Dion

That would've been interesting, could've even plopped Audrey into the story to offer her own insight into the process since Audrey had herself artificially inseminated back in '67 (under much different circumstances of course and Audrey eventually lost the child).

As I said back then my favourite part of the original possession is the Horton Cabin stuff when Mardevil tries to seduce John, and Kristen comes along and tries to throw holy water on her and then Marlena momentarily breaks free and takes off, pursued by the Devil all the way to St Lukes.

Was it perhaps Samantha drugging Marlena and impersonating her while Marlena was locked up at Bayview?

Yeah but that wasn't revealed until 2002, when they decided to make Daphne John's mother (since retconned several more times lol), in order to have Tony (later retconned to be Andre) and John be half-brothers.

I don't think he's been faking per se, more likely that he's so deluded his "reform" has made him believe he has the right to choose life and death for others.

Yes depboy's summaries first mention him on August 2, 1965: When Meg returns home, she finds Brooke is resentful for having had to babysit Scotty and miss a beach party. Meg had arrived about a month earlier so unless Scotty was an off-screen character until his tonsillectomy in December, he would have been around longer than Julie.

I did like Scott's fatherly relationship with Liz which was just about the only good thing to come out of the Liz/Franco pairing

I meant to reply weeks ago but somehow I forgot. I think Mike/Robin were kind of GL's version of Penny and Jeff, they even had similar storylines with slight changes (e.g imagine if Jeff had killed Tom Pope instead of Al James and you get Mike killing Karl Jannings). In the end though Robin and Mike never found there way back to each other after their teen marriage was annulled. Robin went off with the much older Alex Bowden and later Paul Fletcher while Mike eventually got Julie pregnant, which resulted in Hope then moved to Another World for a year after Julie died and didn't come back to GL until after Robin had died.

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