the hatchet they took to Kevin around the same time - was no bueno.

[Chairperson Meow]

6 hours ago, jsbt said:

I liked Ian with Eve. Ian with Lucy was an incredibly bad idea that ruined so many characters, and I have no fucking idea why they did it. It was clear, though, that the show was sidelining and trying to bury Kevin. I had no problem with GH ignoring it all.

What they did with Jamal was also shameful but typical of soaps. I did love the show in that interval post-General Homicide, though, when I think Karen Harris was running it? The nurses' strike and all that, and the early Rachel Locke stuff with Kimberlin Brown, though I think that may have been Brown & Esensten writing that. Also they got rid of Ellen Burgess around that, but nothing is perfect.

Yes!   I really liked Julie Pinson as Eve for bit there.   I even liked the intro they did with ME, where his character was a priest (note to Jelly,  you have a hot guy playing a priest, that's kinda how you do it).  Jamal/Allison was an amazing pairing, and I'll never get why it was dumped for dull Rafe.   I did find that KeMo had chemistry with the Jamal actor as well,  but they kept bouncing her between the Jack actor and ME and one point the Frank actor and Rafe.  Rafe was Port Charles's fetch.    They even had him be an angel just in case we didn't get that he was totally awesome.   

[jsbt]

4 hours ago, TeeVee329 said:

Yeah, echoing the above, I liked Ian fine with Eve (I'm still kinda shocked Eve was the one who bit it at the end of the angels arc), but the pairing with Lucy - and the hatchet they took to Kevin around the same time - was no bueno.

Unless it was Pinson's choice, it was a big mistake, as was killing Karen. Eve was the beating heart of that show from the beginning.

My understanding is that Brian Gaskill took off unexpectedly in what was supposed to be a small role as Rafe and they expanded the part because of that response, and Rafe became a big thing. It certainly didn't hurt that he was white and got them out of another interracial pairing, which soaps have almost always been deeply ambivalent on at best. I understood their capitalizing on his potential (sans banishing Jamal) and I didn't mind Rafe at first, but I sure did later. Brian Presley, OTOH, appeared to only keep his job because of his relationship with Erin Hershey (Presley).

Edited May 20, 2016 by jsbt

[TeeVee329]

When I first started watching "Port Charles", Livvie/Jack/Allison/Jamal were a very Starr/Cole/Langston/Marrko quad, but yeah, once Brian Gaskill and Michael Easton took off, Jack and Jamal both really recessed. 

Gawd, remember when Jack was dating, like, Livvie's good side that had split into its own person?  Oh "Port Charles", you drunk!

Edited May 20, 2016 by TeeVee329

[jsbt]

Tess! God!

[Chairperson Meow]

Oh yeah, Tess.   That swamp creature thing.   Man, I seriously was afraid that Ron would copy that, like all the time.   I'm actually shocked he didn't.    

[HeatLifer]

2 hours ago, TeeVee329 said:

When I first started watching "Port Charles", Livvie/Jack/Allison/Jamal were a very Starr/Cole/Langston/Marrko quad, but yeah, once Brian Gaskill and Michael Easton took off, Jack and Jamal both really recessed. 

Gawd, remember when Jack was dating, like, Livvie's good side that had split into its own person?  Oh "Port Charles", you drunk!

Sooooooo bad. But here's a UO. I hated Livvie/Caleb. 

[Ladybyrd]

I was never clear on what was going on with Tess? Like, we were told she was Livvie's good side, or something, but didn't she have a mental age of, like, six?

God, the last couple years of PC were rough.

[Chairperson Meow]

1 hour ago, Ladybyrd said:

I was never clear on what was going on with Tess? Like, we were told she was Livvie's good side, or something, but didn't she have a mental age of, like, six?

God, the last couple years of PC were rough.

Yeah.   I don't know why your good side made you turn into a child, but it made Jack look very um not good.   But their special effects were great though.   I didn't get why she ran around in rags all day.  Like, are our good sides all raggedy and immature?   Remember the haunted painting story?  

