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Over at ABC’s General Hospital, Ron Carlivati is fired and out the door (woot woot) and Jean Passanante and Shelly Altman are teaming up as the new co-head writers. We are very excited about the possibilities this opens up for all our favorite Port Charles characters. Here’s a look at our wish list for the new head writing team at General Hospital.
Vicki Dummer, head of ABC’s daytime line up released the statement: “Shelly and Jean’s combined talents and experiences promise to continue the show’s legacy of compelling storytelling that will resonate with our impassioned viewers. We’re delighted with what they have in store for the show as they continue honoring the rich, diverse environs of Port Charles.”
Of course, neither Passanante or Altman are new to GH. Altman had been co-head writer before Carlivati took over and Passanante worked under Carlivati until The Young and the Restless lured her away. But now with Carlivati and his craziness gone, maybe these savvy soap-experienced women can knuckle down and shake things up over at Port Charles.
Here’s what we’re hoping for under the new GH writing regime:
#1 Pick up the pace
One of the most frustrating things about watching General Hospital these days is the snail-like pace of key story lines such as Jake Doe/Jason Morgan amnesia, Luke/Fluke, Rosalie’s secret and others that drag on from months to years. Plus Luke has been saying goodbye to Port Charles for endless weeks. They need to model more on the pace of nighttime TV – no we’re not asking for the pace of Kiefer Sutherland’s 24, but maybe a Port Charles day shouldn’t last an interminable week…
#2 Quit insulting our intelligence
Carlivati’s writing has been largely very insulting to GH watchers. We do not need to be spoon-fed information. We do not need constant flashbacks to scenes we saw just a day or two before. We are fans – we are tracking storylines probably more closely than writers and producers. Please stop wasting screen time with this crap. Deliver fresh material on a regular basis without showing us any of what we’ve seen before. That’s easy enough, right? We will love you for it.
#3 More screen time for favorite characters
If Passanante and Altman can do the first two above, it will naturally lead to more of this. If the 35 minutes a day we get is not crammed with rehash and sloth-like stories, we will get to see more of our favorites on screen. As it is now, we will sometimes go weeks without seeing a primary character – thinks about the recent absence of Julian Jerome and Alexis Davis – they were gone for weeks. Seems like they could coordinate shooting to film more content in a shorter span so our faves get air time.
#4 Quit with the crazy
Okay, the crazy itself is okay. Obrecht, Franco and Nina Clay are a lot of fun, but you don’t want to get to campy. But the real crazy is little Jake Spencer back from the dead and Frank Smith kidnapping people from his Hoveround scooter even though he’d be a centenarian by now. Comas are okay, unknown relatives are okay, paternity questions are tolerable. But improbably resurrections are not. Why not invent some compelling plot lines without going completely off the rails?
#5 Rethink everything
Let’s face it, GH is down in the ratings and continues to be plagued by low ratings. This should be no surprise with the same old things being done over and over. Sonny and Carly are gearing up to get married yet again. Why not put Carly with the sexy Kyle Sloane and introduce Sonny to cousin Valerie? Put Ava in charge of the mob with Morgan running it by her side. Let Jake know who he is but then split him up with both Liz and Sam and let them fight over him! So much can be done – just do it!
Fingers crossed that Passanante and Altman will embrace the chance to flourish without Carlivati’s heavy hand at the helm and will save General Hospital from certain cancellation. We look forward to seeing what they will do and hope they right the ship immediately.
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Helena Cassadine stealing “dead” people is plain ridiculous and I am sick and tired of watching this crap.
The piss poor story line they gave Tony Geary as his send off into retirement was embarrassing to say the least. They could have done a better job with the split personality he had all these 37 years. But what can we say, Carliavati/Valentini did such a bang up job murdering OLTL with their stupid story lines of DID and making their veteran actors look like crazy lunatic clowns.
Bringing over the OLTL characters was very insulting to the viewers too. What has been done to Roger Howarth is beyond explainable. He must need the job badly to put up with his story lines.
Now they have Nicholas turning bad, Dante cheating, and Ava wearing a black wig posing as a twin. Hey Carliavati FU, I am NOT that damn stupid and neither are the characters who surround the fake twin and neither is Morgan who is screwing the fake twin. Geez……………
Regurgitated head writers hopping back and forth on these soaps is frustrating to say the least. They killed our beloved cancelled soaps so why are they still working?
I agree with this list…up until pairing carly and sloane. Sloane should be paired with anna with a great story.
