Here's a few.

When AW killed off Frankie. I was 13 and was upset about it for weeks. Something about the show just wasn't quite right after that. They did bring Alice Barrett back, but it was too late.

When Maria slept with Dimitri on AMC was also a big mistake. I had started watching the show in 94 and the show always seemed infallible. That was the first time I ever thought, with my then limited understanding, "wow, AMC just made a really big mistake. Dimitri and Maria would never sleep together."

Brian Frons, anyone?

wait wait..Reva the amish ghost (wasn't that McTavish too?)

Dena Higley, the cancer that ate LLanview

OLTL: Everything. EVERY THING.

DAYS: Everything during her tenure. EVERY THING.

Now that I've done my reveal in my blog, I can post in this thread. I didn't want to spoil myself

Santa Barbara: One of the most critical errors the show ever made was killing off Mary Duvall McCormack. Though the episode is intense & to this day it's the most unusual & memorable death scene in soap history (Mary was killed on the roof of the Capwell Hotel, when a giant Neon letter "C" came crashing down on her), she was a fabulous actress & an interesting character. I absolutely loved Mary & Mason together, probably even a little more than Mason/Julia- two completely different romances. Obviously, a vast majority of the last 6 months of the show was a mistake (Kim Zimmer's Jodie, Eileen Davidson's Kelly, Sydney Penny's BJ, et all), the death of Mary to this day sticks out as a glaring error. A Martinez even once said that it was the show's greatest error in judgement.

Re-casting Carrington Garland unnecessarily with Eileen Davidson was another biggie. Eileen (who I actually like now) was a TERRIBLE Kelly and completely miscast. Plus, most viewers had grown to like and even love Carrington Garland, which was no small feat considering she took over for Robin Wright (actually, Kimberlee McArthur played the role for a short period between the two)

Also, the last episode(s) of the show were a COLOSSAL MISTAKE!! There was no closure given to the long-time fans of the show who had invested 8 1/2 years. Instead, we were "treated" to the wedding of Warren & BJ, a couple that had been together mere months. The regime at the time, Paul Rauch (EP) & Pam Long (HW), made absolutely no effort to give the show the fabulous sendoff it deserved. No history mentioned the final week- no nod to Cruz & Eden. Hell, I would've been happy if they just wrote a phone call in to CC & Sophia from the two- letting the viewers know they were back together again. Instead, the two most loved characters on the show were left the following ways:

Cruz: on the run for a murder he didn't commit, but took the blame for to take the heat off BJ. It eventually was even found out that BJ was the killer but Cruz never was heard from or spoken of again.

Eden: last seen shooting her mother (actually, there was a scene weeks later where Eden spied on Cruz through a window, leaving her wedding ring, and lipped the words "Good bye Cruz- I love you") but mentally ill with multiple personality disorder- also on the run

ITA about Willow.

Don't remember the Goop story? what was that?

This is kind of hard b/c I fast forwarded through a lot of that period and just paid attention to the Lumi storyline then. But I think Tony was pursuing this particular goo substance b/c Rex had a formula that could turn the goo into diamonds. So anyway Tony and Maya, one of Tony's shady business partners, were fighting to get the substance. I think Rex figured out that the substance was located at an Indian reservation. So Lucas, Tony's henchman at the time, tried to negotiate with a guy named Cree(?) to buy the goo from him. But somehow Bo and Hope found out about it and they were trying to talk Cree out of selling the goo to Tony b/c it would destroy the land of his community.

I completely forgot about the goo storyline too. But I recently bought a dvd recorder and I was copying my old Lumi/Lucas tapes to dvd and I came across that nonsense storyline b/c Lucas was involved in it tangentially. Higley's tenure at Days was just so bad on so many levels.

I forgot to mention the Jack and Jen "In the house" scenes. Remember, Jack and Jen had a television talk show that aired from their house? Even though I liked J&J a lot, that was definitely fast forward material for me....

It was really good to see some of that old Higley stuff a few weeks ago. It just makes me appreciate Hogie's writing even more.....

Thanks ademption. I must have been tuned out when that happened. I think once the "aliens" landed I took myself a little timeout. The next thing I remember is Lucas and Cassie in bed together.

I hated "In the House", that was ridiculous as well.

