What storylines do you think soap operas would never do?

[StevieM]

How about an adoption story where the adopters--main characters on the show, usually the romantic lead--are not portrayed as heroes who are supposedly giving a home to a child in need. Let's see the mother being slut shamed by her church. Or going to a crisis pregnancy center, where they promised to teach her how to be a good mom, only to turn around and deceitfully work to break her down and make her feel like she has no right to her own baby. Let's see the prospective adoptive parents (PAPs)--romantic leads on the show--talking to a lawyer about how to make sure that the woman feels like she owes it to them to go through with the adoption after the baby is born. Let's see the adoption agency working with the PAPs to make the pregnant woman feel like she is nothing but a vessel for them, starting by calling her "the birth mother" before the adoption is even finalized, and culminating by having them there for the delivery and cutting the umbilical cord. Why not show us the pain and the grief that the birth mother feels after loosing her child to adoption. Finally, let's watch the adoptive parents--the show's hero and heroine--close the adoption 6-12 months later, and tell the birth mother that their promises of openness are now moot. And when they do this, let's see the flashbacks of the adopters going on and on about how they want an open adoption, along with flashbacks of the birth mother picking them because they were the couple who she was most convinced were committed to allowing her to remain a part of her child's life.

Of course, no show will ever do this. Our society doesn't even acknowledge that it happens. But in truth, it is the most common adoption story. It is the rule....not the exception.

[Vee]

Years ago, seven or eight at least, I was fed up with Eddie Alderson playing Matthew Buchanan on OLTL. At that time he was still pretty much just the cute kid who was Kristen Alderson's brother; he hadn't displayed much talent for acting - and wouldn't, IMO, til 2009, when he rapidly became the best teen actor on the show - and I thought it was a huge waste of the character.

At that time the Elizabeth Smart case and others like it were still relatively fresh in the news. So I came up with a story in which Matthew Buchanan would be abducted, and apparently murdered and mutilated.

He would go missing afterschool one day, just like many kids do. It would happen in January or February and run through sweeps and much of March. It would be played straight down the middle, procedural and very raw, the same way the show had handled the groundbreaking gang rape story with Marty in the '90s - the story would show you exactly how cops hunt for missing children and their abductors, exactly what the timetable and the investigation look like, exactly what usually comes of these kind of tragic cases. It would not pull a punch. Bo, Nora, John McBain and the LPD would discover physical remains, unusually gruesome ones for a soap that would match Matthew's DNA and provide seemingly incontrovertible proof of death, but no body. An apparent perpetrator would be collared and confess. After saying goodbye to his parents the morning of his disappearance, Matthew would never be seen again.

In the aftermath of their tragic loss, Bo and Nora would finally reunite after years of separation. Their anguish and the loss of a sweet boy everyone loved would galvanize the town for the remainder of the year, and Matthew's parents would remain haunted - watching old videotapes of their son, etc. The show would move on.

Then, on New Year's Eve, Bo would awaken from sleep to hear the television on in Nora's living room (Nora still had her house back then). Heading downstairs, he would discover a bedraggled, feral street person staring at the TV, at a fuzzy home video of Matthew and his parents in happier times. Of course, when Bo goes to the wild-eyed waif, he discovers it is Matthew - played by a new, more talented young actor than Eddie Alderson had shown himself to be in the mid-2000s. After being absent for the better part of a year, Matthew is alive, traumatized and possibly amnesiac, someone has held him prisoner and no one knows why. (It would have likely led back to a new woman Kevin Buchanan would have become involved with in the spring, in a totally unrelated storyline - which would lead into some weird, dark gothic [!@#$%^&*] about why she did all this that has nothing to do with cartoon villains like Carlo Hesser.)

I dunno, it was a fun idea. The main hook was the gritty treatment of child abduction. And Matthew would have had an entirely new personality and identity afterwards - one he might never have broken out of.

[amybrickwallace]

Not a bad idea - and I'm sure you would have written it much better than...OK, which one was the OLTL writer, Ron or Frank? I always get them confused.

[Vee]

It is Ron. But Dena Higley was writing the show back then, and she was far worse.

[amybrickwallace]

Got it, thanks!

[cassadine1991]

That would've been an awesome dark and tragic storyline

[amybrickwallace]

Not to mention that Eddie Alderson was a very natural young actor with charisma to spare. He totally would have pulled it off.

[Vee]

At the time, he wasn't, at all. He was basically the cute non-actor kid who was Kristen's brother who would occasionally have a scene with his onscreen parents - the idea was partially devised as a way to recast him with someone more talented, like one of the two boys who played Jack and Carly's sons on ATWT. Eddie's Matthew would have been the one to disappear, the recast would do the return. Eddie did prove himself in years since, of course, but this was before he bothered acting.

[ReddFoxx]

An actual mental illness story rooted in scientific fact, like one about bipolar. Seeing as bipolar can be crippling, it would be interesting to see a soap take a main character and descend them into bipolar, including showing the manic state and all, which can be quite terrifying and then the stage where medication comes in. Schizophrenia wouldn't be touched either, even less so than bipolar, a character hearing voices and having delusions would be quite jarring for a lot of viewers. Soaps do mental illness, but in an over the top manner that is beyond old.

[slick jones]

Sonny Corinthos has bi-polar disease on GH. It was done well at the time, as MB is bipolar IRL.

[NothinButAttitude]

Y&R should've done this with Sharon. Instead, they used her mental illness story as a way to push her back in Nick's orbit, which to this day pisses me off. Now I just wish they would've slapped her with a brain tumor (to explain her erratic actions) and be done with it.

[cassadine1991]

i don't think I've seen a brutal death like this on a US soap, well maybe Frankie Frame