I’m going to try really hard to get through this without resorting to doing nothing more than cursing and banging my fist against the keyboard. While therapeutic, I don’t think that would be very fun to read. And that’s me..always thinking of others.
It’s been four days now (FOUR DAYS? SOB!) and I still can not process what is going on.
Greg Vaughaun…the fabulous, sexy, gorgeous, nice, sweet Greg Vaughan has been fired. And Jonathan Jackson is coming back to a role he abandoned a decade ago.
Now let me start this by saying I adored Jonathan when he was in the role. Loved him. His chemistry with Becky Herbst is the reason why I started watching GH. I cried for days when he left and I prayed daily for this exact situation during those dark times known as the Jacob Young years.
However, I grew to love Greg in the role. He totally brought out Lucky’s Laura’s side, when for far too long all we saw was his Luke. Or his anger. The tendency of Greg’s Lucky to forgive, forget and move on? Laura. His total and complete acceptance of Cameron and Jake? His realization that they didn’t ask to be born into a messy situation and just needed someone to love them? Laura. For all the internet talk of how Jonathan’s Lucky would have never been a cop, I have always been able to see it. Lucky was raised to protect the people he cared about, to not sit around and wait for someone else to do it for him. He was raised to accept a challenge, which is exactly what Mac offered him when he told Lucky if he thought he could solve the case better than Mac, he should go through the Academy. Plus Lucky turned his back on everything to do with his father and trading on his father’s name after he found about the rape. And if you want to talk random ass career choices, making Lucky a photographer was more WTF than a cop.
Greg was not given the writing Jonathan was but that was not surprising. The writers that gave Jonathan the great stories were largely gone. The Labines wrote his orginal stuff. Michelle Val Jean, while still on staff, is in a vastly less important role. The great dialgoue writer Patrick Mulcavey is gone. Bob Guza was never credited or seemed interested inwriting for Lucky Spencer. EVER. I mean most agree he was the brain trust behind “Who Stole the English Test?” and OMG did that storyline SUCK! The time between Jonthan Jackson leaving and Jacob Young taking over the role was characterized by the show rapidly starting the trend we all now know all too well. A character is pitted against Jason and they are thrown under the bus. We call it AJ-ing. Characters that are a threat to Jason and Sonny as the heros and sainted saviours of us must be marginalized. I know this gets missed but when Jacob Young came on, the show was doing the first teasing of the Jason/Liz pairing. Folks don’t we all know how a triangle with Jason goes by this time? OF COURSE the writing for Lucky changed.It had to. Lucky Spencer is the charcter MOST point to as who should be the hero. Clearly you can’t write him well and still have Jason as the hero. I mean come on people really. And if you think that’s magically going to change now that Jonathan is back in the role then I suggest you resist the urge to buy that beachfront property in Kansas and check yourself into your local Shadybroke immediately because you are delusional.
Greg did his best with crap that GH gave him. And he was always gracious and classy with the fans. I can think of several other actors that wouldn’t allow fans to basically sexually harras them for seven years straight without much of a fuss. I understand that soaps do the whole court another actor while having another on the show things happen all the time. It’s a business and this was probably a business decison.
HOWEVER, the douchebaggy lying is unexcusable.
This is not the first time GH has done this. It is clearly the same thing that they did to Colton Scott when Tyler Christopher wanted back. Except that time Colton was legitimately in contract talks. Greg was not. They did the same thing to Jenny Branford with Laura Wright. They admitted Laura had been their first choice, she turned them down and they hired Jenny. Laura then reconsidered and Jenny was outed. It sucked for her because *unpopular opinoin alert* Ithought she ROCKED when Carly went all nuts. She was fabulous! But at least ABC was honest about it.
They are not being honest now. In fact they are being downright disrespectful asses about the whole thing.
Greg tweeted that the show decided to take Lucky in a different direction. Which is Hollywood talk for fired. It happens and the timing for Greg is awful. His co-stars responded in a manner that indicated they were stunned by the news and heartbroken. They sent word of their sadness, shock and said how horrible this news was to them. It spoke of a man who is well liked by his co-stars, not because it is the company line to say you are a close cast but beacuse he was a genuninelly nice guy. Then no more than ten minutes later ABC Daytime sent out their press release, saying Greg had chosen to vacate a role and wow Jonathan Jackson was just happening to step in three days later.
Look brain trust at ABC…I may not have a PHd in physics like my father, but I am not a brain dead moron either.
Really? We want to go with a story that just before sweeps are about to film, when most people suspect Lucky is going to get a point of view adn a storyline…where he’s going to GET a reaction to being dicked over (unlike the whole Jiz fiasco) and actually be angry about it, a storyline and possibility Greg seemed geniunely excited about doing…a storyline that Greg had spent weeks and months laying the groundwork for…and he’s going to walk away for other projects, none of which he’s mentioned to anyone, with a wife that is a scant few months away from giving birth to thier second child? In this economy? You know Greg had never come off as a brain dead moron to me. And you’d have to be if you willingly walked away like that.
Also if you are the one who is walking away, then your friends and co-stars are not shocked and saddened by this news. You know what that is? Beacuse you’re the one who told them. …not over Twitter but in person. While you are preparing to leave.
Oh and it’s just a happy concidence the actor who hasn’t played this role for a decade is coming three days AFTER the current guy leaves to start filming? Yeah again I have the basic idea of how hiring processes work. Even my part time job at a department store took longer to set up than three days.
If you were going to lie fine…I can’t stop you. I’m just a blogger in Kentucky who has about seven readers. But seriously…at least get your entire team in on the lie. Doing it this way is not only disrespectful to the departing actor but to the fans.
Am I surprised by the douchebaggery? No. I clearly remember the “Real Greenlee” fiasco. I read Bob Guza’s defense of Michael getting shot in the head as a justifiable consequence for growing up with amoral psychos as role models. I read Brian Frons’s classless “oh well so sad” comments about Guiding Light’s cancellation. Am I not surprised by the dismissing of the intelligence of the fans. I do watch those “trials” they try to sell us as suspenseful and where they act like none of us have ever seen an episode of Law & Order ever.
What is pissing me off is they are doing this to a guy who in all likelyhood will never strike back at them. Greg most likely won’t ever set the record straight or go on record about how all this is making him feel. He doesnt’ have that reputation. They are clearly going to act like they are “fixing” the issues fans have and will also probably try to dismiss all the complaints about the crap writing Lucky has had for the past decade as just not having the right actors in the role, dismissing both Jacob and Greg’s contributions to the role.
They are being classless assholes to a guy who has been nothing but class.
So I am saying this as a former Jonathan fan…as one who admits I will probably watch……and who knows saying Team anything is so 2003…….but in this case….
TEAM GREG!
Sarcastic Clapping 