2 minutes ago, Khan said:

 

Before that storyline had occurred, though, the only one of Viki's alters whom we had ever witnessed was Niki Smith.  Jean Randolph, Tommy, Tori, etc. never existed.  They TRIED to cover their collective asses by tossing in a line during Clint and Viki's confrontation in the mausoleum (which is still on YT, maybe) about how they'd always been around, but...well, let's just say, I didn't buy it.

I guess one of the things I liked about it wa the other alters were treated much more seriously than Niki.  It went more for tragedy than camp.  And when I was a kid I lived for Niki Smith.  But I see the problems too.

 

Wasn’t Victor there when Viki went to heaven?  And didn’t Dorian kill him on camera?  Lots of retcons to unpack in one set of characters.

 

 

33 minutes ago, Vee said:

It astonishes me that GL ripped off Charles Straub's Ghost Story (a great book and greater movie) not once but twice, each time wildly retconning their own deep history in ludicrous ways. Twice! Who does that? It's the exact same story with the names changed!

 

Agree.

22 minutes ago, Vee said:

The other stuff came later, yes, but by 1995 what was done was done.

 

True.  What was done WAS done.  But that didn't mean Michael Malone and Susan Bedsow Horgan needed to go back and say Victor Lord raped his own daughter just because Robin Strasser tipped them off about how inaccurate past regimes had been about Viki's illness.  Because, as I saw it, the story was about Viki finally nailing Dorian for Victor's murder, and not about her going ten more rounds with Niki and her new "friends."

16 minutes ago, titan1978 said:

Wasn’t Victor there when Viki went to heaven?  And didn’t Dorian kill him on camera?

 

Yes, he was -- although, thanks to all the retcons and such, we could probably dismiss Viki's several round trips to Heaven as mere fantasies.

 

Robin Strasser SAYS she watched the actual scenes where Nancy Pinkerton's Dorian withheld Victor's heart medication, causing him to suffer that fatal attack.  From everything that I've read, too, it seems that it did happen on-camera.  But, thanks to ABC, the footage is long gone; and I think that's how Malone and Bedsow Horgan were able to get away with saying it was Viki, as "Tommy," because there's nothing around to dispute them.

Edited May 16, 20187 yr by Khan

Y&R....when Steve Burton was not clicking with the audience, JFP decided to cram him down viewers throats by having Nikki have a cult baby (Steve) with Paul and gave it up for adoption. WHAT ???????????? Nikki was married to Greg during that storyline and there was NO BABY. 

Here's another bad and illogical retcon - Georgia aka Chelsea Brady (DAYS).

11 minutes ago, SoapDope said:

Y&R....when Steve Burton was not clicking with the audience, JFP decided to cram him down viewers throats by having Nikki have a cult baby (Steve) with Paul and gave it up for adoption. WHAT ???????????? Nikki was married to Greg during that storyline and there was NO BABY. 

 

Yep.

 

ATWT: Rose being retconned into Lily's long-lost twin sister.  Am I wrong, or did they say that Iva didn't remember giving birth to twins?  And wouldn't you know, too, Y&R would do the very same thing to make Mariah a permanent fixture in Sharon's life?

 

7 minutes ago, amybrickwallace said:

Here's another bad and illogical retcon - Georgia aka Chelsea Brady (DAYS).

 

Ah, yes.  The "swamp baby" who magically survived being born (again, in the swamp), like, six months premature.

 

But, you know, I will give credit to then-HW's Paula Cwikly and Peter Brash for retconning Bo into being Zack's father.  I still remember when DAYS asked its viewers to decide whether John or Stefano should be the baby daddy.  Man, talk about being stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Edited May 16, 20187 yr by Khan

2 minutes ago, Khan said:

Ah, yes.  The "swamp baby" who magically survived being born (again, in the swamp), like, six months premature.

 

Not to mention already a teenager when they found her 5 or 6 years after her birth. 

10 minutes ago, Khan said:

 

 

 

ATWT: Rose being retconned into Lily's long-lost twin sister.  Am I wrong, or did they say that Iva didn't remember giving birth to twins? 

