When was your favorite soap broken?

[titan1978]

Can you pinpoint a moment or storyline when in hindsight, you realize the soaps you loved were broken beyond repair?  It could even be one you loved, but now realize that it maybe went too far and changed the foundation of the show too much (Marlena possessed I’m looking in your direction).
 

I was watching a bunch of YouTube clips the last couple of days, and I came across a GH clip of Luke and Laura signing divorce papers.  I think that moment did it for me with GH.

 

You have this singularly iconic couple, and a wedding that is equally iconic inside and outside of daytime.  I was fine with them fighting, with the storyline issues that had driven them further and further apart.  But there was a point where I think it went too far, and the divorce was like a line in the sand.  You were all in on what Guza had started in his second HW stint- deconstructionist storytelling with no going back once that happened.  I know he wasn’t there at the time, but JFP was and she has no problem destroying shows.

 

It’s not even really about them.  It’s about the type of story the show was going to do now.  The breaking of tradition in such fundamental ways.  I see a direct line from that divorce to Alan being killed off, the show centering fully on Jason/Carly/Sonny, Ethan is Luke’s son, Rick as having drugged Laura, etc.  if we can break them up, fully, we can do anything to these characters.  Even toss them aside.

[Khan]

Love can save the world.  But, it couldn't save GUIDING LIGHT.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbRDxpafMGg

[beebs]

With DAYS, that point came surprisingly late: the past year things have gone so off the rails, particularly with the death-means-nothing vaccine, and the stupidity with Steveno and turning Julie into Miss MAGA. The show has been crazy before, but always seemed to hold a sense of reverence for their history, at least enough so not to completely stomp on it. They moved forward instead of constantly messing with the past. I honestly don't know if there is a moment I could really pinpoint as "the last straw" for me, but there were a number of WTFs in 2019 that finally killed it for me.

GH, honestly I tuned out pretty much forever the second it became clear that I was supposed to root for The World's Most Boring Man aka Jason. The propping was constant, and the moral code of the show shifted so extremely by that point that, even being a tween, I could never understand why RoboHitman and The Forehead were supposed to be in any way appealing. They were just awful. Final nail in the coffin was Sonny holding Jax at gunpoint in Robin's foyer in front of her daughter and Robin being totally cool with it and not even chastising Sonny SLIGHTLY for having a gun 10ft from a small child. The absurdity of it all made me realize they would never have ANYONE in the Mob Squad face consequences for any behaviour a normal person would abhor, and it just stopped having any impact for me.

Y&R for me was a combination of Jill's parentage mess, combined with Marrrrrco, and the twin doppelgangers. Once you cross that line into absurdity, you just can't put the genie back in the bottle. They keep trying, but they keep reverting back to it, and it gets worse every time.

GL was absolutely the clone and San Cristobel. I never came back after that, and I was absolutely fed up of every show aping DAYS.

[te.]

DAYS: Killing pool. I don't know why, but it was clear that it was going south even if there's been periods I've found acceptable.

 

(And yes, I know a lot of people will YELL that it was broken the moment JER stepped on set but whatever, I grew up with JER, deal with it)

[Khan]

AMC: One word. Fusion.

[NothinButAttitude]

Guiding Light: When they started pimping Jonathan and Tammy, which I found to be disgusting. It didn't help either that they ruined the brother/sister relationship that Josh and Cassie formed previous years to make them lovers. That along with Harley/Gus eating up the show and the lack of sets made me realize that this show was broken to the point of no repair. I will say that Jill Lorie Hurst did wonders when she stepped in but the damage was done. 

 

ATWT: Janet & Liberty Ciccone 

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[NothinButAttitude]

YR: Making Michael, Phyllis, and Kevin the moral centers of this show will destroying Sharon beyond repair. Also, Genie Francis (a daytime legend) biting people onscreen was enough for me to chuck the deuces. 

 

B&B: Stephanie having Brooke raped. Stephanie did a lot but she'd never go that far. 

[Paul Raven]

Y&R

The revelation that Katherine had a child leading to the Katherine/Jill fiasco which led to Tucker being her son which lead to Devon being his son - a series of nonsensical coincidences and rewrites.

Add in Sheila as Phyllis, Katherine switching Jill's child, Cane pretending to be Phillip etc ...

[Dion]

 

 

The Deconstruction era should have been really great but unfortunately the required reconstruction that needed to happen with Tony, Luke and Laura etc was either sloppily executed or non-existent.

 

Days' point of no return was when John and Princess Gina had sex on that submarine. Instead of trying to get the characters naturally into a space where it would be emotionally credible for them to have an affair, contrived plot points such as brainwashing, microchips etc got them there instead.

