0:03

And

0:09

We

0:11

are Ken

0:12

Jennings and John Roderick. We

0:14

speak to you from our present which we can only

0:16

assume is your distant past, the turbulent

0:18

time that was the early twenty first century.

0:21

Fearing the great cataclysm that will surely

0:23

befall our civilization, we began this

0:25

monumental reference of strange and obscure

0:27

human knowledge. These recordings represent

0:29

our attempt to Thailand preserve wonders

0:32

an esoteric that would otherwise be

0:34

lost. So whether you're listening

0:36

from an advanced civilization or have just

0:38

read invented the technology to decrypt our transmissions,

0:41

this is our legacy to you. This

0:43

is our time capsule. This is

0:46

the omnibus. You

1:14

have access to entry 739

1:16

dot MT2210

1:20

Certificate number 32511

1:24

Luke and Laura. For

1:44

the five hundredth entry in the omnibus last

1:46

week, you pander

1:48

to millennials to to Gen Z? Maybe

1:51

I don't know. Met Bitcoin is more of a millennial technology.

1:53

I think so. I mean, Bruce, probably Gen Z

1:55

Bitcoin billionaires,

1:57

but they inherited it from their millennial

1:59

parents. No. Impossible.

2:02

I never get to do an anniversary show.

2:05

but the five hundred and first omnibus

2:07

will be pivoting back to

2:10

forgotten memory holes of Genesis childhood.

2:13

Oh. At the request of at the request

2:15

of our listener, Pat, who submitted a

2:17

vast list of similar ideas. It was like

2:19

wacky packs, evil, can evil I

2:22

don't know. Night courts. We could just put

2:24

them all together into one big generation

2:26

x. Some of these would be good. I mean, Doug Hending

2:28

is actually a pretty good Yep.

2:30

The idea that stage magic was briefly

2:32

super

2:33

big dance culture, didn't Broadway

2:35

debut. Did he make the space

2:37

or the Statue of Liberty DisappEAR Who? was

2:39

a good cop of David Copperfield.

2:41

The Dickens character. Right. In the

2:43

book you read, did you finish the book at the end he makes

2:45

the Statue of Liberty DisappEAR. I finished

2:47

that book nine months ago.

2:51

Are you reading a new book with your little club?

2:53

I I didn't read one this summer

2:55

because you know, it's the summer I had a

2:57

lot of other activities. But look at this.

2:59

Highlights magazine, Billy Carter. I can't believe these have

3:01

not already been shown. Oh, Billy Carter.

3:04

Wow. We could talk about Billy Carter for an hour.

3:06

Instead, we are gonna do Luke and Laura. This is a

3:08

show I actually have been promising to do for a

3:10

while because you and I talked

3:13

soaps at one point. I can't remember what.

3:15

which entry we were discussing

3:17

at the you did not have any childhood phase

3:21

of American daytime television

3:23

cereals. Right?

3:24

Well, so I don't I

3:26

do remember talking about it,

3:28

but my exposure to soaps,

3:30

I did have exposure to soaps in the seventies.

3:33

and it was that my babysitter,

3:36

Alice, because

3:37

my mom was a single mother and

3:39

she worked what seemed

3:41

like a hundred hours a week. We were all latchkey

3:43

kids in the eighties. Yep. I had I came

3:46

home and put something weird in

3:48

the in the broiler. Just

3:50

put sugar on bread and put it in the other

3:52

I had a a house key on a piece

3:55

of red yarn tied

3:57

around my neck. but I was not

3:59

allowed

3:59

to go into our house

4:02

when there wasn't an adult around because

4:05

was haunted.

4:06

No, I was a pyromagnetic. And

4:09

you were haunted. Instead of

4:11

instead of making sugar toast like

4:13

any normal kid would, I sat with

4:16

matches in the fireplace and lit

4:19

things on fire. Whatever I could find

4:21

that would burn. And so

4:24

I I like how the only recourse here. You're so

4:26

into it, your only recourse is to bang you from the

4:28

entire house. Yeah. Because I you know, nothing else

4:30

works. This is long enough ago that there were that

4:32

I a lighter would have

4:34

been there were no big lighters or if there

4:36

were none of us had ever seen one, and I didn't

4:38

have a ZIP code that had my

4:40

unit from Vietnam on it. So

4:42

I just had matches and you had burned

4:44

down your mom's last three hours. I'd

4:46

burned everything that would burn, and I would just

4:48

sit. I mean, god for hours, sitting at the

4:50

fireplace and just light fires. So

4:52

I was not allowed to go home. So I

4:55

had a babysitter, Alice,

4:57

and you went to Alice's in the

4:59

morning. Mom would walk us up

5:01

to Alison. She lived in her neighborhood. She

5:03

was a your

5:05

your mom's a younger woman? No. She was a little

5:08

older than my mom, and she took kids

5:10

into her home. And

5:12

sometimes there were seven kids,

5:14

and sometimes there were twelve, varied.

5:18

year to year. But we went to Alice's well

5:21

from kindergarten to for

5:23

me, third,

5:25

fourth grade. I mean, there was a certain point in

5:27

time where You couldn't keep me out of

5:29

the house during the day because I was in

5:31

fourth grader. What are you gonna do? You can't.

5:34

You know, I walked home from school on my

5:36

own. Nobody knew where I was, and I'd go into

5:38

the sunlight fires. At that point, I had

5:40

a collection of fireworks. So I was sending bottle

5:42

rockets up to chimney, the perfect

5:44

crime. But up until then, so we went

5:46

to Alice's And if

5:48

you were sick and couldn't go to

5:50

school, you would go to

5:52

Alison, you'd have to lay on the couch

5:54

with with a thermometer in your

5:56

mouth. The whole time, nobody ever checked it.

5:58

And Alice sat up, did you have one of those icebags?

6:00

A little ice bag on the head? Well, how old are

6:02

you? second grade, let's

6:04

say. So well, kindergarten through third

6:06

grade. And you'd

6:09

sit on the couch, and Alice would sit at

6:11

her kitchen table, which was,

6:13

you know, next to the

6:15

living room, and she chain

6:17

smoked moors. And

6:20

during the day she watched the soaps.

6:22

her stories. And then after the

6:24

kids came home from school,

6:27

she would switch over to game

6:29

shows. See, that

6:31

was my that was my childhood. That was obviously a

6:33

game show kid. And the doctor here? Yeah. And

6:35

at a certain point, you know, but there

6:37

was price of right. Price is right and so forth.

6:39

you call it Price Alright? Price Alright.

6:42

It was all Price Alright. And

6:44

then she would switch over to like the Monsters,

6:46

Hogan Heroes, all

6:48

the great shows. All the boomer shows that

6:51

were in reruns on on

6:53

local television. And so

6:55

on sick days, I would watch back

6:58

to back soaps from whenever they started

7:00

ten AM to two PM.

7:02

You would watch Richard Dawson in both his genres.

7:04

The feud and the Hogan series. Emma

7:06

Hogan series. So we

7:08

were and, of course, everybody, my age was a

7:10

huge Richard, Dawson heads. Dawson heads. I

7:12

mean, he never said, hey,

7:14

should we kiss? Do you mind if we he was

7:16

kissing everybody? So he

7:18

was he was an icon to you. So I know

7:20

a little bit of the vibe of soaps,

7:22

but I never myself got engaged

7:25

in any

7:25

other stories? It's, you

7:28

know, the nineteen seventies.

7:31

Soaps

7:31

were in a bit of

7:34

Subsea

7:34

were not forward looking. So I think the

7:36

soaps were aware that their audience was aging

7:38

and their audience had

7:41

not started precipitously declined, but

7:43

the social changes that have led to the just

7:45

the dramatic death of the American

7:47

TV daytime serial, women

7:49

not being at home

7:52

all day,

7:53

smoking more cigarettes. Depressed and working

7:55

for something to take their mind off it. Oh, wait. I

7:57

I forgot one crucial detail.

7:59

She's putting coupons.

7:59

She red

8:02

true detective magazine, where

8:04

the victims of violent crimes had their

8:06

eyes blotted out with a black bar.

8:09

and they had you you know, remember? So

8:11

it's photos. It's like photos. It's photos. I see photos.

8:13

Photos of people that have been dumped over

8:15

the sides of cliffs Wow.

8:17

Or had been strangulated, and

8:20

she had these magazines. And

8:23

so you'd go over and talk to her

8:25

as she sat at the she never left the table and

8:27

she never stopped smoking mowers. But

8:30

you'd go talk to her about something and she

8:32

would close the

8:34

magazines so you wouldn't be

8:36

exposed to the

8:39

Grizzly currency. But

8:42

if you were clever, you could sneak

8:44

and look over her shoulder, and they were all in

8:46

in in that black bar -- Yeah. -- over

8:48

the eyes to, you know, so you

8:50

wouldn't know who it was, but a lot of them

8:52

were terrible.

8:54

terrible murder

8:55

pictures. I was she read these

8:58

magazines day in and day. I was thinking of

9:00

Alice as a as a kind of a type, a

9:02

stereotype, but this is a very tellingy

9:04

specific look into

9:06

this woman. Well, and her husband was a cross

9:09

country trucker But I

9:11

don't think a serial killer. He was a nice

9:13

man. I don't

9:14

think either of them were serial killers. This was the

9:16

beginning of your realization that true

9:18

crime is for women. whatever complicated

9:21

nexus of reasons. As far as I could

9:23

tell, those magazines were bought

9:25

ninety nine point nine percent BY

9:27

WOMEN AND MOST OF THE VICTIMS OF THE

9:29

VIOLENT CRIMES WERE WOMEN. WELL, SPEAKING OF

9:31

INTERTAINMENT FOR WOMEN, THE

9:33

SURPROPRA HAS HAD. Reporter: THE BUS PROTEST

9:35

on this podcast, for example.

9:38

ASMR women, just wanna hear you

9:40

talk, John. That's right. The long

9:42

winters. great entertainment for

9:45

women by women because the ASMR

9:47

fans of mine can just

9:48

thrown out to jeopardy every night. They

9:50

don't they don't need this show. Right.

9:52

Right. Or they could just put on

9:54

a put on a record of somebody

9:57

extolling the virtues of a certain kind of motor oil

9:59

and

9:59

just turn the Turn turn the

10:02

speed of the record up by ten

10:04

percent? No. He's got it. He's gotta

10:06

be me.

10:07

the entertainment

10:08

that's traditionally for women does

10:11

not always get the respect it's due --

10:13

Mhmm. -- in our culture. It's a little

10:15

like So like the way

10:17

romance novels are treated today where they're fully

10:19

a quarter of the publishing industry,

10:22

second only to I think

10:24

thrillers. I think thrillers, you know, dad, thrillers

10:26

might outsell mom romance novels, but

10:28

they're both just, you know, minting money.

10:30

It's romance novels are a billion dollar industry

10:32

and yet. you know,

10:34

Tom

10:34

Cruise makes Jack Reacher movies,

10:37

but romance

10:39

novels get kinda getawayzed and

10:41

laughed at And

10:44

if I ask you to name a romance novel,

10:46

a romance novelist.

10:48

Fifty fifty shades of gray

10:50

person. That is correct.

10:53

Very good. We also would have

10:55

accepted. I I just think like, if you ask me that,

10:57

all my reference points would be between

10:59

thirty to sixty years old. Like, I would say

11:01

Daniel Steele or Robert

11:03

Cartland or something, you know? No. No. No.

