Dion

in the mid-late '90s a significant part of the cast of GH was made up of actors who had been on DAYS during the same time in the '80s.

For example in 1996 you had:

• Genie Francis (Laura GH/Diana DAYS)
• Wally Kurth (Ned GH/Justin DAYS)
• Mary-Beth Evans (Katherine GH/Kayla DAYS)
• Stephen Nichols (Stefan GH/Steve Days)
• Matthew Ashford (Tom GH/Jack Days)

They were even joined by Jane Eliot (Tracy GH/Anjelica DAYS) for a brief period when she came back for a guest stint prior to her crossover to The City.

And shortly after Matthew Ashford left GH in 1997, Billy Warlock (AJ GH/Frankie DAYS) was cast as the recast AJ.

59 minutes ago, BetterForgotten said:

The British television ratings system and its history is quite convoluted and messy, but outside of occasional instances, that doesn’t seem factual from the data that’s available to us. There’s years from the 70’s (60’s data is a rare find) through the 00’s where Coronation Street wasn’t just the highest rated soap, but actually the highest rated program in general on British television.

Though, in weekly ratings (which, historically, is like trying to find a needle in a haystack) anything is possible. Coronation Street ran just 2 weekly episodes up until 1989 when a third was added (now up to 6 episodes a week). Crossroad ran 5 episodes a week for most of its run (cut down to 2 in 1988) and ended before Corrie expanded to 3.

Corriepedia says that for a few years after 1972 Crossroads "regularly outrated" Coronation Street, although this presumably means on an episodic basis and without further clarification could mean as regularly as once a week, once a fortnight or even once a month.

What is known is that from 1972 - 1980 no more than a dozen episodes of Coronation Street each year claimed the top spot on the weekly charts and that sometimes episodes were in the teens for the weekly rankings, so there were likely a few opportunities for Crossroads to "outrate" it on a weekly basis but likely not on a yearly basis as you say.

2 minutes ago, Xanthe said:

Have they ever combined BFTD with a Martin Guerre or Brat Farrar-style imposture story? The only case I can think of where the person back from the dead turned out not to be the person is Roman/John Black but that's not quite the same since as far as I know John believed he must be Roman.

I think Loving did one with Alex Masters posing as Clay Alden, fully knowing he wasn't the real Clay? I'm not fully up on the details of that story.

Other soaps have done stories similar to Roman/John like Todd/Victor Jr on OLTL and Jason/Drew on GH where they genuinely believed they were the person they were presented as but with the added wrinkle that they were twins with plastic surgery.

On 1/27/2023 at 7:12 PM, beebs said:

Additionally, if anyone has any records of what some of the earliest known stories of a previously-established character coming back from the dead, I'd love to know more. I assume this was more common on radio, where recasts could be more easily camouflaged from the audience sans visual. It just struck me that, particularly in the 60s and 70s, soaps seemed loath to have characters return from the dead, even when that death happened off-screen. It's largely from the 80s onward, what with stars seeking their fortune in prime time, and coming back to daytime if that attempt goes belly up.

I remember someone on here once saying that BFTD stories were partially inspired by stories of men MIA in wars coming back and indeed both Days and AMC did stories like that with Tommy Horton (though he'd never appeared on screen before) and Phil Brent respectively. GH too actually with Rick Webber but like Tommy Horton it was his introductory story so doesn't really "count" in terms of your question.

Phil Brewer was the first BFTD story of a previously established character on GH in 1971, and Tom Baldwin, also in 1976. I'm not sure if there were any others prior to Laura's dramatic return in 1983.

Probably the highlight of 2010 - the rest of the year went downhill after that

On 1/29/2023 at 9:25 AM, dc11786 said:

It is a bit weird to me that there is so much emphasis on the teenage storyline and the one teen actress with longevity (Kimberly McCullough) is on the sidelines. 

Well Kimberly McCullough was still only 14 playing opposite early twenty-something actors as high school seniors. I assume they wanted a teenage storyline straight away but as Robin (and Kimberly) was still a bit too young for what they had in mind, they still placed her at the periphery to give these teen characters some ties to a longer serving character. Perhaps they had an expectation that once the teen characters graduated, Robin would be finally able to come into her own, which is what basically happened with the Stone HIV/AIDS storyline.

For @Skylover

9 hours ago, Skylover said:

That is brilliant  

They've done a few Neighbours ones as well. I'll post them in the Neighbours thread.

24 minutes ago, YRfan23 said:

The constant Lauren/Danny makeout sessions during the video would have pissed me off too if I were Paul or Patty...haha total overkill!  I remember a story once from Tracey where she said, her parents were on set the day they watched the video, and she was embarrassed by all the lovemaking scenes between her and MD. 

And what was the point of them anyway? (I mean in the world of the show...Obviously real life explanation is that they were a plot point of getting Paul and Patty worked up about them).

