but i suspect that the writers believed(rightly or wrongly)that after all that had preceeded it they couldn't return to more "normal" soap opera storytelling because it might turn off those "kids that ran home from school".they needed to constantly sate the pre-teen attention span.
i loved the jason mcquire blackmail plot but it's unlikely that it would have rivited many twelve year olds.
in some ways they created a monster.the youth audience brought the show its greatest success but they became captive of it and could never again gear a storyline strictly at an adult audience.
Adults need their imaginations stimulated, too. Jason McGuire was a well-done character and storyline for what it was, but it's such a relief to see it end, and see the last vestiges of 1966-type DS dissipate, knowing things are now really going to take off. For me, watching the Barnabas and McGuire storylines going on simultaneously is strange, because it's like seeing the old DS and the new DS at the same time, perhaps vying with each other. Then, when the two storylines merge, with Barnabas finally getting around to giving some of his personal attention to the Jason problem (dealing with it as a good family man like Tony Soprano might), it really seems to me as if the brave new DS is strangling the life out of the reserved, patience-trying, both-feet-squarely-on-the-ground old DS.