11:05

No. I've thought about

11:07

doing a podcast where I watched romantic

11:10

comedies with a couple of

11:12

other people and we talked about them

11:14

kind of like my late lamented

11:16

War Movie podcast except

11:19

something where I was really a fish out of

11:21

water. Rome ROM Comms. Do

11:23

you and your beloved watch

11:25

ROM Comms? don't

11:27

really make them anymore. What?

11:29

Really? I mean, that's not totally true. There was that

11:31

j lo and Wilson one this year.

11:33

Why did they stop? Is it

11:35

all female a strong female leads now

11:37

that are, like, assassins and stuff?

11:39

I think it's maybe people don't go to the

11:41

theater for that kind of entertainment anymore.

11:43

I

11:43

mean, this was always the appeal of soap opera that you get your

11:46

stories. You get you you know, you get

11:48

dragged into this serialized entertainment where you

11:50

wanna know what happens next because we

11:52

all love We call

11:52

them stories because they they're narrative in

11:55

our lives, and you don't have to seek

11:57

anything out. You don't have to you

11:58

don't even have to go to the

11:59

bookstore for a new romance

12:02

novel or mystery novel, you get

12:04

to see Alec Baldwin with a skinny mustache

12:06

as the generalissimo. In

12:08

your in your house, new stories

12:10

are getting brought to you every day

12:12

with

12:13

this

12:14

motley cast of characters from a

12:16

fictional city that you think of as your own

12:18

and they're very dramatic. They're

12:21

all constantly. They're

12:23

melodramatic. I mean, the roots of melodramic

12:25

go back. Century.

12:26

Certainly, in the nineteenth century, you've got

12:29

the sensation novels of

12:31

the victorians. And Uncle

12:33

Tom's cabin works as

12:35

and we think of it as today as primarily

12:37

for the social change at Rock. But

12:39

for the following fifty to seventy

12:41

five years, it was mostly a basis for

12:43

melodramatic Vaudville. you

12:45

know, the the the slave

12:46

woman escaping across the Ohio River

12:49

on the ice flows and, you know,

12:50

which little Dickensian wave is going

12:53

to die. I mean, these these books were all

12:55

serialized

12:55

the same way soap operas are. Well Dickens

12:58

was. Sure. Yeah. And a hundred percent.

13:00

And that was Melodrama That

13:02

kinda didn't occur to me. I mean, when you when

13:04

you read the plot twist, you know, even bleak house,

13:06

the smart one has all kinds of weed.

13:08

She's really the secret son of whom.

13:10

Yeah. then with old Curiosity

13:12

Shop, everybody can't wait to see if Little Nell

13:14

is going to live or die. Right.

13:16

They It's really just what happens next.

13:18

A character gets introduced And

13:20

then you know two chapters later,

13:22

they will play a pivotal role. There's never nobody

13:24

ever comes and goes.

13:26

And there's the heightened emotions and

13:29

the the kind of the family,

13:31

Sherman, wrong. I mean, today, we

13:32

actually use the word

13:34

I guess,

13:35

I mean, Soap operas came from

13:38

horse opera, the idea that a western would be

13:40

called a horse opera,

13:41

whereas jokingly because these

13:44

early radio cereals were often sponsored

13:46

by soap Soap and detergent

13:48

companies, you know,

13:49

as a funny variant on horse hopper.

13:51

They'd be called soap hoppers. And as a

13:53

result, we think of a certain kind of

13:58

the kind of romantic

14:00

woman oriented entertainment as SUDzie.

14:02

because it comes from the

14:05

the soap industry

14:07

and vibe. What do we

14:09

call those prime

14:10

time soap

14:13

operas that were popular when we

14:15

were in our twenties? Yeah.

14:16

I mean, those were also called soap often.

14:19

I

14:19

mean, sometimes people would say nighttime dramas,

14:21

90210 and Peyton

14:23

Place. Well, I mean, they kinda start with Peyton Place in

14:25

the sixties, you know, a bestselling sudsey

14:27

novel for women. And by the time that

14:29

the culture had loosened up a lot to allow

14:32

for more and more kind of

14:34

a licentious content. Hello. In these

14:36

novels, they could be a little scandalous. It wouldn't

14:38

just be yearning for

14:40

a certain unattainable man,

14:42

it

14:42

would actually be, well,

14:45

let's let's get those breaches off

14:47

him. Mhmm. And so

14:49

once Payton Place could actually and those novels

14:51

could start having

14:52

scandalous content you know, they get

14:54

cleaned up for Hollywood and for TV.

14:56

But, you know, that's where you would

14:59

that's where

14:59

you would go to get the

15:02

hornier side of of mass entertainment. I

15:04

mean, I would go to see the prime of miss Jean

15:06

Brody, but yeah. Right. Is that right?

15:08

Nice, Smith was your

15:10

And there was another boom in the late seventies, and

15:12

that's kind of the era we're talking about today.

15:15

Dallas has become a big hit. Right. And

15:17

then all the Dallas likes, it's always unlike the

15:19

daytime soaps, which often, at

15:21

the

15:21

beginning, would focus on doctors

15:25

or lawyers or neighbors,

15:27

an immigrant family. I

15:29

guess we're

15:30

kind of jumping ahead. The first

15:33

US, the first soap opera is

15:34

typically cited as painted

15:37

dreams on WGN Radio in in

15:39

Chicago in the nineteen thirties. Oh, radio show

15:41

show show show. Yeah. An Irish American

15:43

widow she has

15:45

a single daughter, an eligible daughter

15:47

so that their their, you

15:49

know, their kind of interlocking lives

15:51

and loves can be the start of

15:53

the show. Over

15:56

the following decade, they became super

15:58

popular on radio. The guiding light

15:59

started in nineteen thirty seven and lasted

16:02

as a TV show till two thousand nine. Wow.

16:04

It was a single a

16:06

single seventy two year

16:08

story

16:08

line. And what is it all,

16:11

like, like Marvel Comics universe, it's

16:13

all consistent within itself? Absolutely

16:15

not. It's more

16:17

like a DC comic scenario. And

16:19

as we'll see, these shows are often not consistent

16:22

within themselves from month to

16:24

month. You know, parts will be recast,

16:26

Revisionist history will tell you what actually

16:28

happened even though you saw it with your own eyes a month

16:30

ago.

16:31

But

16:32

these ones you're talking about in the

16:34

In the

16:34

eighties, what which

16:37

one was Rick Springfield on? He was on

16:39

General Hospital. Oh, okay. Thanks.

16:41

But these nighttime ones had had bigger stars,

16:44

bigger budgets, and they were about

16:46

the rich, Falcon Gray. This was the beginning of

16:48

the Reagan eighties, and what all these shows

16:50

had in common was These people

16:52

have money to burn. Look at these fancy royal

16:54

family. Look at this fancy wine family. Look

16:56

at this fancy steel family.

16:58

the they

16:59

were all kinda cookie cutter.

17:01

Here's the intrigues of not just

17:04

normals, pining

17:05

for doctor whoever, but

17:07

like rich people who can buy and

17:09

sell you to get what they want.

17:12

Ruthless. So kind of a Reagan era

17:14

take on what had been an

17:16

Eisenhower era property, their first TV

17:18

soap operas were, you know, kind of along the

17:20

lines of as the world turns in the nineteen

17:22

fifties. And

17:24

they all as I said, they all kind of derived from these kind

17:26

of sensationalist serialized

17:28

novels of Dickens' contemporaries. Maybe more

17:30

Dickens' is a little more high minded. Maybe and

17:33

it's smart and funny. What are some of the of what we

17:35

think of as classic novels that

17:37

actually at the time were sudzy?

17:40

I

17:40

mean, a

17:41

lot of these sensational novels derive

17:43

back to Wilke Collins

17:46

gets mentioned a lot. He's, you know, he's remembered

17:48

today as the inventor of the by

17:50

virtue of the woman in white. I think it's kind

17:52

of the first the first detective novel where

17:54

we follow-up police inspectors who

17:57

tries to solve AAI

17:57

think there's a jewel robbery and a

17:59

murder. But

18:01

those had very

18:02

kind of a and a lot of the stuff comes from Italian

18:04

opera, you know, the sturm and drawing of

18:07

this strong emotions and the person

18:09

who'd rather die than not have her

18:11

love or the defense creations. The

18:13

duels and all the demonstrations. Uh-huh.

18:16

These operatic melodramatic

18:18

conventions that then got fed into

18:20

VOD VILL with their you know, you'd go

18:22

to VOD VILL and you'd see song and dance

18:24

numbers, but interspersed, there would be a few minutes of a

18:27

of a of a

18:27

of a widow who doesn't know how she's gonna pay the

18:29

rent and a mustache twirling villain who

18:32

has evil designs on her

18:34

I can't pay the rent. You must pay the rent

18:36

and all

18:36

that, you know, in the age of silent film,

18:39

there are early serials like the perils of

18:41

Pauline where again,

18:43

a damsel in distress has a

18:45

different terrible threat

18:47

every week. You know, is she gonna survive the plane

18:49

crash or the Poly never actually got tied

18:51

to railroad tracks despite the popular

18:53

idea we we have of those kind

18:55

of silent serials. But that's

18:57

sort

18:57

of a thing. As saturated by Dudley do.

19:00

Right? Right. And

19:01

so that was

19:02

the DNA that got put into these daily

19:04

cereals where they they couldn't all be as

19:06

action packed. It would really be more like

19:08

you

19:09

know, will she tell her mom the secret?

19:12

Will he confess his love to the

19:14

nurse? Find out next week. Well, you see

19:16

all those representations of

19:18

it where there's a bunch of

19:20

rowdy guys there to see the can

19:22

can, and then they have this

19:24

melodramatic interlude.

19:26

And rather than being like boom,

19:29

bring the girls, the the the shot of the

19:31

audience is all these guys are tiering up

19:33

and like, you gotta save the grandma,

19:35

Little Eva. Is that is

19:37

that really was

19:39

that is that a true representation

19:41

of of how a Vaudville show

19:43

would play out? If our test case today of

19:45

Luke and Laura is correct, then yes,

19:48

men do

19:48

gravitate toward this kind of thing too when the

19:51

culture does not shamed

19:52

them away from it. Because this is a

19:54

moment where soap opera is, this

19:57

housewives genre

19:59

becomes mass culture

20:00

for everyone from high school and college

20:03

students on up. all

20:04

ages and genders. And, yeah,

20:07

weirdly, not me at all.

20:09

You missed it. You missed it. You were too

20:11

busy checking firecrackers in your firecrackers. was.

20:13

What if you had a choice right now

20:15

between watching a soap opera and and chucking

20:17

firecrackers in your fireplace, which would you choose?

20:19

I would be watching my soap. My stories right now.

20:21

oil. On November, I know where I was. I

20:23

don't know who the outlier here. In November of

20:26

nineteen eighty one, when Luke

20:28

and

20:28

Laura were married,

20:30

My

20:30

family had just moved overseas and

20:32

the Armed Forces Network

20:34

put on general hospital and

20:36

Ryan's hope every day

20:39

after school. I was in the eighth

20:41

grade. Some of this is

20:43

actually a generation gap because you are

20:45

watching Soaps when

20:46

they are old timey entertainment with

20:48

organ music playing. Yeah. And I have

20:50

I'm watching the new cool

20:52

cool

20:54

the dawn

20:55

of a new age of forward thinking soap

20:57

operas that the early eighties brought. I

20:59

was watching John Ritter

21:02

try to figure out how he was gonna see

21:04

Chrissy's underpants. The fact that

21:06

you're failing And you are saying this and thinking it

21:08

flattens you. I think it's a very

21:10

a crucial part of your personality. In

21:14

nineteen sixty two sorry.

