The much-heralded return of Anthony Geary as Luke Spencer's lookalike cousin Bill Eckert in 1991 was also not well received. Monty was fired in late 1991. While ABC declined to comment, a representative from another ABC soap was quoted: "She was hired 1991 to take the show from No. 2 to No.1, and instead she made it No. 7." Some credited the decline in ratings to Monty's focus on male characters, leaving the mostly-female audience without characters to identify with. Monty was also criticized for using "General Hospital" as a platform for a new series she was working on with ABC. Marla Hart of the "Chicago Tribune" described Monty's second stint: "She abandoned the soap's most endearing stories, inelegantly dismissed actors and introduced characters from out of the blue, until "GH" became one long non sequitur."