GENERAL HOSPITAL: Snubbed by Daytime Emmys, will writers get a clue?

The Daytime Emmy nominations were announced this week and guess what?

General Hospital didn’t do very well.

As a longtime fan of the show, that doesn’t exactly surprise me. I have seen what other diehard fans have seen: Some pretty terrible writing.

Still, for GH to fail on the level it did is pretty astounding?

What am I talking about?

Well, first off, GH was left off the best show list. There were four nominations – and GH wasn’t one of them. 

When there were more soaps, it wasn’t such a big deal to be left off the list occasionally. However, there are only four network soaps now. Four. There were four nominations. You might be asking yourself how GH got left off the list – and that’s a pretty good question.

The fourth soap actually placed on the list was One Life to Live – a program that returned for a very limited online run. A show that had every single person I knew that watched it complaining because it was so bad.

So, there you go. Congratulations GH, you weren’t even nominated in a category that could have nominated

five shows but didn’t.

The other huge snub was the best writing category. There were only three nominations – when five were allowed – and GH didn’t make that list either.

I can’t wait to see how Ron Carlivati justifies this.

RC has been basking in some (undeserved) accolades of late. The ratings for GH were going up – and he was taking credit for them – but the quality was going down (and he certainly wasn’t taking credit for that). Now ratings are starting to go down again -- and I don't see RC tooting his own horn for that little statistic.

The truth is, GH’s ratings spiked around the 50^th anniversary because beloved vets returned. Fans wanted to see Lucy, Kevin, Robin, Robert, Frisco, Brenda, etc.

The problem is, the ratings weren’t real. RC managed to draw back some fans that Bob Guza lost – but he should have whipped out some actual writing to hold on to those fans. Instead, returning fans found that their vets were only being trotted out once a month as a gimmick and RC was much more interested in propping his creations than anything else.

There you have it. For all his bluster and bragging, RC really didn’t care about what fans wanted. Big shocker there.

He claimed he did. He claimed that he was bringing AJ back to reinvigorate the Quartermaines. He claimed

Robin’s return was about her love story with Patrick. He claimed that he was going to go back to GH’s roots and draw from the show’s history to make it better.

Well, guess what? None of those things happened. AJ is dead. Robin and Patrick broke up over the phone (after RC wrote the lamest and utterly unbelievable exit for her possible) and GH’s “history” is wrapped up in characters we’ve never heard of --  like Victor Cassidine.

Our vets and beloved characters are doing things that they would never do if RC was writing them true to character. And, RC's new creations and pets, are eating up the vast majority of airtime on the soap.

It's a total disaster.

Fans have definitely not gotten what they were promised. Instead, we’ve gotten one plot device after another. One plot contrivance after another. One out of character action for a beloved character after another.

That doesn’t sound like respecting fans.

All RC seems to respect is his own agenda. And, as much as I love GH, I can’t help but be glad that the nominating board sent him a clear message: You’re so bad you can’t even get a pity spot on the Emmy list.

Yeah, the nominating board would rather have three writing nominations than offer GH a token bone.

There’s a lesson in there RC. I just don’t think you’re savvy enough to learn it.

What do you think? Should RC take a hint from being snubbed from the best writing and best show categories?