Stories that aren't as bad as they're made out to be

[DRW50]

I enjoyed Maureen's performance and the mystery itself. As you said, the aftermath was shameful. I don't believe this destroyed Holly's character. What destroyed it was the show not giving a damn about followthrough. They so clearly dropped the plans they had for this and it was so unfair to Maureen.

[Antoyne]

I also enjoyed the Music Box Killer and as you said Matt Ashford was AWESOME during it...One of the better once every few months psychos on One Life in a while.

[Mr. Vixen]

i agree with you, reallyhateskateonlost, i liked Casey the Alien.

[quartermainefan]

I didn't realize people made it out to be bad. It was pretty good I thought, and I remember a few years back in an interview Kimberly McCullough cited it as her favorite story she ever starred in.

[All My Shadows]

The first six months or so of the Kendall/Ryan/Greenlee triangle. This, combined with the murder mystery and the introduction of Babe and Krystal, kept me glued to AMC throughout the fall and winter of 2003-2004. I'm in an extreme minority with that, and I'm sure people can give a thousand reasons why I should not have enjoyed that period, but oh well.

ATWT-wise, I loved everything Jade-related, especially her various schemes to get Will from Gwen. Jade could have been legendary had they let her evolve and wrote her into her own stories after her first year, but alas...ATWT was wasted potential. I wanted so desperately for them to do Aaron/Jade.

[P.J.]

ATWT---I didn't think the Kidnapping/Spa of Doom story was that bad. The set up was good. The menfolk searching for them was good. Babs trying to hide her part in the scheme was good. Where it nosedived was the three months it spent focused on ROSE, who was arguably the worst "heroine" ATWT ever created. And it failed horribly in the fallout, where Babs got off scot-free and Carly spent three weeks talking through a creepy rubber mask. TIIC pushed the envelope in some ways (suggesting the girls and Hal had been tortured and the infamous Julia raping Jack scene...) and a month after the girls returned, acted as if it had never happened. Or what happened was "no big deal".

[JtSmarts]

GL

Reva goes back in time

Dool

Tropical Temptation

[Bright Eyes]

DAYS: John and Hope submarine sex, leading into the Who's the Daddy? story. I voted for Stefano. And honestly, I'm still pissed they magically changed Bo to being the father of Zach. Lame!

[MichaelGL]

I honestly didn't mind Tom Langan's tenure as HW all that much. Looking back there was some over indulgence with the teens, but at the time I was pretty young myself and I didn't mind the stories, in fact looking back I was heavily invested in the teens. I liked the stuff he gave to couples such as John/Marlena, Bo/Hope, and Jack/Jenn. I LOVED the rivalry between Marlena and Brady.

[Toups]

The rivalry made NO sense. Brady didn't know Isabella so Marlena was pretty much his mother who raised him and loved him. I think Langan also had John hate Maggie for some reason. Langan was awful - he wasn't even a real writer! LOL

[psychofan]

I totally agree with both of those....especially the Jade stuff. And on that note, a lot of people were complaining when Gwen was dominating ATWT, but loved those few years of the show and found her to be the perfect heroine to cancel out her underdog sister (love them both). I enjoyed all of her storylines with Will, even the "lookalike" one in Branson!

I'm usually in the minority on my favorite writers/stories so one could almost say anything from McTavish or JER, but I will go with some of the ones that stick out to me.

AMC:

- The unabortion.

- Satin Slayer

- Baby switch

DAYS:

- SSK/Melaswen

- Tropical Temptation

- Alex North

- Lucas/Sami/Austin/Carrie round 2

OLTL:

- Everything with Blair/Todd/Margaret leading to the execution

- 1968 Time travel

Y&R:

- Cane's family

- The baby controversy right now

[Titus Andronicus]

Salem Serial Killer was pretty good. The island part was terrible. It's probably quite wrong of me to enjoy the scene of Cassie's death ("death") as much I do.

Shane and Kayla. Then again, it has to be better than it's made out to be. The bubonic plague has better things said about it than their pairing. The storyline with them went off the rails a bit in 1991, but there was good build again in 1992 before Mary Beth Evans was fired.

[Quent]

On ATWT, I usually disliked the "unrealistic" storylines, but for some reason the spa s/l didn't bother me at all. TPTB had to find a way to get all their pregnant leading ladies off-screen , and it was a neat way to do it. And I loved that it was James and Barbara plotting to get rid of all Barbara's enemies.

I remember when Lily used WorldWide to invest in some baby-food company, and the product turned out to be toxic, almost killing hundreds of babies and ruining Lucinda's company. It wasn't a popular story, but I thought it was great, especially watching Lucinda fume at what her daughter did to WorldWide. Both Martha Byrne and Liz Hubbard acted the hell out of that material. Even Jeffrey Meek, the short-term Craig who used the disaster to steal the company from under Lucinda, was good.

[P.J.]

Yeah, I agree--the Spa story got off to a rip-roaring start. It went off the rails when Julia raped Jack and the action shifted to Rose's whining about her three gray hairs. Still, the good outweighed the bad, and you could seriously argue it was the last truly great umbrella story ATWT had.

I'd pick the Adam turns bad story. I still think if TIIC had simply given him a definable reason for his sudden personality shift, the Adam/Gwen/Will triangle could have been a classically soapy triangle.

Where Gwen got annoying in general was the point she turned from a spunky outsider to Oakdale's favorite Saint. I went from literally hoping she was Carly's sister to gnashing my teeth everytime she stuck her nose so high in the air whenever Carly's name was brought up.

[StevieM]

I liked the fact that in 2005/2006 Lucas FINALLY got to have sex with Carrie. I always thought it was cruel the way, back in the 90s, he would be naked in bed with her, only to have her pull back at the last minute, like Carlie Brown and Lucy with the football. Looking back, I wonder what base he got to back in the day?

Shane/Kayla took a dramatic turn in mid-91 when Richard Allen and Anne Schoettle were fired and replaced with Gene Polumbo. Originally, Kayla was supposed to lose out to her sibling. It was supposed to be a "remake," of sorts, of Steve/Kayla/Jack, this time having Kayla on the losing end. But then the story changed and Shane famously proclaimed "All these years I've been with the wrong Brady sister!"