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General Hospital Discussion Group






I was hoping for something a bit more inventive too Natty3, but then again, what were we thinking huh?
Well, you're right, but haven't you noticed that on ABC's soaps the father is usually the villain? The reason Viki on OLTL became multi-personalitied is that her father sexually abused her since she was a child and she buried the memory in the Vivki persona by letting loose the other personalities. And her half brother, Todd, is the miserable creature he is because not only did that same father ignore him and his mother, but Mommy married a guy who abused him. And there are so many others in that show it would be tedious to mention them. On AMC Erika was sent as a 14 year old kid to visit her famous father, who on her birthday left her to be raped by his good buddy. Adam has never sexually abused his many children but he consistently loved them and abused them psychologically and verbally, and still does. The senator who is about to leave the story made his son, Dre, run away from home from his unhappy relationship. Tad's father was a drunken monster, who left him in town with a broken arm, to be found by his foster parents. On GH for a long while the dads got a break; Dr. Hardy was a good father, even though he had a son he didn't know about until later in life. Scott Baldwin was adopted by the Baldwins, Lee and his psychochiatrist wife, but his true father was an alcoholic who left him as a child abandoned in Mexico, when he finally died of drink. Luke Spencer's father was a notorious drunk who walked out on his children when their mother died. Their aunt Ruby saved them from foster homes by taking them in, but she was a whorehouse madam in Florida. Jason Quartermaine is the illegitimate son of Alan Q. and a popular 'other woman' and Monica took him to her heart after she nearly divorced Alan for his betrayal of her. Alan's life was a long running hell from his father, who did not want him to become a doctor and lost no chance telling him he was a failure. Monica was an abandoned child; I'm not sure she knew who her father was. Tracy Q once almost let Edward Q die at her feet when he suffered a heart attack, because she felt he had never given her any love or trust. Laura was her mother Leslie's secret; Leslie had an affair with a doctor when she was a med student, and he left her to have the baby and give it away to keep from a scandal. When Laura was about 12 she was told that Leslie was her mother. She didn't like either Leslie or her husband Rick (busy having a hot affair with Monica Q) for a long time and accidentally killed her mother's lover who was also hers when she was still a teen. Robin might be the little bleep she is today on her bad days because Daddy Scorpio didn't know she existed for years.
Fathers are not people who do well by their children in the ABC soaps, so maybe Robin is right to hang back from making Patrick the legal father of her unborn girl. Mac has been an exemplary father to his two adopted daughters of Felicia, and Robin, his niece, but he is a pretty rare duck in Port Charles. Spinelli doesn't know who his father is, or maybe he just doesn't want to know, but his mother gave him to his grandmother, and he sits waiting for a horrifying story to be revealed someday when they get around to it. The late Zander's father accused him of being at fault for the death of his brother, even after he learned that the death of his favorite son was an accident and not Zander's fault at all. Go figure that one. Fathers in the soaps are usually wealthy, but distant, if not downright cruel, manipulative, and all the other things you can damn a father with being. It's what makes most soaps go around, and it's strange that bad mothers are so much less likely to be the reason for children's angst.





