Why was General Hospital so great in the 80's?!
Question:
Why was General Hospital so great in the 80's?
I watched GH in the 80's and up until about 6 years ago. Why was it so great back then and now it is so ho- hum and boring. Am I just getting too old and the characters so young or what? Don't enjoy it like I used to. Any thoughts?
Answers: Gloria Monty Made GH great- she had a real vision for soaps and respect for it's fans. the Writing!!!!
Remember things like Romance, Love scenes (not just sex scenes), Family, Humor, Adventure- Vets being used-"issue" sl's like monica's breast cancer or stone/robin HIV/Aids- those stories were Real and full of Heart as well as being educational without being preachy
Now what did we have in the 2000s? Mobs/bullets/bombs,relationshi... that go from hi to sex, family/vets rarely seen, female characters that are needy, dumb and betchy--parents/grandparents of characters MIA
Writers/producers that think They are great and the audience is Stupid. I started watching in 1971 and have pre and post 80's- today I barely even watch my tape or watch live if i am home- GH has next to nothing for me anymore but then since I am over 45 ABC doesn't care-they only care about the Young viewers-they ones who don't know any better--- weow got thatt off my chest :)
Thank goodness I have i didnt get to watch soaps in the 80s. cuz i was born in the 80s its because we didnt have the internet in the 80s, and now we do, and nothing compares to all the technology we have anymore.thats why kids dont play outside anymore either. i agree with you. i think what made GH so great back then was that the show was more inclusive of it's hospital and medical/nursing charachters. also i think that even though some of the stories were a little far fetched, they were exciting. now, they focus way too much on the mob. granted, the mob has had a small role in gh history, but nothing like it is today The fact that the show did not center around mobsters was a big reason it was so great. While the show always had heroes who had a darker side like Luke and Robert there was redemption and every time they did something wrong you could see the moral problem. Jason and Sonny are killers with no remorse. Centering the show around the mob has also made the police look stupid. Robert, Sean, Anna and Mac, all of whom were (or are) Police Commissioners were shown to be competent and highly intelligent people. Now because Sonny and Jason must always look good the police, Mac and Lucky and others are made to look like morons.
The show had a great anchor in the Hospital with Steve and Alan and Monica and Rick and Lesley.
The core families: Spencer, Hardy, Quatermain and Baldwin still mattered.
It is also important to realize that the world has changed and soaps have not really kept up. In the 70's and 80's it was still fairly common to find people who were 23 or 24 married with two or three kids, this gets rarer and rarer, yet on GH 24 year old Liz is the "bad boy Baby machine" popping out two kids in two years or so. The idea that 18 year old Lulu runs around sleeping with guy after guy, also goes against the current morals and norms, further as the audience ages it borders on child porn.
The mob storyline also becomes repetitive. How is Anthony Zachariah any different then Louis Alcazar or Faith Roscoe? The plot lines are repetitive and stale. In the 80's GH was innovative now they seem to play it to safe I don't know what it was like back then but I love it now. It's not boring, I think it's pretty interesting. It wasn't all about the mob back then, it was action, adventure and love and not all violent and it actually was about General Hospital and the nurses and doctors It was even better before then. I started watching at 14, now 56. I quit watching every day when, there were spies, Ice Princess, and crap that was no longer hospital. As much as I loved, and still do, Luke and Laura, when they went on the run, I just wasn't interested. I wanted, Steve Hardy, Jeff, Rick, Bobbie (Luke's sister), Aunt Ruby. Rick, Leslie, Audry, all the ones that made GENERAL HOSPITAL, not mob stories. The head writers in the 80s were much more creative than Guza is today, he seems to be stuck on the mob, and rather than letting stories and characters evolve they try to force the audience to like their flavor of the day, rather than presenting a balanced canvas. They also diss the vets and yeah, only focus on the young characters. It was great in the 80's. We had Luke and Laura getting into trouble left and right and trying to stay together. Scorpio was a superhero and Noah that was a singer then and now apparently were weren't suppose to remember that for his stunt lately. I don't think we got too old or that the characters got too young. I think it's the writers. They are trying too many new twists that don't add up for the long time viewers and changing story lines too often for us to care about any character. For example, 6 months ago, Lucky was sleeping with Maxie and is a druggie. Now, he's totally reformed, and sleeping with Sam, Maxie's friend and the girls don't mind. Come on, those girls don't talk or hold some kind of grudge. Please. Amelia comes in with some big storyline and all of a sudden -- where'd she go -- Houdini has her. They are switching stories too fast and then the boring ones like Jax chasing his brother Jerry lasted way tooooooooo long. I really think the writers should actually read these blogs to get a better perspective on what viewers are looking for. I do have to admit I like Sonny and Kate together though. But Georgie -- find her something to do, besides being Spinelli's sidekick, or get her off the show. She needs to do something other than puppy-dog with Spinelli. They must have wondered the same thing or they wouldn't have brought Rick Springfield back!
He was much younger, had a HUGE following with young girls .. (which I think has lost some of that now) and also,
Scorpio with his sexy accent .. Luke and Laura were like the Dynamic Duo of all time .. it just all fit together nice.
now, like us they have GOTTEN OLD! However, I watch TV to be entertained, not have a reality check.
Sex is too much and not enough entertainment.
Need new writers? Maybe .. some that can invision something besides sex scenes and start giving us a reason to watch! I started watching in 81. If you are getting old then so am I. But do think the stories were way better. So were the characters I think. I'm getting tired of all this mob stuff that goes on. I liked the more cloak and dagger stories that Robert and Luke got involved in. Spy stuff is more fun to watch than the mob. I think -- and I was only born in '88 so obviously I wasn't watching then -- that soaps back then probably had a clearer moral structure. The bad guys were allowed to be bad guys, and they were fun to watch but eventually the good guys won out in some way. Even the good characters had flaws, but immoral behavior was presented as just that -- fun to watch and deliciously soapy, to be sure, but it was never held up as the right thing to do. On GH now, the bad guys are good guys and the good guys are made to bow and scrape at their altars. The same characters always win, the villains are constantly glorified, and the audience is constantly told that people who kill people for a living aren't really doing anything wrong. It's not only monotonous, it's downright nonsensical.
Another thing is, they only focus on a handful of characters now, and those characters are always in their own little bubble. GH used to have multi-generational families whose storylines would constantly intersect; those relationships are no longer present, and the great characters are now only trotted out once a year as a meager attempt to retain older viewers. They mistakenly assume that the younger demographics they're really after only want to see teens and twentysomethings; that isn't true. As someone who's squarely in their most coveted age bracket, I can tell you that I'd much rather see a story about Anna and Robert than a story about LuLu and her harem. I've seen entire message boards full of people my age who feel the same. It just goes to show you how completely out of touch the showrunners are with the viewers.
So a short answer to your question would be: You're not getting too old, the writing just sucks. rick springfield was on in the 80's and now he is not...coincedence.....I think not...