ALL: Soaps "Jump The Shark" Moment

[Quent]

It's hard to top the Ridge-and-Bridget fiasco on B&B, but I think I can.

Does anyone remember when Dani Andropolous came back to town, and was revealed to be sleeping with Craig Montgomery, who she once thought WAS HER FATHER? Probably the slimiest, most disgusting moment in all ATWT history. Thank God, Scott Bryce (RealCraig) wasn't there to play such a cringe-worthy moment.

Runner-up: Taylor returns from the dead a second time after she dies in her husband's arms ONSCREEN.

[Soapsuds]

That was some awful sh!t writing!

[Becki]

For me, Days moment was the possession storyline. I stopped watching and I've never gone back, even though I do sorta keep up with some of the stories through my sister.

Y&R was definitely Katherine as Jill's mom and Cassie dying. Cassie's death completely took the heart away from the show and it's never gotten close to getting it back.

[Khan]

To be fair, Dani never believed Craig was her biological father. That was resolved before Dani was old enough to make such connections. Nevertheless, it was nasty.

[Khan]

Yep. Number one, no way would Liz Foster have kept that secret from Jill. Number two, every attempt to undo that, as well as Phillip NOT being Jill's son, was more convoluted than the last.

[Cheap21]

I always thought as bad as people thought making Kat Jill's mom, that Y&R should have just left it alone. Like you said, every attempt to undo it was just a mess and ended up doing more damage than just riding the thing out.

[Khan]

Exactly. Kay being Jill's biological mother made absolutely no sense at all, but there was no way one could say she wasn't w/o raising more questions. Frankly, it'd be much easier to "explain away" the Jessica/Natalie kidnapping and baby switch on OLTL.

[SouthOfSoap]

Thats hits the nail on the head. Its also the last time the show coherently planned stories with a start and an end. Yes, there have been good parts since then, but I don't think the show has ever recovered from Langan. And it showed in the ratings too - He took the show under 4.0 in breathtaking time and it never got above it again.

[Sedrick]

With thirty years-plus of soap viewing (my first childhood memory was of Luke and Laura's wedding) I've been able to suspend belief for wild and wacky plot twists and turns, as long as the writing is good, clear, and entertaining. However, when the twists and/or stunts are so OTT or outrageous that it takes me as a viewer totally out of the story and makes me not only realize that my intelligence not only being insulted but downright attacked and assaulted by TPTB with no mercy, when there is such disrespect for the audience and disregard for the genre and the art form which is soap opera, I've given up on some shows.

One aspect that truly disturbs me and has caused me to stop watching are what I call the HELL NO! Returns from the Dead. We all know back from the dead plots are a time-honored soap tradition. I'm not talking about characters whose bodies are lost at sea, or where there is no positive ID made...those exits were penned with the thought that the character could return at some point. The HELL NO! returns are ones in which viewers see a character actually DIE ON SCREEN, usually in dramatic and/or heartbreaking scenes.

The most egregious of these to me were the following:

OLTL: The return of Mitch Laurence. I LOVED this show from the the time I was a little kid and watched faithfully. The period in the 80's featuring the reveal of Tina as a Lord, with the evil Mitch playing a major role was a masterful story that enveloped the entire canvas, spun off in several directions, and drove the plot for several years. The culmination of the cult storyline was PERFECT...reporter Cassie having gone undercover to expose Mitch and his iced-tea drugging of young rich girls who hung out faithfully in the lobby of the Waterside Inn. When Cassie fell victim to the drugging herself and Mitch cornered her upstairs in his suite at the Waterside on a Friday, chillingly leering over her in his bathrobe about to rape her when suddenly he was clobbered upside the head and killed before he could attack Cassie...the man was STONE COLD DEAD, his body sprawled across the floor for DAYS the following week as the police arrived and investigated the scene. I SAW THIS WITH MY OWN EYES...the scenes were so vivid and his body was on that floor for a good several days as a whodunit enveloped Llanview. It was one of Robin Strasser's best performances EVER as she fought to protect Cassie. In addition, shortly thereafter, during Viki's epic and legendary trip to heaven, who could ever forget a cameo appearance by Mitch, beamed in via satellite from hell?!!! So when Mitch reappeared alive years later, I cried foul. And his return was so offensive and came with such disgusting tales, my love for ONE LIFE was destroyed...

Still on ONE LIFE, Mitch's ill-advised return led into Victor's, which was even more of a HELL NO! Decades of story had been built on the man's death and return had no real purpose and was all rather unsavory and unbelievable even for a soap. His body had even previously been exhumed for an autopsy! Dorian had even attempted to destroy his corpse with acid to prevent the truth of his death from coming out!

AMC: As much as I loved Angie and Jesse's story back in the day, Jesse was DEAD and we witnessed it in heartbreaking detail ON AIR. I personally still have vivid images in my mind of his death. Thanks to the powerful acting of Debbi Morgan as Angie's horror at her husband being shot down as they had dinner, as Angie tried desperately tried to save Jesse's life (I still can hear her frantic pleas for someone to get her some butter to use to stop the bleeding and then her cries while laying on his chest as he eventually died) it was very clear that our hero WAS DEAD. Of course by the time of his return, I had stopped watching AMC due to the ultimate HELL NO! Return from the Dead, which was Josh Madden...

[DRW50]

The sickness of Mitch's returns are what I hated the most.

If you watch the first Mitch stories, he's clearly a despicable man, and it's also fairly clear that his "cult" is probably a haven of depravity. But this is understated. There is a veneer of respectability. That's what made the character work.

When he came back, from the time that we saw him drugging and raping Viki on her living room sofa, something was very wrong. It was clear that TPTB felt this was an excuse to go wild with this trash. Most annoying is that someone seemed to think it was very bold, or clever, to overplay his incestuous feelings for his daughter, as if this had never been done before.

His 2009 return started out with some promise, and then we got back to this again. The scenes of him brainwashing and nearly raping his own daughter were despicable, made even worse because of the show's refusal to ever properly address this, instead going into "Teen Tess" and presenting her abuse as being sexy and hot.

I still think AMC would have been better off keeping Josh around or trying to resolve his story, rather than just gunning him down and pretending he never existed. It doesn't go away, it just leaves even more of a stench.

[Khan]

Someone - Frank Valentini? - compared Mitch to DAYS' Stefano DiMera. For me, that was a HELL NO! moment. Just as it was a HELL NO! moment when Mitch implied he had paid off then-Chief of Police Ed Hall to cover up his death. No. [!@#$%^&*]. Way.

[Gray Bunny]

I actually would've preferred they do that. Or do a Bobby Ewing shower dream with John waking up and finding Marlena in the shower. He'd be overcome with emotion, his eyebrows going crazy, while Marlena stands there gasping and then they engage in porno-like kisses.

[DRW50]

In some ways this made the whole thing even more offputting, because the show was clearly doing this just to spite longtime fans, as Goutman did again and again. Otherwise what was the point?

[Cheap21]

I didnt think there was anything wrong with bringing Mitch back from the dead. I thought that was a good story in late 2002 into early 2003. The jumping the shark moment wasnt him but rather bringing Victor back from the dead. That act completely ruined Mitch's return and set the stage for him as an all evil all powerful cartoon villian, which they stuck with until they got rid of him again and again

[DRW50]

Even before that I didn't think the story was that great. To me when it became about rape it became unwatchable. I think someone at OLTL only remembered that Mitch had tried to rape Cassie, so this led to stuff about how he was going to force Natalie to have sex with him, they had him raping Viki in flashback, etc. It also started down the path of trivializing rape, which has continued since in one story after another (Blair's brain tumor, Tarty, on and on and on).