I don’t think there was a robot on GH and I watched it religiously in the 80s and 90s.
FYI: OLTL and AMC both take place in central PA (and both are filmed in NY, so it is easy for them to do crossovers.) PC was a spin-off from GH so both take place in the same town: Port Charles (or as Luke calls it, Port Chuckles), in NY state. These shows are (well, PC isn’t on anymore, so was) filmed in CA so the chance of them crossing over with AMC and OLTL is slimmer, though it does happen.
And yes, Laura did fall in love with her rapist, but they have addressed that issue (when their son Lucky found out about what had happened, they sat him down and talked to him about it. It was actually pretty well done.) That being said, yes many, many, many storylines, on all shows, are idiotic.
Just a note: on Friends, Joey has a gig on DOOL, which is cool and all, excpet that DOOL is actually filmed in CA, not NY. So Joey has one hell of a commute!
Not only that, but the fallout of Lucky’s reaction and Elizabeth’s rape led to their estrangement. It always bugs me when people complain that she married her rapist. It may have been all happy sunshine at the time, but the past came back and bit them in the ass in a big way, and their relationship never, ever recovered from that.
And I agree. I don’t remember any wacky robots on GH.
At the risk of sounding like a dunderhead, I have never been a fan of GH thus don’t know the back story, (and I properly am to young to remember it anyway).
But I do recall that Luke & Laura’s wedding was suppose to be the biggest event in soap opera history.
So can somebody explain how she ended up marrying her rapist? Did she know at the time only to find out later? Why wasn’t Luke in jail?
OK, here is the short(er) story: (I was not watching it at the time as I was way too young, so someone else might want to fill in what I’ve gotten wrong).
The part that is important to note is the Luke was brought on to play a limited-run bad guy. Laura was married to Scotty and working at Luke’s casino. He had a crush on Laura and Laura was attracted to him. One night they were working late alone together, he starting kissing her, and then he forced her down and raped her. She DID say no and she did suffer the aftermath of someone who is raped (fear, feeling guilty, etc). She did not press charges, though, and IIRC, it was mainly b/c 1. she felt responsible in some way and 2. she didn’t want Scotty to know. The topic was not really mentioned that much at first. And that is why Luke did not go to jail.
Then the fans started to write in about Tony Geary, the actor who plays Luke. They weren’t writing in about the rape–they were writing in about how wonderful an actor he was and how he should have a permanent position on the show. Realizing what a success in the making they had, they kept Luke on and set about redeeming him. The rape sort of became a seduction. (Now, please don’t rail out against the show for it. No one said this is real life, ok?) I do not know if there was public reaction about the rape at the time.
Time passed and due to mob-related issues, L&L were forced into hiding and spent the summer hiding out and sleeping in one room with a blanket hanging between their beds–“The Walls of Jerhico” as Luke referred to them. But on the way they fell in love and eventually the blanket came down. Time passed and yes, their wedding became the biggest thing on TV ever—even making the cover of TIME magazine and a lot of others. They were the first real supercouple. (IMHO).
But that doesn’t address the rape, does it? No, not really and it wasn’t discussed for many years–because Laura and then Luke left the show for about 15 years and so were not mentioned much. When they returned, they had 10 year old son Lucky in tow. Skip ahead a few years and Lucky finds out what had happened. He was FURIOUS at his father for having done it and also mad at his mom for falling in love with the guy who had done it. And now here is where my memory really fails because I remember watching those scenes and crying but now I don’t remember exactly what everyone said. A lot of it was “it was a complicated story and I saw a lot more in your father than what he had done, etc” So I need someone to fill in the rest.
I have just one question I want to ask here, as my experience with soap operas is very limited, and I’ve never seen any of this bizzarro stuff…is there a website somewhere that keeps track of stuff like this? There should be, there are websites these days that catalogue just about everything, no matter how obscure…
Weird_AL - There are hundreds of websites devoted to cataloging even the most minute details of soap operas. Back in my soap-watching days, I had pages and pages of bookmarks – for shows, storylines, couples, and individual characters.
For example, here is a site that has everything you never wanted to know about Days of Our Lives (with related sites for Passions and the O.C.)
To answer another question asked upthread, originally there was a very tenous link between ABC’s All My Children, One Life To Live, and Loving/The City. The shows would occasionally mention each others’ characters or storylines and there were a few minor crossovers (Jeremy went from AMC to Loving). Then Loving was cancelled, and ABC decided to replace it with a spinoff of General Hospital, called Port Charles. As mentioned above, PC and GH took place in the same city, and had numerous crossovers. Initially, characters moved back and forth between the two shows on a weekly basis. Some, like Mike Corbin and to a lesser extent Scott Baldwin, had significant roles on both soaps. After Disney purchased ABC, they decided to increase the synergy of ABC Daytime by moving all four soaps into the same universe. They brought in Linda Dano to play a character who moved back and forth among all four soaps, and created numerous crossover storylines. Each of the four soaps had characters who had originated on a different show and there was a great deal of fluidity among the four. Once Linda Dano’s character settled down permanently on One Life, and Port Charles moved to a filming schedule that made it difficult to coordinate the shows, the connection among the soaps gradually decreased. After Port Charles was cancelled, the remaining soaps essentially went back to being separate worlds, albeit with a few crossover characters still in place.
Thank you SpoilerVirgin, but I’m not interested in all the storylines, just the ones with the really weird stuff like underground cities, or space aliens.
Or lesbians. If there were ever a soap opera about an underground city filled with lesbian space aliens, I would have to see it…
Maybe not the dumbest, but the most obviously dumb that even I, someone who only catches a few minutes here and there once a week while eating lunch at my grandma’s, sees it.
On The Bold and the Beautiful we were recently introduced to Samantha Kelly, played by 32 year old Sydney Penny. She was introduced as a childhood friend of Ronn Moss’ character Ridge.
Yes, B&B always has played very fast and very loose with everybodies age. Especially for such a young show it has had so many rapid agings in its young cast rank, which make it impossible to tell any backstories.
ie… Amber came to town at about the age of 17 to be Mary/Margaret/Erica’s babysitter, she then got banged up by 15 year old Rick. Sheila fled into the night with Erica and two years latter baby Erica came back to town and started to seduce Amber’s husband!
In the mid to late 1990’s on the Guiding Light, they CLONED Reva Shayne! Two crazy Reva’s running around was a little more then Springfield could handle ! Need I say more ? Cloning? Back around that time if my memory serves me correctly - cloning a sheep was all over the news - I remember thinking to myself as I watched GL that they seriously needed some new writer. Who ever ok -ed the Arc about Cloning had to be way out there on the nebular ranch lol or just starved for ideas for storyline and decided to go with first thing he/ she saw on the news! Lucky us the sheep was the main story! Hahaha! Now beat that! I think cloning trumps falling in love with your rapist. Some sick-o’s & hard up people out there or maybe another writer that ran out of ideas and said gee this will be a good storyline considering the odds of this actually happening in real life probably are 1 in 10 trillion - gotta love the soaps! Only on the soaps ! Lol
I came into say “Marlena’s demonic possession” and found it referenced in the OP.
That was the greatest summer of my life. Fresh out of the Navy, back in a college town, hitting the bars all night, and waking up at noon to watch Days.
