GH in Review: May Sweeps
by Arda Darakjian Clark
Introduction:
The citizens of Port Charles have been busy, busy, busy. In fact, their days
have been so jam-packed that the poor writers have had to allocate several episodes
to show just a day's worth of activities. At least, I think that's the reason
why the characters have shown up day after day wearing the same clothes. It's
possible (as George once suggested to Jerry on Seinfeld) that we've simply
catching the Port Charles folks on "the cusp of a wash cycle."
The reason I'm uncertain is that there were inconsistencies in the way the
element of time was handled. On the one hand, The Powers That Be displayed great
efforts (such as having the characters in the same clothes) to make sure viewers
understood that a given episode was taking place on the same day as the prior
episode (and the prior 4 or more episodes). On the other hand, on several occasions
in May episodes, characters implied or stated that an event had occurred several
days or weeks ago when in fact, by the story's own timeline, the event had taken
place a day or two ago.
I don't think allocating multiple episodes to depict a single day is necessarily
a bad thing. A whole month's worth of episodes could certainly be used to show
a single day in Port Charles. Or a whole year's worth of episodes could be used
to depict a single day from the perspective of 12 characters. I don't think such
a timeline would play well, but in theory it could be done as long as the writers
and the actors didn't forget that they're still working on the same day.
I can certainly understand why the writers and actors lost track of time. Many
times they were in fact referring to an event on an episode that aired days or
weeks ago. But when it takes five or six or seven episodes to show a day's worth
of events, surely someone ought to do the math and realize that something shown
2 weeks ago was taking place 2 days ago in General Hospital time.
Stretching or collapsing time to fit the needs of storytelling is a perfectly
acceptable device in soap operas. Using a series of episodes to show a single
day is fairly common. However, in order to give the illusion that time is moving
forward, skilled writers will open the episode that follows such a series of episodes
on a day that seems to be a few days later. In other words, when several episodes
are taken to depict a single day, there needs to be the illusion of a gap in time.
This illusion allows for a character to refer to something as having happened
last week, for example, without causing viewers to scratch their heads.
I have tried to figure out why TPTB have found it necessary to adopt this unusual
handling of time. Is it to save money on wardrobe? Don't the actors object to
wearing the same clothes day after day? Do they get dry-cleaned in between tapings?
Or do the wardrobe people buy multiples of the same clothes? Wouldn't that defeat
the object of saving money on wardrobe?
I believe that the real reason for the mismanagement of time is, sadly, the
ineptitude of the writers. The current emphasis on the show seems to be on shock
value and the dubious pursuit of ending every episode with a cliffhanger, thus
forcing the next episode to open on the same day as the prior episode. In fact,
virtually every scene lately seems to end in a cliffhanger. Take for example the
scene in the hospital where Bobbie shook a dozing Luke awake, saying, "it's
Lucas." Since Lucas had been a coma, I imagine the writers' intent was to
have the audience think the worst. The scene faded, and after the commercial break,
Bobbie explained that Lucas had completely recovered. I recognize and appreciate
the need for veiled comments and cliffhangers in soaps, but there seems to be
such an abundance of these devices lately that I've come to see them as gratuitous.
The old adage "If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with
bullshit," seems to be the guiding principle of the current regime.
But even when I recognize the problem of daily cliffhangers, I am still baffled
by the reluctance to create gaps in time. Packing events into one day is entirely
unnecessary. There were several points where a gap in days could have been created.
For example, Sonny could have spent more than one day in jail. Lucas could have
remained sick longer. Or there could have been a lapse of several days the arcade
scene where Lucky proposed to Elizabeth and the engagement party that took place
the very next day.
The May episodes showed a total of five continuous days. The episode of May
1 was the last episode depicting the day that began with the episode of April
25. For the purposes of this review, I've identified this day as Day One. As a
point of reference, Day One is:
- one day after Lucky administers Helena's virus to Lucky and Sonny receives
a bomb for his birthday
- two days after Roy was shot and Edward was "mugged," and
- three days after the Deception party at Luke's club.
There are no time gaps between the days depicted. Day Two is the day after
Day One, and Day Three is the day after Day Two, and so on. I have elected to
not discuss Day Five in this review because as of this writing, Day Five, which
began with the episode of May 29, has still not ended.
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