One of ongoing gags in the soap biz is the mythical return of Vanessa Marcil to General Hospital. I say it's mythical because for six years now, a certain magazine regular writes about Vanessa's return and it never actually happens. But now, there may be some truth to the rumor. ABC has contacted Vanessa Marcil about returning to General Hospital to reprise the character of Brenda Barrett. Maybe as soon as this spring.

For a change of pace, the news is coming directly from the show. GH headwriter Bob Guza has said that talks are underway with Vanessa. He has also always maintained that Brenda's one of his favorite characters and he'd love to have her back on the show.

It was big news in the world of daytime when Joseph Mascolo exited Days of Our Lives a few months ago. After all, Mascolo's Stefano Dimera was hailed as the number one villain of all time in daytime by Soap Opera Digest.

His return to Days was supposed to be long-term, but it didn't work out that way. In a surprising, some would say typical, soap way, the phoenix will rise again. Stefano Dimera, in the form of Joseph Mascolo, is coming back to Days of Our Lives. His reign of terror will commence once more -- in early August. Meanwhile, the other big time evil-doer on the show, Victor Kiriakis, will become more moderate and good by comparison.

Evil on the soaps is, well, a necessary evil. You can't have characters who are happy and blissful all the time. You need the selfish, the greedy, the vengeful, all those evil types to keep the stories interesting.

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Evil clones, friendly vampires, secret islands and much, much more.

When something's overly dramatic, we call it a soap opera.

And no wonder -- only in daytime serials do we find such plot twists as people we thought were dead being held captive on islands (that's actually happened more than once), characters coming back from heaven, comatose patients astrally projecting themselves.

We're not making any of these up -- these are our favorite crazy, wacko soap opera story lines.

Today, April 1st, is General Hospital's anniversary -- 45 years on the air. The ABC soap has been very successful through most of that time, although it hasn't really followed the path that many daytime dramas take. In the late 1980's, GH changed from a romance-based, hospital drama to more of a crime/spy/action-oriented soap. It's continued that style, and I can tell you six things that keep me tuning in daily to General Hospital (or checking it out on SoapNet).

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