There was a thread... Long time ago, I know I bumped onto it by accident on Usenet that was very, very detailed. And I can’t find it now. (MarkH, I’m looking at you — if this sounds familiar, let me know.)

Anyway, I found another one and I'm going to quote some things from it, formatting a bit changed (look here):

1. Good twin / evil twin
2. Person dies without there being a corpse
3. Dead person returns after several years without their memories, but get their memories back eventually.
4. Woman gets pregnant with Guy A in order to marry Guy B
5. Repressed memories
6. A character on the soap has their lover die; is sad for a while; then falls in love with the first new character that comes to town
7. Every character on the soap has a job but they are rarely seen at work. They have time to cheat on their lover; spy on others, etc. In the real world — these people would be fired.
8. An old-fashioned love triangle.
9. People who break the law rarely get punished.
10. A woman is pregnant and there are two men who could the father.

Edited April 22, 200916 yr by Sylph

1. Woman pretends she's pregnant to get the guy
2. Character is injured and is paralyzed. Doctors say there's a 1 in a zillion chance he'll walk again, but lo and behold, he can do the mambo in 2 months — all through sheer determination
3. Character pretends to be paralyzed, blind, or suffering from a dreadful or terminal disease, usually to hold on to a spouse or SO who stays with them out of guilt.
4. Paternity tests faked or switched.
5. Medical emergency such as blood transfusion, bone marrow transplant, or organ transplant then unravels paternity lie.
6. Plane crashes in exotic and isolated spots,usually in South America or the Caribbean. Alaska or the Northwest Territory will also do.
7. Long lost children that characters never knew existed--often bred in those exotic South American or Caribbean spots, come to town 20 years later to introduce themselves.
8. Same characters are kidnapped repeatedly. They seem to trigger compulsive and obsessive patterns in others who are very good at fooling the general public.
9. Characters are kidnapped by lunatics (usually in love with them) who keep them in dungeons, coffins, or secret sealed rooms. They are beaten, raped, brainwashed and mistreated in a hundred dreadful ways, yet never seem affected by their experiences.
10. Doctors and lawyers take on husbands, wives, children and close friends as patients and clients.
11. Characters possess amazing healing capacities. The marks of gun shot wounds, beatings, and stabbings heal in days--if that long.
12. Characters are always well-coiffed and made-up when coming out of major surgery.
13. Women maintain a tremendously expensive and large wardrobe, even if they are down and out. Within a minutes they can emerge from their bedroom in designer gowns and hair-dos that take hours of professional service for the rest of us.
14. Likewise, those kept hostage in dungeons, sealed rooms, or jungle hideouts remain fresh and clean, though may experience an occasionally smudge on the face.
15. Sex in uncomfortable places.
16. The adult children of core moral "patriarchal" characters (ie. Bauers, Hughes, Hortons) can marry four or six or more times without anybody wondering how they became so dysfunctional and unable to sustain relationships.
17. The ease by which characters can be gaslighted (driven nuts) by evil spouses or SOs.
18. Travel: the simplicity of air travel from Llanview, Port Charles, Springfield, Salem, Harmony, and every other location to the great cities of Europe. Direct flights are available simply for the asking — and no passports needed. And if not, some friend always has a private jet on standby.
19. Hardly anybody has a dog, not nobody a cat.
20. Homes are always immaculate, and you never see anyone cleaning then, unless there's an extra maid around the house. Vacuum cleaners and TVs don't exist. Ada once ran a vacuum cleaner on Another World and it was mentioned in the soap press as a first.

Edited April 22, 200916 yr by Sylph

So I'd like to make a list, as complete as possible, and any help would be appreciated. More clichés later.

So I'd like to make a list, as complete as possible, and any help would be appreciated. More clichés later.

The site Soaphunks.net has a list of the biggest cliches.

It is HUGE. So much so, I'd call it canonical.

http://soaphunks.net/cliches.php

But you'd have to hold your nose and go to a site with near-naked soap men...the cliche list itself if "unadorned" with the prurience of the rest of the site

Thank you, Mark!

