ABC’s 60 year old soap, “General Hospital,” is always in some kind of trouble.
Today the show fired co-headwriter Patrick Mulcahey. He’d been on the job for two months, with Elizabeth Korte. In that time, the show dropped precipitously in the ratings, falling below the 2 million mark in viewers.
Mulcahey managed to destroy characters’ pre-existing relationships with each other to the point where everyone was arguing with each other onscreen. I guess he thought friction would be dramatic, but it was just annoying.
The old writer, Chris van Etten, will succeed Mulcahey and rapidly fix all the chaos. Soap fans don’t want characters shouting at each other and saying nasty things about them. You can have fun, but it has to be within parameters. All TV shows work only if the characters like each other — even villains.
This poor show. I’m told they have one young actress who’s doing 90 days in jail for a big DUI. Two of the older actors are missing entirely. One other actor is returning after cancer treatment. It sounds like a soap opera!
