Dion

Some potentially very minor spoilers but I think they've aired now in the UK anyway.

I assume so. I forgot to factor in John's preisthood so that does make me wonder about Brady though as IIRC he was actually born during the ceremony and thus was technically illegitimate at birth. Brady would be made legitimate by his parent's marriage provided and there was no diriment impediment that prevented John and Isabella from being married at Brady's conception or birth or at some immediate time afterward. But of course there was an unknown diriment impediment since John was a priest and Isabella was long dead when that impediment was removed. However, since the church appears to favour legitimation then I guess any reasonable ruling would be that John and Isabella's marriage after Brady's birth would have still made Brady legitimate as the diriment impediment was unknown.

Yes, I think RoJohn and Marlena's marriage would be considered putative up until the time the real Roman returned as both parties really did believe John was Roman. So if they had had a child born to them before Roman returned that child would be legitimate. After Roman returned however, it automatically made their marriage null so John and Marlena didn't have to pursue an annulment.

This is a very interesting set of questions so I looked up https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/legitimation after seeing your post. My understanding from that is that the Alex North retcon would not - on its own - make Marlena's kids Illegitimate in the eyes of the church as Marlena did not remember her marriage to Alex and thus her subsequent marriages, provided they met certain criteria, were entered into in good faith and would thus be considered putative marriages. How the other marriages - to Don and Anna - effect this I cannot be certain. I don't think Roman and Marlena would be allowed to marry in the church even if their previous marriages weren't in the church so perhaps they both magically got Catholic annulments offscreen lol. In any case, Carrie would likely considered to be the result of a putative marriage and thus still legitimate in the eyes of the church. Belle is a bit more complicated. Not entirely sure what the deal is there. I think she would have been considered the legitimate child of Roman up until physical proof (I guess the DNA test?) was presented that John was her natural father and then possibly made legitimate when John and Marlena married in 1999. If we assume she was legitimate at the time that Marlena was revealed to have been married to Alex then her status would not change.

She probably could have had most of Karen's storylines. The only one that wouldn't fit would of course be the initial storyline with Blake finding her at the diner as Faith and discovering that she was Caroline's long lost twin. The rest - triangle with Thorne and Macy, working with Spectra, being Brooke's confidant until they fell out over Connor, her relationship with Connor etc all seem to be storylines that Donna could've had.

Shane Warne's death came just hours after the death of another Cricketing legend Rod Marsh who passed away yesterday after suffering a heart attack a few weeks back Sadly, Warne's last tweet was a tribute to his mate:

Basically I think the backstory was that Craig and Nancy were high school sweethearts until (and I'm not entirely sure of this next part) Nancy's father split them up. Nancy was then raped by a business associate of her father's and erroneously thought that the rapist was Chloe's father so gave her up (Again I think her father may have played some part in convincing Nancy to give the child up). Years passed and Craig and Nancy reunited and married shortly before coming to Salem in '98 (in fact I'm pretty sure that in '97 when Craig was first introduced at the medical conference Mike and Carrie he was with a completely differently named woman at the time but six months later he was with Nancy - although that all may have been a retcon). Eventually Chloe came back into Nancy's life and when Chloe came down with Leukemia they tracked down Nancy's rapist only to learn that he was sterile. Craig then ran a DNA test and learned he was Chloe's father.

Joe was paired with Heather though and they were probably second only to Luke and Laura in terms of airtime during most of 1981. Summer Madness by Kool and the Gang played during their scenes on a few occasions, so I consider it their defacto theme song lol.

Some episodes after the failed double wedding, Dante pulled a gun on Peter "to complete his mission", but Sam showed up and stopped him and I think she took him to Kevin for a deprogramming session that took place off screen.

I think I read somewhere that in the end Marlena (and Marlena alone since Roman was presumed dead by this point) offered to change Baby Eric's name but Kim gave her blessing to keep it (I think for her it was a way to reclaim the name from her uncle). This type of story was a recurring theme in Irna's work, possibly because she herself had a stillborn child at the age of 19 after being abandoned by her boyfriend. For example on GL, Kathy Roberts married Bob Lang, he died and Kathy married the respectable doctor Dick Grant and passed off Robin as his for a time.

