Dion

5 minutes ago, OzFrog said:

does Spencer ever acknowledge his mother’s side of the family? I mean, does he know for example that his grandfather recently passed away from dementia

He went to visit Mike's grave on July 8

6 hours ago, Paul Raven said:

What caused Bobbie to reform?

I believe Bobbie woke up to herself a bit when one of her schemes to come in between Laura and Scotty caused Laura such emotional distress that Laura took off and got into a serious car accident. Bobbie stopped pursuing Scott and got into a relationship with Roy, only to have her past as prostitute exposed shortly afterwards. Roy didn't take it well and got drunk and caused a scene at the disco on the same night as Luke raped Laura; as a result Roy was one of the suspects after Laura was found in the park. Roy was later "killed" after taking Luke's place during the botched hit which left Bobbie alone. Over the next year or so she mainly concentrated on her nursing work and being a supporting player in Luke and Laura's storylines and had definitely matured a lot by the time Noah Drake came to work at GH.

11 hours ago, soapfave06 said:

Why do you say he would have hated Todd Manning? 

Perhaps because Reilly wrote Jack Deveraux out in 1993 (before recasting him the following year); killed him off in 2003 - only to bring him back for him to be presumed dead twice more during Reilly's second stint.

5 hours ago, Liberty City said:

Plus, didn't they do Dubai and Monte Carlo, too?

They did both. Dubai and Abu Dhabi in a trip in 2014, Monte Carlo in 2017.

10 minutes ago, carolineg said:

I feel like GH looks like a million bucks compared to Days, but when you think of the fabulous location shoots they used to do it is sad.

When was the last big location shoot GH did? Puerto Rico was obviously the huge one of the 90s and then I think there were smaller ones (Malibu for Jax and Brenda)...anything else?

On 7/13/2021 at 5:28 PM, amybrickwallace said:

Was the storyline involving GH's Felicia and her daughters in summer 1997 with a mysterious doll(s) supposed to end differently? It seemed to be heading for a sinister turn, and then it had a very abrupt and happy end. To me, that counted as a dropped storyline.

I think somebody else here (apologies for not remembering who) said Guza ditched it when he came back in 1997.

10 minutes ago, carolineg said:

Didn't he end up killing Chloe?

Stavros killed Chloe.

Stefan killed Summer whilst trying to kill Emily.

9 minutes ago, DRW50 said:

I remember reading about mentions of Audrey having a gun in her toilet lid, or something.

yeah on the night of Peggy's murder, Audrey came home with Tommy in an agitated state and hid a gun in her toilet tank. I'm not sure if it may have been the actual murder weapon or if it may have been Audrey's own gun and the writers were just setting up a red herring, as they do.

3 minutes ago, DRW50 said:

I know soap  characters are often forgotten, but it's a bit odd at how forgotten Diana Taylor is  when you consider she was a main star of the show for much of the '70s. I suppose the irritating turn from Brooke Bundy (sorry to any fans) and her winding her run down as a plot device for Heathermania is a big reason why. I like all I've seen from Valerie Starrett. 

yes, she seems to have been the favorite of the Dobsons but once they left Diana was relegated to secondary status and Lesley took over as the female lead.

3 minutes ago, carolineg said:

For some reason I do remember them interacting or having a moment.  I honestly thought it happened and I missed or it was mentioned and occurred basically off screen.   Of all the Rick re-writes this one doesn't bother me at all.  At least it vaguely makes sense for both characters.

Yeah it was the kinda rewrite that I suppose could have happened off-screen and I think you are right that Monica and Rick did have a moment or two; Alan's jealousy certainly did flare up when Rick returned.

But the actual affair part itself was never mentioned til the storyline where Lulu and Dillon started looking for Rick's killer.

On 7/5/2021 at 6:44 PM, DRW50 said:

I think the idea is that the show was in good form until the early '70s, where it slowly began to decline (peaking with Audrey's passing Tom Hardy off as someone else's baby, or being on trial, or something), then really began going into freefall around 1974 or so when they began dumping actors en masse. 

yeah that seems about right. After Audrey's trial, the show managed to generate a bit of interest with Phil, Diana and Peter; once Phil was murdered and the whodunit wrapped up, the already squeaky wheels just fell right off.

Regarding Audrey: the video posted by @Vee (where Audrey tells Liz about her rape) briefly mentions the story with Tom Hardy. Basically Tom Baldwin (Audrey's second husband, Lee Baldwin's brother) had raped Audrey. Audrey fell pregnant and fled town (Rachel Ames was pregnant and needed bed rest at the time so this was a maternity leave). Audrey later came back claiming that the child, Tom, had died (very similar to the current situation with Maxie). However Tom was with a nanny, Peggy Nelson. Peggy began blackmailing Audrey and was later murdered. Audrey was put on trial for the crime, but it turned out Peggy's ex husband was the culprit.

4 hours ago, Vee said:

Anybody else do a spit-take at this [!@#$%^&*]?!

2007: Dillon is investigating the murder of Rick Webber, probably on some Lulu mess. Alan rather comically assumes Monica killed him, but Monica and Alan casually start discussing how Monica had resumed her affair with Rick in the summer of '02. Say what?! I've never seen this before but I was watching in '02 and I am 99.9% certain this resumed affair never actually happened.

It was a rewrite pretty much designed to give Alan and Monica stronger motives for killing Rick.

