During the years I watched, he was so possessive of his wife Monica and jealous of her lover Rick Webber. He had a sort of quiet menace about him although he was nice on the surface.
Once I left college, my free time in the afternoon on some days was over, and I stopped watching All My Children and GH. GH had added the Cassidine family, and the world domination plot got very silly. GH turned into a James Bond movie.
I still watch today, but only got into the show after around 2002, though even without having watched before then, I was still aware of the wild storylines. They still reference some of them (like “freezing the world”) 40 years later, albeit as if the stuff was crazy.
The show having shifted a tad to Maurice Benard’s Sonny Corinthos character, it’s had more of a “Godfather-lite” feel to it over the past 15+ years.