Dion

Interesting:

Yes, that should have ended when Lisa kidnapped Robin and Robin fell down the well

I remember how shocking it was when the summaries from depboy revealed that Polly Prentice's 1969 car accident death occurred whilst she was being rushed to General Hospital following on a DIY abortion. And while that story was likely more about punishing a "bad" character rather than any meaningful debate on abortion rights, GH wouldn't even dare touch it today. Lulu's abortion in 2006 was also told quite well I think. I do wonder how much they were aware about Mark Fowler over on EastEnders at that point. By the time Robin was diagnosed, he'd been HIV+ for 4 years (and like Robin had even lost his own love to AIDS). Not that I'm saying they copied or anything but rather they may have had a look and thought "well he's still a viable character so Robin could still be too." I also remember the episode where she and Jason talked about her going on new medications. Yeah, I think back then testing was at the stage where if it wasn't picked up in the first test you were still advised that it could be up to a year after exposure before you could be truly considered negative, so Robin testing positive at first and then later testing positive was realistic.

Even Alexandra Quartermaine and Tony Cassadine after they got frozen by the ice machine would still be hotter than Chase/Brook Lynn

To be fair, they kind of lampshaded that when Tracy, the last truly "old money" Quartermaine left, walked into the house and saw it for the first time and absolutely hated it.

Yeah, I remember this episode and at the time I knew about Jake but didn't know about Brock so this episode was the first time I'd heard about that marriage, even though it was a brief mention and I didn't find out the details until later.

Yeah in the Youtube clip they barely make direct eye contact, when Lulu looks at him, he's usually got his eyes on the road so he doesn't get a good look at her etc so I think it works for me. I'm assuming that was probably directed that way or maybe I'm giving the show too much credit lol.

It'll never happen but I recently had the thought Lois and Frisco would be interesting.

Laura didn't find out Cyrus and Martin were her brothers until just before Christmas 2020, while the explosion which put Lulu in the coma was just after Halloween, so Lulu didn't know Cyrus was her uncle. Cyrus did know that Lulu was his niece having found out shortly after first coming to town earlier that year but their family connections weren't revealed to the audience until Laura found out. Lulu ended up in the coma after an explosion at The Floating Rib. Cyrus had wanted to kill Jason and was able to blackmail Julian Jerome into carrying out the deed as he had come into possession a letter that Nelle had written which detailed Julian's involvement in covering up the Wiley baby switch. Julian delivered an explosive package to the Floating Rib and detonated it remotely but Jason (and Danny) had already left the restaurant.

And here's me thinking none of the US soaps ever did that, cheers for that anecdote Good point Yeah, I guess this might be the main reason for an extended day when the plot actually doesn't necessarily call for one.

Yeah the only issue I have with that period was how coy the show was about certain topics from about 1996 onward (post the Billy and Melissa controversy). That's not to say that the show was completely sexless - it wasn't, but it was weird when Janae had an HIV scare and the words HIV and AIDS were specifically avoided even though there was no problem 11 years earlier with Michael and Cody.

Yeah that is a very British way of doing things

A couple of posts about pacing in the Beyond the Gates thread got me thinking about day and night cycles in the soaps, with one of the most famous examples being the several weeks long day/nights that used to happen on Passions. So what are your thoughts? Do you like long days? Or should a day/night cycle be kept short i.e to one or two episodes? I myself tend to think they should be kept short unless the plot requires it - i.e for an event. Should a new day always begin in a new episode? Or are you fine with a new day starting in the middle of the episode like the Australian soaps? I think having a new day starting in the middle of an episode tends to work better when the show is mostly consistent in keeping the length of it's days to one or two episodes. Should the "days" always feel continuous? Or should there be skips where a new day is perhaps a few days later rather than "the next day?" I think having some skips helps avoid the sometimes funny situation of having holidays such as Thanksgiving and Christmas only a couple of days apart in "show time". What are some examples of really long days? Or really short ones? I've heard for example that the 1981 masquerade ball on OLTL with Olympia went on for a month for example, or the 24 style sweeps months that GH was doing in the late 2000s. Discuss.

Yeah I been thinking along those lines too

I'm probably currently on the longest streak of not watching a single episode of the show in it's entire 32 year history (I think I haven't watched since about July) whereas with Neighbours I've watched every single episode since the revival

25th anniversary special, features a long montage in the middle

18 years ago we had the summer of sleaze, so is this the Autumn/Fall of sleaze lol

Correct, Billy Miller's Drew and Sam split not long after Jason came back. Sam had initially decided to stay with Drew and divorced Jason to legally marry Drew, but after two months and an earthquake had changed her mind and then divorced Drew to be with Jason. Drew then was in story with Tamara Braun's Kim Nero and their son Oscar for the next year or so before BM's exit with Drew being presumed dead in the plane crash, while Sam and Jason had the Dawn of Day stuff with Shiloh and Sam's imprisonment and parole for killing Shiloh before splitting up with Jason after the explosion that left Lulu comatose (It was a hit on Jason and he and Danny had just left when it happened, Sam didn't want her children exposed to the danger). Sam then helped Dante with PTSD and eventually started a relationship with him, while Jason had a romance with Britt and was briefly married to Carly etc etc until his own presumed death. When Drew came back played by CM, there was like a moment of two of tension with Sam but they went and put him with Carly.

The "writer" is, I believe, a certain someone who once was HW of OLTL and recently finished a stint as HW on Days...

Mike and April were once, I believe, being groomed to be the next main supercouple to kind of takeover from Steve and Kayla (just as they had taken over from Shane and Kim who in turn took over from Bo and Hope) on the supercouple factory line that was Days in the mid-late 80s, Nick of course was to be their Jack/Victor/Larry. But I think even before MTW left someone had realised they'd struck gold with Jack and Jennifer instead

Too bad the old nephew is (possibly only presumed) dead though (Spencer)

Thanks @depboy uff...the early years GH baby and child curse strikes again! Poor Joanne and poor Jane! Now I don't know if it had already been decided to write Jane out by this point but if the decision had already been made it does seem unnecessarily cruel to kill off Joanne. I recall Jane had a miscarriage as part of her first story and then another one two years later.

That's very true and it's still legal for them to marry or co-habitate in the state of New York. And they could even have kids, just get some genetic testing if they were really concerned. The risk of defects from first cousins marrying isn't actually that much higher compared to non-relatives, it's when successive generations of cousins marry that you really start to get problems and even then only if there is a genetic disorder in the family.

Danny Fargo is probably the other one from AW's early years. He was only on for nine months and while he probably wasn't mentioned very much, if at all after Bill died and Missy left for the last time, he was responsible for bringing in Sam Lucas (his accomplice in a gas station robbery) who in turn ended up bringing his sister Ada and niece Rachel onto the show... And Walter Curtin was the prosecuting A.D.A in the murder trial that followed after his death.