21:16

In April of nineteen sixty three, in

21:18

fact, on first nineteen sixty three,

21:20

both ABC and NBC debuted

21:22

new medical themed

21:24

soap opera

21:25

fools they

21:27

were not well. The NBC one was called the doctors, and

21:29

it kinda was April fools. It only lasted a

21:31

few years. But the show that ABC debuted

21:34

on April first nineteen sixty three was called

21:36

General Hospital. It took place in an the

21:38

black and white show said in an

21:41

unnamed city In

21:41

and around the doctors

21:44

and the patients at a metropolitan

21:46

hospital, the city was

21:48

later named in the nineteen seventies Port Charles,

21:50

New York -- Mhmm. --

21:52

which was kind of vaguely located in Western

21:54

New York near perhaps

21:56

near the Great Lakes. It

21:57

was a city that was big enough by

21:59

the

21:59

time I was watching to have all kinds of spy

22:02

adventures and intrigues, which was

22:03

probably not the intention

22:06

when it first came out and is not realistic to

22:08

update New York, but never mind.

22:10

You know, there is

22:11

a Port Chester in

22:13

New York. There is. Where

22:15

is it?

22:16

Port Chester is

22:19

kind of pretty

22:21

close to Connecticut. and

22:24

really is more of a it's more of a connecticut

22:26

than it is in New York. It's a bedroom

22:28

community. Yeah. But it's it's

22:31

where every year I

22:33

play used to

22:35

play I would

22:37

play Neil Diamond in the last

22:39

Waltz at the big theater there in

22:41

Port Chester, where

22:42

where the Grateful Dead and Mountain used

22:45

to play a lot of shows. The

22:47

fictional city of Port Charles I think

22:49

it's supposed to be a little further upstate.

22:53

But it has more than its proportionate

22:55

number amount of

22:57

drama and intrigue you

22:58

know, originally a hospital is a good place to

23:01

set us up proper because a

23:02

lot of

23:03

people coming and going. Yeah, people

23:05

with problems. Right? Somebody's got a

23:07

terminal illness, somebody else broke his leg

23:10

and may never play. Football

23:12

again -- Mhmm. -- people in crisis.

23:15

with lots of big emotions and tears hanging on

23:17

a hospital, so it's really

23:18

fruitful ground for a soap

23:21

opera. Do people have sex with each

23:23

other in hospitals they

23:25

must. Well, there was less sex on

23:27

these shows. Oh my god. And, you know, you're

23:29

thinking of a kind of a seventies and eighties

23:31

versions of these shows that have lots of

23:32

kind

23:32

of rolling around in the sheets

23:35

while music plays --

23:37

Right. -- while while love ballads

23:39

play. Mhmm. Corning Love Valads,

23:41

this is much more organ music and

23:43

big reveals like, the

23:44

doctor, the test has come back

23:47

and She's her own grandpa. And

23:51

in the seventies, general hospital got a

23:53

little more relevant,

23:55

you know, people would come to the hospital

23:57

for various addictions or

23:59

eating disorder, you know, you can see how

24:02

lends after that kind of a rip from the headlines, kind of

24:04

drama, you know, while Marcus

24:06

Wellbby vibe. I tried to show my

24:08

daughter, eight is enough. because

24:10

I remember thinking eight is enough was a great TV show

24:12

when I was eight. Doesn't that have

24:14

time? Doesn't that have kind of relevant

24:17

OP seventy stuff. So much. I mean, the fur first

24:19

of all, the first episode features Mark

24:22

Hamill in the lead role, and then

24:24

he he left the show in order to take

24:26

Star Wars. Yeah. They recast it.

24:28

Yeah. But, like, the

24:30

episode one and two were,

24:32

like, one of the kids

24:34

drugs and one of them had an abortion. Different daughter gets an

24:36

abortion in every episode. Yeah. And it's just,

24:38

like, I was, like, talk about ripped from the headlines

24:40

and they're, like, mod had one abortion. We can

24:42

have eight abortion. That's our whole

24:44

premise. My kid, I think, was nine and she was like,

24:47

I don't this is really over my

24:49

head. But

24:51

in nineteen seventy eight, General

24:53

Hospital changed.

24:55

Well, I mean, let me

24:56

tell you what's gonna happen here. We're when

24:58

I said I was when I said in mid November

25:00

of nineteen eighty one, when I was coming

25:02

from school and watching general hospital.

25:04

This was mass culture because that was

25:06

the day that Luke Spencer

25:09

married his love Laura Weber

25:12

Baldwin for an

25:13

audience of thirty million people.

25:15

I remember Even though it was on ABC in

25:17

the middle of the day, I remember this. It was

25:19

in all the newspapers. It was in all the main

25:22

Cover a Newsweek. Cover a people.

25:24

Something happening on date, the ghetto of

25:26

daytime TV was literally on the cover

25:28

a Newsweek.

25:28

Princess Diana sent a

25:31

couple of bottles of Balenger champagne

25:34

apparently. Kids that marriage, it couldn't

25:36

have been that much earlier. I think it was the

25:38

same year. Yeah. It was earlier that

25:40

year. Right? Didn't they get married in, like,

25:42

spring or June or something? Yeah. So a few

25:44

months thereafter, she's obviously unhappy because

25:46

she's married to Prince Charles. She's at home watching

25:48

American Soaps. When did they have

25:50

that? When did they have that thing where they were in

25:52

a hotel somewhere and they like

25:54

and they fell in love Charles

25:57

and I I watched They never fell in love.

25:59

No. I watched some

25:59

movie where they were mad at each other and not

26:02

doing well, and then some joking

26:04

time in Australia in some hotel and they

26:06

were like, oh, I mean, we can make it worse. episode

26:08

of the Crown. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. That's what

26:10

it was. Yeah. but they

26:12

were wrong. They could not make -- apparently no. Do not believe the

26:15

romantic Commonwealth

26:16

Hotel in

26:19

Rhodesia that makes you think you can marry

26:21

Prince You cannot marry Prince Charles. I want I He

26:23

loves Camilo. He just loves Camilo. Yeah. That's the problem.

26:25

Just yesterday, I read about a party at

26:27

Elton John's house where Richard Gere and

26:30

Sylvester Stallone were both trying to pick

26:32

up Diana Spencer, who

26:34

freshly divorced from Prince Charles and

26:36

Richard Garen, sylvester Stallone, who

26:38

already ate each other. Sorry for turning this into soap

26:40

opera. They already hate each other because when

26:42

they were when they were filming, Lord's a

26:44

flatbush. Oh, I didn't notice. Richard Gear

26:46

spilled some chicken grease

26:49

on Sylvester Stallone's pants. And

26:52

Sylvester Stallone almost beat him

26:54

up. And and chicken grue.

26:56

And apparently, Richard Gear

26:58

got kicked off of the of the movie.

27:00

And so they had been an ex Lord of Flatbush.

27:02

They'd been hating each other all these

27:04

years and then stolen shows up at

27:06

this party at Elton John's house

27:09

that was the Elton John's given a

27:11

party for Jeffrey Katzenberg. I have no idea

27:13

why you remember all this. And just,

27:15

you know, it's just it's basically

27:17

this show except what

27:19

we do when we're not re rehearsing

27:22

this show. And Stallone was

27:24

like, hey, you know, I I didn't know that

27:26

this, you know, this low life was gonna be

27:28

here. And Richard Gere and

27:30

apparently Diana, you know, they had a

27:32

little You've really got all the hotshots from nineteen ninety four, John.

27:34

Yeah. So anyway, stallone, you

27:37

know, he's got nothing nice to say about

27:39

Richard Hughes. That's so

27:41

anyway. It doesn't help my segue at all.

27:43

But oh, right. Prince you're talking

27:45

about Prince's died because -- Yeah. --

27:47

rumor has it. that she loved since she was

27:50

following ABC daytime dramas closely have to

27:52

send champagne thirty

27:54

million people college students

27:56

skipped class. I've seen stories of,

27:58

like, military bases

27:59

shutting down because everybody

28:01

was was around

28:03

their TV sets, wondering if Luke and Laura were really gonna tie

28:05

the knot, including in the Soviet Union,

28:07

was was your end drop off like No.

28:09

This would have been the perfect time for him to

28:11

launch the missiles. Oh, sure. because all

28:13

of our bases were unmanned. I mean,

28:15

was Brezhnev still alive in eighty one?

28:18

Yes. Yes. Yeah. I think what's the

28:20

year of three? It's eighty three or eighty four that they had

28:22

all three of those guys. Yeah. Right.

28:24

So maybe breastfed as a fan,

28:26

but he was.

28:27

just

28:29

why? Just about this I'm I'll

28:31

explain, but I'll put this in perspective, thirty million

28:33

viewers watching a daytime

28:35

soap. Do

28:35

you know how many people watched the Game of Thrones

28:38

prequel that just came out, which is HBO's

28:40

biggest debut ever?

28:42

No.

28:42

Is it really? Yeah. ABABABBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB

28:52

of the Dragon or something. There are so many

28:54

HBO shows that I would have thought had a

28:56

bigger day day but then

28:58

Game of Thrones. Ten million

29:00

people watched gave a thrones colon

29:02

more stuff. That's it. Yeah. A third, the

29:04

number of people that were watching General Hospital in

29:06

mid November of nineteen eighty one.

29:08

What's the biggest television, what what did the mass finale

29:11

get? I mean, all of these will be dwarfed

29:13

by prime time numbers. The thing about looking

29:15

largely there is everybody was at work or

29:18

at school middle of the day. Yeah. I mean, the mass

29:20

finale, I'm sure, is gonna be something like

29:22

fifty to eighty million viewers. Is it

29:24

more? Is it a hundred? Mash

29:27

finale, viewers. It

29:30

wasn't a chicken. Whoa. A hundred

29:32

and five million people

29:34

watched the final episode of Mash.

29:37

like, I'm tiering up just thinking. Whereas HBO

29:39

is high fiving over ratings that would

29:41

make a home improvement rerun

29:43

in

29:43

the nineties Yeah.

29:45

Shows got canceled

29:47

for having for having

29:48

twice as many viewers as

29:51

that's right. Is that Game of

29:53

Thrones show good? I have no idea. Why would I know? Don't

29:55

you guys have HBO? You do rich people? That

29:57

doesn't mean I watch. What does it even call House

29:59

of

29:59

the Dragon? do you mean?

30:02

It doesn't mean you watch it? You watch everything. You guys watch everything.

30:04

I have not yet seen. As we

30:06

record this, that shows only a couple weeks old

30:08

and I haven't seen it.

30:10

I did your your I did finally watch most of Obi

30:13

wan kenobi, and here's

30:15

a update from a couple months ago. It's pretty

30:17

good. It gets it gets better at

30:19

the end. but Darth Vader is a bad Darth Vader.

30:21

He doesn't walk like Darth Vader. Well,

30:23

the guy's not telling like, Darth Vader

30:25

was a big body builder when they cast

30:27

that British guy, and now they just think they can

30:29

put Hayden Christiansen in the seat. He he

30:32

menses around. It's not Darth Vader. He

30:34

doesn't it's wrong. He can't say Vincent

30:36

anymore. Oh, Well, he's not strong. whirling

30:38

around in a big two two. He's not

30:40

strong. He doesn't he doesn't convey Darth

30:42

Vader, you know, b d BDE.

