Good & Bad Paternity/Maternity Reveals & Changes

[Planet Soap]

Basically the title:

GH:

Bad: Franco being Soctt & Heather's son. Completely out of left field and born out of an obsession of tying new charachters to the canvas unncesarily. 

Y&R:

Bad: Jill is Kay's daughter. Especially because it came at the expense of Billy and Mac. Did they think "screw this couple we've invested in, let's write this shocking retcon".

Neutral: Sure it made for some quick drama in '95 and '06, but did Lilly being Malcolm's daughter serve the show in any way?

Edited March 7, 2023 by ironlion

[kalbir]

@ironlion Changing Jill's parentage twice and having Malcolm as Lily's father served no purpose.

 

[Paul Raven]

Y&R

Jeffrey Bardwell is Chelsea's father. Again, a needless reveal. Hate when these previously unrelated characters from other parts of the country are revealed to be related and in the same town at the same time.

B&B

Massimo is Ridge's dad. Apart from the shock value it messed up things in the future,. Is it even mentioned now?

[carolineg]

Days-

Good-

Bo being Victor's son.  That was reveal created long lasting drama for Bo and the Bradys.  

Mickey/Laura/Bill/Mike

Sami/Austin/Lucas/Will

I assume @ironlion is referring to paternity reveals that lasted longer or happened while the child was older, but John/Roman/Marlena/Belle.  I actually though everything about that story was done really well including the reveal.

Bad-

Most of them lol.  Any Stefano kid revealed after 1992.

Carly/Daniel/Maggie/Melanie-ugh.

GH

Good

Laura is Nik's mom.  I really love that story and the re-introduction of the Cassadines

This is an unpopular opinion probably, but I liked the Alexis/Kristina paternity secret until it devolved into that mess with Dobson.  It was all very soapy

Bad

So, so many here

Ethan is Luke/Holly's

All of Lulu's children somehow not being born to her lol

Karen is Scott's daughter.  She left like 5 min later.  The idea was fine, but it was pointless with the actress leaving.

And the one we just talked about recently, Who fathered Skye? 

[Faulkner]

GH:

Good.

Carly being Bobbie’s daughter. 

I still think Malcolm raping Dru while she was zonked out on cold meds is one of the grossest things I’ve ever seen on a soap. Bell and team didn’t want to take the time to write a real affair story, so they went for a cheap, salacious, out-of-nowhere story that damaged one of their rising star characters as a sexual predator. Yeah, they effectively memory-holed it for years and unearthed it a decade later to try to make it less icky (and shift blame to Dru for keeping Lily’s paternity a secret), but I certainly didn’t forget.

Edited February 12, 2023 by Faulkner

[Forever8]

I always hated how they treated Lily's conception like it was some hot one-nightstand between Drucilla and Malcolm, but the audience know otherwise. I think they hardly brought up the specifics of it. 

[dragonflies]

Nope and sad part is, it was only done to be able to pair up Rick/Phoebe(or Steffy) or Ridge/Bridget. 

[kalbir]

Bill Bell said in a 1996 interview that he regretted writing the storyline where Malcolm took advantage of an over-medicated Dru.

It was brought up again in 2000, when Dru/Malcolm got together. Dru reminded Malcolm of the night that he behaved impulsively with her and Malcolm mentioned he regretted what happened that night. There was no mention though that Lily may have been the result of that night.

[dragonflies]

I wonder if this is where Bell JR got the idea to have Thomas have sex with Caroline while she was hopped up on pills and get her prego 

[BoldRestless]

Maternity reveals in general are not good because you have to buy that a woman forgot she had a child. It only works if the audience knows she gave up a child. Nina being Ronan's mother on Y&R worked for me as a culmination of 25 years of story that originally played out on screen.  We felt Nina's pain for years she she searched for and thought about the child. I went back and watched the clips from 1986 and they even got details right like the names of his adoptive parents.

 

Cassie being Sharon's daughter was also good, since we knew she had given up a child and we knew that the child Grace brought to town was Sharon's. We were only waiting for the satisfaction of Sharon finding out. But the Mariah storyline was dumb, because Sharon somehow never realized she had twins and somehow the twin got sold to a cult that just happened to be the one led by the retcon cult leader who slept with Nikki (even though in the original story the cult leader was a woman who slept with Paul...).

 

 

 

Edited February 12, 2023 by BoldRestless

[j swift]

Totally agree; especially when it happens more than once to the same woman.

I mean look at OLTL.  They constructed the entire Eterna plot in order to explain how Viki could forget giving birth to Megan.  Two decades later, it was revealed that she also forgot giving birth to Natalie and somehow it was even more illogical.

Heather on GH is another great example.  Heather was OBSESSED with Stephan Lars, she drugged people, her mother killed someone, and she eventually moved across the country just to be with him.  Now, you're gonna tell me she had Esme and just dropped her off without a thought two decades later?

At least Nina's coma on GH partially explains how she forgot giving birth to twins.  However, it still leaves the question of how her nurse/caretaker, her lover Silas who was in medical school, and her aunt Obrecht who is a doctor, all never mentioned a multiple birth high risk pregnancy.

Edited February 12, 2023 by j swift

[Planet Soap]

The way it was framed around 2006 was that Malcolm did not know Dru was high or that she believed she was sleeping with Neil instead of him. 

Neutral: Irene Manning is Todd & Victor Jr's mother, OLTL. The essential question is did Todd have to made made a Lord? I suppose it was a way to give the charachter money so he could pull off bigger schemes, and use rewritten Victor Sr. as the origin for Todd's darkness. If not, Todd didn't necesarily have to be related to anyone to be a good villain. With Victor Jr, making him Irene's son had to be done to facilitate Roger Howarth's return. 

Bad: Jill is Neil Fenmore's daughter. It's still better than Jill as Kay's daughter but I wish there was a way to Liz & Bill her parents again. Unfortunately in 2003, Liz stated outright that Jill was adopted.

Bad: Finn is Sheila's son, B&B. Sheila had so many existing offspring to choose from. If they said he was Ryder or something escaping his past that would've made sense. But a whole new son while she was obsessing over Scott Jr for years???

Edited March 7, 2023 by ironlion

[AbcNbc247]

Bad: Basically every single one on GH in the past few years, considering that pretty much all of them either contradicted established history or were part of an obviously rewritten storyline

Edited February 12, 2023 by AbcNbc247

[Taoboi]

THANK YOU!!!

 

I loved Billy and Mac and I found out about that after the fact and was livid. 

[Forever8]

I remember hearing that Bill Bell two biggest regrets were killing off Phillip in the 80's and Dru/Malcolm in the 90's.