I think Marlena was the person Lee trusted enough to tell her secret that Renee was her daughter by Stefano. And Marlena was there for Renee during the strangler storyline and became a sort of mother/sister figure after Lee left. When Renee told off the entire town for making her miserable, she specifically pointed out Marlena and Chris as her friends to - i guess - let them and the rest of the town know that her attack wasn't aimed at them.

And like Gary, Garrison also had a drinking problem. IIRC they never actually showed Garrison's death, the episode ended on an upbeat note with Garrison and Miss Ellie taking a walk around the ranch, now fully reconciled as siblings with the terminally ill Garrison planning on spending his last days at Southfork. And then - like most self-contained shows of the era - Garrison was nowhere to be seen in the next episode so it can be assumed that he passed away between episodes.

There's an interview with June Lockhart where she explained some of this. In the interview June says that Mariah is descended from Maxmilian even though Amelia is supposed to be the mother of Mariah's husband rather than Mariah. But given it's "royalty" we're dealing with here it's not much of a stretch to assume that Mariah and her husband were cousins even if it was never stated onscreen.

Yeah they've been amicable for a while but having deep and meaningfuls seems a bit too much. Carly's closest female friend would probably be Olivia - which is somewhat strange in itself because Carly usually tends to feel threatened by Sonny's exes. As far as I remember Carly and Olivia haven't ever really fallen out in the 13 years Olivia has been around. I think their friendship started because of a mutual hatred of Claudia lol.

So I guess it took Felicia to do the job noone else was able to do lol

Oh yes. I automatically read the date on the video as Day Month Year instead of Month Day Year so thought it was from July 4, 1993 lol

That must have been for their 15th anniversary of the first wedding (perhaps in lieu of an onscreen celebration since AJ and Jason had been SORASed?)

I think there was a big update in 1991 that added characters like Olivia, Dru (although they may have been added the year before, i'm not sure), Neil, Victoria, Ryan and Flo. And then I think there wasn't another one until 1993 when they added Blade, Cole and Hope. So there definitely was an opportunity to put Sheila in the open, though for whatever reason they didn't.

I'm still a little skeptical they'll go there but it certainly feels like it's being written that way.

One interesting thing to note about the Ice Princess storyline was that while Luke and Laura, Robert and Tiffany etc were on that Island during the blizzard, pretty much the rest of the show was dedicated to the emergency response centered on the hospital, which I don't know was repeated to such an extent in later years.

Yeah that's called block storytelling and is used in UK soaps (which also have bloated casts and only half-hour episodes). And actually GH does do that to an extent - its but it's just that a small group of characters (Sonny, Carly, Jason before he was "killed off" again) get to be on all the time and are never rotated out. One thing I liked about RC's run around the time of the 50th anniversary was that there seemed to be an attempt to equalise things a bit more. For example, Sonny and Kate/Connie didn't appear for weeks while other storylines were playing out.

Cricket was trying to set them up and I think they went on a few dates but Nina's head was almost immediately turned by Ryan; John Silva briefly entertained the notion of fighting for her but in the end gave up and that was that.

I agree. They've basically been hinting at it with Alexis and Harmony for months now. Whether or not GH will actually go there remains to be seen but with care and taken slowly I could see those two together.

The one when Lauren first came on B&B for one of the fashion shows. Sheila went to her hotel to confront her, seemingly getting into a minor car accident along the way. Sheila and Lauren then had a confrontation; Sheila smashed a glass vase or something over Lauren's head and tied her up - or so it seemed. Then we see Sheila wake up in hospital and it turned out that the car accident was more serious than had been shown and her meeting with Lauren was all just a dream.

Finola Hughes and Michelle Stafford were on Pacific Palisades together back in '97