7 hours ago, ChitHappens said:

I'm confused.  How did we go from the families accepting Carly as the new leader to Jarly need to get married to save Port Charles  and keep Carly safe? 

3 hours ago, Liberty City said:

Because of a potential power struggle between Carly and Jason for control of the organization? Moving from Carly to Jason within a snap-second shows there is vulnerability, and likely that Carly was incapable of handling the organization.

You're along the right lines but it's more the perception than reality. The problem is that Carly stepped up during the meeting when Jason was unavailable and so seemingly took control of the Corinthos organization. With Jason back, the other families now have the perception that there is a power struggle when in fact that is not the case. Carly and Jason remain incredibly loyal to each other and Carly has agreed to step aside. However the other families expect Jason to get rid of Carly since to them she is a potential rival and if he doesn't they'll erroneously conclude that the Corinthos organization is vulnerable and start to attack. Carly and Jason can still fend off these attacks quite easily, but these attacks are not good for business and may also lead to their families being targeted. So now the idea is for them to get married so that the other families will view them as a team rather than potential rivals.

On 6/23/2021 at 12:30 PM, j swift said:

I started watching a few years later, so I have no memory of this rather odd story

The bulk of the Lisa/Lana story happened while Heather was out of Port Charles (does anyone know if this was when Heather was recast the first time?), selling Steven Lars through intermediaries to Peter and Diana.

Jeff found Heather towards the end of 1977, who told him the bogus story that Steven Lars had died. Heather later returned to Port Charles; Lana got jealous and eventually tried to kill Heather by forcing her out of a window at knife-point, but Peter and Jeff saved Heather and Lana was committed to a mental hospital.

https://vintage70ssoaprecaps.tumblr.com/post/138674539174/general-hospital-week-of-january-30-february-3

https://vintage70ssoaprecaps.tumblr.com/archive/2016/2/tagged/gh - has recaps from this period (filtered to the posting date of January 2016 to save everyone from having to scroll back through)

1 hour ago, DRW50 said:

Has the pacing always been like this?

Pretty much, yes.

Six weeks was pretty much the rule for a storyline to run back in the 90s and that length of time is still common today.

The pacing is actually pretty similar on Neighbours and Home and Away but their storylines tend to be a bit less extreme so it's less noticeable.

Yeah I've complained about the pacing on these forums before.

As an example, in 2019 the King family burned through years of storylines - dementia, suicide, rape, infanticide (in backstory), pyromania, abortion, near incest, temporary paralysis - in their first six or seven months on the show.

7 hours ago, carolineg said:

I want to say his entrance was saving someone on the roof of GH or it was finding BJ after the bus crash.

I think the people he saved on the roof of GH were Karen and a suicidal patient. That was in February '94 and the bus crash was in May.

When I was about 6 I used to tell my mum that if she ever gave me a sister then I wanted her to be called Marlena lol!

36 minutes ago, DRW50 said:

I was going to say Emma Samms, but I don't even know if she's in the US anymore, and I read she had a big battle with COVID.

Yes I believe Emma Samms lives in England, somewhere in the Cotswolds. She was actually supposed to come back to GH for a guest stint last year but that all got delayed by COVID. Fortunately Emma had recovered enough to be able to film a cameo remotely that showed Holly in captivity. Robert and the rest of Port Charles currently believe that Holly is dead; unwittingly the writers have actually set up a very plausible explanation for Holly not being at Sean's memorial.

On 5/8/2021 at 6:57 PM, Dion said:

I wonder if she is playing Chloe Jennings, Maxie's nurse

Well I was almost right...she's playing the Chloe Jennings imposter lol

8 hours ago, AbcNbc247 said:

Guess I wasn't paying attention lol it was a Peter scene after all. Who did he kill?

The real Nurse Chloe Jennings. And then Peter sent Kimberly J Brown's character over to Maxie as an imposter.

Yeah, the hypnotism is a bit silly but overall I enjoyed her return.

Nicole and Maeve did get married off pretty quickly but that's generally normal for this show. They work well together.

Leanne and Rosalyn have mad chemistry and I hope we see more of them.

On 5/9/2021 at 10:57 AM, DRW50 said:

I've been watching some of this recently.

 

Is Eddie leaving? (I hope not as the actor is hot)

 

Who is Miley to Drew and Harper? Who was Talia? Is his name Miley?

I don't know about Eddie but it certainly looks that way.

Marley (though with the kiwi accent it does kinda sound like they are saying Miley sometimes) was introduced last year when his drunken father (with Marley in the car) crashed into Maeve and Nicole after their wedding. Marley's dad died and Drew and Harper (who'd recently found out that Drew had a very low sperm count and thus was unlikely to father more children) fell in love with him and were able to foster him. Talia is Marley's mum who is in prison (for drugs I think). We haven't seen her yet.

I wonder if she is playing Chloe Jennings, Maxie's nurse

On 4/23/2021 at 11:15 AM, carolineg said:

And he served some sort of purpose as the resident MD.  He was never Roman, Steve, Bo, John, etc but I do think a soap needs that character that is very steady or just ordinary.

Yeah and that kind of character can often serve as an audience surrogate.

One of my favourite Neil scenes is when he informs Victor and Kim that Andrew can't be Victor's son. Kim's quietly processing the information while Neil gets to give Victor the telling off on behalf of the audience.