12 minutes ago, carolineg said:

I will forever be curious what Reilly's original plan was for that entire story.  It clearly was completely changed.

 

The vets were all supposed to be dead, period. Corday thought it would be a budget and ratings bonanza. When fans revolted he turned tail, forced JER to rewrite and claimed it had been planned all along. It was disgusting from beginning to end. Sensational in terms of PR, but beyond poorly written. I don't think JER had a sane exit strategy for getting Marlena out of it initially, either. He played a lot of the murders for laughs.

Edited March 29, 20196 yr by Vee

4 minutes ago, Mitch said:

 

All of these things are funny as hell when watching another soap you aren't invested in...(I admit, I LURRRVED the stupidity of the Salem Stalker and kept the scene of Tom Horton's giant head chasing Marlena out of the house. or the "special effect" scene of Marlena falling from her penthouse , with Sammi screaming only to have whats his face John given the wooden play by play..."She's falling, oh no..she hit the lobby canvas entrance..she bounced out of it..and she landed on SAMMI!" Cut to Evans on top of the Sammi actress..LOL) but when it comes to YOUR soap like on GL it hits home! During Conboy I was praying for the clone days!

Not just hypnosis, but the Salem victims all had LOOK-A-LIKES to take their place. Never mind that there could be exact look alikes of all those people, but that means that someone actually had to kill all those people so the murders were real..right? By the time Tony told the whole story the characters and the audience (and the writers) were like.."We don't really care anymore!"

 

Marlena falling on Sami out of a penthouse might have been the best scene of that whole story.  I could watch that over and over and I like days.

I knew Andre was behind hypnotizing Marlena and there were look a likes or something to that extent, but by that time I didn't care about the story either.  Then everyone was stuck in a castle or New Salem forever.  Then mid 50's Marlena got pregnant by Roman and I was just done lol.

1 minute ago, Vee said:

 

The vets were all supposed to be dead, period. Corday thought it would be a budget and ratings bonanza. When fans revolted he turned tail, forced JER to rewrite and claimed it had been planned all along. It was disgusting from beginning to end. Sensational in terms of PR, but beyond poorly written. I don't think JER had a sane exit strategy for getting Marlena out of it initially, either. He played a lot of the murders for laughs.

 

Thanks I assumed JER had some idea how to get Marlena out of it.  He loved the character of Marlena.  I wasn't against a lot of the murders (Abe, Roman, Cassie) but it got out of control when every vets life was at stake.

I enjoyed the adult pairing of Nikolas and Emily. That pirate storyline though... Constance and Blackthorn, with a portrait of Constance that looked exactly like Natalia Livingston, even though Emily was adopted. Looking back on it now, I have no idea how the actors kept a straight face through those scenes. Although to counter, the hotel fire during the auctioning of the treasure was one of my favourite disaster storylines on GH.

Edited March 29, 20196 yr by mango

3 minutes ago, mango said:

I enjoyed the adult pairing of Nikolas and Emily. That pirate storyline though... Constance and Blackthorn, with a portrait of Constance that looked exactly like Natalia Livingston, even though Emily was adopted. Looking back on it now, I have no idea how the actors kept a straight face through those scenes. Although to counter, the hotel fire during the auctioning of the treasure was one of my favourite disaster storylines on GH.

 

Emily and Nik got some weird stories.  The Connor/Mary Bishop thing.  The tumor Emily hallucinations Nik had.  They had some real crap storylines

I'm going to add Another World's forays in doppelgangers with both Rachel and Amanda Cory during its waning years.

 

Rachel/Justine - Rachel Cory, renowned sculptress, society matron, and longtime resident of Bay City, has a doppelganger (with a portrait) in Boston who was her husband Carl's ex-lover, her next-door neighbor Spencer's ex-wife, and Ryan's mother, and none of them ever mentioned the resemblance? 

