All Soaps: One Last Overhaul

[Mr. Vixen]

I know that a lot of similar threads have popped up, a lot of times for OLTL, but I thought I would make one for all US soaps in general.

How would you save them?

What would your cast list be? Who would you add/bring back? Who would you fire? Who Would you recast?

What would your focus be on? (i.e, families, business, mob, drama, etc.)

I'll start with GH, since that's the one I have been thinking about the most, and I will come back and post for other ones later.

Cast List (on contract)

Jacklyn Zeman as Bobbie Spencer

Anthony Geary as Luke Spencer

Genie Francis as Luara Webber

Jonothan Jackson as Lucky Spencer

Jane Elliot as Tracy Quartermaine

Leslie Charleson as Monica Quartermaine

John Ingle as Edward Quartermaine

Robin Christopher as Skye Quartermaine

Adrianne Leon as Brook Lynn Ahton

Annie Llonzeh as Maya Ward

Jason Thompson as Patrick Drake

Jason Cook as Matt Hunter

Kimberly McCullough as Robin Scorpio

Kirsten Storms as Maxie Jones

John. J York as Mac Scorpio

Rebecca Herbst as Elizabeth Webber

Scott Reeves as Steve Webber

Nancy Lee Grahn as Alexis Davis

Laura Wright as Carly Spencer

Sonya Eddy as Epiphany Johnson

Carolyn Hennesy as Diane Miller

Kent King as Lainey Winters

John Lindstorm as Kevin Collins

Lynn Herring as Lucy Coe

Rachel Ames as Audrey Hardy

Cast List (Recurring)

Julie Marie Berman as Lulu Spencer (taken to recurring, brought back for big s/l before written off completely)

Richard Dean Anderson as Jeff Webber (since I don't think he would come back full time, but for appearances and s/l's)

Jennifer Sky as Sarah Webber (on and off)

Catherine Hickland as Hayley Webber

Robin Mattson as Heather Grant Webber

Chad Duell as Michael Corinthos

Former Cast Members I would Bring Back for Storylines

Felecia M. Bell as Simone Ravelle Hardy

David Wallace as Tom Hardy Sr.

Kristina Wagner (on CONTRACT) as Felecia Jones

Cynthia Preston as Faith Roscoe (for several storylines)

Marisa Ramirez (possibly back for good on contract)

Released From Contract

Maurice Benard

Steve Burton

Lisa Lo Cicero

Brandon Barash

Damien Spinelli

Kelly Monaco (though not immediately, but after some major storylines)

Lexi Ainsworth (in an attempt to mature the character and bring her into the adult phase)

Tyler Christopher

Ingo Rademacher

Recast

Kimberly J. Brown as Kristina Davis (in an attempt to mature the character)

Daphnee Duplaix as Keesha Ward

I would focus the show on the hospital, as well as the families. The Quartermaines would have huge storylines with the battling over ELQ. Theere would be a lot of storylines with Skye and Tracy battling to gain control of ELQ. Skye blackmails Edward into making her a CEO, and then she cheats him out of the company by making him appear senile, and takes it for herself. Tracy teams up with Edward to get the company back, but double crosses him and through blackmail ends up in a 50/50 control of the company with Skye. Edward brings back his cousin Celia to help run the company, and convinces the court to let her work with Skye and Tracy. She starts off as an insider for Edward, but eventually Skye finds out she has a daughter in hiding from her psycho father, and threatens to expose the daughters location unless Celia double crosses Edward.

Edward, unaware that Celia's daughter is in danger, brings her to town. Tiffany is an aspiting business woman, and Edward helps her set up Timaine (Tiffany-Quartermaine) Enterprises. Edward gives her millions to start the company, as long as she lets him be CEO. They model the company to go directly agains ELQ. Eventually, Tiffany's father finds her and takes the entire family hostage, etc. for sweeps. Edward decides to focus on the new company and lets Skye, Tracy and Celia run ELQ.