 

 

Yep and ridiculous that Iva wouldn't have remembered.

Just now, Soapsuds said:

Yep and ridiculous that Iva wouldn't have remembered.

 

Thanks, SS!

1 hour ago, Khan said:

 

Maryanne Caruthers.  Yep.  It was a terrible retcon AND a total rip-off an earlier story involving Brandon Spaulding, Tom Reardon, H.B. Lewis and Bill Bauer -- which was, in and of itself, a retcon of established history.

 

Even worse, Carrie Caruthers, who was Maryanne's sister and the instigator of the whole mess, was played by Carrie Nye, who had played the nefarious Susan Piper about two decades before in the "Tony and Annabelle in the Cottage of Doom" storyline which, among other things, killed off Hillary Bauer, brought Brandon Spaulding BACK from the dead (before he died again in Barbados) and introduced Alan and Alex's AA half-sister.

 

Eureka. That name...

Y&R

Phillip fakes his death.

 

Katherine had a child she never mentioned, who  at first appears to be Jill but turns out to be Tucker,who discovers he has a son,who turns out to be Devon.

 

Jill finds out she was adopted,which Liz had never mentioned.Her father turns out to be Neil Fenmore, despite the fact that they are roughly the same age.

8 hours ago, Paul Raven said:

Phillip fakes his death.

 

Ugh.  They rewrite history, bring back a character we saw die on-screen AND have him come out of the closet, and for what?  That twist did nothing for the show that was positive -- and the funny thing is, he's no longer dead, but he STILL isn't on the show anymore.

Exactly...what was the point?

10 hours ago, Vee said:

Alison's molestation story on his Melrose Place - all the crimes committed in her childhood home and IIRC, attic.

 

Ah, but Alison's molestation was in the basement. Originality!

14 hours ago, P.J. said:

BAD

 

B&B

retconning Bridget's paternity seven years and a dozen DNA tests later.  

 

 

I don't think Bridget's paternity was a retcon. I have some vague memory that Sheila (and Mike) tampered with the blood samples during the paternity test.

 

One good and one bad retcon both concerns the Spencer family on B&B:
*The good one was that Caroline had a twin, Karen who had been kidnapped as a baby. It didn't really contradict anything on the show and it also made Bill's overprotective behavior towards Caroline even more believable. Having gone through the pain of losing a child it would only be natural that he would be even more attached to the one he had left.

*The bad one concerns the current Bill, whose whole existence is a retcon. It made absolutely no sense to create a never-before-heard-of son to Bill Sr. So much emphasis was put upon his relationship with his daughter Caroline in the early years of the show. She was everything to him, and I doubt that would have been the case if he had had a son and heir.

Edited May 16, 20187 yr by JellicleCat

4 hours ago, YRBB said:

Ah, but Alison's molestation was in the basement. Originality!

 

My mistake!

 

15 hours ago, Khan said:

Because, as I saw it, the story was about Viki finally nailing Dorian for Victor's murder, and not about her going ten more rounds with Niki and her new "friends."

 

Granted I only started properly watching it in '93, but we saw it differently. That story and its roots to long history fascinated me as a kid, and this is where new eyes come in - not more valid ones, but detached from anything but I guess a naturalistic perspective.

 

Even from the beginning, as a new viewer I sensed something was off - the surface context and official story for a new viewer was, Viki deified her dead, rich, mysterious father and she and the whole town insisted Dorian was to blame for everything and now Viki was going to finally prove it. Something felt very wrong about that assumption. I didn't buy it. Why did she so obsess over her powerful, mysterious father full of secrets? I thought something more was going on, something much deeper. I knew part of the answer but didn't really mentally articulate it as I was pretty young. And I didn't really know anything about Viki's DID stories until the day Tommy threw Dorian down the stairs, which I did not expect and which scared the shít out of me because I thought Viki had lost her mind.

 

I couldn't articulate it. But Dorian taking the blame for Viki because Viki's father raped her? Yes, I'd felt something like that was coming. I thought it was always there. I also don't think there could ever have been a satisfying version of the story where Viki sets out to nail Dorian, does so and that's the end.

Edited May 16, 20187 yr by Vee