Inside this issue:
|
Well here we are folks! Happy 4th Birthday
Port Charles. Who would have thought that Daytime's lowest-rated
and underrated show would last this long? I did! I did!
A couple of years ago, when PC was only a sophomore show, I wondered if
Port Charles or fellow competitor (basement dweller) Sunset Beach would
make it to their senior year (4th anniversary). Well fate has been
tempted, and the Beach is but a memory, and now Port Charles will give
the valedictory address of the senior class who began in 1997.
And what an interesting 4 years it's been!
It really all began on the 1st of April in
the year 1963 when ABC launched the soap General Hospital, a show depicting
the private and professional lives of doctors and nurses on the 7th floor
West Wing of a metropolitan hospital in the fictional NY State city
of Port Charles (modelled on Buffalo, NY). After 30 incredible years
of passion, politics, and perservearance, TPTB launched a spinoff called
Port Charles. And on June 1st, 1997, ABC launched its latest daytime
drama in prime time (a la Loving).
On that fateful June night, we met for the
first time 11 new players to the game. These players were Chris Ramsey,
Eve Lambert, Jake Marshak, Karen Wexler-Cates, Joe Scanlon, Julie
Morris Devlin, Matt Harmon, Frank Scanlon, Danielle Stanton, Rex
Stanton, and Ellen Burgess. Join new Port Chuck's 11 were old favourites
like Scott Baldwin, and his now older elementary school-aged child Serena
with second great love Dominique, Lucy Coe, and Dr. Kevin Collins.
All seemed quite happy... not so says the armchair critic! Soon we
were tossed into the throes of chaos.
Since that time, PC has been on a never-ending
roller-coaster ride that has seen more valleys than peaks.
The show has taken several severe blows mostly in the production department.
To be more specific, the Head Writer's Chair. With more changes than
Planters(TM) has peanuts, the show has seen 8 different people or teams
occupy the writing department in such a short time. This has
been a recurring theme for ABC shows just before death, and was the
fatal blow to NBC's Another World.. too many changes that is.
The Culliton's (Richard & Caroline) along
with Wendy Riche helped scribble the first months of PC, right up to the
advent of the show's first riskiest ventures, GENERAL HOMICIDE. From
there, murder-she-writes, Lynn Marie Latham took over the reigns of show
and took a very compelling story (in the beginning) and made it into a
mess. Although Latham, who scripted Dallas Spinoff Knots Landing's
brilliant final season, fell flat when designing her trademark OMG surprise
murder-mystery for the freshman show. With such casualties like the
tragic hero Jake Marshak and the scorned Grace Sullivan, the show moved
on making Julie Devlin the killer, in an obvious rip-off from the parent
show's great murder mystery of 1986.
Latham's trashy story soon became Scott M.
Hamner's treasure as he tried to rebuild the show during the show's sophomore
campaign. The peak here was on the anniversary of the first General
Homicide killing, Julie revealed to Chris Ramsey, and the viewers
at home, that was indeed pregnant... very pregnant and that we should deliver
in six weeks. Do the math, and you'd have June 1st!
Hamner's story wasn't so good after that,
after ripping off such films as Star Wars and Austin Powers, that the show
did a winter makeover in the late fall of 1999 sending Hamner packing,
as well as Wendy Riche, and importing Karen Harris (an underling of former
GH scribe Claire Labine) and John Estrin, a writer from Cagney & Lacey.
And... Julie Hanan Carruthers moved into the chair of the EP.
Estrin's vision of the show didn't take off,
and Harris was left to write by herself and in doing so, the show seemingly
got back to its roots (the hospital), and then with the help of Barb Bloom
a new co-head writer, another dud story during the junior year was told
by the show. This was unfortunate since the show didn't know
how to deal with actor Kimberlin Brown. Turning her from Ubervillain
to pussy cat was a let down. This led to yet another change.
PC received a Christmas gift of sorts in the
form of Barbara Estene and James Harmon Brown, who scribbled for GUIDING
LIGHT and cleverly turned ABC's Loving into ABC's The City. They
along with Bloom and Harris would turn PC into a telenovella beginning
with FATE in December 2000, resulting in a 3 chapter arc to end in February.
Although the ratings took a tumble, the writing drove certain characters
into the direction they should have been all along.
And now, on the eve of the 4th anniversary,
PC is about to embark in an uncertain future, and new chapter.
If anything, PC has been persistent, progressive, romantic, and most of
all, ambitious. Rather than close with my usual line, I would like
to borrow from the latest story, Port Charles: Time In A Bottle:
"Soaps will never be the same."
This has been a view from a watcher's Point
of View, namely mine.
|