Retconning: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

[Khan]

 

You know, speaking of postpartum depression, I don't think too many soaps have dealt with just that subject, have they?  The only soap character that I can recall suffering from that illness was GL's Reva -- and even when it was happening, my eleven-year-old self had to ask Mama Khan if that's how all women who are pregnant and then are diagnosed with the disease behave.  (Her response: "Hell no!")

[Soaplovers]

 

But since then, there have been some accounts where some women do behave like that postpartum (Marie Osmond went crazy and took off after she had her last child.. and talked about it in length).  I think back in 1990, it was uncharted territory so people just dismissed it as over the top and plot driven.. but considering that Reva had tried to kill herself a few years before (and only climbing out of the water after hearing voices of her future children talking to her)... that it made sense for the character.

[vetsoapfan]

 

 

That may be how the show justified Laura's sudden mental problems, but it was used more for its shock value than as an examination of a serious medical issue. It think if a show tries to use mental illness as a story prop, they should still handle it responsibly. When Jack was raped on ATWT, the show treated it flippantly, and then dismissed it. The Doctors had a story about a child abuser, which TPTB decided to abandon, so the abuser just...instantly learned to control himself, and voila. End of story.  This sort of thing is careless at best and irresponsible at worst.

[j swift]

As I noted on the OLTL board, the retconning of Cassie and Adrianna Cramer annoy me. 

 

Dorian had two daughters, that she never spoke of, kept in foreign boarding schools, and never visited?   

[vetsoapfan]

 

 I hate when young-adult, previously-unknown children appear out of nowhere. Veteran viewers can almost always point out why these newly-created characters cannot logically exist. Creating ONE faux child for an established character is bad enough, but multiple? It drives me crazy.  If writers have no betters ideas, just hand the shows over to me.

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[beebs]

I know Chloe did on DAYS after having Parker (and left him in Maggie's house with the oven on and nearly let him die of smoke inhalation as a result), but that became about her falling into prostitution with Vivian's OTHER retcon son that suddenly has ceased to exist.

[amybrickwallace]

 

If I ran the networks, @vetsoapfan, I'd hire you to write the soaps in a heartbeat. 😊

[Paul Raven]

The talk of Laura Horton reminds me of Days retcon of the reason for her being institutionilized was the affair between Bill and Kate Roberts, none of which actually  happened.

 

That sort of thing really annoys viewers who were around at that time and also tells them that TPTB don't really care about their years long devotion to the show. They're more interested in hooking in new viewers ...

 

The thing is Bill could have hooked up with Kate in the years that followed (while he was off the show)and still had Laura resent Kate.

[vetsoapfan]

 

 

Thank you, my dear!

 

Yes, and that awful retcon tarnished the character of Bill, the way GH ended up destroying the character of Rick Webber by retconning his past  just before he died, making him a degenerate. UGH.

[Dr Neil Curtis]

Not mention retconning Kate into a new total different Kate. Used some of Dr. Kate Winograd’s past to develop Kate Roberts. I always felt Winograd should have been Kate Roberts.... let me hush though becaus RonC will come up with something 25 years later! 

[Soaplovers]

 

With all due respect.. didn't Bill force himself on Laura resulting in her becoming pregnant with Mike?  Plus, didn't he also have a fling with another character also named Kate?  So it isn't as if he was an angel, so I figure this plot twist actually would have worked if the timing occurred post Laura being sent to the mental hospital (after 1980), not before.

[soapfan770]

 

I believe they did confirm Kate Roberts is Winograd a few years ago if I recall right, something about when Kate's real maiden name came up. Elaine Princi was actually free too to reprise such a role had then were thinking it right, but then again she had been disastrous as the Linda Anderson recast in the mid-80s so probably not. 

[vetsoapfan]

 

Back then, the writing was layered and the characters were nuanced, thanks to William J. Bell and Pat Falken Smith.  Bill and Laura had been deeply in love and engaged to be married, when a serious problem with his hand led Bill to believe that he would have to abandon his lifelong dream of being a surgeon. Devastated about this, he left town to pull himself together. Believing Bill would never return, Laura realized that she had to move on. She agreed to marry Mickey, who was in love with her, even though Laura was still very much in love with Bill. Her feelings for Mickey were genuine but did not develop into true romantic love.

 

When Bill returned to Salem, both he and Laura realized that they still wanted to be together. Their mutual affection for Mickey and their determination to do the right thing compelled them to deny their feelings, but eventually, they just could not hold back anymore. They realized that it would be impossible to suppress their love forever. One night at the hospital, while hashing all this out, Bill started to come onto Laura. She resisted at first, but to me it looked and felt that her denials were borne from a sense of duty more than anything else. Bill persisted, and may have technically "forced" her to agree, but as I say, the writing was nuanced back then, and it was hard to describe the situation in simple, black-and-white terms of rape. It came across as Laura submitting to a sexual encounter that she truly wanted anyway, but was denying only out of moral duty. I TOTALLY agree that if a woman does not explicitly consent, then a man should back off. Period. But the moral ambiguity of the situation pulled your intellect and emotions in different directions, which made the drama fascinating. We always knew that Bill deeply loved Laura.

 

In 1978, the writing was in the toilet and our Salemites were often shifted around to suit the plots rather than driven by valid character motivation. At this time, when he was having trouble with Laura, Bill had an affair with Kate Winograd. Whom I loathed. The audience reacted negatively and the plot was quickly dropped. Bill reconciled with Laura and things were as they should be. 

 

Now we are supposed to believe that Bill was also horning it up with Kate Roberts, which precipitated Laura's mental crisis. I could accept the idea that while he was having serious issues with his wife. a lonely Bill made a stupid mistake and had a brief affair with Kate Winograd. But now we are told that he was having sex with everything that breathed (LOL), and had a child with another woman, which CAUSED (supposedly) Laura to break down. Bill carelessly being the genesis of Laura's destruction negates the epic love story that they had shared and makes him look like a selfish, callous pig rather than simply a man who made a single, terrible mistake by cheating with one woman.

[Dr Neil Curtis]

I don’t recall that happening. I always known them to be two separate characters. One was a doctor and the other was just a common whore. 🤷🏾‍♂️

[j swift]

 

We also have another instance of mental illness as a consequence for liberated women of 70's soaps.  GL, AMC and, OLTL all had female characters who were independent and liberated then went nuts and had to be put into a hospital.  Just as Erica Kane is the only character to have an abortion and not to be become barren, liberated female characters in the 70/80's rarely ended well.