GH: Classic Thread

[DRW50]

Laura went to the hospital, was treated as being raped, and went to counseling sessions. Over time, and much to Genie Francis' upset, the show decided that Laura would tell Luke that she had wanted to have sex with him, that it was a seduction. I think Scotty became the villain as he freaked out over the rape, but I don't know.

There are clips of the aftermath on Youtube. Some are easy to find. Others are more difficult. This is the first of those. These clips also include a moving scene with Laura and Jessie right after the rape. Today, Jessie would just call her a dirty whore and Laura would develop a funny alter personality.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qedbdSo2V0

[Susan Hunter]

Thanks for posting those clips. So I guess there is definitely no mistaking what happened. That is definitely one of those storylines that could never work today because of the online community.

That was hilarious.

[DRW50]

It could still happen today, as our savior Ron repeatedly rewrote a sexual assault viewers saw happen, and sadly, many viewers likely always believe that a woman asks to be raped. But I think that Luke and Laura were a very unique pairing and I don't think it could work in most circumstances.

[SweetPea36]

Luke was a very damaged character. Rather than do something out of character like work for a living, he decided to put his teenage sister Booby on a street corner to hook so he could be her pimp.

There were many of us who knew about that, and then we watched the rape and we hated Luke Spencer. Genie had such a strong connection with viewers that she managed to pull off an enormous feat and redeemed the rapist, but most women I knew were horrified and never got past it. Supposedly they had a huge following who were enthralled by their romance and perfect love and bought the rape as seduction b.s. I thought anyone who bought the romance must have been brain damaged or at least had memory lapses. Luke Spencer was and is a sociopath.

Part of what Monty did to redeem Luke was pit Scotty against him. To make Luke look good, they made Scotty look bad. It was pretty horrible, beginning to end. Scotty was trying to interfere with Luke and Laura's perfect love, so of course everything he did was wrong. We had never seen Scotty do anything but love Laura. Luke loved Luke; always did, always will.

30 years later, we were told that after all of that, Luke was unfaithful to Laura. He should have been in her debt forever for keeping his sorry butt out of prison but instead he had the affair that produced Ethan.

I haven't seen the scenes for years, but after Elizabeth was raped in order to segue Lucky into being angry at Laura because Luke raped her (how stupid was that?), I'm sure both Luke and Laura admitted it was rape. I don't recall it being called a "seduction" then.

[OldGHFan]

Great post, Sweet Pea. I agree with every word.

[Susan Hunter]

From that clip he seems really unrepentant about what he did to Laura. It must have taken some masterful writing to totally change his character and for the audience to buy it. Wasn't Luke the mayor of PC at one time?

I'm thinking that Roger Thorpe was the only major character rapist, who wasn't turned into a hero.

Edited April 21, 2012 by Susan Hunter

[Y&RWorldTurner]

Roger was never a hero though. He had heroic "moments," but his history and battles with his conscious were never whitewashed. To his last day, he was always the town pariah and never part of the establishment - no matter how much he really wanted to be deep inside.

Edited April 21, 2012 by Y&RWorldTurner

[DRW50]

If I was watching GH back around the time of the Bobbie/Laura rivalry I don't think I could have rooted for Laura. She just seems whiny and insufferable.

[SweetPea36]

Leslie, Jeff and Scotty made a big difference in Laura's favor because they were all so well-liked. Boobie and Luke came across as very obvious villains. JZ played a hard, tough version of Boobie and her reason for hating Laura was flimsy at best. We had no way of knowing Boobie would become so benign later on; who could have guessed that?

It was smart of GH to make Boobie a victim of Cujo because giving birth to that was a huge strike against her.

[DRW50]

Yeah, I'm not sure I would have been rooting for Bobbie either (although her bitchiness is a lot of fun). There's just something so immature about Laura. She reminds me of Lily on ATWT. I think of all Marland's young ingenues the one I liked best was Morgan on GL.

From what I've seen, she does grow up over the next few years, but it's unfortunate that this came after a rape.

[SweetPea36]

Laura had too many people coddling her. It's nice they loved her, but they probably kept her from maturing emotionally.

Leslie was sometimes smart and fairly tough, while other times she was passive and a victim, particularly when it came to Monica. Laura was sitting at the foot of the master and taking it all in. I had not seen those Leslie/Jeff scenes in years, but she comes across as a major wimp there. I had not recalled that.

It really is too bad they couldn't think of another way to move Laura forward without the rape and her involvement afterward with Luke, but it probably would have required something drastic.

[DRW50]

I wonder what Marland planned for the character - he didn't write the rape, did he?

[SweetPea36]

Marland was head writer then. Pat Falken Smith took over, and I think she was writing with him at least part of the time. He was HW during the rape.

[DRW50]

I remember reading that he wanted natural marital conflicts for Scott and Laura, while Monty wanted something more dramatic. That's why I wasn't sure if he was there for the rape.

[SweetPea36]

Sorry, I didn't answer the other part. To my knowledge, he never said what he planned to do with Laura. I don't think he stayed around GH very long because he didn't like CA. He may have hated that story, but Monty was given a very short time to turn the show around and they sure pulled that off.

I just went and looked him up on Wikipedia. It says he was hired by Monty in 1978, so he might not have had a story in mind before they had to hit the ground running.