This stuff barely flew during the cold war years, but now it seems archaic and dated. With the world of technology and modern drugs, mind games etc, this stuff seems like it is definitely from the 80's. And a story driven almost entirely by 80's actors has a polarized group attracted to it and excludes others from a very time consuming part of this show.
The Nurses Ball, an event that cries out for the regulars on this show to be initiating it and be heavily involved is handed to two new characters that are too bad to be forgettable.
The one story other than Sonny that I might watch has a DOG tossed into it and is ridiculously presented now.
Sonny's stories, as you say, revolve around two characters that many Sonny fans are either totally annoyed by, totally indifferent too, or bored to death from lack of action or movement.
Everyone appears in mini-scenes that flit by faster than one can type. Dead people return like ghosts in a cemetery and besides the Livers, the golden oldies, we have a flock of annoying young women hovering over the hospital doing everything but medical procedures.
The show is a series of disjointed stories, not a one driven by one of the main characters I watched for over the years. Not one.
Carly flits from rapist to jerk to loser, while Sonny fields insults from a runaway bimbo and is stuck with perennial loser AJ as his story partner. Liz is the hospital lonely hearts counselor and gossip and even McBain must wonder what the heck he is really doing on this show.
