GH: March 2024 Discussion Thread

[Vee]

As I think titan alluded to, this has been a long time coming. The previous regimes have made Sonny and Ava way too cozy in recent months and years, like a lot of other characters who shouldn't be. So this is a reasonable outgrowth to me.

[Contessa Donatella]

No, thank god they've not messed with any retcons on any of these children. And, Rick Hearst played Ric Lansing & that is how Molly is Molly Davis-Lansing, you're right on that! I just blanked. I find I do not know who Sam McCall's father is. Julian Jerome? Dunno. And you see I don't know who the fathers are to all of Liz's boys! 

Excessive is a good word when it comes to these family trees. Of course that is true in other soaps as well. And, Courtney is Spencer's bio-mother. I say it that way because she died, of course. And, Trina is Portia's & Taggert was her dad but they changed that last year, dammit. Now Taggert has been missing for 6 months & Curtis is now her bio-dad. 

Were you watching a few weeks ago when Drew threw a birthday party for Scout? The mix of famlies was fun but also confusing. I was just getting used to the kids lineup as it was & now we have new male tweens & teens! 

Also Violet is Finn's & Hayden's, so she is Liz's niece. 

[carolineg]

I agree that I don't think Sonny is on to Ava at all.  I still think Sonny has been in worse places and his behavior isn't that erratic yet to where people would be concerned.

They way you and @titan1978 explained it did make me re-think my take and I suppose you could say it's a long time coming, but I didn't really notice it.   It's kind of like you can tie all of Sonny's current behavior back to Nixon Falls, but I don't think that was the initial intent and PM/EK (if they are responsible) just made a very conscious choice to go that particular route.  The imbalanced medicine is really a great move for Sonny's motivation and it does open a lot of possibilities outside of Sonny just being stubborn and wrong.

Julian Jerome is Sam's dad.

[DeliaIrisFan]

Yes, it is a soap cliche across the board, but it just seems especially hollow here because none of the relationships resulting in these children seemed to have any kind of resonance in terms of character development.  Hence my analogy to ATWT.  And I suspect some of those couplings came about because of physical and/or other resemblance to past love interests.

And I think that's right, Julian Jerome is Sam's father, or at least he was when Lucas was reintroduced a decade or so ago.  That I watched for a bit.  It also doesn't help that I keep wanting to call her Olivia, because of PC.

Edited March 30, 2024 by DeliaIrisFan

[Vee]

I think everything titan said makes perfect sense. But I also think the final step (turning on Jason) would not be possible quite this quickly without his meds being tampered with. (Sonny has turned on him before, but it takes more time and more incidents.) So now this works for me.

I still think Alexis has used her teenage fling with Julian to block out the truth about Sam - that she's the child of Stavros. Oh well.

[BoldRestless]

And Leo's biodad, but that doesn't seem to be acknowledged despite recent closeness between Olivia and Sam.

 

What about Dante and Lulu's kids? Just Rocco? And Violet is Lulu and Valentin? I know the first kid Maxie was supposed to birth for them turned out to be George (Maxie and Spinelli) but wasn't there another embryo that Britt stole? Or was that Violet, lol.

Edited March 30, 2024 by BoldRestless

[Vee]

There are way too many kids on this show due to baby fever on soaps in more conservative, less risky times. But yes:

Dante and Lulu have Rocco (who Britt briefly stole). Lulu (allegedly) has mutant test tube hellspawn Charlotte with Valentin, not by choice.

Equally demonic Violet is Finn and Hayden Barnes' (Rebecca Budig) daughter. Violet is unfortunately a Webber, as Hayden is Jeff Webber's illegitimate child.

Maxie inexplicably, unacceptably has three damn children: Georgie (with Spinelli), James (with sentient log Nathan West) and Bailey or whoever (Peter August). She should not have one child let alone three.

S&C stupidly had Donna a few years ago so the show could name a baby after a deceased crewmember. So now she can never die. Sonny and Ava of course have Avery, who also should not exist but was Ava's insurance policy after Connie and A.J.

Sam has Danny and Scout, her unnecessary daughter with Drew.

I still remember the dreadful period in early Passanante where they worked overtime to put Julian over as a good guy again and had him wearing matching Christmas sweaters with a doting Olivia following Leo's birth. Never again.

Edited March 31, 2024 by Vee

[BoldRestless]

Thanks @Vee I always confuse Charlotte and Violet. 

The Halloween episode this year was... woah.

[Vee]

Me too, for a long time. The key is Charlotte is older and currently blessedly offscreen in a padded cell, and Violet is the obnoxious little one lisping all her lines.

And yeah I saw some of that Halloween ep. There's far too many kids.

[carolineg]

Britt stole Rocco and it is Dante/Lulu's.  Valentin stole Lulu's embryo for Charlotte who I think was given birth to by Bree Williamson's character via IVF.  Lulu gave birth to 0 of her children.  Maxie miscarried the surrogate Lulu/Dante child then got pregnant almost immediately by Spinelli and tried to pass now Georgie off as theirs.

Violet is Finn and Hayden's child.

[titan1978]

The meds are the extra kick. Sonny was this isolated during the (vomit) Emily affair, but she was trustworthy. Ava is not, which makes his situation more precarious every day his meds are off and she is his only confidant.

 

[Contessa Donatella]

I had that problem when ATWT had PC's Eve (Julie Pinson) on as Janet. Also ATWT had PC's Karen (Marie Wilson) as Meg Snyder. 

[titan1978]

Carlivati had no clue how to write for Lulu, and I get why JMB had enough. Her character had more going on than just a baby factory. But all of a sudden she and Maxie are reduced to traumatic children stories without any emotional depth.

Edited March 30, 2024 by titan1978

[Liberty City]

That's what I noticed: both Lulu & Maxie, like a lot of women in soaps in recent years, were given children and any kind of adult-like edge was stripped away. Thankfully, Mulcahey & Korte seem to be restoring Maxie's edge ever so slightly, and I am enjoying it.

[Vee]

I think it has to do with several factors I've ranted on about over and over: Baby stories allegedly being the most easy thing to get greenlit and eating up months of story while keeping the lights on at struggling soap operas, a perceived conservative backlash among the audience the network most values re: more edgy storytelling or overt sexuality, and of course good old-fashioned misogyny and lack of ideas. So instead we've gotten years of young hot people just settling down and either popping out babies or haggling over them or wondering who their parents are up til now. This is also a key issue on Y&R.

It was clear early on RC saw most of GH's previously layered 'good' characters as plot pieces vs. the more exciting baddies, like he often did later at OLTL. (The men also got this big time - Dante became nothing more than a clueless plot widget, like most heroic male characters on RC shows). It still feels unreal when I remember how I watched babies become the center of young Lulu, Maxie and Dante's lives all of a sudden. Settling down with children had nothing to do with who they were prior to 2012 as young, vital characters and it took me a long time to accept that all parties now actually had small children. I still don't totally buy it when I've seen Dante or Lulu with a son lol.

Edited March 30, 2024 by Vee