ATWT

-Killing baby Jenny Ryan. Irregardless of whether Paul and Emily ever got back together, this baby was the granddaughter of Susan Stewart, Barbara Ryan, and James Stenbeck, had links to three core families (Stewarts/Ryans/Stenbecks), and offered tons of story potential both in the present and the future.

-Revealing Jordan Sinclair as James' son. This is one they should rewrite, because the character turned out to be such a non-entity.

OLTL

-Recasting Todd Manning. Nothing against TsJ, but they should have kept him Walker Laurence. Besides, the way they actually did it was full of holes (which, I can only hope means one day they will change it LOL!)

Maureen's death on GL. There just weren't any characetrs on daytime who had that 'mother/everywoman' quality like she did, that goes so against the glamorous outlandish archetype, and they just destroyed it to get Justin Deas. That's a reason why her death hit so many people hard... it was so realistic. So wrong! Like losing your mother.

The O.J Simpson trial! That was when I first discovered I didn't have to watch the soaps to survive. They took it off for I think a couple months here. Then they tried to get people to jump back into watching the soaps like nothing happened.

AMC

-Unabortion hands down

ATWT

-Recasting Alison Taylor Rice -- I loved Connor!

-Firing Hunt Block (although I'm fine with recast)

-Killing Marshall Travers (after raping Jessica)

-Not bringing back Scott -- Lisa's other son

-Killing baby Jennifer -- this child had perfect soap genes!

-Finding out David wasn't son of Lucinda and James.

B&B

-Killing off Macy again. Why?

-Botched return of Sheila/Erica

DAYS

-Hands down SSK. Who will ever believe someone is dead on that show again? Don't be surprised if Tony/Stephano somehow saved Zach and is holding him hostage as revenge on Bradys.

-Iraq was completely disrespectful.

-Treatment of Jack/Jen -- terrible for fans of this SC

GL

-Maureen's death

-Phillip's death

-Waste of India!

-Marion (the "Dress to Kill" serial killer)

-Sonni/Solita SL conclusion. was so compelling at beginning and then just imploded.

Y&R

-Killing Cassandra Rawlings so that Brad could become rich. Dumb, dumb, dumb

-Killing Philip III, so that Nina could be thrown into conflict with Jill. Wasn't necessary.

-Paul "raping" Christine.

-Sperm thief -- pathetic to have these two women portrayed this way

-Killing Ryan.

OLTL

-Recasting Todd Manning. Nothing against TsJ, but they should have kept him Walker Laurence. Besides, the way they actually did it was full of holes (which, I can only hope means one day they will change it LOL!)

I completely agree with this! Trevor's Todd has never felt like Todd to me. I agree that he should have just stayed Walker Lawrence.

Some big mistakes that I see going on right now in soaps are (These are just general):

- Constantly changing things to suit fan uproar.

- Changing backstage personnel too often, and getting rid of continuity directors on the soaps. The soaps used to have them back in the 70's. I can't remember what it was called but someone was in charge of it back in those days.

- Constant relegation of legacy characters to the background in favor of new ones.

- Creating too many new characters in a short span of time and featuring them too heavily.

- Relying solely on the charisma of the performers to carry the show, esp. in the case of a bad story or bad writing

- In the same vein, relying on the popularity of a couple to carry the show or story, when they either have no story or the story is very bad.

- Trying to be socially relevant, but doing it as a form of preaching and not as part of entertainment

- Constantly rewriting history, and changing character ages to the point that the shows whole history or characters history makes no sense

All of these are going on right now on the 9 soaps, and they are all big mistakes and ruinging each one of our shows. I can think of at least one example for each one of them.

OLTL

-Recasting Todd Manning. Nothing against TsJ, but they should have kept him Walker Laurence. Besides, the way they actually did it was full of holes (which, I can only hope means one day they will change it LOL!)

So true, the only reason that was done was because Roger decided to leave and OLTL didn't want to want Todd gone, however I do love TSJ though.

And also on OLTL:

Bringing back Nikki Smith OVER and OVER, I love Nikki but she has been ressurected too many times. If they loved her that much they should have just made Nikki an actual character back in the seventies when she first came around.

Tess herself, that is a TOTAL repeat of what happened with Viki, and I hated the whole story.

For me the worst Days moments were Virtual Eden and Georgia/Chelsea is alive and a teenager to boot!

DOOL:

Billie returning

Georgia back from the dead in the form of Chelsea

Zack being killed off

Making Bo the father of Hope's baby