Daytime's Biggest Soap Cliches

[VirginiaHamilton]

Amen. Now there are some exceptions (Jonathan Randall from GL) to that rule, but for the most part, soaps are guilty of dredging up that mess to justify their newest brat of a character.

[VirginiaHamilton]

Only if you count her being brought in as Julia's bratty little sister/daughter of a friend of the Quartermaines.

[marceline]

What I hate about that is the way soaps treat adoption like something dirty while presenting biology as the zenith of human connection.

It doesn't matter if you were raised by a loving family, all that matters is finding the mother or father who provided your DNA. (I'm looking at you Kendall Hart Slater.)

[VirginiaHamilton]

Although I did love SMG Kendall (as she, at least, was depicted as an unrepentant bitch instead of someone who needed love), you're spot on about her being one of the main examples of long lost brats who think that they deserve to administer payback to the parent that had the nerve to give them away to loving adoptive parents. (Slagbeast from GH is another example of that.)

[SweetPea36]

I always thought Carly was insane for wanting to punish Boobie for giving her up for adoption to a family instead of raising her in a whorehouse. The weird thing was that it was written as if that made sense or was somehow normal.

[ellabelle]

Yes! I would have liked to see Alice Hart brought back to Pine Valley, especially when Kendall had children of her own. I thought Tad was a rare example of a good adoption in that ended up having a good relationship with both his adoptive parents and his birth mother.

[DRW50]

I think some abusive adoptive home stories can make sense and add drama, like Natalie on OLTL. Other stories just muddy the waters. For instance on Y&R, Ronan was supposed to have had a happy adoptive home, yet he still spent endless amounts of time on a vendetta against his biological mother, who didn't even give him up for adoption - he was stolen.

[Cheap21]

Tad was adopted onscreen as a child though. The drama usually comes from retconned children who come to town specifically to look for their birth parents and end up trying to cause trouble for them.

[marceline]

Natalie started out as an abusive adoption story but then the show decided to ignore that and practically turn Viki and Roxy into lesbian moms tripping over each other for the privilege of propping Natalie. The same thing sort of happened with Ruth and Opal on AMC mainly because the show used the recast of Opal to take the character in a "new direction."

But I'm beyond sick of stories where characters discover their bio parents and decide that the people who raised them suck.

[DRW50]

That's true, although I think Melissa Archer always played the pain, even when the writing wasn't there.

The shows tend to half-heartedly write these stories. Kendall never hated the Harts, although she did feel like they were no longer good enough. When she left for the 7 year stint it was to be with Alice.

Carly seemed to have less regret - she was mostly just upset when Virginia dropped dead. I hated that story, IMO it was a lot worse than Kendall's, as it had no emotional weight.

[Darn]

More like they decided they loved Ilene Kristen and wanted to keep Roxie around as comic relief. It's why I could never find her truly funny. She did a number on Natalie's psyche and self-esteem.

[antmunoz]

The worst SORAS EVER was Leah Bauer on GUIDING LIGHT. It hugely rewrote past history and threw all other children's ages on the show out of whack. Then, combined with Daisy's deaging by about ten years, and Daisy then dating James, who was born when she was like 14...it all went to hell. Leah was recast twice and never even had a storyline.

[MissLlanviewPA]

On Y&R in 2002, there were questions as to whether Paul raped Christine or not one night.

Here's a scene from GH in 1979/1980ish with Alan and Monica where I got the feeling the show might have implied that he raped her. The only way I can watch it and continue liking them as a couple is to think that he wanted to have sex with her when she didn't and she was able to stop him before things went too far. I just can't think that Alan would ever hurt her like that. Was this scene ever even mentioned again?

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[SweetPea36]

Paul & Christine is a very good example.

I had forgotten how awful that Alan & Monica scene was, how sinister he acted and how he was seething at her. I don't recall his raping her was ever mentioned again, but there was so much dramatic build-up in the Ric/Monica/Alan triangle. It probably became one among many incidents. I know a lot of viewers were upset by it, but most of the GH viewers I knew hated Alan & Monica and that was certainly part of it, as were some of the terrible things Monica did.

I think that's why it's so jarring to see her be such a hypocrite now.

[Khan]

I still recall the hilarity some of us at another board (might've been The Buzz board) cooked up in regards to that fack-up. Like, GL should've gone WAY out there and have Leah become progressively older whenever we saw her, so that in one episode she'd go from the cradle to the nursing home.