[TeeVee329]

Of course I remember the haunted painting!  It was the Orbitz lady slash Alison's ancestor.  And didn't Kevin eventually get sucked into that painting and Lucy brought him home by lighting a candle?  Ugh, the candles.

[jsbt]

I loved the Orbitz lady - her ads were all over TV at the time and then boom, she was on the show. They also brought on Joy Bisco as Casey, and she was lovely until they tried to keep her around by creating the role of Casey's boring living twin. Then they compounded the madness by 'fixing it' in some bizarre episode where the twin's history was rewritten (and written out of the show) and Casey returned to life instead, all in 30 minutes. They should've just kept her there to begin with.

[KerleyQ]

3 hours ago, HeatLifer said:

Sooooooo bad. But here's a UO. I hated Livvie/Caleb. 

I still think that Allison and Caleb had tons more chemistry in their one night together than Livvie/Caleb or Allison/Rafe. 

[HeatLifer]

1 hour ago, KerleyQ said:

I still think that Allison and Caleb had tons more chemistry in their one night together than Livvie/Caleb or Allison/Rafe. 

A/R were the worst, man. And I always thought the Livvie/Caleb chemistry was overrated. I couldn't care less about their sex scenes or what not.

[WendyCR72]

Please return to GH history talk here, please. Thanks!

[UYI]

2 hours ago, WendyCR72 said:

Please return to GH history talk here, please. Thanks!

I'm just curious:

Should Port Charles and Night Shift have their own threads here, since they're GH related? They don't have their own individual forums, otherwise. 

[WendyCR72]

Night Shift, unsure. I'll check with my fellow mods since there were so few episodes overall and it was finite. But Port Charles, while connected, I'd think that would warrant its own forum.

Again, I'll check.

[UYI]

10 hours ago, WendyCR72 said:

Night Shift, unsure. I'll check with my fellow mods since there were so few episodes overall and it was finite. But Port Charles, while connected, I'd think that would warrant its own forum.

Again, I'll check.

Would a GH Spinoffs thread pinned to the top like the character thread work, with NS and PC getting their own subthreads there? 

Obviously, you're a mod so you know how it works, but that sounds doable :) .

[ulkis]

Cracking up at the look on Finola's face 5 seconds in at the start of the video.

[Tiger]

It's Kiki and frrrriiiieeeeennnddss, ya know the one's who called her "Kiki" yet outside of that song she never shared a scene with.  

[Chairperson Meow]

I think we're supposed to pretend that never happened.   Lol if HE ends up being a better singer than KA too.  

[UYI]

3 hours ago, ulkis said:

Cracking up at the look on Finola's face 5 seconds in at the start of the video.

 

I hate you for reminding me of this. You are sick. ;)

Fin's face says it all. 

[TeeVee329]

This may be one of the first examples of caller ID catching someone in a lie on a soap - Tony and Monica use *69 to bust Alan and Bobbie on their ultimately aborted attempt to have an affair.

Edited May 21, 2016 by TeeVee329

[Ladybyrd]

25 minutes ago, TeeVee329 said:

This may be one of the first examples of caller ID catching someone in a lie on a soap - Tony and Monica use *69 to bust Alan and Bobbie on their ultimately aborted attempt to have an affair.

I've always found it pretty galling that Bobbie and Alan's basic attitude is that since they didn't actually have sex, its not worth getting worked up over.  Shouldn't there be some groveling?  Instead Alan's basically like, "You've been withholding sex since you had cancer; what did you think would happen?"

I also can't remember... did Bobbie have any justification here in doing this to Monica?  Had they fallen out for some reason? They had been best friends, right?

Huge points, though, for the acknowledgement that one would likely want to fly from Port Charles to NYC and it's not a half hour drive.

[KerleyQ]

11 hours ago, UYI said:

Would a GH Spinoffs thread pinned to the top like the character thread work, with NS and PC getting their own subthreads there? 

Obviously, you're a mod so you know how it works, but that sounds doable :) .

