Baby switches are an old soap trope, but what soap did the storyline best?

The OLTL/AMC baby switch crossover!

 

From Wikipedia:

Babe strikes up a friendship with Bianca Montgomery during December 2003. They grow close and become best friends. At a cabin, while a storm goes on outside, Babe helps Bianca give birth to her baby daughter, Miranda Montgomery. Bianca falls unconscious and Babe leaves to go get help. She breaks into Dr. David Hayward's cabin and calls Paul at Llanview Hospital for help. The day before (on One Life to Live), Paul helped his sister, Kelly, give birth to a baby boy, but the baby died right after birth. Kelly, believing a baby would be the only thing that could save her marriage, begged her brother to get her a child. Paul helps Babe get back to the cabin, where he delivers her son by the fireplace.

Paul seizes this opportunity to give his sister a baby in a storyline that becomes known as the baby switch. He drugs Babe, puts her in a helicopter, and stages a helicopter crash near a river in the forest. When Babe awakens, Paul tells her that the helicopter crashed and her baby is dead. She loses consciousness again. When Adam Chandler and JR arrive at the scene and threaten Paul, should anything bad have happened to their heir, Paul twists his story around and tells them that it was Bianca's baby that fell into the river and that Babe's child survived. JR's family is elated that Babe's baby is alive, but Bianca's family is devastated by the news. In Llanview, Paul gives Kelly Babe's son (later known as Adam Chandler III, then Little Adam, and currently AJ), telling her that the boy's mother was a poor homeless woman who did not want a baby.

Later on, Babe finds out that the baby she thought was her own is really Miranda Montgomery, Bianca's baby who was thought to have died in the storm. Babe is so distraught over the reveal that her son has been the one to die in the storm that, with convincing by Krystal, she decides to keep the baby. But she eventually discovers her son to be alive, and that JR is indeed the biological father of the little boy. When the truth is finally revealed, it causes a severe rift in Babe and Bianca's friendship, although Bianca is more distant than hostile toward Babe. Babe's romantic relationship with JR also ends.

The one on AMC/OLTL actually got me into both Soaps.

I'm surprised no other soap attempted to do something like this. The one Ron did on GH with Sam and Téa's babies doesn't count since we hardly saw her bond with Sam and Jason's son.

The Jenny/Katrina baby switch on One Life to Live.

 

from wikipedia

 

Soon after marrying, Jenny learns Brad is a philanderer and the two suffer a rocky marriage. Actress Brynn Thayer, a fan of Katherine Glass' Jenny, assumed the role in August 1978 amid a contract dispute between Glass and ABC Daytime.^[4] Jenny becomes pregnant into 1979 and looks forward to motherhood. But the stress of a perpetually unfaithful Brad (Steve Fletcher onward) and learning he had raped her sister, Karen (Judith Light), causes Jenny to blackout, go into premature labor, and give birth stillborn daughter Mary Vernon in November.^[9] Not told her child was dead in the morgue instead of the maternity ward, misguided sister Karen conspires in a plot with ex-boyfriend-con man Marco Dane (Gerald Anthony) to switch dead Mary with a live newborn.^[10]

Mary Vernon and Peter[edit]

Jenny rears a child born during Jenny's delivery to Karen's former fellow prostitutes, Katrina Karr(Nancy Snyder). She then divorces Brad, marrying Dr. Peter Janssen (Denny Albee) September 2, 1981.^[11] She is soon widowed for a second time when Peter is killed in a car accident in May 1982.^[12] Only a short time after losing her husband Peter, Jenny learns the truth about Karen's baby switch and makes the wrenching decision to give the child back to Katrina.^[13] Unknown to Jenny and Katrina, both of their children were fathered by Brad.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Between the two baby switches mentioned on OLTL, I prefer Katrina/Jenny's story to Babe/Bianca/Kelly for several reasons.  The Katrina/Jenny story was about moral equivalence.  Katrina was initially unprepared for motherhood given her career as a sex worker.  Jenny had experienced so much loss at an early age, she was widowed twice, divorced once, but had a supportive family and friends.  So, there was some debate between characters and it tested the morals and values of people like Larry and Vicky.  The Babe/Bianca story was just about the victimization of both women.  A modern audience would never stand for the multi-year baby story.  However, it was never stagnant and it grew more complex as each character learned the truth.  It is also oddly contemporary that Katrina got fleshed out as a character and was not demonized because of her choices.  I dare say that in 2019, a sex worker would not get a happily ever after at the expense of an ex-nun

 

It also goes without saying that Paul Cramer was no Marco Dane.  Marco carried so much of that story and he was such an unusual character that it made the whole time period seem unique.  Paul was on-screen for two seconds before he was stealing babies left and right.  The Marco/Karen stuff had been set up for years.

 

I would be remiss without mentioning the worst baby switch ever; Santa Barbara's Channing/Brick saga.  Sophia and Lionel cared so little that Jinx switched the babies that once they met their son they proceeded to quickly forget about him and never mentioned it again. 

