Port Charles

Okay, it began as a simple spin-off of General Hospital, a very famous and very good ABC Daytime Soap Opera. It began with only a few main characters, including General Hospital's Lucy Coe, Kevin Collins, and the old character Karen Wexler. The show started off VERY slowly, with storylines progressing even slower. Character developement was OKAY, but Port Charles was missing something... exciting storylines.

About a year into the series, the writers decided to spice things up a bit with a truckload of new storylines, such as Courtney Kanelos making her way to Port Charles, and the most irritating storyline of daytime television: "General Homicide." This was, in my opinion, the writer's way of getting half the cast off the show. This was definately the worst plot I've ever seen.

When things looked bad, new writers came to the show and saved it. They came up with GREAT storylines, such as Joe's battle with possible HIV, and Karen's addiction to pain killers. Character development was at its peak.

Mid-2000. Enter "Port Charles Fate." NEVER IN MY LIFE have I seen such a dumb thing. Port Charles has a new format. Every twelve weeks there is a new storyline that involves new characters, while the other characters are left out completely. Can you say "no?" Some of the storylines are like science fiction novels! Will Port Charles ever change back to the decent show it used to be? Time will tell.

I turned into PC during the end of Tainted Love. I love the story arc idea, at least each series has an ending. It's not as overpowering as Dark Shadows and it has interesting twists. The actors are colorful and the supernatural story lines are intriguing while keeping to the typical "love triangle" of ancient soaps. Brian Gaskill and Erin Hershey shine as the Super Couple. Lynn Herring is great, "Livvie" is the typical "soap bad girl, and "Caleb" speaks for himself. The show definitely needs more air time. I would love to see it go to one hour!

When this GENERAL HOSPITAL spin off first hit the airwaves in the summer 1997, it had originally centered around a new group of young interns living, loving, and working at General Hospital. To inspire GH viewers to watch this show, longtime GH characters Scotty Baldwin, Lucy Coe and Kevin Collins crossed over to PC. About four years later, the format switched to story arcs, and vampires, angels, demons, and werewolves abounded. Lucy Coe, one of the long-running characters on GH became a vampire slayer on this show. One of the characters on this show was Livvie Locke, who was the long-lost daughter of Kevin Collins. Alison Barrington, granddaughter of Port Charles' society maven Amanda Barrington was also a presence here. Unfortunately, this show was cancelled way before its time.

It doesn't surprise me that Port Charles has been cancelled. I was never a big watcher of it but I started heavily watching it during the last arc, which I believe was well I don't remember the name of the arc but it was on between about April and June of 2003. Then I started watching the next arc and then I just stopped watching because I couldn't keep up with all the tapes I had stacking up. I don't know really what to say about the cancellation. I feel that some of the actors on this particular soap can't really act. One of them is Erin Hershey-Presley. I really don't feel like her acting is superb and Lynn Herring, who's been a veteran soap star for years is lacking in substance too. Maybe the writing for them is too teeniebobpish. I guess they need to shoot some pilots and show them to test audiences. I feel like bad acting and indecent writing is the reason why Port Charles is being cancelled. What's next, General Hospital? This is another soap that is just reaking havoc on plots and characters to keep audiences interested and by telling viewers they can catch the entire episode on SOAPNET tonight is no good if 1) they don't have soapnet and 2) their cable/satellite provider does not carry it.

It took only moments for me to formulate an opinion of this show. Once again, the brilliance of acting must suffer to mind dead scripts geared toward the key demographic that is, painfully, thirty and under.

Soap opera actors are a breed apart. They are called upon to learn pages of dialogue, just for a single show, CONSTANTLY. The actors here are no different. I can see that if they were given a REAL script to work with they could be extremely dynamic. Unfortunately, the need to work or contractual agreements kept them chained to this rehashed GARBAGE. This re-treaded idea that was sorry when it was "Xena", which was borrowed from the Hercules sagas [The Legendary Journeys] [[garbage], which borrowed from old Sinbad story lines that was campy GARBAGE back in the sixties and seventies. The actors must be positively relieved to not have to be chained to this foolishness any longer.

You see we are in a midst of a full blown ANTI RENAISSANCE of creativity. To actually NOT blatantly "borrow" from someone ELSES ideas that worked in the past is unheard of. This generation believes that since there's about one hundred years of recorded media to "borrow" from that they don't have to "waste time" by thinking up something NEW. Young people don't see the need to ABSORB knowledge when you can look up anything you need to find on the internet. This rubbish hit me in the gut as hard as when I heard the singer Little Romeo, "borrow" from Biz Markie's song "Just a Friend" a few years ago. That "artist" had borrowed from a song barely a decade old. I'd already been forced to live through the seventies AGAIN. How soon will I find myself looking @ kids with tall, box cut haircuts and "Cross Colors" yet again?

I've said it to friends and I'll say it to those who read this: I STILL remain optimistic that ONE DAY I will turn on a radio and NOT here music from MY past rehashed and desecrated by some blithering X or Y generation buffoon. ONE DAY, I'll turn on the television and NOT see herds of people contriving "reality" for some moronic coward living for free in his parent's basement to WATCH because he's too scared to go outside and experience it HIMSELF.

Now.I await rebuttals against what I've written here, no doubt presented in ALL CAPS, run together sentences, ridiculous grammar and lots of sentences using lowercase " i " to refer to themselves with. You'd think a generation raised on computers would know how the spell check function works on their word suites but then again, who do you copy THAT from?