The Original TV Score Selection of the Week is saxman Dave Koz’s “Faces of the Heart,” the main and end title theme for General Hospital from 1993 to 2004. Koz grabbed a few notes from “Autumn Breeze,” Jack Urbont’s ’70s and ’80s General Hospital theme (a.k.a. the theme that kicked off with an ambulance siren, one of the most iconic ambo sirens ever), and created from those notes a completely different instrumental: one with a smooth-jazz vibe instead of the orchestral vibe of “Autumn Breeze.”
(The following is a rerun. From my Serializd account, here’s my post about John Oliver’s recent three-episode arc on General Hospital.)
I used to watch General Hospital in the late ’90s. (My memories of the hype surrounding the 1997 episode where Nikolas was accidentally wounded outside Luke’s blues club in a mob hit meant for Jason are here.) The last time I watched an episode of GH was in 2009, when James Franco joined the cast as a villain named Franco. Around that time, the Joel McHale era of The Soup was sometimes fond of rolling clips from GH and pointing out how awful the crime drama half of GH was as trash TV.
Nothing could bring me back to GH. Nothing—except John Oliver.
It turns out that the hilarious Daily Show alum—currently the host of HBO’s still-on-the-air Last Week Tonight—watches daytime soaps like I used to do when I was a UC Santa Cruz student. Unlike Franco, who viewed his recurring role on GH as an act of performance art (my eyes are rolling as I type out those last few words), Oliver begged GH for a role on the show—and the chance to either receive a daytime soap-style slap in the face from one of its cast members or slap a cast member—because he really is a fan. I like how he saw Stephen A. Smith’s bizarre guest appearances on GH as a “computer and surveillance expert” who works for Sonny and Jason and was like, “If he can get a role on GH, then I can, too.”
The final episode of Oliver’s three-episode arc as “Z”—the British head of the World Security Bureau, the intelligence agency many GH characters (including Josslyn Jacks, the daughter of former mob wife Carly Spencer) work for as spies—is kind of a wild ride straight out of Last Week Tonight’s “And Now This” segment and is worth watching. (The WSB first popped up on GH in 1980, when the soap bizarrely shifted towards espionage storylines and battles with Bond villain-style foes like Mikkos Cassadine, who was played by John Colicos, a.k.a. Kor from both Star Trek ’66 and DS9.) Oliver—who played the role of the enigmatic WSB head completely straight and mocked Carly’s American accent at one point, which resulted in the slap in the face he always dreamed of—was clearly having the time of his life.
Most of the guest appearances I saw celebrities do on daytime soaps were awkward. This one was not. I wish Oliver had a longer arc on GH.
According to Laura Wright—the fourth and longest-lasting actress in the role of Carly, which makes her the Tom Baker of Carlys—in a Variety interview, Oliver respected what she and other daytime soap actors do when he was on the set. I love that.
Wright said to Variety, “A lot of times people like to come on and make fun of what we do, and I’m not a big fan of that. Our job is as important as anyone else’s, and we don’t consider it a different type of acting or anything like that. So, I was so impressed with the writing that honored what he does well while also staying true to what we do, and how he showed up and delivered. It was incredible.”
It’s too bad The Soup doesn’t exist anymore because I would have loved to have seen how McHale—Oliver frequently had scenes with him on Community when he recurred as Professor Duncan, Jeff’s best friend from Greendale’s psychology department—would have reacted to his former Community co-star’s daytime soap acting debut. (Oliver also scored a role on Days of Our Lives.)
GH hasn’t changed since 2009. The show is still bonkers: One moment, it’s a solid medical drama that does well-acted and pretty grounded storylines regarding subjects like breast cancer, AIDS, drug addiction, and mental health, and then the next, it’s this ludicrous crime show where a heavily romanticized Mafia does things that would cause Nicholas Pileggi and Martin Scorsese to spit out their sambuca from laughter.