LAST WEEK ON THE SOAPS: NOTHING HAPPENED

Exactly a year ago, I wrote a post wondering WhateverHappened to Classic Summer Love Stories? I name-checked the classics like General Hospital’s Luke and Laura on the run from the mob and, later, stopping an evil maniac set on freezing the world (and saving us all from global warning, but nobody realized it at the time). There was Days of Our Lives Bo and Hope and Kayla and Patch (that’s Steve, to you new viewers) and Kim and Shane and Roman and Marlena and location shoots and prisms buried in ice and Phil Collins music (yes, I realize I’ve compressed several summers and stories into one, but doesn’t it all seem like just one glorious season?). We had All My Children’s Erica facing down a bear and breaking her lover out of jail, and One Life to Live’s Vicky going to Heaven and traveling through time to rescue her husband from the Old West. Guiding Light featured young love via the same rich girl/rich boy/poor girl from a big, salt of the earth, fatherless household triangle writer Douglas Marland would later recreate on As the World Turns, while Santa Barbara contrasted the angst of Cruz and Eden against Mason and Julia’s banter, and Another World threw an Electra complex into its triangle for some very different results.

Let’s all take a moment to recall the 1970s, 80s (and some of the 1990s).

Now it’s summer of 2016. Time for fun and travel and romance, right? Right? Find out what's happening on the last four soaps left standing and how it measures up to the glory days at: http://community.ew.com/2016/06/07/nothing-happened/