Skye is diagnosed with breast cancer, and Monica and her grow close. Maya reveals that her mother suffered from breast cancer too, and that she had a scare as a teen. Edward has a massive heart attack while being held hostage, and has to have a bypass. The new doctor butchers it and Ed almost dies. He wakes up, and in a brief change of heart, decides not to sue the doctor, grateful to be alive. Skye decides to get revenge, but needs help since she is in the hospital. She recruits BrookLynn, and they try to destroy the doctor. BrookLynn falls in love with the doctor, putting her in an impossible position.

Maya/BrookLynn butt heads. BrookLynn asks Monica to throw Maya out, she refuses. Brook moves out. Monica becomes lonely and depressed with Edward and Skye in the hospital, Tracy and her not getting along, and Maya always at wwork. She turns to alcohol again, but Skye comes home and helps her through it and they grow even closer.

Patrick tramps it up with Lisa, and OTHER women, because he falls out of love with Robin. They are on the rocks, and Patrick and her get in miserable fights. One night Patrick goes to far, and Robin drives off upset. She is crying and unknowingly hits a young boy on a bike. Carly finds out and blackmails her, but Robin has a mental breakdown and is committed. She shuts everyone out and the only person she is willing to talk to is Brenda, because she thinks everyone else will judge her since they have been around and know her recent drama, but Brenda has been away and won't be biased or impartial based on the recent drama of robins life. Brenda returns to town and helps Robin recover from the accident, and helps her go through therapy, etc. once she confesses. The court rules Robin's crims as temporary insanity and give her therapy, and community service as a sentence.

Eventually Celia goes to work for her daughters company, and Edward pisses off skye by filling Celia's position at ELQ with Brenda. Brenda and Skye hate each other, but eventually work together against Tracy, who is trying to blackmail them out of the company.

Skye brings in Faith Roscoe, who has secretly been alive, to be her partener in crime. SKye manages to become the senior board member for the ELQ portion of the stocks in GH, and eventually blacmails her way into the system, and becomes an administrator at the hospital. She begins holding the hospital hostage of all its necesesities, until a doctor caves and gives her what she wants. It is revealed that she needs an illegal drug to saver her mother's life, and she needs a doctor to get her acces to it. when a doctor finally caves and gives her the drug, she resigns from the hospital board and allows them to have their necessites back, just as the hospital is on the verge of shutting down.

Bobbie revelas to Carly that not long after she gave Carly up she fell in love with another teen, who she didn't tell she was a prostitute. She reveals that they fell in love. She reveals that she yet again became pregnant only a couple years after having Carly, and she knew her boyfriend was the father because during their relationship she didn't "go all the way" with her prostitute buyers. She decided to keep the baby, but first decided to come clean with her boyfriend. She told him she was a prostititue, and before she could tell him she was pregnant he ran out angry. She went the next day to his house and his mother said he had run away in anger. She never found him to tell him of the baby. She had the baby, and believed for many years that it had died at birth. But she now has reason to believe her abusive father stole the baby and gave it away, because she didn't know any details about the death. She employs luke and carly to help her find out what really happened, and she finds out the child is alive. (she also reveals that Luke, her father, and aunt ruby were the only ones to know about the second baby.)

Obviously there would be more stories than this, but this is the basic way I would go with family, hospital, medical, etc. types of drama. What do you think?

[Bright Eyes]

I'll wait three months from now when this thread is posted, AGAIN!

[Khan]

Some people need to realize that no matter how many times you start and/or contribute to these threads, no one from any show is going to hire you to write and/or produce it. Seriously. Your time is much better spent just snarking. :-D

[Mr. Vixen]

It wasn't about wanting to get hired to write or produce them? It was about how you would personally "save your soap", ie. how you would change it IF you were in charge, to make it more appealing and give it one last chance. Basically what you WANT to see it, or the writing you think could save it.

It wasn't a thread to be taken all so seriously. Jesus.

[Sylph]

Khan, don't tell me you thought somebody would notice you and all those synopses you kept posting until a few weeks back? You really thought someone would notice you, didn't you?

