Happy Holidays, More Viewers Lost

As we finish out the holiday season and turn off General Hospital for the last and final time, it is weighing heavily upon us to let you know why you have lost a multitude of viewers who have literally grown up with your show and are saddened to know that they will not be growing old with it.

It really begins and ends with one sentence:

General Hospital wished us a very merry Christmas for 2007 by presenting us with the disturbing gift of witnessing mass murders and back-to-back funerals.

We are not even sure why we are surprised or disturbed by this event. After all, watching a kindhearted, well-loved character such as Georgie Jones be viciously murdered and left to rot on a frozen ground mere days before Christmas is simply the culmination of your shows sick decline into depravity and depression, as it highlights your contempt for human values and moral decency. Selfless characters with kindness or compassion are treated as second-class citizens not worthy of storylines or respect while the criminals, the morally corrupt, and the insane (which are not necessarily mutually exclusive) are glorified and hailed as the heroes and heroines of Port Charles.

Watching the senseless murder of a gentle character who was born and grew up on this show breaks our heart, but it also breaks our heart to see what a travesty this show has become. The death of Georgie Jones was just the final stop in a descent that began years ago, dating as far back as the decimation of A.J. Quartermaine, if not even further. It is a symbol of what has gone wrong with your show: death has replaced romance; mob violence has replaced intrigue; and the veterans have just been replaced, period.

The constant use of death as a catalyst for a storyline or to create conflict is quite simply lazy writing at its. . . laziest. You show no loyalty to your viewers who are longtime fans of these characters, and who have invested time and emotional commitment in watching them grow and develop. By ending the life of a character who still has years of untapped storylines to explore, you show a complete lack of forethought. And how much easier is it to just kill off an existing character and create a new one, rather than actually show some creativity and think of an intriguing, ongoing storyline which would be even more enjoyable to your audience?

A.J. Quartermaine, Justus Ward, Tony Jones, Alan Quartermaine, Emily Quartermaine, Georgie Jones. Characters whose names were a presence on this show for as far back as we can remember. Characters tied to core families. Some of them born on the show, some of them grew up on it, others simply showed up and established their place as forces to be reckoned with for what should have been generations to come. All of them now dead victims of whichever Sweeps Season they had the misfortune to be a part of.

The treatment of your vets is deplorable. Bobbie Spencer, Monica Quartermaine, Edward Quartermaine, Mac Scorpio, Lesley Webber, and so many others why do you only bring them out for weddings and funerals? The actors who portray these characters are powerhouse performers with the talent to carry any scene theyve proven it time and again. They blow the younger actors away. They should be the backbone of the show, mainstays providing guidance and rounding out a cast heavily laden with unseasoned newcomers. If you look to your competitors, you will see that the shows with higher ratings have learned how to capitalize on the talent and history of their veterans and balance them against the use of the younger cast members.

Robert Scorpio, Holly Sutton, Anna Devane legendary icons who should have been treated with reverence and respect upon their return to your show but were instead turned into caricatures of their former selves. They were good enough to be used as props to woo viewers back to the fold but were apparently not good enough to actually earn intelligent material. Instead of portraying them as the savvy, classy, combustive forces of nature they once were masters of espionage and intrigue they were written as comic relief and trotted out for the occasional laugh a glaring example of your writers not bothering to learn the history of the very show for which they write. Robert Scorpio was many things, but a joke was never one of them.

We will not even deign to name the many odious, obnoxiously self-absorbed, gratingly annoying characters you insist on shoving in your viewers faces, ad nauseam, day in and day out, at the expense of these beloved vets. You seem to be under the mistaken impression that the more you parade these chosen characters across the screen and force them into every scene of every storyline, the more we have to like them. No, we dont. In fact, the more you shovel them down our throats, the more we dislike them, the more they grate on our nerves, and the quicker we fast-forward over the majority of your show. It has gotten to the point where we can literally watch any given episode of General Hospital in five minutes or less. Perhaps if you gave equal airtime to the immensely talented, underused cast you have sitting on the back burner, the numerous flaws and shortcomings of these overexposed characters would not command so much of our attention. We would not have as much time to focus on the little things, such lack of personal development or charm deficiency.

If your show was more well rounded, we also might not notice that the stars of your world lack any sort of moral foundation. Killers are kings, and liars are judge and jury. Dont get us wrong, we personally have no problem with killers, liars, or any other social deviant present on a soap opera after all, they add to the element of good drama. However, there needs to be a balance, and there needs to be an understanding that wrong is wrong and can never be right, no matter how you try to twist it. You cannot have yin without yang, nor can you change physics to suddenly declare up as down.

A killer is a killer and cannot label himself as a good killer, while all other killers are bad. Liars are not noble and do not have the right to declare their lies as acceptable but condemn the lies of others. The corrupt cannot consider themselves superior and look down their noses on others, while shrugging off the sins of their own past. For every criminal, there must a strong, competent legal foil. And for every sinner, there has to be saint. The morally bankrupt should never be confused as the moral compass of a show. Once that happens, the world is truly out of order.

And lastly, romance. Where exactly has it gone? In between shootouts, strangulation, hate sex, and meaningless one-night stands, where is the love in the afternoon? Where is the slow build and yearning between star-crossed lovers that drew us to our television sets each day? Your idea of love is two people meeting and having sex within maybe two months, then declaring their sudden and eternal devotion to each other . . . until the next month. There was a time when a supercouple was defined by the audience, not by the dictate of producers or head writers. These pairings were happened upon and cultivated over time. Two actors shared a scene together and the magic they created was felt by viewers, who immediately clamored for more. We were not informed by The Powers that Be of who the next supercouple was supposed to be and then forced to endure the painfully awkward, stiff interactions of two unfortunate souls who have absolutely no chemistry. Once again, just because you put them on our screen and force us to watch them, does not mean we have to like them.

As a whole, you do not give your viewers enough credit.

So, as you continue to lose viewers, and your ratings continue to drop further down in the polls, perhaps this one letter may give you a little insight into the mind of a few longtime fans who got fed up with the drivel they were being given and decided to say no thank you to any further servings. And as we shut the door on several decades of a once treasured soap opera, and we ring in the new year free from General Hospital and the constant aggravation awaiting us on our Tivos and VCRs after a long day at work, consider this letter our belated Christmas present to you. We only send it, because we care. Maybe, in time, you will care enough to reevaluate the direction you have taken with your show and turn it back into something that can be loved, once again, by viewers of all ages, genders, and nationalities. Because, as we've always said, balance is key.