Good & Bad Paternity/Maternity Reveals & Changes

[Xanthe]

AW:

Good: Donna is Marley's mother

Great: Marley has a twin Victoria 

Terrible: Maybe Marley and Victoria's uncle John is really their father (worse would have been the speculation that their adopted uncle Scott was their triplet).

Also fairly ham-handed: Iris is not Mac's biological daughter! Except now she is back and recast and yes she is for some reason!

[DramatistDreamer]

Served absolutely no purpose, afaic.
Lily, despite spending precious formative years away from Neil, is more like Neil in personality and temperament than she is to either Dru or Malcolm (especially as portrayed by CK).

[kalbir]

Going way back, Y&R Ashley learning she was the result of an affair between Dina and alcoholic Brent Davis. Yes in a way it was a dust off of Lorie Brooks parentage reveal a decade earlier. The initial impact of Ashley's parentage reveal is that it lead to so many storylines that still impact the canvas. The downside though is that it was largely forgotten after the initial storyline. Also John Abbott never found out that Ashley wasn't his biological daughter.

[Soaplovers]

Which made spermgate all the more out of character for Ashley.. since there was no way Ashley would ever keep the secret that Victor was Abby's real father from her daughter.. especially knowing the extreme trauma and questioning of identity that it caused Ashley back in the 80s when she found out that John Abbott (the man who raised her after her mother deserted/abandoned her) wasn't her real father.  I couldn't buy that she would subject her daughter to that same fate.

 

 

I agree Bo being Victor's child was a pretty great story.. and it was interesting that it came out because Caroline's daughter Kimberly had her own whose the daddy situation with Victor and Shane.

It also kept Victor/Caroline tied together because of their son.. and that connection would come up here and there throughout their times on the show in the 80s/90s/00s... with Caroline's husband always feeling threatened by that (best example was the aborted John(Roman)/Diana when Caroline had a heart attack.. and Victor came to see her then tried to sneak out only to be caught by Shawn).

 

ATWT:  

Aaron/Holden reveal- Good/neutral

This resulted from a drunked one night stand after Holden/Lily had a fight.. and Caleb/Julie had a fight.  With people wondering if Caleb or Holden was the father.. with the reveal of Holden motivating Andy to have his name put on the birth certificate as the father.

Then you had Iva adopting Aaron.. Holden over-hearing that he was the father, confronting Julie then getting mugged/losing his memory... then months later learns again at Aaron's 2nd birthday party that he was the father.   It was a 3 year story that sadly got dropped after Holden came back in 1997 and revealed he sent Aaron to live with Caleb/Julie in Seattle.  

Edited February 12, 2023 by Soaplovers

[OzFrog]

What the heck?

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[BoldRestless]

I forgot that one too! 

[Planet Soap]

GOOD, OLTL: It's been discussed on different threads already but Mitch being Jessica's father was well done as it was plausible and rooted in history. My only issues were that the recreated flashabcks where crappy and it took ten years to make Clint her pops again. Loved the slow reintroduction of Allison Perkins which lead up to all of this. 

NEUTRAL: Ray is Jock's son, Dallas. Did it really advance any plot? I guess it works from the poor outsider now has to fight for his place angle. Maybe it expanded his stories beyond ranch hand. Otherwise, he and Lucy were another Billy and Mac. Screw the incestuos ramifications, let's make 'em family for some shock value.    

BAD: Dylan is Paul & Nikki's son. A complete retcon of events that played out onscreen. How could they say Ian Ward was cult leader when someone completely different was established as such on screen (as I've read on these threads). Just like Sheila, inventing new children when a charachter has negleted offspring from whom to draw conflict. 

Edited February 14, 2023 by ironlion

[Paul Raven]

That was done purely to push Steve Burton. What would have been acceptable would have been Paul having a child from those days as we saw onscreen that he had sex with (Rebecca?)

Nikki having a child was rubbish. Did they say she blocked it out? And the tying Mariah into the cult was even worse.

Who wrote that garbage?

And then once Burton left the whole thing was forgotten.

[Planet Soap]

OLTL Plot hole:

Mitch says he gave his baby to Viki to grow up in luxury and gave Clint's baby to Walter & Roxy in 1986.

How could Mitch have known which newborn twin was his vs Clint's without a blood test???

Edited February 14, 2023 by ironlion

[titan1978]

The best one that did the most for the show in my viewing was Nikolas revealed as Laura’s son from the island on GH.  It used history in a good way, and the couple was never the same again.  Same with Belle on DAYS.  Also Kendall Hart on AMC was a great one!

One that I think was a mess but I enjoyed was Lily/Rose on ATWT.  I enjoyed Rose, even if it made little sense on Iva’s part.

Worst has to be the unabortion on AMC.  Just awful.

 

Edited February 15, 2023 by titan1978

[Darn]

I've always liked that he never found out. I don't know, I guess I just thought it was neat that a soap secret wasn't revealed to everyone.

Can we get a tally of the number of women on soaps who gave birth to twins without realizing it? 

OLTL

Viki (Jessica/Natalie)

Y&R

Sharon (Cassie/Mariah)

GH

Nina (Nelle/Willow)

Susan (Jason/Drew)

ATWT 

Iva (Lily/Rose)

GL

Alexandra (Lujack/Nick...this one I'm unsure of, did she know she'd given birth to twins?)

BTW I really need this plot device to die.

[MichaelGL]

GL:

The Great:

Amanda is the daughter of Alan and Jane Marie Stafford.

The Good:

Dylan is Billy and Reva's son. I really liked Pam Long's second tenure on the show, and the team of writers at the time made sure to hit all the right beats with this one. 

The Worst:

Amanda is not Alan's daughter, but his sister. 

 

Edited February 16, 2023 by MichaelGL

[Faulkner]

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[Melroser]

Great: AW's Lorna being Felicia's daughter. It helped to fill in some of Felicia's past and conflicted with Felicia's glamorous romance writer persona. Plus, Alicia Coppola and Linda Dano worked amazingly together.

Bad: AW's Ryan being Carl's son. First of all, it was so shortly after the Felicia/Lorna reveal. It also led to the over-the-top creation of Justine (Rachel's doppelganger). 

[Xanthe]

All of these seem to have revealed the twin in 1990 or later even if the character was born onscreen earlier than that. The reveal that Marley had a twin Victoria was in 1985 and I believe the explanation was that Donna had been drugged and out of it when she gave birth in a secret room so it was halfway reasonable all things considered. It seems harder to retcon a twin when the birth was otherwise normal.

Is Donna/Vicky on AW really the earliest example of the secret twin even the mother didn't know about? (I would not count scenarios where the mother knew and thought the baby had died or kept the secret.) 

Agree with these. Lorna was very nicely handled.