Ethical Dilemmas in Soapland

[Jimmy Todd]

In all of the 1980's prime time soaps, there were a plethora of ethical and moral dilemmas the characters would face. Were there any that stood out to you as particularly intriguing and/or particularly well handled by the show?

 

[Willie Oleson]

"If you want to refuse it, refuse it because the gift is too small" - Miss Ellie to Gary and Valene.
Matthew Blaisdel's decision to let Krystle go since he couldn't guarantee a happily ever after.
Abby donating her kidney without any strings attached.
Lady Francesca Scott Colby Hamilton Langdon feeling awful for loving her sister's husband.

 

[Jimmy Todd]

"If you want to refuse it, refuse it because the gift is too small" - Miss Ellie to Gary and Valene.
Matthew Blaisdel's decision to let Krystle go since he couldn't guarantee a happily ever after.
Abby donating her kidney without any strings attached.
Lady Francesca Scott Colby Hamilton Langdon feeling awful for loving her sister's husband.

Those are great ones, especially Abby's choice. I love how she mulled over the pros and cons with Gary, and them gave her "Go save a whale" speech to Karen.
The situation on The Colby's with Frankie was interesting because ostensibly Frankie was the "good" one and Sable was the shows "villainses." However, Frankie wasn't thst good going after her sister's husband who, if I recall correctly, who was also her supposedly dead husband's brother. Sable was more sympathetic imho.

 

[Daniel Avery]

Knots Landing's Laura found out that Greg was secretly trying to bankrupt Lotus Point (and by extension, her friends Gary and Karen) during the arsenic clean-up situation. On the one hand, she loved Greg and was a supportive wife, but she was also a devoted friend to both Gary and Karen and felt they did not deserve to suffer for the issue that Paul Galveston actually created. As she had an internal debate about whether Karen and Gary should be made aware of Greg's plans, Jason came to her with a problem he was having at school. One friend was doing a science-fair project involving fruit flies, and another of Jason's friends had stolen and hidden the fruit flies in order to sabotage the project. Jason wanted to know if he ought to tell his friend where the fruit flies were hidden, even if it made his other friend mad at him. As Laura told Jason to do the right thing and help his friend get his fruit flies back, Laura realized she knew what she had to do with respect to the Lotus Point situation. She went to Gary and Karen, told them that Greg had the clean-up trucks driving in circles in order to make the clean-up take longer, with the goal of waiting until LP went bankrupt. When asked about her decision, Laura only replied that she had "told them where the fruit flies were".