5 soap murder mysteries where the non-contract player did it

[dragonflies]

From EW:

 

http://community.ew.com/2015/09/02/soap-opera-non-contract-player-murders/

[Soapsuds]

Will on ATWT might have been non contract player but he seemed more of contract player. The Carolyn Crawford murder was committed by a non contract player.

[dragonflies]

Wow I had forgotten that Will had killed Rose. I thank him for that lol. Rose was annoying

[Cheap21]

Port Charles - General Homicide killer being Greg

GH - Text Message Killer being Diego. He was dead and wanst even on the show!

AMC - Satin Slayer being Alexander Cambias. Ditto as above

 

Rose was great and MB was better as her than Lily in her final years IMO

[DRW50]

AW - SIn Stalker/whatever the hell that Fax Newman garbage was

[vetsoapfan]

All these awful stories make me thank God I was able to enjoy the brilliant Henry Slesar's excellent work spinning tales of murder and suspense on THE EDGE OF NIGHT. There has not been a well-written murder mystery on daytime TV for decades, alas.

[NothinButAttitude]

Ugh. Don't remind me of the mess. I still don't know his purpose for going on a murder spree. I just found that story to be uber-tacky. 

 

That's because Slesar threaded his characters in long before they committed a crime. The audience would have an opinion about the culprit before being discovered. Murder mysteries make no sense when the killer is some extra that we know nothing about.

 

But all this talk about murder mysteries is so ironic when I spent most of yesterday watching all the clips I could on YT on Doug Cummings (of ATWT) murder. Marland perfectly crafted that murder mystery together. He got rid of dud characters like Marie and Cal, and tied the whole story ingeniously to Kim's past. Still don't understand why Kathy Hays, Julianne Moore, Hilary B Smith, Gregg Marx, and anyone else involved in that story didn't get an EMMY. Hell, a special EMMY. The acting across the board was superb. 

[Sindacco]

DAYS: The Killing Pool.

The victim was first thought to be Kristen, then Susan, and finally the never before mentioned character Penelope. The main suspects were Laura and Celeste but the real killer was Edmund.

[slick jones]

GH: Susan Moore killed by Crane Tolliver, Lila's ex

[Khan]

Was AMC's Jennifer Bassey on-contract when Marian Colby murdered Zach Grayson?

[soapfan770]

Once again, another dumb article on soap murder mysteries from Entertainment Weekly. 

 

Of course there are others: 

-George Rawlins on Y&R was murdered by a character who wasn't on yet(Mark Derwin of GL fame's Adrian). 

-The Terror Island killer turned out on Sunset Beach turned out to be Ben's evil twin brother we didn't know about.

-When idiotic Julia Larrabee was killed on ATWT the primary suspects were Lily, Luke, and her brother Keith on ATWT. Of course the killer was the non-contract Les(how the hell did he get out of that van?).

-Did Y&R ever resolve the death of Richard Hightower???

 

[quartermainefan]

I don't think so, but she was just as important to the show as many contract players.

Agatha Christie said she would write the murder first and then construct the puzzle after so by the time the clues were placed there was only one possible solution.  When soaps write murders they tend to do intellectually not challenging puzzles where the murder could be anybody.   I will never forget Roger waking up from his coma to kill Michael Grande on OLTL because it was so silly, but if you go to youtube and watch the explanation for EoN "who killed Nola Patterson" it is a lot more satisfying because it actually makes sense and you can go back and see the sequence of events the explanation discusses.  The recent GH mystery was very poorly constructed:  not only were there no clues, but no one was even investigating it and the motive and police figuring it out all came from nowhere.  When Marian killed Zach on AMC there was a telltale clue left at the crime from the get go and if you thought about it you might have figured it out.   On GH it was "by the way, you have no clues but the killer is..."  Murder mysteries are my favorite stories of all, but soaps rarely do them right.

[Khan]

IA -- and just as you have intimated, EON seems to have been an exception to the rule.  By Henry Slesar's own admission, though, EON was, by nature, more heavily plotted then most other soaps, which tend to be more character-driven (theoretically, that is).  Ergo, that COULD be why many other whodunits don't quite succeed.  A murder mystery has to be planned to the most minute detail, and that's tough to accomplish when stories are modified frequently thanks to the whims of actors, producers, fans and network execs.

[Vee]

This article is poorly done. Yes, technically some of these culprits were off-contract but many (Will Munson, etc.) were prominent or long-running characters.

[Pine Charles]

I agree that this is a poorly written article.

And to be fair, Janet knocked the police guard out with a lamp.  Haha.

 

 

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