All Shows: Your Top (Bottom?) 5 WORST storylines ever

[beebs]

So for next week's news show at my college, I'm doing a segment on the five WORST soap storylines ever told. Everyone has their own criteria of what's the "worst" and it covers a huge breadth of material. So, because I'm still fairly...new to the genre (not really, but I'm rusty in my recall), I want to know, what do YOU consider the worst soap storylines ever told?

I expect the bulk of the list will consist of stories from the past 15-20 years but...hey, maybe I'll be surprised!

[quartermainefan]

GH

Laurelton

Alexis' Cancer

Ric's revenge plot against Sonny trying to drive him crazy (but then they rewrote it where he drove him crazy for his own good)

Scrubs fighting over a couch for a month

Jerry's DVDs

I could write essays on why each of these were bad, and I could come up with even worse from GH except the stuff that was worse I don't even think I can call it a story: The Drab 4 on every day despite never being in an actual story comes to mind.

[beebs]

Now THIS one I've never even heard about until now. Something about sleepwalking murders??

[quartermainefan]

Laurelton gets my vote for the worst story GH ever told since I started watching. Structurally it was so unsound, and then to make it worse it was boring, and then for the finishing blow it went on for what seemed like years.

Bobbie's step daughter who was only a fairly recent addition to the show (maybe a couple of years) was having nightmares or something. And for a year Bobbie would say "Terri, what is it?" And then it turned out to be a murder mystery set in a town not Port Charles set in the past starring characters not even on the show. Who cares??? They should have gotten their own show and leave GH alone!

[juppiter]

Uh please tell me this was a writer's strike...

[DRW50]

The summer of hell, Y&R 2009, during which a pregnant woman, for no apparent storyline reason, was terrorized for months, hounded into a miscarriage, and molested by a "doctor" with a history of sexually assaulting female patients. This "story" also involved writing which said that the lowest thing a man can do is become intimate with another man, intimacies that were entirely offcamera, although we did get to hear that homosexuality is hilarious and disgusting.

Wasn't Laurelton something about water being poisoned, and there were two brothers, Kevin and Jay O'Connor, from the same town as Terri.

[quartermainefan]

I think it was just their main adventure story meant to occupy Anna, Bobbie, Frisco and pals. It went on for a long time and introduced Lucy Coe to the show, but it was just poorly thought out and executed. Terri, Patrick Conner (or whatever his name was), Lucy...they were all suspects in a crime that happened before any of them arrived on the show, featuring a dead character who never actually was on the show. Maybe I am remembering it wrong. I think eventually murders started happening in PC forcing Anna to investigate, but considering the suspects were all people nobody ever heard of, it was tough to get interested.

[Gray Bunny]

Take your pick of basically any storyline featured on Days of Our Lives from September 2003 til mid-2006. The worst of course being the Salem Serial Killer which killed off close to 10 characters, only to have all the victims turn up alive on an island that was an exact replica of Salem (except there were palm trees, sounds of monkeys in the background, and all male inhabitants had to wear Hawaiian shirts). There was so much awfulness to this storyline, too much suspension of disbelief that nothing made sense logically. There were forcefields, volcanoes, ninjas, coffins falling into pits of fire. It was just too awful, too stupid, too insulting.

You'd think the crazy would end there, but you still had 6 characters not make it off the island with the rest and were taken to a European castle for the next 6 months. At one point, Jack made it out of the castle, back to the good ol' U.S. of A. and back to his home in Salem to encounter a fake Jenn who persuades him not to go to the police. Jack was suspicious about this woman, until he caught Jenn by herself doing her signature hair flip, and he was reassured that it was his beloved Horton heroine. Before Jack could inform anyone else of his whereabouts, Tony/Andre's goons had him captured and taken back to the European castle... Oh, and did I mention that all of this happened in ONE NIGHT?!?!?

Let's not forget Stan the Man, Sami in disguise (a clever but absurd way to keep Sami on the canvas while Alison Sweeney was on maternity leave), and the 5 Salem studs in Iraq to save Phillip. And people forget this lil nugget of goodness, but later on when I believe Sami & Lucas were getting married at St. Lukes, who shows up to the wedding? Stan the Man! But wait, it's not a guy named Stan! It's not Sami in disguise! No, it's actually KATE wearing the disguise that Sami used to masquerade as Stan! Truly absurd.

I'd also mention the awful history-rewriting Dr. Alex North, the long-lost husband of Marlena.

Seriously, anything on DAYS 2003-2006 was soap opera at its absolute worst (minus Passions).

[Cheap21]

was it great? Barely, but worst ever? Definetly not

1. Days: Garden of Eden

2. PC: Psychic Espionage

3. PSSN: Vincent is Valerie and pregnant with his father's baby

4. OLTL: Teen Jessica

5. OLTL: Echo's revenge on Dorian

[juppiter]

Days Garden of Eden hell yes that was SO STUPID. That's around when I got fed up & quit DAYS... and never returned as a daily viewer after that

PSNS Vincent is Valerie and pregnant with his father's baby was one of the ballsiest stories in daytime history and creative as hell, I loved that.

[Cheap21]

I thought it was offensive and disgusting

[juppiter]

So did I! I loved it lol.

[DeeeDee]

Kevin & The Chipmunk Head.

RELIQUARY

CANECANECANECANECANE

Clear Springs

The Terroni Plot

AMBER

Undead Gay Phillip

The Ashby Invasion

Who Killed Plum

Daniel's Porn Obsession

Giggly Sheila

Nick & Giggly

Colleen's death

Brad's death

River & Gloria

Alistair & Gloria

Evan & Gloria

Jeff & Gloria

John's Death

Angelo

Jana's brain tumors

Daisy & Ryder

Pretty much ANYTHING from 2005 - present for Y&R

[Cheap21]

[quartermainefan]

wow some of the stories listed here I found really fun. DOOL I loved the island of dead people with force fields and a giant tidal wave, and I was impressed the show could send characters to castles for months on end but had the good sense to leave these off the show characters with a status quo to return to when the time came to write them back in. And I love Sami as Stan. It was creative and the guy who played Stan did a great job.