The introduction of new unrelated characters seemed to become more cumbersome as the years went by. Having some tie-in to Hutch could only have enhanced matters.
Some perfectly nice poster (I can't remember who) said on these boards a few months ago that these shows, the soaps, should supposedly just forget about their pasts and, essentially, simply dispense their contemporary romantic duo/triangle plots. And then never look back.
Y'know, like most of the soaps do anyway. And it often doesn't work.
The problem with that endless
who's-boinking-whom-today-and-who's-mad-about-it? approach to storytelling is that it becomes egregiously superficial and repetitive and, ultimately, soulless and boring. Unless it's anchored to the past in some way. ...That's why the 80s primetime soaps (when they were doing their best work, before they melted down mid-decade) were so phenomenally popular: they were multi-generational telenovels, with secrets and skeletons (sometimes literally) in the basement quietly waiting to reveal themselves, obscured by the noise of the youth and the present.
People just like that kind of stuff. Especially when it's done with a sense of chutzpah, cleverness and game.
The past should be used as a counterpoint, an enhancement, to the modern narrative. And whenever they can connect any
new character to the soap family's past -- without it feeling overly contrived -- that's generally the correct choice.
Without those layers or the correct balance between old-and-new, you wind up with one of those fervent-but-vapid "youth soaps" which no one really remembers long-term, except for tweens because it's what was on TV when they're in school or just out of it.
