Any one remember when every character on the show suddenly started working for some asinine trucking company? Even Jackson Freemont, European music promoter, found himself out of a job and hauling loads. Something shady was going on. Some guy beat Roxie to a pulp and tried to kill Rusty with a sawed-off shotgun and Hawk tied to a chair.

Is this where the photos of Simon in the flannel shirt come from? I swear I've seen that photo of him more than once. It might have been in the GL history book.

Thanks for the rundown of the stories in that timeframe. I've only heard about a few of them. I had heard they weren't that great and the show seemed a bit desperate at the time (this was also when they tried to make the Shaynes the new core family wasn't it).

What did you think of Calla? She doesn't quite work for me. I wonder why they never really mentioned her again after she left. I didn't even know Lillian had a sister until I read about it.

I loved the Annabelle Simms story. Continuity went straight to the devil with the idea that the Spaudlings, Bauers, Reardons, and Chamberlin men all knew one another, but those were fun mysteries with a touch of the supernatural, great location sequences, and some interesting characters. Carrie Nye's mannered by hysterical performance. I found it silly, but engaging like many of those 80's stories.

Worst of the worst on GL for me? The 1985-87 period when there was a succession of sucky writers after Jeff Ryder and Pam Long left: Mary Ryan Munisteri, Joseph D. Manetta, and Sheri Anderson. They wrote these chestnuts.

Jesse Matthews is a virgin. She spends the night with Simon and DOESN'T have sex, but worries for weeks that she's pregnant. Hello!

Calla Matthews suddenly can't have sex with Ross. The reason: she finally remembers that ex husband Gordon once gave her syphilis.

Chelsea Reardon's boyfriend Jean Claude (puhhhhlezze) crashes his car into Phillip Spaulding. When Jean Claude dies, the annoying Chelsea blames Rick (???) for Jean Claude's death.

"The Man From Amsterdam". A ridiculous plot involving a diamond smuggler, played (badly) by serial villain Jack Betts, and had absolutely no purpose, rhyme or reason that I recall.

Johnny Bauer/Christine Valere/Paul Valere: Christine dropped her dress in practically every episode, cooing "ooooo, Johnnnnny Bauer". Everybody in town vocally vowed to murder Paul, an art dealer, who again had no purpose at all. Paul WAS murdered, shot by Christine, only it later turned out that Warren Andrews had done the deed. Why? Who knew? The writers certainly didn't.

The Swamp Monster. There was swamp monster spotted at the local pond. I think it attacked Reva and had something to do with Jackson Freemont. It turned out to be Professor Blackburn looking for some gold coins or something.

Any one remember when every character on the show suddenly started working for some asinine trucking company? Even Jackson Freemont, European music promoter, found himself out of a job and hauling loads. Something shady was going on. Some guy beat Roxie to a pulp and tried to kill Rusty with a sawed-off shotgun and Hawk tied to a chair.

Worst of all, they tried to pair Alexandra with old coot H.B. Alex and H.B. spent the night locked in a fur vault. Did they do it to keep warm? God help us.

LOL on that last line!!Poor Bev.I LURVED H.B. but even he and Reva made a more realistic couple then Alex and a man her own father's age (in the shows timeline.) I know what they were going for, the tightly wound sophisticate with the rooting tooting cowboy but it was like Billy and Vanessa with wrinkles.

I am glad you brought that up as I HATED that period and only Wheeler and Kreizman was worse. Yes, they brought in Sarah not as she had always been pictured, as a hardworking woman who was ridden hard and put away wet, but now as a poor Bert Bauer. Even Pam Long made sure we knew the Shanes were dysfunctional white trash but that ended with the new writers.

I agree on the Eli Simms mystery...loved it and loved the Cabin Mystery, up until the very end which kind of sucked, and Nola was the obvious person to be involved in that storyline. Susan PI-PAR was a hoot and a great short term villian. But then I also like Holly the Nursery Rhyme stalker.

I forgot about the monster storyline, though it was called a Lake Monster and it involved everyone on the show getting a job as a camp couselor in some dumb summer camp. This is where Beth disappeaed. You forgot about them trying to start an exciting romance between Billy Lewis and Roxie Shayne....WTF. And the gold coins that Blackburn was looking for were the Von Halkin coins which an ancestor or Indias had stolen and put in the cornerstone of the castle (why you would steal things to put in cornerstones I dont know.)

Brad in a cage. That's the sort of thing one expects to see on Days, not Y&R.

the first thing that comes mind when asked about WORST S/L['s] are

ALL MY CHILDREN.....

Doc in the box - nothing happened w/this he didnt really pay for it except feeling gulity..and really only very close ppl to him knew..esp Dix..

and

POISON PANCAKES!! "killing" of my Dixie was THE WORST thing ive seen of this show..

OH and anything and everything involving KWAK..ugh..just ugh! leave alrdy! srsly

Edited July 9, 201015 yr by Mike_Cady fan

Mitch, saynotoursoap, what did you think of the story which was Claire's initial exit, the one where she had some kind of rages and that's why she almost suffocated baby Michelle (perhaps she had a vision of some of the future Michelle recasts...), and Keir Dullea, a famous doctor, operated on her and they left town together? I think even Susan Pratt disliked that story.