[All My Shadows]

I don't think the cast is what will make or break any of the show on the air right now. It's really out of the hands of the soaps' PTB at this point.

[Khan]

No, I didn't, lol. I never posted those fanwanks with the idea that someone at one soap or another would read 'em and then magically hire me to replace [enter HW's name here]. I'm not that simple-minded, lol. However, I realized how non-constructive indulging in such efforts truly was.

Don't get me wrong, it's fun to fantasize how you might turn things around for "your show" if you had the power to; but when you compare what's actually on-screen to what you've written, it's too easy to become depressed, and none of that -- from the stuff you dream up, to what you see everyday, to the disparity between the two and subsequent emotions -- make watching these shows any easier. Know what I mean?

[Khan]

My apologies, SoapBoy. I wasn't trying to piss in your corn flakes, as it were. However, I truly believe some people who make these wouldn't-it-be-awesome-if-so-and-so-were-to-hook-up-gee-I-hope-Ken Corday's-reading-this-'cuz-it's-a-damn-good-way-to-save-DAYS posts actually think TPTB will do just what they tell 'em. I mean, I wanted Brody and Nat to hook up for a long time on OLTL, but in no way do I think my suggestions even indirectly led to their recent ONS. LOL!!!

[Mr. Vixen]

Oh no, Khan, I didn't really take your post offensively at all. Just in the moment I was having one of those moments where I just kinda let my fingers type beefore I realized I was coming off as pissed.

I understand completely what you had meant about some of the posters who think what they post will magcally happen. I was just trying to say that that's not what I had been intending here, but going back and re-reading what I wrote I realize I came off a bit snappish! So, for that, I apologize!

I totally know what you are saying...So we're all good.

[marceline]

I'm done trying to save soaps but I always come home to Pine Valley so here goes...

• I'd do what comes naturally and make/allow/establish the Hubbards as a core family just like the Kanes and Martins. They have all the appropriate "ties", the right "pedigree" and more "history" than most of the characters on the show. (Did I hit all the buzzwords?) To that end, I'd bring back Natalia's mother, Rebecca, preferably played by Laura Koffman. I know a lot of people hated the idea of Jesse's "white woman" but I want to know more about Jesse's time in the mental hospital and Natalia deserves her mother. I'd like to see Rebecca and Tad fall for each other which would create magnificent tension between Jesse, Tad and Angie as well as Frankie and Natalia.
  
• Make Fusion a real freaking business but not THE only business in town. Revive the TV station, show some scenes at Chandler Enterprises or revive Cortlandt Electronics. Most viewers spend their day at work. Our co-workers are like our second family. The show should reflect that.
  
• Rebuild the Kane/Montgomery blended family. Jack, Erica, Kendall, Binks, Greenlee, Reggie, and Lily. If you can't find dramatic potential in that, you're an idiot.
  
  
  
  

[All My Shadows]

There are so many things that can be plausibly done with AMC at this point to strengthen it. It would be so easy for them to place the focus squarely on Erica's fam, the Chandler/Martin/Cortlandt crew, the Hubbards, and David, Ryan and Greenlee.

[Soapsuds]

Let's face it soaps are dead. When Y&R uses shock value to get viewers to watch. You know that soaps are in BIG trouble.

[marceline]

I know. But IMO threads like this show that soaps didn't die because they ran out of creative ideas, they died because TPTB couldn't do the job.

[Mr. Vixen]

Thank you! That's the point I was trying to make! I wanted to show that soaps could be a perfectly plausible and respected genre if TPTB had the faith in them that they did years ago. Soaps definitely didn't die out because there was nothing left to do with them, they died because the people writing/produing a)don't care about them and tried to make them like every other generic primetime serial, and that's not what daytimes loyal audience wanted.

[Khan]

The late director Billy Wilder had very simple, yet very profound, advice for all filmmakers: never bore the audience. Now, I realize soaps and film are two different animals; but in a way, Wilder's words are just as effective here as they are anywhere else. Fans will forgive "their stories" for a lot of things, but they'll never forgive 'em for being boring.