3 hours ago, titan1978 said:

I think Ron Carlivati, who is also a comic book fan, really suffers from this. A prime example is digging up the oldest Spencer sibling who had not been mentioned since the earliest days of Bobbie and Luke, never factored into their stories, and was dug up for three days with a relative also gone fairly quickly after.

THANK YOU. (Of course, I hated every minute of that story and felt it robbed Luke and/or Bobbie of the opportunity to be reunited with their deadbeat father down the road, but whatever, lol).

1 hour ago, bongobong said:

The most successful retcon is probably OLTL making Tina Viki's half-sister. I can't think of another example of an actor's second stint being infinitely more popular than their first.

That's because the clues were there going all the way back to when Tina first showed up to live with Viki. Why Irene picked Viki of all people seemed a bit weird in retrospect.. but it did allow Viki and Tina to get to know one another for a few years so that you could buy the two having an underlying tension that got amped up once it came out that they were half-sisters.

Well, the flipside of an illness never being terminal is that you know from the outset the character will be OK, so why bother?

That's why fictional diseases were invented-to kill off characters w/o disturbing the audience.

1 minute ago, Paul Raven said:

Well, the flipside of an illness never being terminal is that you know from the outset the character will be OK, so why bother?

True. On the other hand, a story about a disease (terminal or not) never should be about the disease itself, but about how it affects the characters. On AMC, for example, the point of Molly Montgomery's battle with childhood leukemia wasn't the leukemia itself, but what it forced her parents, Travis and Barbara, to do, and how that, in turn, destroyed their marriages to Erica and Tom, respectively.

The difference, though, is that - again - a story involving a non-terminal illness offers viewers who might be afflicted with the same illness SOME hope that they'll make it. Which is why, as stirring as it was emotionally to watch Cindy Parker Chandler fight AIDS (and AIDS-related bigotry) on AMC, it was ultimately a downer for me, because, my God, to watch her struggle for so long, just to watch her DIE in the end!?

Edited 23 hours ago23 hr by Khan

One of the biggest retcons was on Dallas with Bobby's death being revealed as a dream and an entire season worth of storylines tossed aside.

I'm not sure you could call it a recton since it was early on in the shows run, but out of the blue all that business about another Forrester daughter Angela being kept at a secret house for decades. Then that hilarious stuff about her being replaced by an imposter because the real Angela died because they forgot to set the brake on her wheelchair. Stephanie was told she had to have reconstructive surgery to explain why she looked so different. Then later the imposter Deveny has a burned face and has to get plastic surgery. Oh, Bill Bell what were you smoking when you came up with all that?

Gwen, Days of Our Lives. And considering that character was alluded to have involvement in the death of a long-time character {goodbye, Dr. Laura Horton!] - and not even on screen - does not help matters!

(I know Jack Deveraux was a black-hat character early on, so I could buy he had kids before Jennifer and maybe even ignored them. But the setup for Gwen was clunky, and Gwen whining about poor, pitiful her, was just...UGH.)

It didn't have any long-term effects, and Gwen still seems like an afterthought of a character.

6 hours ago, EricMontreal22 said:

This is only somewhat related but I remember Agnes Nixon used to say she didn't want to write illness storylines that ended in death--in case a viewer was watching with that illness she still wanted to offer hope. So what do you do when you tell an AIDS or cancer story--at a time when there isn't a cure...)

It’s one of the many reasons why Stone and Robin’s story was so heartbreaking. It has the classic layer of tragic first love, and although he died, Robin got to live. To this day I think GH was very brave for that time to tell that story, and go all the way with it even if it was hard to watch. There was a lot of beauty in those shows, a lot of community and love. At the time making Robin Scorpio HIV+ was very shocking, and as the medicine got better it did allow her to live a full life realistically.

6 hours ago, Paul Raven said:

It doesn't even have to be a major thing. eg on Y&R ,Nikki's sister Casey has been MIA for years. If she was occasionally mentioned eg a trip to see Casey, or Casey sends her love then you feel respected as a viewer. The show wants you to invest so it's annoying when they won't do that themselves.

Sometimes I think this is an example of lazy writing. Soaps used to know that at least once a year, during the holidays or if some major event happened, characters would mention a loved one not there. So and so couldn’t get away from work to visit, or the couple is settling into their new lives, etc. Didn’t have to be major, just a little line or two here and there. Now more often than not we have the absent character presented as a terrible mother or father that abandoned their families instead of just an easy bit of dialogue here and there about the things we don’t see. It certainly impacted Felicia and Lucky on GH.

5 hours ago, Wendy said:

Gwen, Days of Our Lives. And considering that character was alluded to have involvement in the death of a long-time character {goodbye, Dr. Laura Horton!] - and not even on screen - does not help matters!

(I know Jack Deveraux was a black-hat character early on, so I could buy he had kids before Jennifer and maybe even ignored them. But the setup for Gwen was clunky, and Gwen whining about poor, pitiful her, was just...UGH.)

It didn't have any long-term effects, and Gwen still seems like an afterthought of a character.

Laura's part in this storyline was the thing that turned this "good" retcon into one of the worst retcons

As much as i love Nik Cassadine, the whole creation was bs.

Massimo being Ridge Father. Ugh…

Nobody minded that dead Jesse showed up in Angie's life after all these years.
I guess people don't even talk about Melaswen anymore.
Wasn't JER a consultant during the Deveney Dixon madness on B&B?

14 hours ago, AbcNbc247 said:

Laura's part in this storyline was the thing that turned this "good" retcon into one of the worst retcons

Those recreated flashbacks were embarrassing. It was supposed to be cutesy/campy, I guess, using Cady McClain as Laura. It was Body & Soul bad.

Did the Deveney Dixon plot not go anywhere because it didn’t suit B&B or because it just didn’t go anywhere?