Roger.....deadbeat dad?

[IluvBarnabas]

At the beginning of the DS, Roger and David hated each other's guts. Then they eventually grew closer....however I have noticed during throughout the show's run, Roger went on a lot of business trips.

[spoiler]I mean, he's gone for most of the Quentin/Beth haunting Collinwood story, absent all the way throughout the entire Gerard/Daphne as ghosts story. Even during the time he was married to Cassandra, he seemed to have been gone for 3 or 4 weeks there.[/spoiler]

Now I realized that Louis was  doing other projects off DS during these periods, but I'm talking about the character of Roger here....he supposedly wanted to improve his relationship with David and be a better dad, yet he always seemed to be going away to somewhere and staying away from Collinwood for long lengths of time.

[michael c]

unfortunately after a certain point traditional soap opera storytelling(such as a father building a relationship with his son)fell by the wayside.

once the show fully became supernatural the writers seemed very adrift with how to write for the character of roger.hence lots of "business trips".

across 1967 and 1968 the early human male characters began to die off.burke devlin,jason mcguire,dr.woodard,sam evans,joe haskell.by late 1968 they were all gone replaced by warlocks,werewolves and artificially created monsters.in 1967 barnabas' chief rival was burke.in 1968 it was adam.that says something.

as a key member of the collins family roger was too important a "presence" to be permanantly killed-off so i think that the writers dealt the lack of storyline ideas for him by sending his character away for extended periods of time.

as i've said before i think louis edmonds(and joan bennett)fared better in the historical time periods than in the "present" after a certain point.

[Willie]

I think it's the same with most soaps.  I watch As The World Turns, and kids disappear for long periods of time until they're needed for a story line.  We're always just supposed to assume that all the family stuff takes place off camera I guess.

[MagnusTrask]

My theory is that every time Roger said he was going off to "Bangor", he wasn't talking about the city.   Everyone just sort of assumed.

My father often worked elsewhere and didn't interact with us kids much.   Thank God.