30:45

Big Darth Energy. So

30:47

you're you're watching Sandman, I'm guessing.

30:49

Oh, I haven't seen Sandman either, but I hear it's

30:51

good.

30:51

Yeah. I think good. I'm I'm just not watching as much TV

30:53

as you're imagining. Oh, right. because you're a

30:55

big Hollywood star. That is

30:57

correct. I am spilling chicken

31:00

grease on So let's

31:02

just alone at at David Gevonfeldt.

31:04

The let let's let's

31:06

tell the story of how a daytime

31:08

soap briefly became cover

31:11

of Newsweek type. How are you gonna tell this

31:13

story if I keep interrupting you? How will

31:15

this ever happen? In nineteen seventy eight,

31:17

general hospital is on life

31:20

support. Oh,

31:20

a new producer has been brought in a kind

31:22

of a young ninety pound

31:24

soaking

31:25

wet, little

31:28

powerhouse

31:28

named Gloria Monty.

31:30

If you ever watched Tutsi, she's kind of the

31:32

basis for the for the takes no

31:34

crap. So upper producer in Tutsi.

31:37

Yeah. And it's fine. At some point, Tutsi and

31:39

Soapace are gonna be our only memories of

31:41

what the soaps were like, like these kind

31:43

of the few times

31:45

that primetime

31:46

entertainment actually dipped their foot into that. Are

31:48

none of these is this one of those things where they

31:50

were all recorded on tape they

31:52

got taped over by by some

31:54

Monday night football. hospital was on

31:56

videotape, and I think it all still exists. The thing

31:58

is there's no

31:59

bingeable audience for it because

32:02

for one thing,

32:03

it advances at a glacial pace.

32:05

Every day, it kinda has to recap, hey, here's

32:07

what happened yesterday when you might have been ironing or

32:09

you might have been putting down your crying

32:12

baby Now we'll

32:12

advance it a little bit. Here's one new thing that's gonna happen, but

32:14

we just wanna keep you hanging for tomorrow. That

32:16

was the I think the thing I I liked

32:18

about them the least was just like, if you were sick

32:20

for three days, nothing new happened.

32:22

Yeah. And you just got told the same place over. It's just

32:25

easier to I mean, those shows

32:27

it's a new hour of TV a

32:29

day think about the poor actors, but think about, you

32:31

know, actors who have to kind of block it, then rehearse

32:33

it, then shoot it in a matter of hours, whereas

32:36

a primetime show would have seven

32:38

or eight days to shoot that much, that many pages. Did

32:40

they record it on episode a

32:42

day, or did they do, like, jeopardy and record

32:44

five episodes? It was one a day, but

32:46

today they do more. to cut costs on

32:48

these things. Now, the cast of those three

32:50

remaining soaps have to do more than

32:52

an episode a day. And

32:55

how much are they improvising? So

32:57

that'll be a lot. Right? They're

33:00

supposed to know the pages, but

33:02

they, you know, they just got them. You know, well, I mean, they

33:04

got them weeks ago, but they're having to

33:06

do I

33:06

don't know, twenty to eighty pages a day. So

33:08

they become geniuses at memorization.

33:11

So

33:12

having watched some general hospital of

33:14

this area in preparation for this. I can see that

33:16

they are actually scattered around the lines

33:18

quite a bit, looking for the lines,

33:20

they don't have cue cards, but they're kind of

33:22

looking upward, hoping that it comes to

33:25

them, helping out their scene partner

33:27

when he forgets the queue. Uh-huh.

33:29

There's there's this is evident, but they are

33:31

pros. They have nailed this style of

33:33

acting. I was just thinking

33:34

about the poor riders that have to generate this

33:36

much novelty a day. You can

33:39

see why the plot advances so

33:41

racially. It's it's easier on them

33:43

as well. the

33:46

Gloria Monti is told in most versions of the

33:48

story that she has a couple weeks to

33:50

turn this show around.

33:52

She has turn the

33:55

show around. I think at the time she gets

33:57

this ultimatum from ABC, she's been there a

33:59

while and she has tried

33:59

to bring general hospital

34:02

So I say ABC? Yeah. I think that might have been a fraudulent slip.

34:04

That's what they called their daytime dramas.

34:07

She has gotten rid

34:08

of the organ music of the

34:11

past and now there's kind of these

34:13

new

34:13

wavy synths. Uh-huh. The

34:16

lobby of General Hospital

34:18

is now if

34:18

you were watching it this era, it is no longer it's now kind of

34:20

a vibrant chrome thing with elevator banks. It

34:22

looks like a real hospital instead

34:26

of the fifty's era set. I think I remember that transition.

34:28

Yeah. Occasionally, there's, like,

34:30

handheld camera. The show has

34:32

actually picked up the pace quite a bit.

34:34

I mean, plot

34:35

incident does not happen more often, but

34:38

scenes are shorter, so it's more

34:40

like the the Sesame

34:42

Street MTV Air

34:44

attention span. instead of six long

34:46

scenes, an episode will be twelve to fifteen shorter scenes. Is

34:48

there like walk and

34:49

talk? There's

34:51

I mean,

34:54

you

34:54

have to think these things are just blocked to be so you can shoot them

34:56

in forty five minutes. Right. Right. You know? Like, somebody

34:58

kind of walking over and looking out a window is

35:00

as good as it's gonna get.

35:03

Even in a love scene, you know, there's the

35:05

actors are

35:05

gonna have to cheat toward camera and and to

35:08

claim. It's a weird style of

35:10

of

35:11

directing and acting it's got to be done

35:13

on a budget. But despite all these innovations, the

35:16

show was

35:17

in trouble ratings wise. and

35:19

Gloria Monty has two weeks to make

35:21

something happen. Whoa. She

35:24

goes to one of her

35:26

newer actors. a a guy named Anthony Geary has been given a

35:28

thirteen

35:30

week stint on the show. He's not one of

35:32

what you would

35:34

call their contract players who's guaranteed a a credit in a certain

35:36

number of scenes. Oh, is this how it works?

35:38

Yeah. There's a there's a number of old

35:40

guard that you know are going

35:42

to appear. and then

35:44

everybody else is

35:45

basically day players. Thirteen weeks, it's

35:47

like you get a you get a you sign on and then

35:49

your you know your character's gonna die cancer.

35:51

Yeah. kind of the creative decisions that would drive

35:54

these things on other shows just do not happen

35:56

here. You know, this this guy

35:57

needs

35:58

this many scenes because he's been on this

36:00

show and our deal says he gets

36:02

this many scenes. So we have

36:03

to find a way to involve the quarter

36:05

main family even if they weren't gonna be

36:07

in this plot. Is it is it flexible enough that if a if

36:09

some actor or actress is really

36:12

popular that they will say like, oh,

36:14

we we can't

36:16

fire you. we will see that happen in a moment. But in general, it's the other way. Like, if

36:18

somebody's sick or gets a pilot, it gets

36:20

a real pilot, and they don't have a

36:22

deal suddenly, A voice will

36:24

say, today, the part of

36:26

Colton Shore will be played by,

36:28

and some under study will just be there

36:30

and all the actors will pretend it's

36:32

Colton. Oh, whoa. It is not

36:34

correct. Anthony

36:35

Geary was brought on the show

36:37

to play a bad boy

36:40

named Luke expensive. Uh-huh. At the

36:42

time, a

36:44

young actress named

36:44

Jeannie Francis is on the

36:46

show playing she's only like

36:50

seventeen, I think, but she is

36:51

playing a young law student's wife.

36:53

She started

36:53

out on the show as a rebellious teenage

36:56

daughter of the of the Weber family of

36:58

Port Charles. Leslie

36:59

Weber, I think works

37:00

at the hospital and had been a

37:03

longtime fixture of the show. But this

37:04

is a time when, nowadays,

37:07

or from the nineties on when soaps

37:09

put in young teens, it's in hopes

37:11

of getting a younger audience by having more

37:13

relevant adventures -- Uh-huh. -- because, you know,

37:15

they're their cast

37:15

their contract cast members are continually

37:17

aging into

37:19

into

37:19

into

37:20

into senescence into senesence. Back then,

37:22

you would bring on a rebellious teenager because that's what

37:25

the housewives watching would be would -- Right.

37:27

-- you know, be worried about, like, oh,

37:29

no. Is Jeanne gonna My

37:31

daughter-in-law reefer bell bottoms and --

37:34

Right. -- driving around in a in a

37:36

pinto. So Jeannie Francis' character, Lauren,

37:38

just existed to give

37:40

her parents service and

37:40

and not come home

37:41

in a timely manner and break curfew and

37:44

and and get involved with bad

37:45

boys. But at this point, Laura had

37:48

settled down

37:50

with a young upstanding law student, and I think they had gotten married, Scotty

37:52

Baldwin. So she was married to

37:55

this

37:55

clean-cut college student named

37:58

Scotty and

37:58

they were now the good boy and girl of Port

37:59

Charles. Anthony Gary's

38:01

character,

38:02

Luke, had been

38:03

brought in basically to break up

38:06

their marriage. He was the

38:08

brother of a of a general hospital

38:10

character, Bobby Spencer, who

38:12

really

38:12

wanted to break up Scottie and

38:14

Laura, because Bobby, a former prostitute.

38:17

that had designs on

38:19

Scotty. There's

38:20

so there's always it's like wrestling. There's

38:22

there's faces and heels. And Bobby was a

38:24

heel, and she was gonna bring in a bigger

38:26

heel. this near do well brother on here

38:29

two four unmentioned,

38:30

named Luke. And

38:31

Luke could do the bad stuff that even Bobby

38:33

could not do because Bobby kinda turned into hicker

38:35

with a heart of gold character. Whereas this out of

38:37

towner, he could basically be you know, it

38:39

was implied. He had he was

38:42

criminal

38:42

connections. He was mobbed up.

38:44

Here's what I don't understand.

38:45

And I might I might be jumping ahead, but I

38:47

remember this now, and I just googled Luke

38:49

and Laura, and I'm looking

38:51

at the pictures. and Luke,

38:54

and III thought this at the

38:56

time. Luke does not.

38:58

Laura is conventionally beautiful Laura's

39:01

a beautiful young Vaseline smile, blonde, blue thing. Yeah. She

39:03

clearly has veneers on her

39:05

teeth, and she's got cool

39:07

kind of feathered hair But

39:10

Luke -- Yes. -- has got a Jerry Kearl

39:12

-- Correct. -- and he's half

39:14

bald. He looks like Kevin Dubrow

39:18

from Quiet riot. Like,

39:20

he was not a conventionally

39:22

attractive and and I still

39:24

don't find him. He kind of has a he's

39:26

balding. He has kind of a blonde white man's afro. Yeah.

39:29

And kinda a little bit like

39:31

shoulder length. Both his look

39:34

and his affect when you

39:36

watch him on the show, maybe it's because

39:38

he came from playing a villain. He is

39:40

not doing

39:42

the standard competent able soap opera

39:44

acting line reads. He's

39:46

he's

39:46

he's got, like,

39:48

he's kinda he's scatter around.