This sounds like the most workable solution, in my opinion.  Since both had GH characters and tie into those characters' history, it makes sense to have them under the GH forum's umbrella.  It would be different if either show was still airing, but, since they're not, I think giving each a thread here would make more sense (and drive more conversation on the topics) than setting them up in their own forums apart from GH.  (I know other no longer with us shows have their own threads, but, since those two, specifically, are a part of GH history, this seems like a special case.) 

[cleo]

I've been watching some scenes from 1979 and really enjoying it. It's great seeing Tracey and Monica in scenes together, the actresses are great and very entertaining. It's horrible to think how much this show has been ruined today. Also love watching the whole Quartermaine family. 

It's also really nice to see Lila. 

I missed the scenes where Alan found out that Monica and Rick were together the night of the quarantine, unfortunately.

I find both Rick and Lesley to be boring. 

How did Monica get the house and why is it such a big deal? Like I think I saw some clips in the early 80s where this came up.

It's a shame these soaps haven't been very well preserved.

[nilyank]

Quote

How did Monica get the house and why is it such a big deal? Like I think I saw some clips in the early 80s where this came up.

Alan bought the Q mansion for Monica when they got married. The Quartermaines were originally from Long Island, New York so it wasn't the family home.

[Chairperson Meow]

Ok.  Let me ask this question so I can make sure I'm remembering correctly.   I think I know why Sonny hates AJ.  But Jason?  What I got is that Carly and Jason were banging behing Tony's back.   AJ was Tony's neighbor.  Carly wanted to hook up with Jason, but found AJ, so they hooked up.  Michael is conceived.  AJ tells Carly if he relapses that he's leaving town.  She wants the kid to be Tony's, so she drugs AJ and makes him think he relapsed.  He starts remembering that he did have sex with Carly and is probably Michael's father.  So, he wants to see his kid.  Custody battle.  So, Jason gets mad at AJ for this?  His own brother?  Or was he mad because he was cheating on Robin with Carly and he caught feelings?  Or was he mad because AJ ordered the DNA test?  Because didn't AJ not find out till Michael was already born and everyone was all sad in a carriage house and it wasn't her secret to tell?  Like, why did/does Jason hate his brother when he's the one who took his kid, turned the family against him, and introduced him to the guy who would kill him?  He initially forgave him for the wreck.  

[dubbel zout]

AJ drove drunk in the car crash that made Jason Q into Jason Morgan. Carly and Sonny also did a lot of poison Jason against AJ, and since Jason was in a hate-the-Qs phase for a long time, it was easy for him to dislike everyone connected to his pre-crash life.

[nilyank]

Jason and Carly were not banging behind Tony's back. They stopped sleeping together before she hooked up with Tony but they still remained friends. Jason was not close with AJ but he didn't hate him. He only liked Emily, Lila and Ned because the other Qs had high expectations of him turning back into Jason Quartermaine.

When Carly went to Jakes looking for Jason, she just had a huge fight with Tony but found AJ instead. While she was pregnant with Michael, Carly was super stressed about Tony finding out, AJ remembering and trying to keep all her lies straight. When she found out that Tony was secretly going to sue for sole of custody of her baby and Lucas from Bobbie, she told him that he was not the father and that Jason was. Tony had previously found Jason hanging out with Carly in the apartment as friends.

Carly turned up to Jason's and begged for his help which he agreed to because they were friends. He also didn't think a baby should have been controlled by the Qs. When Michael was born, AJ misinterpreted that Michael's blood type ruled him out as the father.

Again, Jason did not hate AJ but he viewed himself as Michael's protector and he decided that he needed to be protected from the Qs. Of course, the Qs namely Edward and AJ did a bunch of schemes to get Michael away from Carly. Jason hated that.

[Chairperson Meow]

But why was Jason, who said over and over about loyalty and honor code and was able to be on good terms eventually with Monica and Alan, so okay with everything Sonny and Carly did to AJ?  I know he apologized to AJ for keeping Michael away from him at his first grave before he died.  But why was Jason just so hunky dory with Sonny and Carly, yet turned his back on his own brother?  I remember watching scenes of AJ and Jason hanging out after the Jason Morgan accident because they bonded over being sick of the Q expectations.   But, like years later, I see a new AJ and Jason is like "I hate that dude."  

