ALL: Soaps "Jump The Shark" Moment

[lovely_m]

Especially after her parents started using her as an aphrodisiac.

[sungrey]

Add this to the list: GL making Ben Reade a serial killer. While the story did feature Marina (at the time played by the wonderful Aubrey Dollar), I was furious that Ben was being sacrificed in this story because he was supposedly molested as a child.

The first thing I did when Ben died was e-mail CBS and say "you better take a look at who you have writing Guiding Light, because she is KILLING this show's spirit. She's awful." She got fired a few weeks later. I guess a lot of fans had the same idea I did.

[DRW50]

OLTL - Todd as the noble rapist and the instant millionaire. Victor molesting Viki. While the story was riveting and Erika Slezak gave the performance of a lifetime, and initially, for about a year or two, Roger Howarth gave some great performances, both of these broke the show's back, setting up some very ugly story patterns that got worse and worse with each year.

[soapfan770]

Pretty much why I chose hiring Conboy and Weston as the JTS moment. We all the know the previous damages (ie Maureen's death, the clone, the mob, San Cristobel etc.) but in a single year and a single story GL history was completely obliterated, multiple characters were assassinated, and the show going down into a hell hole. The show had a hard time recovering after that, and I was so grateful for Wheeler bringing back Dinah that summer because it seemed nothing prior to 2003 had existed under the final days of "Wescon"

[DRW50]

For me the real JTS moment with GL would be the 1984 Bauer bloodbath. There was nothing to fall back on after that - the show's structure then had to revolve around actors and characters who were never going to be there long-term, or could not be sustained long-term (look at all the knots they twisted themselves into to keep Reva relevant - you wouldn't have had to have done that with some of the more down-to-earth Bauers).

[Bright Eyes]

DAYS:

The unnecessary SORAS'ing of Mike Horton and David Banning

Valentine's Day Massacre

Most of the things that have to do with Eugene (Robot,time travel, etc.)

Stupid nonsensical 80's plots

The joke of death

[DRW50]

Would you say the supercouple format?

[Bright Eyes]

No. What I have a problem with were the plots themselves. Each couple could have been written without a convoluted adventure and the subsequent heap of murders of nobody.

[DRW50]

For me, with ATWT, as silly as it sounds, it was the firing of Allyson Rice-Taylor solely because FMB or MADD wanted to hire a friend from ABC. Even before that, with the writing out of so many of my favorites, I kept hoping things might change. After that stunt with poor Susan Batten, I knew then that "my" ATWT was gone forever.

[Cheap21]

I think the definitive moment for The Bold and the Beautiful was when they started the incest stories, and that can be traced back to 2002 when they staretd Ridge and Bridget. Ever since then they've had no problems having the Forrester family hook up within themselves and that set the stage for the nasty sex scandals that the show always falls back on to give itself attention. One can argue the Brooke/Deacon affair was the precursor to it and I can agree with that to a degree but I think the Ridge/Bridget stuff was more of a "I cant beleive they went there" moment than that

Days of Our Lives without a doubt for me was killing off a good chunk of the cast adn then bringing them all back from the dead in that stupid island story

Port Charles - Tainted Love. PC did some sci-fi stories before (psychic espionage and time travel) but introducing a supernatural element was the true jumping the shark moment. Once they had vampires, every arc that followed relied on some supernatrual gimmick. From angels to werewolves to an avatar shroud to more vampires, the soap was forever changed and not for the better

[P.J.]

GL's JTS moment was AmishReva. As flippin' awful, mystifying and history-rending as MAC mystery was (and the Ben the Serial Killer plot) Amish-Reva completely changed the dynamic of the show. The show had actually done the impossible---survived the departure of arguably it's biggest star when Reva went off the bridge in Florida. But characters GREW out of that. Reva's return was a huge step backwards.

ATWT JTS moment isn't about a story, but rather attitude. It's the who killed Rose story, where they purposely "rev'd story up", using jump-cuts, etc. "like primetime". It ended up gutting the structure of storytelling eliminating the "beats" that keep the audience connected to the story and characters.

B&B---Taylor's return from the dead. The last one, with all the floodlights and Ridge digging up her body. Or any of Sheila's returns. Or Bridget's paternity re-write, backtracking and making Eric and not Ridge, her father. Although with the level of camp, I'm not really sure it can JTS.

[DRW50]

To me the problem with Reva's return was the story, moreso than the return itself. Josh, like Holly with Roger, was a stronger character (IMO) when he interacted with Reva, even if it was not in a romantic relationship (I think some of their best material was when they were divorced and dealing with their kids in 2000-2001). But why bring her back and not bring back Sarah, who should have been a matriarch? Why ignore her friendship with Fletcher? What about her complicated relationship with Vanessa?

[LeClerc]

I'm going to go a bit further back than the unabortion story )and say Edmund's murder for AMC.

Now I felt that John Callahan had been phoning in his performances for years, and I was disgusted by his alleged behind-the-scenes shenanigans. I was not upset that he was fired. But I was disgusted at how they wrote off a character who had been on the show for 13 years. There was no real build-up to it; it almost seemed like they just decided to kill him off the day they wrote that episode.

All the stuff afterwards of Jonathan having the bad cut out of him and moving into Edmund's home added insult to injury, but that single moment of a shovel bashing Edmund's head in was probably AMC's "jump the shark" moment for me.

It was a sign of things to come with Dixie, and while Dixie's death was even more offensive to me (killing the character with Cady's favorite foods) and (unlike with Edmund) I still loved Dixie, I cannot say that the show hadn't already jumped the shark well before Dixie's death-by-pancakes.

[JellicleCat]

Can this really be seen as a JTS moment though? I've always thought of JTS moments as something that is actually decided by TPTB of the specific show. A very bad decision, that causes irreparable damage to the show. But the death of an actor/actress is not something that anyone can do anything about. If B&B had recast the role of Sally, then I could maybe agree that it could have been seen as a JTS moment. But they didn't, and for me they did the best of an very sad situation.

[DRW50]

I didn't think they did that well at all, just sending her away offcamera. They also dismantled the entire Spectra family in Darlene's last years, meaning that there was no longer any type of balance to B&B, unless you count the worthless and destructive recasts of the Logan family.