I mean, I'm sure back in the 1980s there's no way such a video would play on MTV or something without those scenes being heavily censored coz Danny and Lauren are really going at it!

4 hours ago, janea4old said:

Here's the same clip on facebook video (in case the youtube is geo-blocked)

Cheers, yes it was geoblocked for me.

And...um...oh god that was a hot mess lol!

The old faces just keep on coming!

The season return was INSANE! Dare I say, best episode in years?

1 hour ago, Vee said:

I was doing some late night digging around about the '80s soaps and stumbled across this. Ralph Senensky is a living legend, one of the Golden Age of Television directors, doing a ton of work on everything from the original Star Trek to Dynasty. He chronicles his extensive experience on the Dynasty pilot and first season in the Dynasty section at the link. He's still going strong at 99, and this blog appears to have been written in the last couple years. You can also find extensive entries on the many, many other shows he worked on.

Been watching a youtube channel that does Star Trek reactions and one of the reactors cannot stop raving about Ralph Senensky. Might suggest they react to Oil since they've been doing a few pilots lately to test out what shows might spark their interest. Bit of a long-shot though as I'm sure if I do suggest it, my suggestion will be drowned out by other people's.

They did really enjoy The Gaurdian on the edge of Forever but it was obvious that they weren't familiar with Joan Collins lol (and of course Joan Collins didn't show up on Dynasty until the second season anyway).

December 16, 1966 seems to have been a very busy episode with Tom Baldwin's introduction, Jessie and John Prentice discussing his daughter Polly and Jessie also meeting with Polly as well as some awkwardness between Phil and Audrey.

Again some of the scenes are repeated between the clips:

Starting with Lee and Meg since it contains what I assume is the pre-credits scene (Lee proposing to Meg). However, this clip also seems to contain the last scene of the episode:

John Prentice and Jessie (and Polly and Phil)

Steve and Audrey and Phil

Now that were at the end of 1966 there are quite a few clips to go along with the summaries. I found them by doing a search of General Hospital 1966 on Youtube. They're not full episodes and are focused on specific characters; as a result these clips often share common scenes between them.

This one focuses on Peter and Carol:

This one focuses on Lee and Meg and contains the Lee and Peter scene and Peter and Meg scenes featured in the first clip:

Quality in the next one is very choppy. Basically Steve and Lee talk about Lee's brother Tom:

Again choppy quality, more Carol/Peter/Meg drama:

1 hour ago, Darn said:

I'm so glad I didn't watch for several years. Thank you!

You're welcome!

Oh I forgot to mention that Obrecht had Dante and Lulu's last embryo that she held hostage - hmm maybe not the best word, perhaps held as leverage is better - to get Dante and Lulu to drop charges against her and Britt. I think Dante and Lulu eventually found out the embryo wasn't viable just before Charlotte was revealed to be Lulu and Valentin's, making Lulu all the more determined to get custody of Charlotte.

5 hours ago, Darn said:

Wait a damn minute...Lulu didn't give birth to either of her children? I knew about Charlotte and that mess but the boy was carried by someone else too? That is...crazy. How could they tell such similar stories with the same character? Babies and doppelgangers is right.

If Esme and Willow's babies are switched that will be, correct me if I'm wrong, 3 baby switches in 10 years? And the second involving the same character in Willow, right?

There was a period (pun not intended!) when much of the show revolved around the fate of Lulu's eggs. And the woman who carried Rocco was none other than Britt!

Basically Lulu found out she couldn't carry a child to term, so Maxie offered to be her surrogate mother. Maxie got pregnant with Lulu and Dante's embryo, then promptly miscarried (though it probably would have been more realistic if they had said the implantation had failed). Maxie then jumped into bed with Spinelli and got pregnant again, but didn't have the heart to tell Lulu and Dante that she was not pregnant with their child so kept up the ruse that she was still acting as their surrogate.

While this was all going on, Lulu was kidnapped by Helena and had some of her eggs harvested, this eventually led to Charlotte's conception and birth via Claudette.

Maxie eventually gave birth to Georgie and everyone found out the truth. A custody battle followed between Dante and Lulu, Maxie and Spinelli (separately) with the result being Spinelli ending up with custody and Maxie being forbidden to see Georgie for a time.

Meanwhile Britt (who had been Maxie's OB/GYN and had known the truth about Georgie all along) was claiming she was pregnant with Patrick's baby and then switched to claiming that Brad was the father after it came out that Patrick wasn't.  Eventually it was revealed that her mother had convinced her to take one of Dante and Lulu's embryos and implant it in herself to trap Patrick. I think it was Liz who eventually exposed this and Dante and Lulu got custody of their son Rocco.

3 hours ago, Vee said:

I didn't know Steve and Audrey were apart for eight years. Jeez.