First Welcome to GH. Second Rick Hearst is one of the best in daytime. When he returned in 2014 it was to be story of a Redemption please I beg you ladies get him back to that & out of this crazy Nina story he got stuck in. Give his character better court cases to defend or put him back to work in the DA’s office. A decent love story & more time with Molly. Oh while you are at it a Contract Please!! Thrid speed up stories to last no more than 6-10 weeks end it & give something new. & reveal Jason to all of PC Now! And finally give our favorites like Ric Sonny Carly Alexis Julian Molly & others not just more screen time but better stories that make sence. Thank you & good luck fixing our favorite soap.
Enough of the out and out crazy stuff. I love Nina Clay, but what Ric is doing to his wife is cruel just . Also with Luke Spencer gone . Sonny Corinthos is our Legacy Anti-Hero. I do not agree with you about Carly and Sonny. They should indeed get married for the Fifth and Final time. I am looking forward to the being a sort of twisted Lila and Edward Q, Sonny has a complicated life and a few children and grandchildren. So why not let them be the catalyst for many real family stories to come. GH has got to rebuild actual family’s. The Jerome’s are not my favorite. Last but not least use the people you have Felix is a great character with a rich history from GH Night Shift use that. Molly and TJ need Teen friends , to kill off Rafe Kovich was a travesty. bring in some lovely young people17-21. Give us some Doctor’s and Nurses we care about and real Hospital stories, the show is called General Hospital. Use the Doctors we know and love and keep Michael and Sabrina together if you insist of keeping him a Q. Oh. love Laura being back to keep an eye on her Children. Britt is purpose for Nic. She loves him and he loves her , not to mention Spencer see’s her as his Mom. He loves her and she loves him. I have watched GH 45 years.
Enough of the out and out crazy stuff. I love Nina Clay, but what Ric is doing to his wife is cruel just . Also with Luke Spencer gone . Sonny Corinthos is our Legacy Anti-Hero. I do not agree with you about Carly and Sonny. They should indeed get married for the Fifth and Final time. I am looking forward to the being a sort of twisted Lila and Edward Q, Sonny has a complicated life and a few children and grandchildren. So why not let them be the catalyst for many real family stories to come. GH has got to rebuild actual family’s. The Jerome’s are not my favorite. Last but not least use the people you have Felix is a great character with a rich history from GH Night Shift use that. Molly and TJ need Teen friends , to kill off Rafe Kovich was a travesty. bring in some lovely young people17-21. Give us some Doctor’s and Nurses we care about and real Hospital stories, the show is called General Hospital. Use the Doctors we know and love and keep Michael and Sabrina together if you insist of keeping him a Q. Oh. love Laura being back to keep an eye on her Children. Britt is purpose for Nic. She loves him and he loves her , not to mention Spencer see’s her as his Mom. He loves her and she loves him. I have watched GH 45 years.
To me Jason Morgan is a better hit man and what I like about him is You could never get a read on him because those eyes on him tell you different Sonny really need him now. Love the mob wars with Sonny and Jason
Ok ladies, it is time to get the ball rolling on General Hospital, love Tony Geary & always will but now get the story of Jason moving & give the show some real juicy stories. Enough with insulting us viewers !
I agree 100 percent! And what about the nurses ball! Either do it or don’t but don’t have 20 people in audience if you are doing a red carpet! I liked Nina and Franco when they were in Ferncliff….or is that another soap? Lol. And Carly announcement was so forced. These are great actors and they need the storyline to shine.
And last…why do the same 4 or 5 writers keep being hired and fired. We need some protégé or fresh writers from an evening show. There are lots out there!
Yes I want Jason to remember EVERYTHING bit want him to go back to being the hitman, Sonny needs him now more then ever, I want him back with Sam & Danny!! Sam & Jason truly loved each other unconditionally & get rid of Elizabeth send her away for a while she needs to focus on being a mom!!!
