Worst rewrite/changing of history

[DRW50]

I must have been annoyed enough by the show at that time to not notice. At least they had one or two scenes then I guess. Such wasted potential. At the time I was probably too busy shielding my eyes from the adult diapers and plaid scarves they put Marah in.

I had forgotten all that Winston stuff. All those stories sucked. Crazy Julia didn't do a lot for me either.

Weren't there also some bizarre rewrites for Carly when they had her as Gwen's sister? Something about she killed a child when she was a little girl, and she had now been living in Oakdale her whole life?

[Saving ATWT]

I must be the only person in the World who liked the Z twins. I just wish the story had been less compressed, longer and that they had done something more the the characters, especially Zoe. They were creapy, twisted but funky and Zoe had a right to be pissed. She could, with the correct writing, been a good character.

I did hate the 'rape' of Luke part and how Noah suddenly 'woke up' to save his boyfriend from a naked woman.

I hate the Lyla rewrite the most. She was a great mom and it was silly to write her as basically abusive to Katie.

Also, the David Stenbeck comes back as Reid Hamilton story was sooooo bad. In addition, James being Jordin Sinclair's father was silly and they never even mentioned Gunner during the story.

[soapfan770]

Are you referring to Marah's fashion show featuring Alex in a see through disco suit that Marah had designed and how she also suddenly became an overnight fashion sensation for her new approach to making denim purses? As she was pursued to by Jeffery O'Neill?

As as the Carly/Gwen connection goes, yes that was pretty bizarre. Not only did deage Carly by a few years, we never did find out what happened to Iris' "beautiful baby boy" or why Carly thought she had killed the child or why Iris let Carly think she did. Obviously they wanted to tie Gwen to the canvas, although I originally thought Gwen was to be a long lost child between Ray Tenney and Susan, given how Susan knew Ray. Ugh I'm getting a headache just thinking of how it was completely rewritten.

[DRW50]

That was bad but I was thinking of the late Rauch era, that time in 2002 when they got the big "coup" of having Patricia Field of Sex and the City fame supervise their wardrobe decisions. The young female characters all started dressing like they'd been hit on the head before they made it to their closet. Marah suffered the most, although I remember being baffled by Lizzie, the one who was Julia Barr's daughter and who yelled most of her lines, wearing a tartan miniskirt.

This is a milder example, but I think this is from that period. Marah and Michelle (I HATED HATED HATED Michelle during this period -- what fun that GL unwittingly made me root for the mob).

[DRW50]

Speaking of GL, how about the story where Jeffrey raped Olivia, only to not only be rewritten into Olivia wanting to have sex with Jeffrey, but then chasing him 25 years later?

How sad that I can come up with all this and yet not mention one of the Reva rewrites. By 90s/00s GL standards those actually made relative sense to me.

[Paul Raven]

In the 50's Search For Tomorrow, Stu and Marge Bergman had a daughter Janet and son Jimmy.Janet became a major character while Jimmy disappeared(I think at first he was at camp,away at school etc)

Then in the early 60's jimmy became Stu's nephew and his sister arrived and took him away,never to be referenced again.

[MichaelGL]

Even though I wasn't watching the show much at the time, such a rewrite and obvious attempt to prop Jeffrey made me see red. Since the days when Claire Labine helmed the show and had Olivia save Marah from being potentially raped, it was always meant to revealed that she was a rape victim. However this rewrite stunk the most in my opinion, as it was an obvious attempt to make Jeffrey look good in the viewers eyes at the expense of Olivia's character.

[JellicleCat]

Even though I've never watched AMC, and only watched Y&R sporadically I have to agree that the un-abortion storyline on AMC and P3 faking his death on Y&R are two of the worst stories ever.

The un-abortion story was ridiculous on every level, and the original story was such an historic and groundbreaking part of daytime that tampering with it was disrespectful.

P3 faking his dead was offensive for other reasons. People faking their deaths is not a new story for daytime, nor is people coming back from the dead. But this death took place such a long time ago, and was such a vital part of the history of Y&R that changing it was so un-necessary. The fact the the whole story was such a failure and fizzled out into nothing almost immediately only made matters worse.

Of the ones I've watched more closely myself I would have to say Taylor's return from the dead on B&B 2005. The whole explanation of how she survived when we clearly saw her flatline on screen was silly, and the character really wasn't necessary anymore. Her return meant that any hope of B&B developing new stories was crushed. It just went right back into the Brooke/Ridge/Taylor merry-go-round, with the added "bonus" of Nick. No progress whatsoever, and the show has suffered creatively as a result. Sure, I enjoyed the B/R/T triangle during the 90s, but it's time had long passed.

[Khan]

DeeeDee: "Pretty much."

[Khan]

Not only was that a poor rewrite of history, but it mirrored Cassie's introduction almost exactly.