But this one on Usenet was even bigger!

I was thinking not too long ago about starting a list of cliche phrases from soaps.

"The press is going to have a FIELD day!"

"I don't know how to tell you this..."

"How long have you been standing there?" "Long enough!"

As for standard soap opera cliches, I have to add my personal pet peeve:

Someone is on the phone as they enter a room and the person on the other end of the phone is almost ALWAYS depicted as being a complete and utter moron, even if it's another character we know. "I don't care WHAT you have to do, damn it, just GET IT DONE!" and then the person hangs up on them in a huff.

Y&R does this A LOT. I always think "Damn, Jack's a total douche on the phone."

Sylph, do you think clichés are a good thing or a bad thing? I seem to recall you saying soaps were all about clichés so they might as well do justice to them or something of that sort.

Also baby switches are almost common. And after a while another person on the show finds out about the baby switch but keeps quiet about it for whatever reason till the climax of the story.

When two characters go out of town, they are forced to share the same bed/hotel room. PSNs did this one time with Whitney and Chad, and having them separated by a sheet. Oh look! The sheet falls onto the bed, and the two end up in each other's arms= LAME!!!!

Sylph, do you think clichés are a good thing or a bad thing? I seem to recall you saying soaps were all about clichés so they might as well do justice to them or something of that sort.

Yes, I think I said soaps are about clichés, but clichés well done. And I kind of agree with that and at the same time think some of them need to be banned if not permanently then for about 10 years or so (those JamesF listed in another thread, for example).

I think ideal soap storytelling is about "easy" yet brilliant twists and tales. Think Lost. For four f*cking seasons those people tried to get off the island and then BAM! "Kate, we have to go back!" Man! Some would say that is such an easy, obvious choice yet amazing. As if a gigantic hammer squashed your head, especially if you were spoiler-free.

A soap has to be a concatenated, inevitable sequence of events, one leading to the next one seamlessly flowing, how action provokes reaction. Newton's third law if you will: ""To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction." Your hero or heroine is in this whirlwind of events, nobody knows what the hell is happening, but everyone knows it's brilliant.

Soaps are about those 7 or 36 or [insert number] dramatic situations, each time done differently, diversely structured or something. But it has to flow. One event after the other after the other and so on. An avalanche. Not the jerky, spastic stop then go, stop then go.

Cliches are great, IMHO.

Just when told correctly. They are best when told great, but even when they are just told OK i still love them.

Its when they are used as a plot point i hate them.

Cliches are great, IMHO.

Just when told correctly. They are best when told great, but even when they are just told OK i still love them.

Its when they are used as a plot point i hate them.

Honestly, I think cliches are the problem. Cliches remove unpredictability, and that is part of the reason people roll eyes and stay out of soaps.

On my Y&R right now, Sharon Newman has been sleepin' up a storm with at least three men. You just know -- no spoilers, I'm not aware of any -- that she's gonna turn up pregnant. Although I confirm that it will be interesting seeing that particular group of men do a "who's the daddy" story...on the other hand...didn't Billy Miller just go through that? Didn't Jack and Nick go through that with Summer? (Although, part of me wonders if this story is being engineered to get us to a blood test involving Jack and Nick...and that it will somehow lead to the reveal -- sob -- that Nick is not Summer's father. I'm just feelin' that, a little).

But, back to cliches in general. Outside of daytime, the shows I tend to like the most are those that surprise me...those that do an interesting spin on a genre. The Sopranos was great, because we'd never seen a family like that before. The first season of Brothers and Sisters was great, because we'd never quite seen a family like the Walkers--or a primetime show that (back then) so fully embraced political issues in the context of a prime titme soap. True Blood is great because -- really -- a soap opera romance between a vampire and a mind reader? I can't tell where it is going. I also tend to like independent films, because they often don't stick to the traditional premises of big studio films.

I actually think the secret to the evolution of the serial (when it happens--although I happen to think, from the list above, that it has happened) is to eschew the cliches or turn them on their ear.

I think cliches are both good and bad. Some, when done right, can be fun or interesting while others are annoying and lazy.