I would love for the New GH writers to change the storyline that Patrick and Sabrina son is a alive that he didn’t die but someone from Patrick past want to see him hurt and to see both Patrick and Sabrina fight to get their baby back. I would love to see Robin come back and to see how Patrick would handle have two family one with Robin and with Sabrina
I don’t care about any of the characters you mention. I care about Laura, Tracy, Bobbie, Monica, Scotty, etc. the younger actors seem all the same to me except for Carly and Sonny who stand out. The new Paul and Dillion are pretty impressive. The rest are a waste of air space. Maybe Alexsis is talented but the lover is a bore. Maxie, Lulu and Dante are horrible. Morgan, Kiki, Denise, Brad and a whole swath of actors are a total waste of air space. The stories are horrible. Lulu running around asking who kissed who and who liked it? Get a life! Get a job! No one really works. Everyone lives in the same building, the hospital has snack machines, not a cafeteria? The Floating Rib has turned into a neon Bucket of Blood? The show’s shouldn’t model network nighttime TV. The pace is fast because they are trying to hide how empty they are. The problem with General Hospital’s slow pace is because there is also nothing there. Create characters people can believe in and identify with, admire and hate. Comas aren’t Ok when used too often. They should be rate. The problem with the Luke farewell was because it was so stupid and shallow. Laura’s return and Luke’s farewell in 1983 lasted 6 weeks. Very few false notes and when it did it was because of a lack of time. A story of redemption isn’t bad but there are times people have to deal with bad things that happened. A person can’t repair a relationship with a son (Ethan) by never checking on him when he goes to the hospital. You don’t let your other son just leave and I don’t know what to do with Lulu that girl is a twit. There are so many lame characters on GH it doesn’t seem to really have stories for them. They just bang in the night. Characters couldn’t even get together to celebrate the Fourth of July. Set too small? The music is horrible except and I’m sure many of the clips the show could have shown of the old Luke stories weren’t used because of having to pay for music rights. No Rise, Facination, Rotation or Georgio Mororder for the past? I suspect that the Bobbie/Luke clip was used because Bobbie is so under used that the current audience didn’t really knew that Luke and Bobbie were very close. While there were many scenes with actors including the new Paul and Dillon spent considerable time telling old stories, an old clip for some, a abbreviated version for others would have been fine. Take a look at the serial dramas that AMC and FX are showing. They are good models. Of major importance is using the hospital once again as a base and create families that have some normality and morals. Important for a soap. Then deviance stands out.
Sorry for some typing errors. Difficult to see the whole post while writing.
Jake Doe should stay with Elizabeth and Sam should stay with Patrick. Let Sam have closure knowing Jake is Jason and he is OK. Nathan and Maxi should move forward and get married. Let there be some happiness. As far as Rick goes him and Nina’s mother they need to get what is due to them and Nina needs some happiness to.
i love the idea of Maxie and Nathan getting married. I also think that Sam and Patrick should stay together if they are happy but for Jake/Jason to see his son Danny. If Sam and Jake/Jason got back together then maybe Liz gets with Nikolas or Patrick. Patrick should maybe end up with someone new in town – or if Lizs sister comes to town pair Patrick and her. Either pair Valerie and Dante and Dillion and Lulu or keep Dante and Lulu and pair Dillon and Valerie.
I personally LOVE Sonny and Carly together!! I want changes I want story lines that don’t go on for overa year, but don’t screw things up!! Ok??
OMG, yes, wrap up the Jake/Jason snoozefest! And do it in a way that somehow redeems Elizabeth, who is currently unrecognizable as Elizabeth, thanks to Carlivati’s lousy, lousy writing.
Then, PLEASE round up all the One (as in ONE) Life to Live crew and ship them back to Llanview! The fact that their show was CANCELED wasn’t a major clue? Why bring canceled characters over to clutter up the screen on an entirely different soap? Giving them different names didn’t help either; that was just an extra heaping helping of stupid. Anyway, I’m tired of looking at them, and tired of them robbing screen time from the GH characters. (And what in hell is that Todd guy doing, trying to play James Franco with the munchies? Dumb, dumb, dumb!)
Also, isn’t it time for Morgan to go off to college, or join the military, or whatever? Get that bad actor, and his dull, unlikable character, off the show!
Same with boring, crybaby, bad news Cousin Valerie and the yucky rumors that she’s going to wind up pregnant with Dante’s baby. Just, no. Cheating on Lulu, of all un-Dante-like things to do, and he’s never heard of condoms? Make Valerie go away! She should never have been brought on in the first place, nor her mother, Patricia, a.k.a. Who in hell was she, and where did she come from? WHERE WERE EITHER OF THEM back in the 90s, when Luke, Laura, Bobbie and Sonny were leaving no stone unturned looking for relatives, however distant, to donate bone marrow for baby Lulu? They didn’t exist, that’s where. Carlivati invented them, to no good purpose whatsoever, and in the process totally contradicted the history of the show.
Maybe with JC finally gone, and hopefully the cast tightened up, TPTB can convince Jonathan Jackson to return? And/or Nathan Parsons? How about the REAL Lulu, versus this new one whom I can barely tell apart from Kiki (who needs to pack her backs and hit the road!)
And honestly, now that Luke’s gone, I don’t care whether I ever see Laura again. Bringing her back to futz up things between Luke and Tracy was moronic. No point keeping her around now, either, because her character has never been worth watching without Luke in the picture, and now she’ll only be a reminder of how much I’ll miss him.
I do respect Tony Geary’s decision to leave, not that it’s any of my business, and I loved, loved, loved his very candid recent interviews. Maybe with The Writer now gone, TG will be willing to come back now and again to do the Luke thing…but happy Luke, not tortured, dark, grandson-killing, mother-killing, repressed-memories Luke. I hated the whole Fluke waste of Tony’s last year, and that alone would justify the firing of Carlivati if he hadn’t caused all the other devastation.