[Vee]

AMC

Josh Madden

Dixie gave Kate away

GH

Luke cheated on Laura on the regular and made Ethan with Holly

Rick cheated on Lesley, and Scott killed his mistress and buried her in the backyard

Stavros has been kept in cryogenic freeze since like 1983

Heather Webber has always secretly wanted Luke for herself

OLTL

Jessica was molested and has alters

Victor Lord is alive, sort of, don't ask us how he survived, oops now he's dead again, this was well worth our time

Kevin neglected Duke and Kelly was his only true parent, who he later fucked

Tea was brokenhearted by Todd's "leaving her for Blair" in the South Pacific, even though in the original storyline she forced him to realize he loved Blair and encouraged him to leave

Three-time rapist Todd is a far better parent than Ross Rayburn, occasional grifter and man of leisure

GL

Olivia has served the San Cristobel royal family for years, no wait she's just a good old-fashioned American girl, oh and Jeffrey raped her at some family picnic and didn't know any better

Jeffrey is a CIA agent/town mayor/soft rock musician/deadly assassin surgically altered to look like Prince Richard, he also is a Guitar Hero champion

Ben Reade got diddled

The Maryanne Carruthers storyline, a.k.a. THE WORST RETCON EVER: ALL OF GL'S SENIOR LEADING MEN SOMEHOW KNEW EACH OTHER AND GREW UP TOGETHER IN SPRINGFIELD DESPITE BEING DIFFERENT AGES, DIFFERENT BACKGROUNDS, WITH WILDLY DIFFERENT INTRODUCTION STORYLINES AND PRIOR CONTRADICTORY HISTORY THAT COMPLETELY FLIES IN THE FACE OF THIS; THEY THEN PARTOOK IN AN IDENTICAL RIPOFF OF A PREVIOUS STORYLINE WHICH ALSO RIPPED OFF PETER STRAUB'S "GHOST STORY"

[Khan]

That's not a rewrite of history. That's a mind-rape.

[Vee]

I have a few more, mind the edits-

GL

Mallet: Good cop turned cold, soulless assassin-for-hire turned police chief complete with Guest Star Darnell Williams as the least threatening crime boss possible

DAYS

Chelsea is Georgia, the dead baby buried in a swamp; she also is giving cousin Max some sweet, sweet head on her first day on the show

Re: a few other bits - that Dr. Thomas story on GH was hysterical. Both that and the "Scott killed Theresa Carter" retcon were clear reaction to fan backlash over the original stories, in which Laura had killed Theresa (awful) and Michael had killed A.J. (also awful). But what was really funny was the ending of the Dr. Thomas story, in which they tried to dummy up this fake flashback of Dr. Thomas on the phone with A.J. back in 1995, when Thomas was supposed to have helped A.J. try to kill Jason in the hospital after the accident - "no one will know you tried to kill your brother!" Cut to: Old clip of A.J. from 1998, holding a phone! And then Dr. Thomas took the Quartermaine mansion by storm with a shotgun.

The Kate/Laura story on DAYS was, IIRC, not thought very far through. The version I heard was simply that JER had heard Bill had cheated with someone named "Kate" in the '70s, and decided that could be Kate Roberts.

[SFK]

Exactly, and I sensed that Robin Strasser was still a little unsure about the whole thing from the way she played it. She wasn't exactly gushing over her new (to us) daughter, it was like, "Uhh, yeah yeah, she's really mine. Next order of business..." I DO think the idea of Dorian having a kid while she was in Mendorra was pretty slick, I can imagine Elaine Princi over there with huge shoulderpads and flowy Dorothy Zbornak dusters to conceal her *scandalous* pregnancy. But as too often in soaps, they didn't approach it with any finesse, it felt slapdash, tacked on.

[P.J.]

Yep...don't get me started. It wasn't that Carly had supposedly lived in Oakdale all her life---just one random summer sometime after Molly had moved away. As per usual with ATWT, their timeline didn't add up because of sloppy details. In flashback, young Carly looked about 10-12, which was fine. But when you added that up with Gwen's current age (at the time of 17/18), that made Carly 30, with an 8 yr. old Parker...meaning she'd had Parker at 22, Nora's miscarriage at 20...and screwing Mike away from Rosanna as a teenager.

Then there was the premise that Susan had "been drinking buddies" with Ray and Iris. Which meant that twenty years before, she'd still been drinking after Ali was born, since Ali and Gwen were roughly the same age.

Not to mention the fact in all the years Carly had lived in Oakdale, been feeding the gossip rags on a yearly basis, nothing and no one either triggered or remembered Carly's role in the "tragedy".

THEN they flucked it up even more when they introduced Cole as Gwen's older brother (who was old enough to leave the home before Gwen was a teenager), meaning Iris had had him, but never mentioned him the entire time she'd been taking care of Carly, which was when they'd grown to hate each other, and supposedly paved the way for Iris to frame Carly for "doing away with" the precious "baby boy" she gave birth to.