39:51

He's unpredictable. He's sometimes exuberant, and

39:53

he'll whooping holler. But also,

39:55

he's he's very brooding. It's kind

39:57

of a brando like I mean,

39:59

it doesn't go

39:59

that far. But as

40:00

far as a brando like method

40:03

works on daytime dramas, Tony

40:05

Gary is trying it out. He's kinda

40:07

got these these hooded

40:08

eyes like a cobra where he's kind of he's got

40:10

this kind of

40:11

dead stare. Yeah. Like kind of like

40:13

a dead fish. He

40:16

is not It's not just

40:17

that he's not your average soap sex symbol.

40:20

He doesn't look like any kind of

40:22

seventies or eighty sex. No. He looks like

40:24

a he looks like

40:26

a pastor. like a teen pastor or a or a fitness instructor.

40:28

Untrustworthy teen pastor. Yeah.

40:30

And this kind of if

40:33

you've you may have seen him in movies even if you're not

40:35

a soap guy because he broke out enough that

40:37

you would remember him as an

40:39

oddball in movies.

40:41

He was the a character in UHF that turns out to be a

40:43

space alien -- Good. -- working at the station. You never saw

40:45

the word out movie UHF? Right now. How about the Fat

40:48

Boy's movie

40:50

disorderly? I

40:50

well, I was somewhat of a fan of the bad boys,

40:52

but I didn't see disorderly. Oh, the premise

40:55

of the movie? Exactly. The premise

40:57

of the movie is that

40:59

a spoiled awful young rich kid wants to

41:02

kill off

41:02

his grandpa so he inherits and so he

41:04

hires the fat boys to take care of grandpa.

41:07

So so

41:07

in this case, Tony Geary is playing

41:09

the Space Alien

41:11

TV state local TV station

41:14

employee and the unlikable

41:16

rich weirdo

41:17

Any other films that I have definitely

41:20

not seen that had him in him? That's kind of the

41:22

basis of his eighties career.

41:24

I mean, there's we'll talk

41:25

about this in a second, but soap opera stars sometimes

41:27

get kind of get a lot. Yeah. Like as much

41:29

as it's talked about as

41:31

a as a a factory that

41:33

produces your Alec Baldwin's and your Saramois retailers and your Demi Moore's,

41:35

it most often

41:37

produces regular work

41:40

for kind of

41:40

a journeyman type actor who did could not make it

41:42

in front of him. Did

41:43

all of the people you just mentioned start on

41:45

soap operas? They did.

41:48

Demi Moore that Me Moore was on

41:50

General Hospital at this time in their

41:52

ladies. She was

41:53

Jackie Templeton.

41:54

So

41:56

Anthony Geary is an unlikely soap

41:58

star, and he's brought in he

42:00

brought in

42:02

to, you know,

42:04

to menace Guinea Francis,

42:06

Laura, try to break up her merits of Scottie.

42:08

But Gloria Monty decides to swing for the

42:10

fences. She is going to

42:12

have this unusual presence, now front and center on

42:14

the show, in all his

42:16

weirdness, and he is going to fall

42:18

for this perfect blonde

42:20

miss America. Perfect.

42:22

What's the term we use

42:24

for the perfect young

42:26

American blonde. Zaftec.

42:29

No. She's

42:29

not stuffed. She's an apple pie. Oh, well, you're

42:32

perfect. And my perfect or different. Perfect. It's a

42:34

girl next door. Girl next

42:36

door. Yes. I like how when ask for girl next

42:38

door, you say, you you give me a

42:40

German word for for big

42:42

boobs. To get ish, I think.

42:44

But yeah.

42:46

And this so his pursuit this

42:48

all turns on a dime in a now, what,

42:52

infamous

42:53

scene where

42:55

content warning

42:55

for sexual assault. Wait.

42:58

He actually falls in love with her or he falls in

43:00

love with her in a cynical way because he's a

43:02

bad guy. He's trying to get something. he

43:04

confesses that he even though he's a bad guy who has

43:06

just been making her and her husband's life

43:08

miserable, actually he loves her.

43:10

He then, in the

43:12

same scene, proceeds to rape her. This takes place

43:14

at a Port Charles

43:16

mobbed up hangout called the campus disco. I

43:18

don't know why the mob

43:20

would own someplace that sounds

43:22

like a student hangout. Well, you know, you you

43:24

never know what the mob's gonna Everybody's gone for the

43:26

night. Herb Alpert's rise is

43:28

playing on the jukebox. Luke

43:29

confesses his love for Laura. She

43:31

gets squicked out, and then

43:34

he

43:35

absolutely,

43:37

forcibly has sex with

43:39

her, you know, kind of pushing

43:40

her off the bottom of the screen while,

43:42

you know, Gloria Monty's patented

43:46

handheld camera kind

43:47

of roams through the lights of this

43:50

disco, and then we come back in the next scene

43:52

to find her

43:54

shaken and violated. Mhmm.

43:56

She runs off and is

43:58

found in a

43:59

park

43:59

with torn

44:00

clothing. It is absolutely

44:04

a

44:04

It

44:05

is played as a terrible,

44:08

violent

44:10

tragedy. And yet,

44:11

the two have

44:14

undeniable chemistry. It's James Bond

44:16

rape. Right. I mean, this was

44:18

a time

44:20

when

44:21

the there

44:22

was a line between date rape

44:25

and what might be called

44:27

forced seduction. And in fact,

44:29

the show later provide

44:32

some retroactive continuity such that both Luke and Laura

44:34

think back on this encounter

44:38

as a No.

44:39

No. Don't. If you watch the scene,

44:41

she's saying no. No. No. And never stops

44:43

protests and never says no

44:46

means yes. Whereas in the kind of

44:48

this squeaky James Bond

44:50

kind of, actually, what women

44:52

really want kind of paradigm. You

44:54

know,

44:54

she never switches to actually, yes,

44:57

take me hold me.

44:59

and the fans

45:02

love Luke and Lara together

45:04

despite this

45:04

origin of their relationship.

45:07

mostly because the actors are, you

45:09

know, doing something

45:12

on a different level than most stop

45:14

stars. They're

45:15

at the top of their

45:16

game. And Gloria Monty

45:19

starts writing elaborate adventure story

45:21

lines for them. First, it's

45:23

kind of a lovers on the run. It happened one night. Scruggable

45:25

Cross Country

45:27

vibe, as they, you

45:29

know, kind of,

45:31

go on the road

45:32

having adventures together that bring that bring

45:34

them together in hotel rooms whether they want

45:36

it or not. Filming it

45:38

still in the studio. They're just they

45:41

keep doctoring a room to be a hotel. The whole

45:43

thing is it is it, I think, sunset

45:45

Gower in Hollywood. And later no.

45:48

Probably later this is around the time the show moved to ABC Television City

45:50

in Los Filos, which

45:52

is now it's Prospect Studios because ABC's

45:54

moved to

45:56

Burbank, Are they Thanks for that that insider tour.

45:58

I'm sure. I'm I'm sure you guys

46:00

are all wondering when general hospital

46:04

moved to Prospect Studios, it was around eighty one. Were they

46:06

doing outdoor filming, like, into the

46:08

daylight? Almost never. That was very rare on

46:10

soaps at this time, but you know, the whole thing

46:12

would have to be done on redress sets

46:14

and on the cheap and, you know, the

46:16

same kind of street set would always be the

46:18

street and the same hotel room would always be

46:20

the redress tell room I would love

46:22

to be a set dresser like during that

46:24

era where I was like, you gotta make this you

46:26

you have like six hours to make this a completely

46:28

different environment. But even this was so than

46:30

what other shows were doing. This idea that you would try to have these kind

46:32

of hitchhocking in North by Northwest adventures

46:35

very ambitious for a

46:37

late seventies. So And very quickly,

46:40

the show moves in in fact straight up

46:42

into James Bond style

46:43

science fiction. An evil

46:46

guy named let's see. John

46:48

Colicos, who was like always a he's on

46:50

BattleStar Galacticica, and he was

46:52

a he was a cling on

46:53

on Star Trek. he plays

46:55

Mikos Casadine, an evil supervillain type

46:58

who is

46:58

looking for a a diamond,

46:59

not just because he's a diamond thief,

47:02

but because critical

47:04

part in his weather controlling

47:06

machine that will allow him to take over

47:08

Port Charles New York and then

47:10

the world. Oh, John Colicos, I remember him. He was in a

47:12

lot of he was in Star Trek.

47:14

He's the very first cling on. In the

47:16

very first cling on

47:18

Star Trek. He was in

47:20

so many things. Well,

47:22

on on general hospital,

47:25

he wants to change

47:26

the weather in Port Charles and then the world. So with a

47:28

with a special gem, with a diamond

47:31

that makes his his his weather

47:33

machine work, he's gonna

47:36

he's gonna threaten the governments of the world with with the

47:38

second ice age. And this was

47:40

again, as

47:40

you can imagine, then a now super unusual

47:43

territory for a daytime soap

47:46

opera. but it really broadened the appeal of the show because, like,

47:48

when I was a kid, I was like, whoa, they're having

47:50

you know, now there's, like, fist fights

47:51

on the

47:54

waterfront and at the time for these plot

47:56

lines to

47:57

work, the writers

47:59

introduced

47:59

a world security

48:02

apparatus called the WSB that for some reason

48:04

also most of its members were Port

48:06

Charles police

48:07

officers. Oh, yeah. So

48:09

there it was a world security Yeah. It was

48:11

like an interpol like organization,

48:13

but also seemed seemed to spend an

48:15

awful lot of time in

48:17

a city in upstate New York. Hand it

48:19

out traffic ticket. No. They'd be they'd be,

48:22

like, you know, passing

48:24

microfish to the Kamis,

48:26

the the KGB was never named. It was always

48:28

the DVX, the evil -- Uh-huh. --

48:30

the evil specter. Eastern block type specter,

48:34

co tenancy. if you watched the show this

48:36

time, and and Luke Spencer was

48:38

always front and center in these adventure plot lines, and

48:40

he was given a a fun, wise cracking

48:42

cracking australian Australian sidekick

48:44

played by Tristan Rogers with whom we had a really good

48:46

kind of rapport and

48:48

you could tell they were riffing on the script quite a bit.

48:50

It was just a lot more loose and fun

48:54

and It's cocky and James Bondi and then you would

48:56

expect in a in a

48:58

daytime romance entertainment. So this is what

49:00

people actually wanted the whole time

49:02

and not

49:04

not just the trickily kind of violin based

49:06

entertainment, but they they wanted to

49:08

work excitement. If you were a housewife in

49:12

nineteen eighty, and

49:12

you didn't like this kind of thing. You had plenty of other options you could just

49:14

switch back to edge of night. But

49:16

this is what suddenly had a

49:20

bigger audience watching the shows. You know, college students kind

49:22

of getting into this kitschy entertainment,

49:25

but also genuinely,

49:26

you know, they could laugh that genuinely they

49:29

would wanna know. What was gonna happen next? Is that guy really a look like? Is

49:31

she a spy? And this is the dawn of thirty

49:34

something boomers. Right? They're they're

49:36

they're all moms and dads for the

49:38

first time. at this point. They're having

49:40

millennials. Yes. The first

49:42

well, I mean, I'm an elder gen x,

49:44

and I was watching this.

49:47

Yeah. Or, sorry, I'm a younger Gen X and

49:49

you're a younger Gen X. Younger Gen X

49:51

and elder Millennials are eating the stuff

49:53

up, whether they are older millennials would

49:55

have been bordered Right

49:56

at this time. Right? The oldest millennial would been zero years old,

49:59

but their

49:59

moms and dads. Nineteen

50:01

eighty one, eighty

50:04

two? It would have been it would have

50:06

been at the end of Gen X. Yeah. Yeah. Eighty.