Edited July 9, 201015 yr by CarlD2

Mitch, saynotoursoap, what did you think of the story which was Claire's initial exit, the one where she had some kind of rages and that's why she almost suffocated baby Michelle (perhaps she had a vision of some of the future Michelle recasts...), and Keir Dullea, a famous doctor, operated on her and they left town together? I think even Susan Pratt disliked that story.

Hated it! Claire was discovered to have a convenient brain tumor...which E & B forgot when they brought her back as a raving bitch years later. I remember where she stumbled out of her room and almost fell down the Cedars elevator shaft! I think KD was her doctor, and she and he had like a five minute write off saying goodbye to Ed and Mo at the Black Orchid (remember that place???)

I guess better then Taggerts write off later, which is that Claire simply ceased to exit, and no one mentioned her! I loved her and Meta going at over mothering Chelle, that could have been a good storyline if they would have fleshed it out. I loved Mary Stuarts Meta!

I can't believe nobody mentioned "dead Sheridan in a coffin" and "hell in the closet" in Passions. That show was just one big hot mess.

GH - The text Message Killer

AMC - The unabortion, Deadly pancakes.

"Doc in a Box", "... like Billy and Vanessa with wrinkles"...

I'll start with The Guiding Light, which had had a remarkably long stretch of greatness before its descent into the toilet, starting in the early 1980s.

The worst:

--The Dreaming Death

--Jonathan Brooks & The Talking Computer

--Annabelle Sims/The Girl In the Lake/The Ghost In The Attic

--Susan Piper

--Reva The Ghost

--Reva The Amish Amnesiac

--Reva The San Cristobalian Queen

--Reva The Illegal Immigrant Savior

--Reva The Blind

--Reva The Time Traveler

--Reva The Clone

--All Things San Cristocrap

--All Thing Santos

--All Things With Bradley Cole

--Beth Raines, Inexplicable Psycho

--Amanda Spaulding: Alan's "Sister"

--Holly Reade, Nursery Rhyme Stalker

--Maryanne Caruthers

Granted, the first four stories were not GUIDING LIGHT at its' best, but I think each had their moments. IMO, though, "Who Killed Maryanne Caruthers?" was not only GL's hands-down worst story, it was also the story that sealed the show's fate. It stole from GL's history, rewrote what we've always accepted as fact, and (worst of all) wasn't the least bit plausible or entertaining.

I have mixed feelings about the Carolyn Crawford storyline. Yes, it was not one of Marland's best-thought-out plots. It involved the murder of a woman in a wheelchair that we knew nothing about, nor really had any time to care about. The story went on FOREVER. And when it finally was over, we learned that CC had been murdered by some day-player hired thug, on orders of Gavin Krueger, who never shared a scene with CC before she died!

Years ago, Julie Poll told some SOD reporter (forget which) that Marland uncharacteristically changed his mind about the killer halfway through the storyline. If you ask me, I think Marland had originally intended Darryl, and not Gavin, to be the culprit. At least, looking back on those scenes between him and Frannie in the ski lift, it certainly felt that way.

Edited July 15, 201015 yr by Khan

I pick the two different stalker storylines Dena Higley wrote for Adriana on OLTL - the first in which the stalker turned out to be Nash's sleazy buddy from California, who was doing it on Dorian's orders for the ultimate soap motive: To pay his student loans. The dramatic tension was, of course, astounding.

The second was the Tate Harmon/One Pure People saga. Pro ball player/racist cult mastermind. Insanity.

There are so many options from OLTL in the last seven years: The "ghost" haunting the Love Center in 2004, originally intended to be the spirit of the heretofore unmentioned "Amy Dunham," who was engaged to an equally unmentioned Lord cousin some many years past, yet, we are told through baldfaced exposition courtesy of Marcie, was truly in love with another insta-ancestor, "Charles McBain." Fascinating. There's also the godawful Cris/Evangeline boxing tale, the bizarre Todd/Evangeline flirtation, all things Margaret Cochran, the recent Rex/Gigi Native American follies, the Stacy epic, and now, of course, the Ford family and all their works, including the Unfrozen Nazi Eli twist.

Vee, would you include the KAD killings in those? I just have a blind hatred for that story and wonder if I'm too hard on it.

Vee, would you include the KAD killings in those? I just have a blind hatred for that story and wonder if I'm too hard on it.

Of course. It was [!@#$%^&*] terrible. Every story Higley did was terrible. I just chose to pick out a few less obvious ones.

Oh, right. I did that too, for some other soaps. I guess it helps that I skipped most of Higley's run.

I'm tempted to put Carlo's 1996 return in as well.

Higley also did the story in which Carlo agreed to work for Asa and kill Blair. Carlo attempted to accomplish this by getting in a brown jumpsuit and posing as a custodian or something to kill Blair himself, in person, with like a gun.

Terrible.