It’s Only My Opinion For The Soap Week Ending February 7

Historical Fiction: For better or for worse, Y&R’s Victor (Eric Braeden) and GH’s Drew (Cameron Mathison) and Carly (Laura Wright) are in storylines made possible by retcons.

There’s a line soaps shouldn’t cross when asking us to believe an outlandish story and it’s different for every viewer. Personally, I’d much rather they rewrite history to add a new character than throw an unconnected newbie at us.

Fans seem most upset about GH recently, so let’s start with that. I didn’t care about Cody until he turned out to be Mac’s son. That revelation added welcome screen time for Felicia and Mac, gave Maxie a stepbrother (which will never make up for GH killing Georgie, but okay, moving on), and put the kibosh on Cody’s romance with Sasha when she also turned out to be a Scorpio via Robert and Holly.

Too much retconning? Yes. But look where we are: Sasha got pregnant by Michael, who’s in a coma… so Jason stepped up to help… which caused Cody to misunderstand that Jason was the father and broadcast it to the world… and here’s me: Are you sure Lucy isn’t Cody’s mother (instead of Dominique) with that big mouth?

But I digress. Carly and Drew’s epic fight at the Metro Court (over his continued affair with Willow) resulted in him shouting out the rumor that Jason fathered Sasha’s baby. The expectant Sasha told Drew it was “none of his damn business” and stormed out. Felicia, Anna, Tracy, Brook Lynn, Maxie, Lulu, and the always-gossiping Lucy witnessed the scene.

Tracy: “This should be entertaining.”

Felicia (to Anna): “Can you imagine Jason Morgan the father of Robert’s grandchild? Who would have the bigger stroke, Mac or Robert?”

The scenes were delicious and none of it would have happened without those backstories being tweaked.

Just because we didn’t see something happen 20 years ago doesn’t mean it couldn’t have happened. All four soaps need more young people which means augmenting existing families and, yes, massaging history. Sam became Alexis’s sudden daughter in 2004, and we got 20 years of crackerjack drama until Sam was murdered and she’s still inspiring story. Nina unknowingly giving birth to Nelle and Willow while in a coma made no sense but look at the messy Nina/Drew/Willow triangle we got out of it. Fast forward to Brook Lynn and Dante — who grew up off-camera in Brooklyn — and I have no problem with their newly-revealed teenage fling having produced a child.

Brook Lynn: “I was too young to be the mother that baby deserved.”

Lois: “I will support whatever you decide.”

Brook Lynn: “I can always count on you, Ma.”

Until BLQ finds out the baby she gave up is living in her own house… I’ll take logical revised history like a long-ago, off-camera pregnancy every time over sci-fi tales like Drew turning out to be Jason’s long-lost twin who had amnesia and had Jason’s memories “mind-mapped” into his brain from a flash drive.

Preposterous stories like that abound. It helps us buy them when a character we like voices their absurdity. Eg: Jenz Sidwell held Lucky captive, tried to kill him, Jason and Anna and then just… moved to Port Charles and got an audience with Laura.

Liz: “This man tried to kill Lucky. How is he walking around taking meetings with the mayor?”

Exactly.

B&B is using Will for that kind of straight talk. They stretched credulity with the tale of Bill thinking he’d fathered Luna in his youth, which would have made Luna his third out-of-wedlock child turning up as an adult. Bill’s only “legitimate” son tried to explain that to his new girlfriend.

Will: “He’s still dealing with thinking he had a daughter.”

Electra: “What?”

Will: “Unknown kids show up at his doorstep. How do you think I got my brothers?”

Indeed. It will be interesting to hear how Bill’s loved ones react to the unbelievable story of murderer Luna being released to home confinement at Bill’s mansion.

Electra: “Where is Luna now?”

Will: “In prison.”

Nope. She’s spying on Will through the banister and developing a crush on him.

Luna’s history has been changed too many times for a character that’s only been on the canvas 16 months. She was a sobbing, innocent girl who got drugged and had mistake-sex with Zende and then veered into being a calculating murderer in a few months. After Bill turned out to not be her father, we careened from Tom Starr to Jack Finnegan to cousin Finn being Luna’s dad via his teenage tryst with her mother, Poppy.

A week before the reveal we got this clumsy retcon:

Luna (to Bill): “Finn was the only person who gave a damn about me. My cousin Finn was always there for me.”

Really? Because the only scenes we ever saw between them were when Finn broke into Luna’s apartment to stop her from killing his wife, Steffy. That’s why this story is so hard to swallow — not only is B&B rewriting Finn’s backstory (common), but they’re also erasing Luna’s recent history (uncommon). It’s a double whammy.

Adding unknown children to front-burner families is DAYS’s go-to. Stefano DiMera is the king with Megan, Lexie, Chad, Jake, and Stefan. Maggie found Daniel, Jack got Gwen, Patch got Tripp, Victor got Xander, Justin got Alex, and the late Doug Williams just got a sudden grandson named Doug III who showed up at his funeral and promptly stole a diamond necklace from bereaved widow Julie. Given Doug’s checkered past, that was believable.

Less believable was the return of Rafe’s doppelgänger, Arnold, who died in prison after being given plastic surgery in 2011 by Stefano and his son EJ to look like Rafe (so Arnold could destroy Rafe’s marriage to Sami). Because that’s not enough soap tropes, Arnold-as-Rafe just dumped Jada at the altar with the lie that EJ hired him to dig up dirt on her and he found it.

“Rafe” (to Jada): “I’m sorry, I can’t marry you. You’re not the woman I thought you were. We found a very disturbing trail of lies and corruption.”

That’s ironic considering “Rafe” is not the man Jada thinks he is, but her being the police commissioner makes it extra hard to buy that she didn’t smell this plastic-surgeried, back-from-the-dead imposter a mile away. I’ll take a retconned kid over that nonsense any day.

Which brings us to Y&R’s Claire. Yes, it’s far-fetched that Victoria and Cole’s dead baby was kidnapped and raised by her psycho aunt Jordan only to return as an adult, but I am much more willing to believe that than Victor speaking to the cops without a lawyer present. And you can’t deny that Claire has added a fun wrinkle to the decades-long Victor/Jack feud now that she’s dating Jack’s son, Kyle. Victor will only ever believe the worst of Jack, like when he came to check on Nikki after Victor was shot.

Jack: “I hope you’re not in too much pain.”

Victor: “As if you give a damn.”

Jack: “I’ll see myself out.”

Victor: “Tell your son to stay away from my granddaughter!”

That’s what makes it okay to retcon a dead Newman baby into a grown woman — so she can date an Abbott and continue their feud.

Hey. It’s only my opinion.