Once again from the files of “ohh there’s a shocking low class move”

An open letter to the brain trust at GH –

Can I level with you all?

Are you on medication for insanity?  Are you part of a work release program ABC has set up with a nearby home for the mentall deranged?  Or do you think it’s good business sense to continually piss and insult your audience every single day they stick with you?

I know all of you were there when AMC decided in their brilliance to promote the return of Rebecca Budig while another actress was in the role and actually creating a following and excitement in a new pairing for Greenlee with the rightly bashed “Return of Real Greenlee” campaign.  I’m sure you remember the ads…the ohh so classy countdown running on the main page of ABC daytime’s website.  And I also know you and the entire soap opera community heard the loud outcry and rightful disdain about that campaign from not only the fans but the press.  It was digusting.  Tacky. And it was low class in a way even you hadn’t figured out how to scale. 

So why the hell are you doing the exact same thing?

“Elizabeth’s first love returns”?  Yeah he did…in 2000!  Remember that guy who showed up brainwashed by Helena?  THAT WAS LUCKY.   Remember Jacob Young was on your show? He won an Emmy and you all loudly shoved that in everyone’s face that it was the writing that made Lucky great…not the actor.  (Lord knows you brought it up enough when Greg Vaughan sat down for an interview or if he was within three feet of Jacob for an all ABC event.)  And look here…I hated Jacob Young in the role. At one point I was the co-owner of the Jacob Young Hateration website.   I set up entirely new email addresses so I could get pictures of Jacob from his fans for the sole purpose of bashing him and making rude fanart about his portrayal and the writing for the character. So for me to sit here and lecture you that yes in fact Lucky DID exist before next Tuesday, it must speak to the insane amount of evilness this promo is. 

Plus…see I don’t know if you are aware of this…but Lucky is STILL ON THE FREAKING SHOW.  He’s played by Greg Vaughan. I know he’s making your lives awful right now..what with booking film roles (negating your chance to claim he just couldn’t act) and like talkign to the press and fans about what backstage at GH is actually like.  You know the guy that inspired you all to clamp down on what your stars share on Twitter.  Cause you didn’t have a problem with it when we got intersted in the carn-evil…or when James Franco’s joining GH spread through Twitter like wildfire. It was only when Greg beat your announcement and pretty much prevented you from spinning his FIRING as his totally insane decision to leave while his wife is entering her third trimester with their second child…THEN you had an issue with it.  As a matter of fact…he is in the episodes you are running this promo during.

IT’S NOT LIKE WE DON’T NOTICE THESE THINGS!

Are you now going to tell me I and the entire audience imagined Lucky and Liz’s fairytale wedding? That every time Lucky and Liz were torn apart (Dating BACK to 2000) just to be drawn back together as either friends, lovers, or parents  and thereby giving this couple a major history that is hard to rival in this day and age was nothing becuase ONE ACTOR WASN’T IN THE ROLE?  Do Cameron and Jake now no longer exist because Lucky’s awesomeness as a dad no longers counts? 

Look I’m not shocked you did it. In fact I predicted something like this about three seconds after I heard your announcement.  But for the life of me I do not understand why a show in a genre that desperately needs every viewer they can get delights in treating their viewers like morons who will just accept whatever it is that is told them.

That’s about as surprising as the sun rising in the east…

There are few things in life I enjoy more than seeing an evil entity that I hate get egg on their face in an epic way.  Ususally I am forced to watch fictionally characters do this…but every now and then…it’s a real person.

Like right now..I am 100% enjoying watching ABC Daytime desperately try to spin Lucky-gate to their advantage.

First they released the press release saying Greg had decided to move on and Jonathan was returning.  Too darn bad Greg had beat them to it with his Tweet by about ten minutes that clearly indicated he was fired.  It was still possible ABC could have spun it that Greg’s words were the words of an actor trying to save face….then his co-stars pretty much responded in a manner that indicated they were not expecting this in any way.  Which helped everyone decide fired was the correct story. 

In a classic show of stupidity….GH had decided to fire Greg the same week he had several planned events that he didn’t cancel.  Not to mention pre-taped TV apperance on the New Newlywed Game with his wife.   So clearly he wasn’t going to quietly slink off and never be heard from again like say Jenny Branford or Colton Scott/Steven Martinez.   So people were going to be able to talk to him directly.

Then they try to say that Greg came up with the original spin no one bought and he backstabbed them by changing his mind to a decision they all agreed to.  Yeah, cause I totally think that ABC Daytime held him in such high regard that they would go with a plan he came up with to cover up THEY FIRED HIM. If they thought so highly of him…wouldnt’ they have …I don’t know…NOT FIRED HIM FOR A RATINGS STUNT? 

Of course shortly after that…one of Greg’s good friends on set, Jason Thompson had his own event.  Where he said he didn’t know Greg was gone until he went to talk to Jill about his own contract.  That Jill had assumed he had come to talk to her about Greg.  You know call me crazy here…but if it was Greg’s decision…wouldn’t his friends on the set hear about it from him and not Jill?  Or his Twitter account?  I’m just saying…maybe I have a strange idea of friendship. You tell me.

Now Jonathan Jackson is saying ABC called him out of the blue claiming Greg was moving on.  So they lied to him as well. 

Isnt’ that a shocker?

Yeah…not to me either.

Come on ABC…lets see what insanity you come up with now! It’s the best fun on the internet in ages!

The one where I try not to resort to cursing and crying

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!