[nilyank]

It was because of Michael and Carly. The more AJ went after them, the more Jason went into protective mode. Sure Jason hung out a few times with AJ, but he was closer to Sonny and Carly. Once AJ found out that Jason lied about being Michael's father, he stopped trying to reach Jason as his brother. They were on opposite sides and little over the years that followed saw them on the same side.

Jason also eventually left town for three years and he came back when Carly was presumed to have been killed in a car accident. Jason had little use for AJ by this time. Then stupid Courtney storyline happened and the brothers hated each other after that.

Edited May 24, 2016 by nilyank

[Chairperson Meow]

Ugh.   So, that's another reason to hate Courtney.   Why the hell was she all about snowglobes?  All I remember is that her mom was a stripper, she was a stripper, she was Sonny's sister, Spencer's mom, and is dead.  And she had a thing with snowglobes.   

[TeeVee329]

On 5/21/2016 at 10:07 AM, UYI said:

Would a GH Spinoffs thread pinned to the top like the character thread work, with NS and PC getting their own subthreads there? 

Obviously, you're a mod so you know how it works, but that sounds doable :) .

We got our GH Spinoffs thread and I just posted something about "Port Charles".  Come join me!

[Asp Burger]

There was talk about Jensen Buchanan in the news thread, and ulkis gave the bullet (...of love) on her brief stint on General Hospital.  

Here is a little more detail about Jensen as Nurse Melissa Bedford in 2001-02, because it's a good story. I mean it's a good story as General Hospital casting/writing lore goes. It was not necessarily a good story to watch.  

When Jill Farren Phelps took over as exec producer in late 2000, Phelps's buddy A Martinez (Roy), who was already on the show paired with Bobbie/Jackie Zeman, got a big beefing-up as a would-be leading man. Jensen Buchanan, another Friend of Jill (FOJ), followed close behind. The show created a never-mentioned ex for Roy, Melissa, who was a nurse in Chicago. In a story very similar to the current one with Maxie, Nathan, and Claudette, Bobbie stupidly went out of town to see this Melissa for herself, awakening a sleeping dog.  

There was some real-life contractual dispute going on, in that Jensen was still under contract to another soap, even though her character on that soap was dead. While that was being worked out, a temp recast played Melissa. I think we had only seen the permanent Melissa for one day when the temp one took over. So there were problems with this character right off the bat.  

Melissa (now played by Buchanan) ended up moving to Port Charles, got a job at the hospital, and very quickly aced ol' Bobbie out in the love triangle with Roy. Bobbie was made the villain by Phelps's newly installed head writer, Megan McTavish. Bobbie was for a time trying to frame and ruin Melissa, which made Bobbie look bad and inflamed the Bobbie loyalists. Phelps and McTavish tried hard to make Jensen Buchanan/Melissa Bedford a thing throughout 2001. It was one of the hardest sells I've ever seen for a new character on a soap. A total "Poochie" if you've seen that famous episode of The Simpsons. She was shoved into everyone's story. Edward Quartermaine became fond of her and rewrote his will to include her. She became Liz's confidante, although she was quite a bit older. Luke was won over by her, and more or less took her side when "Barbara Jean" was scheming against her. She was inserted in the Endgame story with the Cassadines. And, oh my God, the Roy/Melissa story...we joked back then that the show's new name should be "MelRoy's Place." They got a ton of screen time. We had to watch, for example, a whole "funny" camping trip for this insta-couple whose entire romantic history had been offscreen years earlier. Roy himself had been on GH years before, but he sure wasn't enough of a veteran presence this time around to anchor such a thing.  

In early 2002, when McTavish had tanked as head writer and Phelps's power was waning a bit, and Guza and Pratt were waiting in the wings, the show unceremoniously wrote Melissa out. There was a left-field reveal that she was mercy-killing patients at General Hospital and had a prior, Annie Wilkes-esque history of doing this at other hospitals where she had worked. Melissa was taken away in cuffs and never seen or mentioned again.  