 

Amanda/Amalie - Jordan Stark and the Lumina Foundation get an enormous, if absurd, build up, including a doppelganger with the required portrait, dissolving a character into dust, and putting babies in trees, only to completely disappear on order for the show to change course before it ended.

 

Special mention goes to Cass Winthrop who had a doppelganger replace him on his honeymoon to Kathleen.

5 hours ago, SteelCity said:

Wasn't Santa Barbara a bit rapetastic as well?

 

As much as I love SB, yes it was. Nearly all of the show's leading ladies were raped. There were THREE pairs of sisters on the show who were rape victims (Eden and Kelly Capwell, Gina and Summer Blake, and Mary and Christie Duvall). 

I remember the day that GL's two stupidest storylines at the time (San Cristobal and the Santos family) were suddenly linked together, though each one had been running for some months with no evidence of a connection. I practically threw something at the TV, and I gradually drifted away from the show, though I had started watching in the mid-70s. I looked in from time to time but it never seemed to be getting better after that, just a long downhill slide to the end.

Linda Anderson as a madame on Days.

GH. 2003. Dead Man's Hand. Need I say more? 

1 hour ago, BuckyB12 said:

I remember the day that GL's two stupidest storylines at the time (San Cristobal and the Santos family) were suddenly linked together, though each one had been running for some months with no evidence of a connection. I practically threw something at the TV, and I gradually drifted away from the show, though I had started watching in the mid-70s. I looked in from time to time but it never seemed to be getting better after that, just a long downhill slide to the end.

 

Almost makes the Holly as nursery Rhyme stalker look like Masterpiece theatre in comparison.. although that story was kind of rooted in history/character... not by much.. but at least it was centered in Springfield and involved the whole cast.. and had some long lasting fall out.

1 hour ago, Titus Andronicus said:

Linda Anderson as a madame on Days.

 

At least it wasn't Margaret Mason so it's easy to believe that character assassination never happened. In my head, anyway.

The whole 2009 General Hospital hostage crisis. It was confusing as hell and seemed like a patchwork of ideas and it became insane. Text Message Killer is pretty close too.

What’s pathetic is in many of these years Deirdre Thought she was worthy of best actress and lobbied for it and mailed tapes.  

B&B.  Liam bumps his head and Quinn kidnaps him and has sex with him for 6 months.  She tells him he is Adam and her name is Eve.  Rapes him for 6 months and he’s her son’s half brother.  And she loves it.   She shoved Deacon off of a cliff into the Ocean where he apparently floated around for about a week before showing back up with seaweed wrapped around his head.    

Edited April 2, 20196 yr by Fevuh

14 minutes ago, Fevuh said:

What’s pathetic is in many of these years Deirdre Thought she was worthy of best actress and lobbied for it and mailed tapes.  

B&B.  Liam bumps his head and Quinn kidnaps him and has sex with him for 6 months.  She tells him he is Adam and her name is Eve.  Rapes him for 6 months and he’s her son’s half brother.  And she loves it.  

I vaguely remember this because I wasn’t watching regularly then, but, man, if there’s a hell for writers, Brad Bell has a lot of [!@#$%^&*] to answer for.

20 hours ago, BuckyB12 said:

I remember the day that GL's two stupidest storylines at the time (San Cristobal and the Santos family) were suddenly linked together, though each one had been running for some months with no evidence of a connection. I practically threw something at the TV, and I gradually drifted away from the show, though I had started watching in the mid-70s. I looked in from time to time but it never seemed to be getting better after that, just a long downhill slide to the end.

You should have watched a lot more soaps if that’s what turned you off. 

5 minutes ago, Faulkner said:

I vaguely remember this because I wasn’t watching regularly then, but, man, if there’s a hell for writers, Brad Bell has a lot of [!@#$%^&*] to answer for.

Then Eric in his best Sean Connery voice declares to everyone- sheesh changed -  sheesh a changed pershonnnn.  Sheesh changed.  Changed perrrshonnn.