Stories that should have ended characters, but didn't

[Adam]

I really must agree with the Carey girls..... the babyswitch clearly should have finished them..... that's now 5+ years ago..... Krystal is still around..... and Babe basically is too in the form of Marissa.. and her name is still mentioned all the time.

Yeah, the only reason Krystal went to prison was to be a plot device to introduce Di Henry..... I didn't see it as Krystal owning up at all to what she had done.

[Bright Eyes]

Aw, I actually kind of liked 1968. I used to be a Rex fan up until this Stacy SL started. However, as one of the very few Jen fans, this Gigi is the love of his life bullshit is extremely frustrating. LOL

[SFK]

And how about on Loving when bad skin cream burned off Isabelle's face and turned her from Celeste Holm to Patricia Barry?

[Sylph]

That reminds me of an episode from Models Inc., strangely... Was it Julie that poured something into Sarah's shampoo, which made her hair green?

That was so dumb, but then so was the whole show.

[quartermainefan]

I don't think the Sami/EJ thing ruined EJ's character at all. How different was this for EJ when he picked up Sami in the car as he was getting away from shooting John in cold blood? And this followed stories where EJ was drugging Steve and locking him in mental institutions, sending poison gas into the hospital to send Steve and Kayla into a coma, switching the embryos on Belle and Mimi, beating Patrick to a pulp and sending him to the hospital, and probably something else I am forgetting?

If anything, he was ruined when they turned him into a cardigan wearing Mr Rogers who everyone forgave as he ran off to work for Mickey.

I truly think that on GH the Ric Lansing and Lorenzo Alcazar characters should have logically been written off at the end of the Panic Room story, since their crimes were so heinous it made no sense nobody killed them for revenge. Same for the Mr Craig/Jerry Jax character after holding everyone hostage and killing Alan Quartermaine. It just made no sense anyone tolerated him after that, and yet everyone did.

[DRW50]

The main difference was that a soap character can get away with a lot more if they have some romance which will make fans see another side to them. Instead, "EJami" became a lightning rod for controversy over whether or not it was rape, made even worse by EJ taunting her, and a year of Sami weeping.

[quartermainefan]

I guess since it was Sami, it didn't seem so outlandish to me. It wasn't really rape, it was a cold hearted deal: he will help save Lucas if she sleeps with him. And this is Sami we are talking about, someone who just like Kate knows all about getting to the cold hard facts of the matter. She could have said no, but it was in her perceived interests to say yes. Had it been sleep with EJ or Kate dies, Sami would have said no, and then it magically wasn't rape. Or if it was Belle who this was propositioned to then it would have been horrible. Sami knows all about getting down to brass tacks, and it was only a year or so before this she was making a different deal to become a drug dealer to turn John into an addict for revenge against him. There is no honor among thieves, or soap villains.

Now she is ruined currently, with her Donna Reed personality.

[DRW50]

Yes, but why tell the story at all? What purpose did it serve? A WTD story for two children we rarely see?

If they had made this about a deal, and made Sami work more against him afterwards and fight conflicting feelings, that might have been interesting drama, but instead, it was Sami in tears, Lucas yelling, more of Sami in tears, with EJ taunting her and then, depending on the week, saving her from various crises, or Lucas saved him from various crises. The whole thing was such a mess. All this at the same time as he was, as you mentioned, being so cruel to Patch, and to John. There was no real contrast, which is what a character like EJ probably needed.

[RomeAt50]

I don't know. Maybe its a slightly fuzzy situation but there is an extreme amount of coercion invovled when someone could die if you don;t have sex with someone. I don't know whether or not it meets the legal definition of rape but its despicable imho.

[DRW50]

Even worse is that they went back and rewrote the damn story! A woman died possibly because of tainted skin cream. Then several years later, when they wanted to try to make people hate Gloria less, they said wait, never mind, she actually died from food poisoning, definitely not the skin cream. And all this for a character who does nothing but do tedious "comedy" with Ted Shackleford.

I don't mind if characters who serve some purpose in story might stay, even if they have committed horrible crimes, but Kevin and Gloria are such dead weight. As is what has become of Todd.

[lovely_m]

We waited two years for Gloria to get caught and all for nothing. Maria wasted a perfectly good opportunity to get rid of this character and have more money for the show's budget by firing Judith Chapman. It wouldn't suprise me if Chapman makes some serious coin.

Unfortunately Kevin has a free pass from most fans thanks to his father and the beating he got in jail.

[quartermainefan]

At the time EJ was The Gloved Hand, the most evil man in town. He was supposed to be despicable. Being despicable is what made him a good character in the first place, no? I just don't see where the complaint is. Here you have the uber villain of the show, enemy to every main character in the cast who just got done minutes before shooting John, and this is after the zillion other things he did to everyone on the cast, and somewhere along the line people decided this guy needs to be viable as a romantic lead. How did that happen? Next thing I know I am going to be reading posts in the OLTL forum about how they ruined Mitch Laurence and tainted his pairings forevermore.

Where they ruined EJ is when they made him soft and nice, the lovable ex villain trying his best to walk the straight and narrow. They ruined him with this, Sami, and eventually Nicole too. Three great characters all watered down to sell some romantic pairing that is just the latest and not the last romantic pairing to come to DOOL.

[GladGirl]

When DAYS' Jack raped Kayla in 1988 (at the height of Steve and Kayla's popularity), that could've been the end of the character. But with good writing and Matthew Ashford's solid acting, the character was saved and became HUGELY popular. Imagine if DAYS had kept either of the two doofuses actors who played Jack before Matthew Ashford. It would have been a disaster.

[DeeeDee]

And for being White.

[Michael]

I think you guys are actually saying the same thing, just from different sides: that the rape (I firmly believe anything involving coercion and the life of another person is RAPE, but we probably don't need to have that debate again) solidified EJ's character as a Bad Guy. As such, it should've prevented him from going on to be some kind of romantic lead... but it didn't.

I sort of like to pretend that 2007-08 didn't happen, and this Sydney story is the extension of Sami having gotten pregnant from the rape. It seems like a natural follow-up to that story: EJ having a soft spot for her, manipulating her to win her affection, but still not acting like you do when you love someone; Sami making weird concessions for EJ and continuing to be attracted to him, even though she knows he isn't good. The characters work well together, and I like that they're in story together. It doesn't have to be a romance, per se, and given the rape, I don't think that's appropriate. But we still get to enjoy their chemistry and the push-pull.