Twists You Hated

[Khan]

I think it's more than better writing.  To me, as a woman AND as an attorney, Julia had more integrity.  She was flawed, yes, but she was also allowed to have intelligence and backbone.  And she never would have fallen for the likes of Julian Jerome.

[titan1978]

She has said more than once that her character from SB was her favorite because she was clearly defined, and her intelligence was respected and not thrown out the door just to advance a plot like Alexis.

 

What reminds me of Nora is how ABC soaps treat all their female characters since the late 1990’s.  Generic, ill defined and male dependent.  Nora and Alexis both suffered from this.

[victorlord75]

Nora was a smart character in the beginning, it is later writers who screwed her up.  I never "met" Julia, as I was never a Santa Barbara viewer, but I think some Santa Barbara people were involved in the background of GH at the time of Alexis's introduction.  I likewise think that Alexis didn't become ill-defined until later on.  Like Norah, she began as a smart, independent, and witty lawyer.  That was where I saw the parallel between the two and thought that they were very similar. 

I never bought "Julexis" from day one, actually.  Cheryl Stansbury was the real love of Julian's life.

[j swift]

I similarly don't wish to derail, but at least Nora got some memorable courtroom scenes; I can't recall Alexis ever having a single dramatic summation.

[titan1978]

Nora was an all time great character under Malone’s writing.  Once he was gone, she just slowly slipped into generic woman of her age on a soap.

 

In hindsight, it seems like ABC stripped all the character out of the women on their shows.  It didn’t happen as hard or quickly to GH, but the rest of their shows suffered greatly from this from about 2000 on.

 

 If you were a good person, they didn’t know how to write conflict for you based in character and choices.  Nora was one of those characters that had integrity and choices mattered, and she lost all that in order to tell less complicated stories.  Or to tell any story they wanted, even if it didn’t fit her character to do it.

 

Back to bad twists- on GH, the identity of the text message killer.  Also on GH- Luke has DID.  

[Soaplovers]

I think the OLTL 2.0 restored Nora back to her old self again...not quite how she was back in the early to mid 90s...but closer (she started out more harsh when she first debuted and soften a bit by the mid 90s).

 

Julia on SB in the the first year and a half had two ill fated relationships pre Mason.  One of which was her client that was semi similar to Julian Jerome...but she got burned and swore off men opting to have a baby and raise it as a single woman hence Mason stepping in to be the sperm donor..thus starting Mason/Julia.  The difference between Julia and Alexis was that Julia learned from her mistakes and grew in the first two years of her stint on SB into the successful and confident lawyer and female character.  Alexis started out intelligent..the black sheep of the Cassadines and devolved into what we see now.  So I get why NLG prefers Julia (I do too)