 

Edited March 25, 20197 yr by j swift

My favorite baby switch was on ATWT. The show did a great job of creating an umbrella storyline involving a large part of the cast including Jennifer, Craig, Gwen, Emily, Carly, etc. Probably the only Jean P story I enjoyed.

I think AMC/OLTL owns this thread. I wasn't a regular viewer, but the show did a great job. Loved Heather Tom as Kelly.

The original OLTL story had the advantage in that they were the first to do it and found something fresh to tell (similarly the Salem Strangler on Days)

It seemed like a natural outgrowth of what had been happening story wise for months.

Later baby switch stories seem way more calculated in that it looks like the idea came first and then they wrote the characters and situations to allow it to happen.

It felt like after the success of the Bianca/Babe baby switch every soap did a baby switch. It's like the writers realized "oh here's a trope we haven't touched in years, let's ALL do it". ATWT did one, then Days, then Y&R, then OLTL did another one, then GH (with OLTL characters to boot)...it all got to be too much because none of it mattered. I think the only ones that resonated with audiences were the ones on Days (Zack (which came before Bianca's but I don't think had the impact on Daytime that her baby switch did) and Sydney).

 

I like the Bianca/Babe until they decided Babe was worth destroying an entire show for. First all, she found out too soon that it happened so she just looked like a monster for keeping Bianca from her baby. Also everyone became real stupid, Bianca almost immediately forgave her, we had hordes of characters coming to Babe's defense when it made no sense since she was brand new to the show and JR, while the son of Adam Chandler, had grown up with these people. They were so quick to demonize him in service of her.

11 hours ago, Quent said:

My favorite baby switch was on ATWT. The show did a great job of creating an umbrella storyline involving a large part of the cast including Jennifer, Craig, Gwen, Emily, Carly, etc. Probably the only Jean P story I enjoyed.

 

I was going to say this as well. This is probably going to be an unpopular opinion, but as someone who started watching ATWT at 2000 (and thus had no idea how much better the show had been), I always enjoyed the era from 2000 - 2003. The following year, 2004 was an absolute low for me at the time, leading well into 2005. In my opinion the baby switch umbrella storyline in the second half of 2005 pulled me back in and kept me invested throughout most of 2006 even. From 2007 onwards the show quickly fell back to the 2004 standard (and beyond). 

To me, 2004/early 2005 had too many characters I wasn't really invested in, like Sarah, Rafael, Celia and Doc Reese. The show had also gotten too divided into fixed storylines with little to no overlap. The baby switch storyline changed all that.  

 

7 minutes ago, Darn said:

It felt like after the success of the Bianca/Babe baby switch every soap did a baby switch. It's like the writers realized "oh here's a trope we haven't touched in years, let's ALL do it". ATWT did one

 

ATWT had done another baby switch storyline in 1998/1999 with Hope Dixon and Faith Snyder. So the trope had not been untouched for years. But I get your point.  

Edited March 25, 20197 yr by Brolden

21 minutes ago, Brolden said:

 

ATWT had done another baby switch storyline in 1998/1999 with Hope Dixon and Faith Snyder. So the trope had not been untouched for years. But I get your point.  

 

You're right, I meant to go back and correct that after my comment about Zack's baby switch on Days. I think the AMC/OLTL had a bigger impact than others in that other shows tried to replicate it's success.

I enjoyed DAYS' Zach/JT baby switcheroo of 2000-2002.  They took liberties with the timeline of Hope's pregnancy and times when she would've potentially been knocked up by Bo, John or Stefano, but that's okay since Bo was the father in the end. The babyswitch storyline itself provided great story for Bo, Hope (and Barb & Glen, though unimportant), Stefano, Lexie, Abe, etc. This was the story that tipped Lexie over from good girl to chip off daddy Stefano's block. 

43 minutes ago, Gray Bunny said:

I enjoyed DAYS' Zach/JT baby switcheroo of 2000-2002.  They took liberties with the timeline of Hope's pregnancy and times when she would've potentially been knocked up by Bo, John or Stefano, but that's okay since Bo was the father in the end. The babyswitch storyline itself provided great story for Bo, Hope (and Barb & Glen, though unimportant), Stefano, Lexie, Abe, etc. This was the story that tipped Lexie over from good girl to chip off daddy Stefano's block. 

I remember the episode where Zach was finally returned to Bo & Hope, and J.T. to Barb & Glen, with Abe & Lexie childless at the end, was pretty moving. Wasn't it entirely sponsored by Kleenex?

1 hour ago, Gray Bunny said:

I enjoyed DAYS' Zach/JT baby switcheroo of 2000-2002.  They took liberties with the timeline of Hope's pregnancy and times when she would've potentially been knocked up by Bo, John or Stefano, but that's okay since Bo was the father in the end. The babyswitch storyline itself provided great story for Bo, Hope (and Barb & Glen, though unimportant), Stefano, Lexie, Abe, etc. This was the story that tipped Lexie over from good girl to chip off daddy Stefano's block. 

 

Literally, the only real story Lexie ever got.