She went off to help the orphans in Vietnam following her miscarriage in 1968, divorced Steve shortly after her return, suffered through two disastrous marriages to Tom Baldwin and Jim Hobart and didn't re-marry Steve until 1976 (of course that marriage turned out to be invalid since Tom Baldwin was still alive so Audrey and Steve had to marry for the third time in 1977).

Oh just remembered that apparently Steve and Audrey did basically get back together in 1971 but her lies over "Baby Steve" (Tom Hardy) doomed that reunion.

As of these summaries I think Steve and Audrey have been trying for a baby for over a year; you can really sense the slow destruction of their marriage that would eventually lead to their divorce and eight years apart.

You also have Audrey involved in Phil and Jessie's problems which from one of the 1967 episodes that I've seen is going to lead to something very shortly...

10 hours ago, will81 said:

I am not sure if Bell had a pro-life stance or if he was so wrapped up in how he thought Ashley would react to the abortion that he didn't consider how it would play out to audiences.

It made sense that Ashley would have a bit of a meltdown as she had wanted the baby and terminated the pregnancy for Victor and Nikki and not for her self. Plus she never got therapy for her previous breakdown, so she had never resolved the mental health issues that were there. So it made sense, but I guess the breakdown didn't have to happen. I do think Bell was looking for some big high drama and I don't think he considered the message he was sending.

Then again maybe he was pro-life and this was a cautionary tale, which would suck. I don't like the idea he would punish Ashley for making that decision. 

I think I was only 8 when it aired in New Zealand but I do seem to recall one particularly egregious dream sequence where Ashley was in the hospital holding a baby in her arms and the nurse came and snatched the baby off her saying words to the effect of "This is not your baby, you had an abortion!" with the most utter contempt that I don't think I've ever seen matched by a background character on a soap ever since.

24 minutes ago, FrenchFan said:

Absolutely fascinating ! It gives us many information we had no idea about !

Yeah, we'd all be forgiven for thinking Angie and Eddie left town immediately after kidnapping their child from the adoptive parents as that's what other sources seem to indicate but no it turns out they stayed on for months afterwards with Eddie battling addiction.

And little Nancy Brewer survived for at least six weeks after birth.

6 minutes ago, Faulkner said:

Oy, these shows just make such a mess of their timelines through SORAS and incompetence. You really have to turn your brain off and roll with it or  tune out like so many have. I can only imagine how messy many primetime/streaming series would be if they ran for 50-60 years. At least soaps aren’t rerun 24/7, with history thrown in viewers’ faces all the time.

True. I do actually think that GH unwittingly has the least messed up timeline, partly due to not retaining many of its vets and not using certain legacy characters and partly because of a lack of what I like to call compound SORASing - i.e SORASed characters on GH tend not to have kids straight away, meaning the generational gaps are at least for the most part still plausible (for example, AJ, Michael and Wiley are all roughly two decades apart, meaning Monica is still plausible as Wiley's great-grandmother).

Where GH does seem to fall down though is in not taking account of events in relativity to one another, like the situation we have now with Willow and Nelle being twins makes Willow older than Michael because of all the things previously established with Nelle and Carly.

I think Jimmy-Lee and Celia - or Grant and Celia, depending on which you liked better - from General Hospital probably qualify. There was a love triangle storyline that lasted more than two years with the result being Jimmy-Lee winning Celia and Grant eventually leaving town. Then a few months later Jimmy-Lee and Celia split up and Celia left town. Eventually Jimmy-Lee ended up with Charity and left town less than a year after Celia.

12 hours ago, ironlion said:

As this year marks 20 years since the panic room storyline, question: how was Ric a functioning charachter after imprisoning a pregnant Carly and slipping Elizabeth birth control? How did he not go to jail or how was he not killed?

Good question! I know the reason he wasn't killed was because he had information about Lorenzo's compound which Sonny needed after Lorenzo kidnapped Carly from the panic room and then I think Jason couldn't leave him to die at the compound because Lorenzo had now kidnapped Courtney. And then Scotty offered to drop the charges if Ric agreed to help him set Sonny up for something.

12 hours ago, ironlion said:

He was able to become a detective (or was it police commissioner) and was able to marry Alexis. 

Ric eventually managed to become District Attorney.

On 1/14/2023 at 5:15 AM, depboy said:

Tuesday, April 26: Ken tells Meg he has enlisted in the Medical Corps as a way to put Cynthia behind him.

I guess that's how Ken was finally written out.

On 1/14/2023 at 5:15 AM, depboy said:

Tuesday, May 3: Dr. Prentice tells Jessie that the slowing of her labor is normal, but he will administer a hormone solution.

I believe John Prentice had been appearing since 1964 but this storyline seems to mark the beginning of his increased prominence.

Thanks @depboy