The one person who emerged from this mess with any credit at all is Buchanan. She acted the hell out of everything she was given. When Luke/Geary said something to Melissa/JB like "I didn't want to like you, but you won me over," some viewers read it as meta for their behind-the-scenes relationship, and he certainly spoke for a lot of viewers. Not even the best actor on soaps could have made a success of this, but she tried. I'm sorry to read of her present real-life difficulties.

Some typical "MelRoy's Place":  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nBrFfSIa2A

Edited May 25, 2016 by Asp Burger

[Chairperson Meow]

That was when I was watching OLTL, PC, AMC, and Passions.   Sorry, GH.   I needed my Timmy fix.   I'd switch GH on now and again, but if I didn't recognize the actor, I wouldn't watch.   Which is why I am very confused about a lot of GH history.   I've also seen a lot of Sonny because I recognized him.  Shrug.  

[jsbt]

Fuck Melissa and fuck that whole mess. God, I hated every moment of it. GH has rarely been worse than 2001.

Incidentally, they intended to write Bobbie out that year - she was going to go crazy over Melissa and get shipped off to Ferncliff. Geary intervened.

Edited May 26, 2016 by jsbt

[Asp Burger]

Quote

GH has rarely been worse than 2001.

It was so, so awful, wasn't it? Just a pile of shit from beginning to end. Laura and Carly and their stupid cosmetics company, and the battle between Liz and Gia to be the Face of Deception...RKK hamming it up as Stavros while Constance Towers stroked his naked chest...Chloe...the onslaught of long-lost sisters...MelRoy's Place...Angel Ellis...Jacob Young's horrific Lucky...pregnant Becky hiding behind increasingly large purses...Sonny blowing up a building and then a few weeks later being focal in a 9/11 tribute...AJ on the meat hook...FOJs galore (even Linda Dano kept stopping by).... 

And yet, I had fun "hate-watching." I have weird nostalgia sometimes and want to watch clips, because (1) it was a happy time of life and (2) I want to see if it was as bad as I remembered. Yep. Guza was actually an improvement over most of it.  

The shame is that GH was coming off of a pretty good four- or five-year period at the time. It started to go downhill in late 1999, but the free fall was 2001. How did McTavish keep getting hired? Never mind. I know.  

Edited May 26, 2016 by Asp Burger

[Chairperson Meow]

McTavish is the worst.   Ugh.    And I hated the Linda Dano run through every ABC soap.

[coffee drinker]

8 hours ago, Asp Burger said:

It was so, so awful, wasn't it? Just a pile of shit from beginning to end. Laura and Carly and their stupid cosmetics company, and the battle between Liz and Gia to be the Face of Deception...RKK hamming it up as Stavros while Constance Towers stroked his naked chest...Chloe...the onslaught of long-lost sisters...MelRoy's Place...Angel Ellis...Jacob Young's horrific Lucky...pregnant Becky hiding behind increasingly large purses...Sonny blowing up a building and then a few weeks later being focal in a 9/11 tribute...AJ on the meat hook...FOJs galore (even Linda Dano kept stopping by).... 

And yet, I had fun "hate-watching." I have weird nostalgia sometimes and want to watch clips, because (1) it was a happy time of life and (2) I want to see if it was as bad as I remembered. Yep. Guza was actually an improvement over most of it.  

The shame is that GH was coming off of a pretty good four- or five-year period at the time. It started to go downhill in late 1999, but the free fall was 2001. How did McTavish keep getting hired? Never mind. I know.  

At least McTavish had the presence of mind to not write in Becky's pregnancy.  Guza failed on that regard, twice, and crippled the Liz character by saddling her with babies where Liz was the big bad keeping them away from the favored male/father.  

[ulkis]

20 minutes ago, coffee drinker said:

At least McTavish had the presence of mind to not write in Becky's pregnancy.  Guza failed on that regard, twice, and crippled the Liz character by saddling her with babies where Liz was the big bad keeping them away from the favored male/father.  

I don't think Zander was a favored male.

I think writing in Cameron wasn't a bad idea. I remember it helped a lot of people move past seeing Liz as a teen.