One Life to Live: Difference between revisions

Created by Agnes Nixon, OLTL shared its universe with Nixon's other soap, ''[[All My Children]]'', and has had many [[Crossover|crossovers]] with same, most recently a baby-switch story in 2004. ''[[One Life to Live]]'' aired its last episode on January 13th, 2012, and the characters of John McBain & the Mannings migrated to [[General Hospital]].

* [[AB Negative]] - Tina and CJ, among others

* [[Absurdly Youthful Mother]] - Greg has to be at least in his early 40s to have been a practicing neurosurgeon for as long as he's explicitly stated to have been. The actress playing his mother is in her mid/late 40s. And he has a 15 year old sister, {{spoiler|who's actually Greg's daughter.}}

* [[The Baby Trap]] - Stacy to Rex.

* [[Big Fancy House]]: the Buchanan mansion, Llanfair and La Boulaie.

* [[Bound and Gagged]] - Hardly uncommon on any soap, but a notable example came in 2003 with Mitch's kidnapping of Blair, who is next seen tied up in her underwear while Mitch calls her husband. She spends a good part of the following episode tied up and blindfolded.

* [[The Cast Showoff]] - Several actors on One Life to Live. For instance, the original actor who played Jessica, Erin Torpey, has a nice singing voice, so they had Jessica in a band at one point, and also had her sing on a few other occasions. Evangeline Williamson got to sing a lot in the show, because her actress Renee Goldsbury is a real life singer/song writer, and was on a Broadway musical. And Blair Cramer, is also shown singing on a number of occasions, because Kassie [[De Paiva]] is a singer and has albums out.

* [[Cliff Hanger]] - {{spoiler|Victor Lord, Jr. is still alive and is somehow being held by Allison Perkins.}}

* [[Convenient Coma]] - Evangeline Wiliamson. Went into a coma for three years after being exposed to a gas leak. She soon went off life support.

* [[Crossover]] - mostly with ''[[All My Children]]'', but with other ABC soaps as well

* [[Damsel in Distress]]- Natalie used to often suffer from this back in the day, to be saved by John. This has not happened so much recently, however.

* [[Downer Ending]]: Bobby Ford and Cole Thornhart are fighting to get out of Heaven to be with their loved ones, Bobby does the chivalrous thing and lets go on to other side. {{spoiler|But as soon as Cole and Starr arrive in [[General Hospital|Port Charles]], they get in a car accident and Cole and Hope are killed.}}

* [[Dynamic Entry]] - Shaun comes to [[Big Damn Heroes|save Starr, Hope, and Todd from drug dealers]]. This is also a [[Crowning Moment of Awesome]].

'''Shaun:''' ''I'm'' Shaun. }}

** Another example occurred when Sam burst into a hotel room where Echo had been holding Dorian hostage, in a Spiderman costume, and taking Echo down with toy web shooters. Did we mention the kid is seven?

* [[Earn Your Happy Ending]]: In 2001, Jessica Buchanan's [[The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air|life got flipped turned upside down]]. First [[Talkative Loon|Allison]] claims [[Switched At Birth|she returned the wrong baby]] after baby Jessica (Natalie) was kidnapped. Then it's revealed Jessica and Natalie are half twins when it was discovered her father was Mitch Laurence and not Clint Buchanan. Then after developing DID to repress childhood sexual abuse, her alter falls in love with a man and gets pregnant by him, just as she comes around to loving the guy...he dies in a freak accident. That freak accident was caused by her aforementioned twin sister's deception. She lapses into her DID again and imprisons her sister, and she's pregnant again. Unfortunately this baby doesn't survive, so ANOTHER alter steals her teen cousin's baby. Eventually, the ruse is lifted and she loses another child. She gets institutionalized (a recurring theme) and finds love with another crazy. Mitch escapes and fucks that up by erasing her mind to when she was a teenager. Her new beau can't cope and thus sleeps with said twin sister. She comes back though...mid coitus with the town pervert who impregnates her. Despite this she attempts marry him, until the ugly truth comes out. You guessed it, DID time. She hooks up with the town pervert and begins to like him, but Jessica takes over again and it's square 1. Just as Jessica and the town pervert begin to fall in love, Mitch returns and kills ''HIM'', somehow a DNA test is found and it's revealed that {{spoiler|Clint's her biological father all along.}} Did I mention she lost a kid before all this too?

* [[Evil Old Folks]] - Victor Lord was one very vicious old man. Also, Echo Disavoy.

* [[Flashback with the Other Darrin]]- lampshaded when during ex-husband Asa's "funeral" Blair (played by a Caucasian actress) flashbacked to her own wedding to Asa...which occurred when Blair was being played by an Asian American actress. Cue the confused look into the make-up compact.

* [[Hannibal Lecture]]: Mitch is the ''master'' of this. Everything he does is passive-agressive, which makes him all the scarier.

{{quote|'''Matthew''':(disagreeing with [[Humans Are Bastards|the point]] of [[Lord of the Flies]]). I think ''most'' people are good.<br />

'''Justin''': -But you don't have a leg to ''stand'' on, Buchanan! }}

** {{spoiler|When both Ford and Cole are on death's door, Ford is sent to Hell for having raped Jessica, while Cole is allowed to go to Heaven in spite of the murder. Ford finds his way into Heaven, but dies while Cole lives and is allowed to reunite with his parents.}}

*** {{spoiler|Averted, Cole and his daughter die in a flaming wreck in [[General Hospital|Port Chuck]].}}

** In the late 80's Bo was the producer of the soap opera Fraternity Row, which was just an excuse for the writers to mock themselves and their actors. It was brilliant.