50:08

I mean Gen X is either

50:10

in college, somewhere between elementary school and

50:12

college at this time. Not in nineteen eighty

50:14

one. Are you talking about nineteen

50:17

ninety one? No. Nineteen eighty one. I'm

50:19

talking about nineteen eighty. There were no Gen X

50:21

in college. I was twelve years old.

50:23

you're not the

50:23

oldest possible j, hey, you're pretty close

50:26

actually. Thanks. Yeah.

50:27

Nineteen sixty, what are

50:29

they whatever it is, whether it's nineteen

50:31

sixty four or nineteen sixty six. No. This

50:33

would have been boomers. Yeah. Middle aged

50:36

version Young. Young boob. The college

50:38

students said

50:40

eighty one Yeah. It's

50:42

right on the cusp. Late nights. Very

50:44

late boomers? Well, no. If you're

50:46

nineteen in seventy nine,

50:48

you're born in nineteen sixty.

50:50

you're Barack Obama's age. So it's

50:53

a

50:53

broader audience.

50:54

And what's

50:56

really driving it is people

50:59

love Luke and Laura. The

51:01

ah

51:03

the marriage

51:06

when they finally get married, you know, in late nineteen

51:08

eighty one, it is a marriage

51:12

that almost didn't happen.

51:15

What had happened was that

51:17

it looked like Jeanne Francis was gonna leave

51:19

general hospital and Luke was gonna lose

51:21

his Laura. would she leave if she was so popular?

51:23

She I mean, all these people

51:25

just want an offer from prime

51:27

time. Oh, yeah. and that's, you

51:29

know, some of them were kept under lock and keys so they

51:31

can make a living without ever looking for real

51:34

work. But Jeanne Francis had

51:36

an offer. She ended up doing one

51:38

of these Dallas

51:38

knots Landing shows for, I think,

51:41

NBC called Bear Essence, about

51:43

the a wealthy

51:45

perfume industry family. Oh, I thought

51:47

you were gonna say bear bear

51:50

circus performers. Yeah. It's park

51:52

rangers. Mhmm. Family of wealthy

51:54

-- I don't know. -- yellow

51:56

stone rangers. Who

51:58

else was on this show? It had, like, Jessica Walter

51:59

from the rest of development was on. And I think Ian a

52:02

young Ian McShane when he's I mean, he's

52:04

very sexy now, but when he's kind of a leading man type Uh-huh. --

52:06

and it was, you know, big news

52:09

that Laura Weber Baldwin would

52:12

be would move to prime time and

52:13

beyond bare essence. And Scottie Baldwin,

52:16

who had, you know, a lot of these Luke and

52:18

Lara shows were a love

52:20

triangle because

52:21

for a while, she was still

52:22

with her clean-cut lawsuit

52:23

and husband, then they

52:25

break up so she can be with Luke, but there's

52:27

a lot of back and forth

52:30

over that. And the actor playing Scottie actually left general hospital for a year,

52:32

which slowed down the whole plot line, their

52:34

whole love trying to plot line.

52:35

But in nineteen

52:36

eighty one, Elizabeth

52:38

Taylor, calls.

52:41

Elizabeth Taylor,

52:41

you didn't think this was gonna

52:42

happen? No. This is you know, she's

52:45

still married to send Warner

52:47

or future senator Warner? Why did he go in the

52:49

Senate? Not sure. This is the waning days of her

52:51

marriage to John Warner. She's obviously unhappy.

52:54

She's at home watching soaps. like everyone else.

52:56

She loves Nuke and Laura. And

52:57

she says, I wanna be

53:00

on general hospital. You're

53:00

a kid. This would

53:03

be fun. if I were on hospital,

53:04

again, this is a previously unimagined

53:06

imprimatur of legitimacy for

53:08

this show business get out.

53:10

And ABC,

53:12

of course, will promote the hell out of

53:14

Elizabeth Taylor appearing on General

53:16

Hospital.

53:18

Well,

53:19

she was Oh, I guess she was fifty

53:21

years old. So, is that

53:23

right? Around

53:23

nineteen eighty? Yeah. So, you

53:25

know, like, forty

53:28

eight. So, I mean,

53:30

that's younger than me, and I'm still hot.

53:32

So she looks good.

53:34

Yeah. Elizabeth

53:35

Taylor looks great. Yeah.

53:37

In the early I mean, I'm sure there's all kinds

53:39

of unhealthy crash dieting going on and

53:41

biolidize. And, you know, she's having having to hang

53:43

out with Michael Jackson more than any normal

53:45

person should. Mhmm. Correct. That's

53:48

still that's still in his off the

53:50

wall days when he was,

53:52

you know, He didn't have a monkey yet, I don't think. That's true. He's less

53:54

weird at this point. And she's not married to

53:56

Larry for Penske yet. No.

53:58

But she's not married to Richard Burton

53:59

anymore. So

54:02

but she wants to be on general hospital and her condition

54:04

is that Luke and Laura have to get

54:06

married. I want Luke and Laura to get

54:08

married. I this is

54:11

I have enough creative control to say that if Luke

54:13

and Laura get married, I would totally

54:15

be on

54:16

general hospital. This can't be real.

54:18

What

54:18

you were telling me cannot be

54:20

real? she has a ultimatum. And

54:22

did she also say, like, I

54:24

must wear a turban? Now are you looking at

54:26

a picture? because she does, in fact, wear

54:29

a turban? She was probably wearing a turtleneck

54:31

when she called. Well, but but wait, she's

54:33

Cleopatra. So is this some is

54:36

this some like hat tip or

54:38

turban tip? To Cleopack,

54:40

she does play an exotic character. I think the Casadines

54:42

are supposed to be Greek on NASA's type

54:44

-- Okay. -- millionaires -- Sure. -- she has

54:46

written into the show as the widow of

54:49

the John Colicos weather controlling

54:51

character. The vengeful Helena

54:54

Castle. So, you know,

54:56

she's it's it's greed not Egyptian, but it's

54:58

mediterranean exotic looks. He dies

55:00

in Mailing to get his eyes out.

55:02

killed at the end of his weather controlling plan.

55:04

And then she shows up not

55:08

wanting to control the weather or She's

55:10

less interested in weather than her husband.

55:12

Like, you know, like a lot of these

55:15

wealthy wives, Well, she's husband and wife who's gonna super

55:17

into every element of her husband's business.

55:19

Who's gonna care about the weather more? She's a

55:21

little shaky on the weather controlling aspects of

55:24

his business. Right. But

55:26

she hates Luke

55:27

Spencer and Robert's Scorpio and all the other

55:30

World Security

55:32

Bureau

55:32

stop

55:34

stars who have who have doomed his plan

55:36

because she's trying to

55:38

control a one world government or you

55:40

gotta get over her husband died.

55:43

She's a vengeful widow. Oh, I see. The

55:46

WSB has led to the death of Oh, I

55:48

see. She's vengeful on behalf of her dead

55:50

husband, not vengeful against him. Oh,

55:52

it's a nice reply. I said, no. I get

55:54

it. She still is a hundred percent into I mean,

55:56

if she says, honey, I'm gonna control the weather

55:58

today. She said she says,

55:59

how high? if he if

56:02

she said if he says, I'm gonna make the temperature rise. She says, how high?

56:04

So between these two things, the

56:06

soap getting first of all, they got Scotty

56:10

Baldwin back. the love triangles back. Second of all, Francis

56:12

is gonna

56:12

fly the Coup, and we need

56:15

some resolution to Luke and Laura.

56:18

And third, Elizabeth Taylor says, and you can't

56:20

break them up. It's gotta be a wedding. The

56:22

writers were now

56:23

creatively hemmed in.

56:26

Nobody can now appreciate what a big

56:28

star Elizabeth Taylor was in nineteen eighty.

56:30

Go to any supermarket checkout

56:33

for

56:33

a decade. And she is guaranteed

56:35

to be on

56:37

every tabloid and one of

56:39

the of the Celebrity

56:40

Men. People really cared what Elizabeth Taylor

56:42

was doing long past the

56:44

point that Elizabeth Taylor

56:47

was

56:47

really doing anything. So

56:49

it's like, I don't know what the equivalent would be. What's

56:51

the lowest possible cultural thing

56:54

today? You know, the

56:56

least prestigious

56:57

outpost of popular culture. And

56:59

then just imagine the

57:02

biggest star. Like suddenly

57:04

Barak and Michelle are on

57:06

an infomercial. or something.

57:07

You know? Right. Right. Guest guest starring on. They're

57:09

like, now now tell me all this

57:11

blender works. You

57:12

know? Like,

57:14

it it was also a good bra It was reference. It

57:16

was literally like that when

57:18

Elizabeth Taylor called up ABC. So

57:21

in

57:21

November of nineteen eighty

57:24

one, there's a massive it's actually

57:26

found outdoors. This doesn't happen much

57:28

as you point out in the house, but it always

57:30

seemed weird. when you'd see

57:32

soaps out in in the air. Well,

57:34

it's because they're shooting on video tapes, so it's got

57:36

that kind of cheap thirty frames a second low --

57:38

Yeah. -- that TV

57:40

Sports has. I've often

57:40

thought they shouldn't do that. Like, couldn't they just print it to video

57:42

and just or print it to film and have it look

57:44

like NFL films? So it would look

57:46

a little make, you know,

57:48

a really substrate shooting themselves in the

57:50

foot with that cheap look

57:52

for making us cost.

57:54

films

57:55

expense. And even now, you could digitally, you could make

57:57

it have the texture and frame rate of

57:59

film. Oh, yeah. You could do it on your iPhone.

58:02

Yeah. But people don't want that, I guess. They want

58:04

it to look like a soap. It's even

58:05

called soap opera effect when

58:07

when movies try

58:08

to or when TVs try to do the

58:10

motions movie or movie directors try to

58:12

give you sixty frames a second immersion because

58:14

people just think it looks cheap

58:17

and and and kitschy.

58:20

Yeah. It's the

58:20

genre's fault, not the technology's fault.

58:22

So in August of that year,

58:24

because the show's tape a couple months in advance, everybody

58:26

leaves ABC Television City, goes to

58:29

some Hollywood man and it's the hottest day of the

58:31

year. Everybody's miserable. The whole cast is there. You

58:34

know, the people from the

58:36

hospital, the

58:36

it's it's the this

58:39

grounds of this mansion are doubling for

58:41

the quarter main mansion of Port

58:44

Charles' old old

58:44

money family. So they had to

58:47

put blankets over the palm trees. they

58:49

try to make it look like upstate New York, and they have to make it

58:51

look like upstate New York in November, which is the

58:53

problem. So the characters have to remark on what

58:56

unseasonably wore in summer day this is but the theme of

58:58

Luca and Laura's wedding appears to be autumn.

59:00

There's a lot of pumpkins,

59:02

corn stalks,

59:05

it's funny how much even though this is some ethical

59:07

TV moment, how much side conversation there

59:09

is about, how beautiful the ham

59:11

looks in the buffet, And which side

59:13

of the receiving line doesn't have enough corn? Hey,

59:16

have you noticed how beautiful the ham is?

59:19

a beautiful lamb. because all these all these other little

59:22

actors, you know, just the people who play the

59:24

nurses at at general hospital have to be

59:26

there and they have to have

59:28

their own subplots.

59:28

There has to be stuff about the the bridesmaids

59:30

and whatnot.

