GH: Classic Thread

[j swift]

My timing was off because I thought Marland wrote the rape, then left and PFS picked up from there.  But I just did a deep dive on her obits and she started in 1979 so that was before the rape.  Which makes a difference in how I perceive her work.

 

I also saw that she left in 1981, but I guess it was after the WGA strike that year.  There was an article about her re-hiring at Days which stated that she was pilfered along with six members of her writing staff.  Can you imagine that meeting?

https://newspaperarchive.com/bluefield-daily-telegraph-nov-01-1981-p-337/

 

I'm with you that flattening Rick would have been the best alternative (although I've always questioned the logic of a skylight in a nursery).  But, who wrote those Monica/Leslie scenes when Monica lays into Leslie for her lack of lust?  On YT that remains a throughline to their relationship including when Leslie helped birth AJ, and later in the early 80s, so there are a lot of arguments between the two.  There is a scene that is frequently referenced when Leslie is pleading with Monica to give up Rick, but Monica talks about how Leslie doesn't fulfill his needs, and I wonder who claims responsibility for those remarkable scenes?

 

BTW- Monica's arc is underrated/amazing.  Without any specific redemptive plot, (except for age, breast cancer, and motherhood), she has evolved from a very selfish character to the voice of morality for Jason.  That is a leap you only get from a show that's been on as long as GH.   So many bitchy characters are punished before they become better humans, but Monica has just evolved that way on her own. 

 

Edited May 26, 2019 by j swift

[titan1978]

That is one of the reasons I love Alan and Monica.  They were both horrible people in relationships, but they also were great doctors and more than just one thing.

 

I have seen several scenes on YT from back then of Monica with Laura trying to help her.  These people had layers, and even in Monty’s plot oriented storytelling they still kept their layers.

 

Monica could go from concern for Laura and selfishness with Rick and Lesley to love for Alan and anger over his child with Susan.  And yet she ended up loving Jason, arguably more at times than her own son.  She helped Sean steal the Q fortune and kicked them out of the house, and was later devastated by Alan cheating on her and marrying Lucy.  She had so many layers that her cancer storyline never occurred to me to be a redeeming story.

 

Same with Bobbie back then.  She was awful to Laura in her pursuit of Scotty and then protection of her brother.  But she was also a good nurse, and seeing Roy killed and then her abusive relationship with Brock never seemed like a redemption arc.  

 

Luke and Laura and the left handed boy seems like a redemption arc to me though.

 

Once again, why do all these soaps have rapists as romantic leads during their history?  Roger, Luke, Todd, Franco, Jack, Lawrence? Even if I loved some of these characters, it is still ultimately gross.

[BetterForgotten]

At least with Roger and Jack, their behavior was never brushed aside and what they did was very integral to what their characters were about. They were never really forgiven for anything, and in Roger's case, he was always the town pariah, even when his intentions were good. He never became the hero of the universe like Luke. 

[Khan]

On the bright side, PFS and Gloria Monty never tried to blame Luke's raping Laura on something REALLY silly...like a brain tumor.

Edited May 27, 2019 by Khan

[titan1978]

And yet Holly and Roger had romantic scenes together again.  Jack through his relationship with Jennifer did become an heroic man.  Mark Valley sure didn’t inherit a character that the rape played a part in at all.  And truthfully, neither did Matt for a long time until GH laid the groundwork by destroying Luke and Laura.  Todd and Marty were paired together as well (I think. Wasn’t watching OLTL then).  Poor Jennifer Horton, one of her friends chose her rapist as a partner (Carly I’m looking at you). 

 

Roger was the only one in my list that their entire show was not propping at some point.  He was never really redeemed.  Sure he had good qualities, but as Alexandra said he was also always hungry.  For power.

Edited May 27, 2019 by titan1978

[BetterForgotten]

 

Holly felt a ton of guilt and shame over connecting with Roger sexually again though, it wasn't like she slept with him and all was forgiven over night. It took years for them to even get that to that point again, and when it finally happened, she had a hard time accepting it for months afterward. The rape was always thrown in Roger's face - whether it be by Holly, Ed, Alexandra, or Ross and that never really stopped. GL, during its best years, always reminded us that Roger and Holly were deeply messed up people and it was wrong (yet strangely delicious) for them to feel the attraction they always felt for one another. 

 

The annoying thing with Luke was that the show had to pretend it never happened, so it never allowed to become an integral part of Luke's character. Even after the revisitation, they never really incorporated it into the character, other than to destroy Luke & Laura (to appease Geary). 

