AMC: What is with all the character deaths?

[dragonflies]

Not that I'm complaining about Babe having been killed off, but soon to be 7 deaths in 5 months(started with Babe in October) seems very extreme

Pratt is averaging a character death a month, practically since he took over as HW:

Let's see we've had these characters killed off or soon to be killed off:

Babe

Di

Myrtle(I can let that one slide cause of EH's death)

Josh

Rebecca

Soon to be Dr. Sinclair and Greenlee

I can't remember any HW in recent years that killed off so many characters in just a few months after taking over as a HW, has there been?

[Adam]

Dr. Sinclair as far as I know isn't going by way of the death.... not that it matters because you have more than enough of a list to make your point.

[Soapsuds]

Really there is no more suspense in soaps anymore. All is done for shock and ratings value. Why not have a character leave town?? But I got to say GL right now is must see tv. I would check it out Angie!

[dragonflies]

I agree, not every character has to be killed off, can't they just leave town?

Adam have you read something different than I did? I guess I assumed she was dying cause of what spoilers have said

[detroitpiston]

I can't fault Pratt for killing off Mrytle because the actress passed away and he gave us an amazing tribute episode for her. And I appreciate him for killing Babydawl and Greensnot. I haven't heard anything about The Bitch Doctor dieing and I couldn't care less about him killing off Rebecca. It's the unnecessary ones like Di and Josh that pissed me off.

[dragonflies]

Yeah I mean to bring back Di just to kill her off, WHY? I know her and Annie were friends from when Annie was married to Terry, but geesh Di did have connections to Dixie and JR, she wasn't just some random character

[SteveFrame]

I don't remember the time frame but MMT killed off 2 long-running characters pretty quickly into her run I think. Both Trevor and Noah were long-time characters who were killed offscreen. And those 2 deaths still bother me more than Di and Josh.

Add to that her killing off of Edmund and I think overall she did more damage because she killed characters that had been part of the show for a long time. Then you throw in Dixie and Simone in her last few months and the picture gets even worse.

Her whole run was about death and baby stories.

AMC has just had way too many deaths in a short period of time. The last 3 writers have been way too fascinated with it. But the soap opera genre overall just doesnt' take death seriously anymore anyway. Why worry about coming up with a clever way to write someone off when you can just kill them and bring them back alive whenever you want. Fans don't care as long as it is one of their faves. They can invent the most idiotic excuse for who stole the body and fans will just say well it is stupid but I can forgive them this time because it is (fill in the blank).

[detroitpiston]

We only refer to her as "the writer" now!

[DRW50]

What I dislike more than Josh being killed is that his death had no meaning. Kendall having his heart is an afterthought. Erica grieving him is an afterthought. If you're going to kill someone, at least make this a big part of the story. I could understand why they killed off Noah, since KHC wasn't returning (but at the time I assumed they had some reason for Julia to return, which apparently they did not), but I still don't know why Josh needed to be killed. They could have just left him offcamera if they didn't think he had a place on the show.

I think Greenlee's death is just lazy writing. As awful as the original Kendall/Ryan/Greenlee triangle was McTavish was right to not kill her off. Greenlee being alive and leaving Ryan and Kendall to pick up the pieces was much more effective than a death which few fans are going to believe is real.

I'm still disgusted by Julia's pointless murder, made horribly gory just to make sure viewers knew she would never return.

Someone should make a tape of that death sequence and title it, "THE DEATH OF DAYTIME", because that epitomized so much of what has chased millions of people away from this genre.

[You're Soaking in it]

Agreed. Trevor's made no sense. As crazy as Janet would ever go, she wouldn't kill Trevor. Regarding Edmund, the WAY his character was decimated prior to the death was a pile of salt on the wound.... I liked Di, but only when she was "Dixie." The reveal that she was NOT Dixie was also carried off in a lackluster way (why not have her pretend right up until her wedding to Tad... when the real Dixie walks in, surprising PV residents and the audience BOTH?) ... so afterward, I didn't invest that much in her.

On the subject of Josh, how could he NOT die? I mean, considering the scientifically-impossible way he was "conceived," he eventually would have died from exposure to water, or being fed after midnight... or something like that.

I do feel bad that Greenlee was re-paired with Ryan (aka nearly-ruinned) before her departure. And the ridiculous method of death! Girl in a bridal gown & veil rides a motorcycle in the dark and goes over a cliff on her wedding day? That's hysterical. I mean, it's the stuff urban legends are made of...

[dragonflies]

It actually amazed me how much of a non exit Greenlee got, her exit even took a backseat to just about everything

It just disgusts me that Di was brought back just to be killed off, and Josh's death was pointless, the time for undoing the unabortion was after it happened, not 3 years later

[DRW50]

As stupid an idea as it was to revive an aborted fetus, the way they killed him I still saw as such an anticlimax, made even worse because the followthrough was rushed and most of the focus was on horrible Zeese. I wish they had simply undone him being Erica's son, then he would have had more of a reason to flip out, or he could have just left town hurt because he realized Erica was secretly relieved.

Over on DAYS, they brought back a fetus Billie had miscarried in the bayou, and yet they still don't seem to have any plans to kill her off. Sometimes death is such an obvious plot point it alienates viewers instead of moving them and I think many of AMC's recent deaths fall into the former.

I wonder if they were paying RB back for leaving after a year. Her return was a fiasco and I'm sure Frons probably blames some of this on her.

[Adam]

I read she

[R Sinclair]

Amen!

Anyway, the deaths under 'the writer' as I remember them were:

Edmund

Phoebe (since Myrtle's death was blamed on Pratt even though EH died, same for Phoebe and 'the writer' even though RW died)

Noah (off screen)

Trevor (off screen)

Dixie

Simone

Erin

Braden

Ethan

Michael Cambias

Terry McDermott

Greg Madden

Eric Kane (off screen)

And the countless faked deaths...

So this is nothing brand new.

[SteveFrame]

I must have missed something about the writer thing. I guess I missed some rule of something. It is getting to where you don't know what to post.