59:31

Michael Jackson's monkeys,

59:34

pooping all

59:36

over everything. But there is a lot of

59:38

incidents. As you mentioned, Elizabeth Taylor has seen

59:40

lurking in the shadows in a turban. This

59:42

is her

59:44

debut. She has appeared the week before saying that she

59:46

is ready to, you know, getting a

59:48

a shadowy team of messengers together to

59:51

event her husband's death.

59:53

And

59:53

then from then on, you can just see

59:55

the messengers because Elizabeth Taylor only agreed

59:57

to do five shows. So it

59:59

can be the messengers that are sending Luca

1:00:01

ominous gifts on their wedding day,

1:00:03

which in fact

1:00:05

happens, you

1:00:06

can see Elizabeth Taylor in the

1:00:08

shadows with no other cast members because it

1:00:11

was filmed on a different day saying, I

1:00:13

curse you, Luke and Laura, literally putting a hex

1:00:15

on their on

1:00:17

their nuptials. That's

1:00:18

why you should always wear an evil eye

1:00:21

repeller to

1:00:22

at any big event. I

1:00:25

was actually talking to somebody the other day who always wears

1:00:28

a charm bracelet with a little eye on it --

1:00:30

Really? -- to keep the evil eye away. Are

1:00:32

they Greek? turks, not

1:00:34

to my knowledge. They just but

1:00:36

they're they're aware that there could be Greeks and Turks

1:00:39

at any turn. There could. That's you

1:00:41

know, you go into anytime you step out the door. I just I

1:00:43

just wanted a halal hero and No.

1:00:46

And then there's more drama at the end. Laura

1:00:49

throws the book k and no less than her. Ex

1:00:51

husband, Scottie Baldwin, catches

1:00:52

it. That's not how it

1:00:54

works. And

1:00:54

says, I'm gonna contest this marriage.

1:00:57

You're my wife, Laura. And

1:01:00

then

1:01:00

they, you know, liquid reassures her and they drive off on

1:01:03

their honeymoon. The wedding spans two

1:01:05

different days. It was

1:01:07

November sixteenth

1:01:07

and seventeenth of nineteen eighty

1:01:10

one. Now, I watch this

1:01:12

show so you don't have to, and it's pretty it's

1:01:15

it's campy fun. I was in the civil air patrol at the time, and I

1:01:17

was probably were you not allowed to take a day off to

1:01:19

watch freaking large, you know? I was marching up and down

1:01:22

the square. Rich Springfield, not at

1:01:24

the wedding, by the way. You he was in the cast.

1:01:26

There's a cutaway to him at the

1:01:28

hospital saying, well, I couldn't really we've

1:01:30

got I had the cover for doc the doctor Brett. He's got a very convincing

1:01:32

American accent. Is he Australian or

1:01:34

something? Oh, no. He's from California,

1:01:38

I thought. Oh, is that right? Yeah. Is he playing a

1:01:40

does he play a I don't know why I'm He's got an

1:01:42

unconvincing Australian accent. Oh, no. He

1:01:44

is he is Australian. Rick

1:01:46

Springfield, Australia. Yeah. I wonder how if he's been in this country for a while.

1:01:49

Oh, I didn't know that. So he's like, oh,

1:01:51

there was a terrible bus crash

1:01:54

and Oh, that was a terrible life crisis. He just kind of speaks

1:01:56

in the slow careful way people

1:01:58

do when they're trying

1:01:59

to sound American. You hit in the r's

1:02:02

too hard. He's

1:02:04

a working class. Oh, so you see him at the hospital

1:02:06

saying, oh, I had to cover shifts.

1:02:08

I'm sorry to miss the wedding of

1:02:10

the of the century. The

1:02:13

wedding had

1:02:14

had you know,

1:02:16

the show is kind of unremarkable, but the wedding

1:02:18

had a number of effects on

1:02:20

the culture at large. I mean,

1:02:22

for one thing, basically,

1:02:24

it pushed soap

1:02:25

operas into the

1:02:27

popular conversation where you know that Elizabeth Taylor is watching and it's on the

1:02:29

cover of Newsweek and What am I

1:02:32

missing? Maybe, man, all my sorority sisters to get

1:02:34

together and

1:02:36

watch jeopardy or maybe even like, you know, my frat brother

1:02:38

should get together and watch Jeopardy.

1:02:40

In the industry,

1:02:42

Jeopardy, Did I say jeopardy? You did.

1:02:44

General hospital weird. Well, they're both

1:02:46

daytime shows that start with Jeff. Oh, I suppose. Within

1:02:49

the soap

1:02:51

opera industry, it started a trendarian. You're

1:02:54

concerned. There's a b in the middle. There's a b in the

1:02:56

middle. It started a trend

1:02:58

that became known

1:03:00

as the super couple. Every show needed to have a Luke and Laura.

1:03:02

They decided this was their pathway to

1:03:04

success. And the fact is none of

1:03:06

them had kind

1:03:08

of an eccentric actor like Anthony Gary to pull it off.

1:03:10

But they all of them

1:03:11

tried to push

1:03:13

a protagonist that would always be on the

1:03:16

cover of soap opera weekly and maybe fingers

1:03:18

crossed to TV guide

1:03:20

someday. Didn't George Clooney

1:03:22

start on a popular on

1:03:24

a show? Well George Chalk, can he ever yeah. He had a podcast, I

1:03:26

think. Just kinda hitting some of his bros

1:03:28

ripping on the news

1:03:30

events of the day.

1:03:32

I mean,

1:03:33

Didn't a bunch of

1:03:35

those kinds of Moody's produce start on All those early eighty

1:03:37

shows I can think of the Hewah's on was

1:03:39

sitcoms -- Oh. -- you know, a fact

1:03:41

of life and

1:03:43

I don't know if he was ever

1:03:44

on a daytime show.

1:03:46

Oh, he was on

1:03:47

one of those night times when he was on

1:03:49

ERER That's what I was

1:03:51

thinking. of. Isn't that a soap opera? I mean, it's just got it's

1:03:53

the same general

1:03:55

hospital playbook where all the

1:03:57

doctors are sleeping and then the

1:03:59

patients

1:03:59

kind of bring in their mystery of the week to

1:04:02

solve or or Doctors and

1:04:04

nurses sleeping together,

1:04:06

it's anarchy. That's probably the

1:04:08

opposite of anarchy. Like, doctors and nurses like

1:04:10

having a quickie and a supply clause, and it's

1:04:12

probably, like, the most

1:04:14

expected thing at

1:04:16

a hospital. So all the

1:04:16

soaps wanted to have a super couple, you know, days of our lives had to

1:04:18

have bow and hope and try to make them happen. And

1:04:20

and I think a lot of it

1:04:22

turned into a real creative

1:04:24

challenge for these shows because if

1:04:26

you

1:04:26

have some established protagonist couple that's

1:04:29

where it's always them against

1:04:31

the world, that really kind of

1:04:31

limits the amount of

1:04:34

shocking changes and tragedies

1:04:35

you can bring to the former.

1:04:37

You kind of get inertia.

1:04:38

if it's

1:04:39

the same, you know, it's

1:04:42

they got

1:04:42

married. Now what happens? Do people actually

1:04:44

get, like, shot and killed

1:04:46

On soap operas, are there, like, real I mean, apparently, there are rapes.

1:04:48

Are there murders? Sure. I mean, there's

1:04:50

there's, you know, henchmen are

1:04:54

getting on general hospital at this time, henchmen are showing up in town with a

1:04:56

secret statue with microphone in it and

1:04:58

getting shot and falling into the bay. Wow.

1:05:02

It's a it's a tough life on a soap.

1:05:04

Oh, the stakes could not be higher.

1:05:06

These are very different than the ones I was watching in

1:05:08

the seventies. Yeah. Where was

1:05:10

just like, oh, somebody, you know,

1:05:12

tore my puffy sleeve

1:05:14

organ

1:05:15

music. organ hit.

1:05:17

Jeanne Francis

1:05:18

left

1:05:20

just a

1:05:21

few months later, left Port

1:05:23

Charles. Her primetime

1:05:24

primetime Show failed,

1:05:26

but one of her co stars on the show was

1:05:28

a young actor named Jonathan Frakes -- Mhmm.

1:05:30

-- later, they co starred in

1:05:33

a couple prime time miniseries together. They are

1:05:35

both leads in North and South. They

1:05:37

fell in love. And Jenny Francis is sixty

1:05:39

years old today and is married still

1:05:41

to Jonathan Frakes. one of the longest and

1:05:43

happiest vile accounts Hollywood marriages.

1:05:45

Anthony Gehre, Jonathan

1:05:47

Frakes. He's number one.

1:05:49

He's from Star

1:05:52

Trek. The Anthony Gehre

1:05:54

was very

1:05:55

uncomfortable with fame. Apparently,

1:05:57

his kind of Twitchy

1:05:59

odd

1:05:59

performance was indicative of a twitchy

1:06:02

odd self, and he wanted

1:06:03

no part of being

1:06:05

a Matt Neidl and he immediately decamped for

1:06:07

Amsterdam where

1:06:09

despite some subsequent returns

1:06:11

to American daytime dramas, I think he

1:06:13

mostly has been based ever

1:06:16

since. General hospital for the

1:06:17

rest of the decade would go on to embrace these kind

1:06:19

of action suspense mystery

1:06:21

thriller story lines,

1:06:23

But

1:06:25

eventually, the bloom was kind

1:06:27

of off the roads. You know,

1:06:29

general hospital only stayed the

1:06:31

hot new thing for a decade. That's which is an eternity in

1:06:33

the soap opera world. Right? Gloria Monty

1:06:35

eventually left because the young and

1:06:37

the restless had overtaken general

1:06:39

hospital.

1:06:39

That's what what all the cool young

1:06:42

people were watching. It had the

1:06:44

coolest

1:06:45

super couple and

1:06:47

general hospital really never reclaimed

1:06:50

even though

1:06:51

it stayed, you know,

1:06:52

one of the few legacy shows that

1:06:54

managed to stay on the air,

1:06:56

It never reclaimed its cultural buzziness of the early

1:06:59

eighties. Well now, what's the big

1:07:01

hot soap opera right now?

1:07:03

Here's the problem.

1:07:05

there's the problem So

1:07:06

paparas have busted in a big way. General hospital had thirty million

1:07:08

people watching Luca Laura's wedding. It's still on

1:07:11

the air, but I think in

1:07:12

an

1:07:13

average week it gets

1:07:15

less than two million viewers now. Oh. There

1:07:17

are three soap operas that there

1:07:18

are only three soap operas on American

1:07:22

broadcast broadcast airwaves

1:07:24

for

1:07:24

the first time since nineteen fifty one.

1:07:26

That number has been so low. General

1:07:28

hospital is still

1:07:29

around and then it's I

1:07:31

think it's young in the restless and bold in

1:07:33

the beautiful. Our bolster Even days of our

1:07:35

lives in the beautiful Even days of our lives has

1:07:37

moved to peacock where I'm sure

1:07:40

it will probably not

1:07:40

thrive because all the people old enough to

1:07:42

wanna watch days of our

1:07:43

lives do not know how to watch peacock.

1:07:45

Is peacock a a

1:07:47

pay service. It's NBC streaming service in

1:07:50

which some product is pay and some is

1:07:52

not. No. None none of

1:07:54

the soap opera people are gonna know

1:07:56

what that is. I mean, when

1:07:58

when all my

1:07:58

children and one other

1:07:59

soap, maybe as the world

1:08:02

turns,

1:08:04

some one of

1:08:04

the networks tried to move its soaps to streaming, and

1:08:06

they lasted less than a year under this

1:08:08

new. because it's

1:08:09

an even lower budget paradigm. These

1:08:11

shows always looked cheap.

