Why we should watch General Hospital

When a ship is sinking you should jump, right?  Not if you can save the ship and its passengers.  The sinking ship I am referencing of course is General Hospital and the viewers are its captain.  I think fans can make a difference before this soap becomes dead in the water.

So why do I think that it is so important to for General Hospital to stay on the air?  To be honest General Hospital hasn’t been that great lately - even downright dreadful at some points.  If a show isn’t entertaining me, I usually don’t care if it lives or dies.  But this is different.  General Hospital is part of a genre that I love.

General Hospital hasn’t always been this lifeless.  For a long time it was very entertaining and popular.  It had the most famous super couple of probably all time and adventurous storylines with spies, gangsters, and evil rich widows played by Elizabeth Taylor.  Unfortunately the adventure has been replaced by long depressed conversations about being depressed, the gangsters have overtaken the show, and James Franco is no Liz Taylor.  These things need to change.

General Hospital’s biggest problem right now is the writing and sad story lines.  This is on it’s way to being fixed via new executive producer and head writer.  The old creative team was killing the show.  I’m not saying that Frank Valentini and Ron Carlivati are going to save the show but it’s a step in the right direction.  What they did with One Life To Live this last year was amazing and fun to watch.  Added bonus - Carlivati is a long time fan of General Hospital so he cares about the show.

Another reason to start watching General Hospital again is the addition and return of some fan favorite characters and soap actors.  No offense to Mr. Franco but this is what TPTB should have been doing to try to boost ratings in the first place.  Franco’s character was just a little too out there and did nothing to boost ratings.  It just ended up being something for Joel McHale to make fun of on The Soup.  On the other hand, bringing back popular characters who have family connections to the show and can be easily worked into current character story lines in a positive way makes more sense.  And, although a little controversial, bring in popular One Live to Life characters to fill in some missing character gaps (Starr as the smart young leading lady and John as the hero type) is in my opinion a smart move.

So with some of the creative changes on the way for General Hospital, I am remaining optimistic that the show can once again become must see TV.  I think that fans of the soap genre should give the show a try if they aren’t watching.  If after a few weeks you just don’t like it you can always stop watching but I have a feeling that some good things are about to happen.

Another major reason to watch General Hospital is that there are only four daytime soaps left now and it would be a tragedy for that number to drop even more.  Soap fans need to send executives the message that we would rather watch soaps than cheaply put together “educational” reality programing.  TV executives don’t care about our feelings or the soap genre at all really but they love money and ratings.  It’s not enough to just not watch The Chew and The Revolution.  If those shows have low ratings they will just be placed with other shows like them.  However if ratings for soap operas increase and fans show a demand for them, we may not only be able to keep the soaps that we have but maybe the number of daytime dramas can increase again in the future.