* [[Likes Older Women]] - David Vickers.

* [[Little Miss Badass]] - Mr, actually. Mr. Samuel. Lord. Manning. Stared down the barrel of a .38. Didn't flinch.

* [[Long Runner]] - 7/15/68-1/13/12, 11,105 episodes

* [[Love Makes You Crazy]] - Schuyler

* [[Magic Plastic Surgery]] - Max, Todd {{spoiler|(actually Todd's twin brother, Victor Lord, Jr.)}}

* [[The Malaproper]] - Roxy

* [[May-December Romance]] - First Dorian with Joey, then Dorian with David, which would count as [[Squick]] [[Chelsea Lately|to many when David gets a love scene with her]].

* [[Perky Female Minion]]: Allison Perkins

* [[Pretty in Mink]] - Until the early 1990s.

* [[Rape as Redemption]] - Played straight after Marty's gang rape.

* [[Rape Is Love]] - Subverted once Marty got her memory back.

* [[Retcon]] - Since this is a soap opera, waaaaaay too many to list. But it's worth mentioning one of the show's most famous and most recurring: the cause of Viki's DID. First it was because her wealthy and powerful father had raised her so strictly and placed so many expectations on her she developed a split personality just to have all the fun and lack of responsibility she never could; then it was from a childhood trauma caused by seeing her parents argue and thinking (falsely) her father had deliberately pushed her mother down the stairs, causing her death; then it was because Viki had repressed memories of walking in on her college roommate and best friend Irene having sex with her father (leading to the birth of her sister Tina); and ''finally'' it was 'revealed' in 1995 that all along (inspired by ''Sybil'' and ''When Rabbit Howls'') that Viki's DID was the result of her father routinely raping her from the age of seven until she was in college. To be fair, the 1995 story did tie all of these explanations together.

* [[Retired Monster]] - Victor Lord after he came [[Back From the Dead]] briefly before dying for good. He never actually retired from being a [[Complete Monster]], though, and right up until his death he was trying to take the heart of his daughter that he molested as his own.

* [[Rivals Team Up]] - Viki and Dorian usually don't get along. But even they could find common ground to team up against the evil Echo [[Di Savoy]].

* [[Sassy Black Woman]] - [[Hollywood Meaningful Name|Destiny]], a [[Hollywood Homely]] Sassy Black Teenage Girl.

* [[Serial Killer]] - the Music Box Killer

* [[Sexy Spectacles]] - A certain assistant DA always wore glasses but eventually admitted that he had 20/20 vision. He had started wearing them in law school because he wanted to be taken seriously but kept wearing them because he found that women loved them.

* [[Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome]] - Tea's daughter Danielle (b.2003) who is now (late 2009) ''fifteen''.

** Joey Buchanan. (Nathan Fillion plays the best Joey ever. Just sayin')

* [[Sociopathic Hero]]: Todd Manning. Rape Marty Saybrooke? Check. Save Marty Saybrooke? Check. Assault a blind Nora? Check. Save two children {{spoiler|(actually his long lost niece and nephew)}} while on the run from the law? Check. Kill a man by exploding his yacht? You betcha. He's made a career on these.

* [[Split Personality]] - both Viki and her daughter Jessica

* [[Taking the Bullet]] - Bo for Rex. He lived.

* [[Teen Pregnancy]] - Starr recently had one of these. Markko and Langston were sure to use a condom when they did the deed, though Lola poking holes in Langston's nearly caused this. Gigi also had one with Shane. Destiny is currently expecting with Matthew's baby.

** Jessica Buchanan was also pregnant as a teen, although the baby, who was named after her dead half-sister Megan, was stillborn after Jessica was hit by a car. Speaking of Megan, Viki was pregnant with her as a teenager, and the fact that Viki's [[Complete Monster|complete monster of a father]] had her brainwashed into forgetting the pregnancy and birth ever happened was one of the explanations for Viki's DID before it was retconed into being childhood sexual abuse.

* [[Teens Are Monsters]] - the whole class laughed at Justin's above-described [[Hurricane of Puns]] as though it was genuinely funny.

* [[Their First Time]] - Starr and Cole, Langston and Markko.

* [[Too Dumb to Live]] - Everyone has their moments.

** Destiny's parents somehow make a bizarre cross between this and the {{spoiler|[[Moral Event Horizon]] by indirectly being responsible for Greg's involvement with Elijah Clarke's schemes just because they're way too stubborn to admit that Destiny is not really their daughter.}}

* [[Who's Your Daddy?]] - many instances, but the volley between Sam and Bo over Matthew's paternity was especially prolonged.

*** Played with, as it turned out {{spoiler|his father was Mitch, but was then some fictional character, and finally revealed to be Charlie, only because Clint - the real father - faked the DNA test.}}

** Played with during Stacy's pregnancy. {{spoiler|When Stacy miscarried her child with Rex, she lost any sense of obligation he felt towards her, and so she immediately tried to find another man to get her pregnant. After hitting on Kyle, who revealed he was gay, and Schuyler, who didn't sleep with her even after she drugged him, so preyed on cop Oliver, who was drunk and struggling with his own coming out. The next day Stacy was pregnant and Oliver came out of the closet. Flash forward some months and Stacy has both Rex and Schuyler believing they are the father of her child, while assuring Oliver it isn't his baby.}}

* [[Wicked Cultured]] - Carlo Hesser