1:08:13

Now they look

1:08:13

even cheaper and they can pay fewer cast members. So they're,

1:08:16

you know, shedding legacy

1:08:18

favorites. They can't bring back

1:08:20

the big stars people like the soap opera

1:08:22

industry has just been decimated by Love Island UK

1:08:25

losing its audience. Well, yeah,

1:08:26

okay. There's not a few things

1:08:29

you know, more more women started to work.

1:08:31

So last it's decline our culture

1:08:36

and civilization an

1:08:38

increase in, you know, an

1:08:40

improvement in almost every way, except that

1:08:43

there are not now a hundred

1:08:45

million people trapped at

1:08:46

home with

1:08:47

nothing but a

1:08:48

bottle of pills and needing

1:08:50

background noise. More cigarettes and

1:08:53

detective not. Right. Detective needing

1:08:55

organ music in the background. But, you know,

1:08:57

within the industry, if

1:08:58

you follow this this decline

1:09:01

trend, you know, a lot of a

1:09:03

lot of times they'll point at whatever is luring people

1:09:05

away, you know, a precipitous

1:09:07

drop happened in nineteen ninety four

1:09:09

when the okay trial was airing during

1:09:11

the day. it recover, that's what happens. You lose

1:09:13

track of your stories and suddenly you

1:09:15

don't care if

1:09:18

anybody finds out that Kevin actually had amnesia because Lucy

1:09:20

shot him or whatever. You know, it's

1:09:22

hard to come back in because

1:09:25

you're like, wait a minute. Exactly. So

1:09:27

once everybody end, you know, and the OT

1:09:29

trial taught people that, oh, wait, like,

1:09:31

real drama is actually

1:09:33

much more involving in

1:09:36

a way. And so, today, this

1:09:38

audience is watching judge Judy, or or, you know, whatever these,

1:09:40

you know, it's

1:09:43

the same kind of soapy beats

1:09:45

but with real people. I thought you were gonna say

1:09:47

they all started victory gardens and became like vegan

1:09:49

farmers. Yeah. They

1:09:51

all moved up state and do make

1:09:54

organic, grow organic lettuces. Over the so general

1:09:56

hospital is still on the air. Luke and

1:09:58

Laura over the years have made

1:09:59

various returns to

1:10:03

the

1:10:03

show. For a while, Anthony Geary refused

1:10:05

to come back without Laura, so

1:10:08

he played a different character on

1:10:10

the show, Luke's Lookalike cousin. Well, what what did he end up

1:10:12

doing with his life? He didn't like fame and fortune.

1:10:14

So what did it did he become AAA

1:10:16

beet farmer? He's happily smoking weed in Amsterdam. What

1:10:18

do you want from the guy? Oh, nice.

1:10:21

He's liven it up. Show like a bra. I mean, these guys come these people come back to

1:10:23

these shows in in twenty year cycles. You

1:10:26

know, after a while,

1:10:29

playing a similar character on passion. Suddenly, he's back on your

1:10:31

favorite network, and he's playing his old favorite character. At at one

1:10:33

point, Luca Laura were remarried in

1:10:35

hopes of recapture this.

1:10:39

It was the twenty fifth anniversary of the of the original wedding,

1:10:41

and so

1:10:41

oh, that's writing. And I think

1:10:44

both were married to other

1:10:46

characters at the time. Scotty Baldwin, interestingly, the the Clean

1:10:48

Cut Law student who saw his newly

1:10:50

wed wife raped and then stolen away

1:10:53

by the Scuzzball actually

1:10:54

was made to become a hero character. He

1:10:57

became the show's kind of

1:10:59

sleazeball rat character

1:11:01

for decades just

1:11:03

because Luke's face turn had to stick. And I

1:11:06

think most interestingly

1:11:08

is the way the show

1:11:10

has addressed kind of the real creepy

1:11:13

origin of Luke and Laura. Because

1:11:14

for years, they tried to

1:11:15

ignore the sexual assault

1:11:18

inherent in the relationship and

1:11:20

both characters kind of remembered

1:11:22

it mystally as a as a, you know, I will,

1:11:24

I won't

1:11:25

kind of a

1:11:26

kind of a

1:11:28

clever seduction

1:11:28

kind of a clever seduction

1:11:30

when

1:11:30

we had all seen it, general hospital. And finally,

1:11:33

there was a nineteen ninety

1:11:35

eight plot line where Future

1:11:38

star Jonathan Jackson, future

1:11:40

movie star Jonathan Jackson was started out as

1:11:42

a child actor on General Hospital

1:11:44

playing Luke and Laura's

1:11:46

son lucky. a friend

1:11:47

of his later his longtime love love interest

1:11:49

and and wife on the show. That

1:11:51

character was part

1:11:53

of a a sexual assault storyline. where

1:11:55

she was raped by somebody.

1:11:56

And he really, you know, came to

1:11:58

care

1:11:58

very deeply about this issue. And then somehow

1:12:00

he finds out that

1:12:02

that's how his parents meet.

1:12:05

that's how his parents had met. Like a decision had been

1:12:07

made in the writers room that they would take this by the Horn's head because

1:12:10

by the horns head on on and admit

1:12:12

that

1:12:13

there was a creepy, rapey element to

1:12:15

their high watermark to the Luke and Laura

1:12:15

storybook romance.

1:12:20

and

1:12:20

Laura has to sit her son down

1:12:22

and be like, yeah, it was it was

1:12:24

wrong, you know,

1:12:27

consents important and it's kind

1:12:29

of the original sin of our marriage and we've had to deal with it and the sun's angry

1:12:32

Luke feels

1:12:34

bad and has

1:12:36

to you know,

1:12:37

work through this. And so fifteen years seventeen

1:12:39

years later, the show did

1:12:41

a

1:12:43

massive therapy

1:12:44

session based on

1:12:46

the change in the culture and confronted

1:12:48

it head on. But it's just kind of

1:12:50

a weird underbelly of the story that

1:12:55

America's

1:12:55

storybook wedding of nineteen eighty one if,

1:12:58

you know, if the UK had Charles and

1:13:00

Diana

1:13:02

had

1:13:03

this weird forgotten origin. I'm just

1:13:05

impressed

1:13:05

that you've spent an hour

1:13:08

just really really

1:13:10

telling

1:13:10

me about your favorite soap opera from the eighties and and

1:13:11

And I got a bunch of people to,

1:13:12

like, pay to subscribe

1:13:14

to this. Yeah. It didn't

1:13:18

It it took me twenty minutes before I realized

1:13:20

that this was just this was just

1:13:22

you describing your train set to me.

1:13:24

And that concludes

1:13:26

Luke and Laura. Entry 739

1:13:29

dot MT2210

1:13:34

certificate number 32511

1:13:38

in the

1:13:40

omnibus. Futurelings in the unlikely

1:13:42

event social media still exists in your era? Facebook,

1:13:44

Twitter, and Instagram are and have

1:13:46

always been garbage. But you can

1:13:48

find us at omnibus project at

1:13:51

ken jenningson at John Roderick. Our email

1:13:53

handles were that. No. They were those things, but

1:13:55

also the omnibus project at

1:13:59

gmail dot com. You can hang out with

1:14:01

other future links anywhere you type the word future links because it's

1:14:04

all that you're

1:14:06

gonna get. Us. Future

1:14:08

links You can send

1:14:10

us real things, actual physical things at PO Box 55744

1:14:14

Berlin, Washington 98155

1:14:18

I'm laughing because I'm remembering my

1:14:21

Bitcoin wallet. All great

1:14:23

shows. Are you gonna plug

1:14:25

it in every now? No. I just

1:14:27

remembered. I will I'll immediately forget it and never never

1:14:29

mention it again. Speaking of our post

1:14:32

office box, a

1:14:34

listener named Todd sent us a

1:14:36

a coffee table book called The Aloha

1:14:38

shirt, Spirit of The Island, and a post that says,

1:14:40

this book is

1:14:43

for Ken since John surely knows all contained

1:14:45

within. Oh. Oh. Who's wearing what right now? I know. Well, maybe

1:14:47

I can I'm wearing this beach ball.

1:14:49

I'm gonna get

1:14:51

in my woody and and

1:14:52

to go hang out with the chillers.

1:14:55

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I had a dream last night that I met somebody at a party

1:14:57

who was also wearing in

1:14:59

a Loha shirt except

1:15:02

a completely different headspace than mine, and he was I could picture

1:15:05

him in

1:15:08

this dream, he was much smaller

1:15:10

than I was. He was a small man, and he was wearing a rayon,

1:15:12

a Loha shirt. Is that good or

1:15:14

bad? Well, it's just very different. It's

1:15:18

more of a Rayon shirts are very expensive. This is a

1:15:21

very this is a very Freudian peek into the

1:15:23

recesses of your mind. Yeah. And he

1:15:25

had some of us worried about a low shirt fibers

1:15:27

than my dreams. And then he kinda looked

1:15:29

like the psychologist on

1:15:31

Mash, and and we hit

1:15:33

it off. And I was like,

1:15:35

Isn't that a meat cute? Like we both like different kinds of

1:15:37

aloha shirts, so we're not in competition with

1:15:40

each other,

1:15:42

but we appreciate one another five. These are amazing and then I woke

1:15:43

up and I was crying. Look at the illustrations

1:15:46

of these shirts in this book. This

1:15:49

one has

1:15:52

portraits of Hawaiian royalty? Those aren't great. I think I don't know.

1:15:54

Would Todd allow me to regift this to you? Well, it's like you're gonna go

1:15:56

more out. Like most of the mail,

1:15:58

you're just gonna leave it on the floor.

1:16:01

People do send us a lot of

1:16:03

books and I figured out why. Go on. It's

1:16:03

cheaper to mail them. because of media mail. That's

1:16:09

why nobody is actually sending you, you know I

1:16:11

re handled the revolvers from the Spanish

1:16:11

American war or too bad.

1:16:14

Whatever it is you want.

1:16:17

And

1:16:17

then last but not least, please support the show

1:16:19

at patreon dot com slash omnibus project.

1:16:24

Your Patreonage helps us make the show, and

1:16:26

there are lots of cool things that you can only access.

1:16:28

By subscribing to our Patreon,

1:16:30

you

1:16:30

can see photographs of All

1:16:34

of the things we get and and you

1:16:36

can receive actual copies of our handwritten

1:16:39

show notes that have some of

1:16:41

Ken's DNA on them. at the most verified

1:16:43

levels you can even suggest a topic for

1:16:45

a show like Pat did or

1:16:47

me or see us on a Zoom

1:16:49

call that we have with you will hang out

1:16:51

with you. Yeah. That is, you know, I don't know. That's probably ten

1:16:53

thousand dollars a month you have to pay for that.

1:16:55

Meets me. I never

1:16:57

see the receipts. Listeners, from our

1:17:00

vantage point in your distant past, we have

1:17:02

no idea how long our civilizations respond. We

1:17:04

hope and pray that the catastrophe we

1:17:06

fear may never come But if the worst comes soon, this

1:17:08

recording like all our recordings will

1:17:10

be our final. But if Providence

1:17:13

allows, we hope you back soon for another entry in

1:17:16

the onwards.