Edited May 27, 2019 by BetterForgotten

[Khan]

 

I think you're talking about the rapemance, when Todd, or Trevor St. John-as Victor Jr.-as Todd, had sex with Marty, who was suffering from amnesia and did not recognize him as one of the three men who had raped her years before.  I also think the retcons that turned TSJ's Todd into Roger Howarth's Todd's twin brother (but with a surgically altered face) was supposed to negate that storyline.  However, the fact that he BELIEVED he was Todd when he slept with the woman "he" had raped back in college still makes the situation offensive.

 

 

True.  All true.

 

 

Thank goodness, though, DAYS never tried to sell us a Jack/Kayla pairing after the rape, like they did with Bill and Laura.  In fact, I think Kayla has always had mixed feelings about Jack even after he redeemed himself in the eyes of most everyone else in Salem.

 

 

Because, where do you go once you've acknowledged someone to be a rapist?  You can't turn him back into the hero, and you certainly can't have him reunite with his victim (even though, to be perfect and frank, she was the ONLY female on the show who made him palatable).  So, either you kill him off (which was never on the table) or you turn him into a completely different character, like how DAYS turned Jack into a clown.

 

Again, that's what I found remarkable about Roger Thorpe's journey: although GL certainly added layers to him both before and after he raped Holly and Rita, they never swept his actions under the proverbial rug or turned him into some romantic hero/comic relief character.  They let Roger BE Roger.

 

Frankly, as pissed as I was to learn about Laura's rape and how it was turned into a "seduction" in order to make her and Luke a couple, I was just as pissed when the show brought it back up as a means to destroy the two.  IDC what Tony Geary thought or wanted: you don't ask the audience to invest not just years but DECADES in the couple that literally put soaps and GH back on the map, just to have it all end like that.  If you don't want to be saddled with Luke and Laura forever, then just f**king quit.  Let Luke die some noble death, so Laura (and the audience) can grieve and then move on.

Edited May 27, 2019 by Khan

[Khan]

 

I could swear I read once how Marland had planned for Luke and Laura to become a couple eventually (although, I don't know whether the rape was part of the plan) but that he wanted to take his time getting there.

 

I dunno, I've also read Pat Falken Smith say she never intended for what happened at the Campus Disco to be considered rape either.  The whole BTS on that plot twist is murky as hell.

Edited May 27, 2019 by Khan

[BetterForgotten]

Frankly, it seemed strange that the audience even accepted Luke & Laura regardless of the rape - did the 15 year age difference between Geary and Francis not bother people in a more conservative era? Or did Genie always read as "older" even though she was a teenager?  

Edited May 27, 2019 by BetterForgotten

[Khan]

 

Well, IIRC, the show did acknowledge concerns about the age disparity by having Luke say, during one of their bedroom scenes, "You may be only eighteen years old, but when you kiss me, you're a woman."  Or something like that, lol.

[BetterForgotten]

I have to say that Wendy Riche/Claire Labine/Guza really "de-sexualized" Laura - Genie was dressed so damn matronly in the 90's, you'd think she was well into her 50's at some points. I guess the weight gain after her real-life pregnancies made this easier on them to do so. 

Edited May 27, 2019 by BetterForgotten

[Khan]

Yeah, but...was GF ever what you would call "sexualized"?  Even when she was playing a gold-digging grifter with a history of childhood sexual abuse on AMC, she still often came across as virginal.

 

And I say that as someone who adored GF on GH, DAYS and AMC (but probably not on Y&R).

Edited May 27, 2019 by Khan

[Franko]

Rewinding back to Lesley and Monica for a second, I think this is a nice scene.

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[j swift]

I was going to add this scene as a classic example of a Leslie/Monica argument.

 

However, what made me laugh was Leslie's dialogue about Heather coming to stay at her house for the holidays as a respite from the asylum, when she says, "I keep forgetting about her amnesia..." 

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You would never guess from their interaction that Monica was once married to Jeff.  Which makes me wonder if Monica is younger than Leslie? She married Jeff while they were in med school together, and Jeff is Rick's younger half-brother. 

 

It also leads to the perennial question of why anyone would choose RIck over Jeff, or even Alan?

Edited May 27, 2019 by j swift

[vetsoapfan]

 

It was not praised for its writing at what time?

 

Everyone seemed to be singing its praises during Douglas Marland's stint and then when Pat Falken Smith FIRST took over. Until the sci-fi dreck began, the quality writing was referred to in the press and in commentary by the viewers as a fundamental reason why the show soared in the ratings and stayed at the top. Then, of course, once the campy science fiction plots began, GH started attracting a different kind of viewer (kids and teens), who kept the show popular even though, through most of the 1980s, the scripts were far inferior to what Marland and Smith had given us before that.