 

B&B went downhill when Brooke went through a period of getting married every year. And bring Taylor back from the dead a second time was a sign that Brooke and Ridge would never settle down.

 

Y&R was definitely making Katherine and Jill mother and daughter. It set a bad precedent.

[DramatistDreamer]

ATWT- With a series of HWs writing mostly uneven, inconsistent stories in the late 90s,  mixed with some unfortunate casting choices, as well as firings and sidelining of key characters, the show became a caricature of itself by the early '00s. The last few years of the series were just sad. There were some reasonably compelling storylines and talented actors during that period but overall, the show couldn't/didn't sustain any of it and the last fifteen years paled in comparison to the shows previous decades.

[Fevuh]

For me, B&B with the constantly fickle characters - getting annulments and married within the same week and the same triangles and quadrangles.  Bill/Ridge/Brooke, Liam and the women.  But Quinn really did it for me with all of her antics and never having any real punishment....and sleeping with her son's brother.  But B&B honestly to me was just filler since its inception.  It really is just silly.  I remember Stephanie being homeless and no one ever knows who any of them are even though they are supposedly world famous.  

 

World Turns definitely took a nosedive during the years of Zoey and that Kasnoff girl.  It was dreadful.  Pilar...who I can't believe went on to other things....whoever played her.  The show pretty much hit rock bottom when they brought on the opening credits with the seasons changing and geese flying.  Kind of made a comeback during the Gwen years...

 

GL well we know when that happened.  The all knowing Teen Cleva, Time travelling Reva, etc.  One of the high points in the 90's was Annie/Cynthia Watros vs. Reva.  I remember the show hitting good ratings during that time.  My favorite time periods were Lillian's affair with Ed, and Alan Michael vs. Frank fighting for Eleni...and Frank and Eleni's wedding on 5th street is one of my favorite weddings of all time...along with Josh and Reva at Cross Creek and Phillip and Beth on Valentine's Day.  But Frank and Eleni will always be memorable to me because they altered the opening credits to play "Goin' to the Chapel and we're gonna get Married."  Ah the good old days.  Y&R nor B&B ever had a place in my heart like GL and World Turns when they were at their best.  

[titan1978]

It is hard to argue that Jill being Katherine’s daughter (and the convoluted mess that resulted from constantly tweaking that) was a wrong step by Y&R that led them to loose their identity and become just another soap over time.  It took more from Jill than it gave to her.

 

Also- if they had invested in Mac and Billy, they had the fuel for another 20 years of stories for Jill and Katherine.  There was no need to tie them together as mother and lost daughter (and ultimately dismantle them again).  Just like young Phillip had reignited them for years, leading through him, Nina, and his death and them fighting with Nina for his son’s inheritance.  That was close to 10 years of story.  It was already set up for a third generation.

[Khan]

 

Exactly.  DAYS clearly wanted it (meaning, a John/Hope (or Gina) relationship) to happen.  They saw...something between Kristian Alfonso and Drake Hogestyn and wanted to explore it.  Which is fine, but (like you suggest, @Dion) why not take the time to get fans to see it as well?  A storyline where John is truly torn between Marlena and Hope/Gina would've been so much more satisfying than what we had instead.

 

IDK what Jack Smith had hoped to accomplish by making Y&R's Jill and Kay mother and daughter.  (It WAS Jack Smith's idea, right?  Lynn Marie Latham hadn't hopped aboard yet?).  Perhaps, if Jill had been introduced as an orphan, or if Nikki had been revealed as Kay's long-lost daughter instead, the whole idea of Kay having a child she later gave up would have worked better, but I don't know.

[Gray Bunny]

DAYS is famous for some truly WTF moments (one that just popped into mind was Austin & Greta in Virtual Eden circa fall of 2000) but the whole Salem Serial Killer of 2014 and beyond: the Captive Island, complete with force fields, volcanoes, coffins seemingly traveling through the hot magma of earth, Captive Castle, doppelganger Jennifer when Jack escaped all the way back to Salem and back again to the European castle over the course of one night, etc. etc. etc.  Plus, around the same time was all the Salem studs plus Sami-as-Stan casually going to Afghanistan to save Phillip but lo and behold, evil Andre DiMera is also there! That whole era (2004-2006) was such a laughingstock. 

 

The overall lack of budget, starting in 2009, which meant a lack of creativity and the coincidences of people running into each other to a degree never seen before on daytime (other than GL's Main Street), took away the overall spark and "magic" of Salem and therefore DAYS. 

[Khan]

 

If OLTL could come back from Eterna, as some fans suggest, then GL could have come back from those missteps.

 

For me, however, the severe reduction in budget and production values that came with the move to Peapack, along with the fact that Ellen Wheeler and her team were CLEARLY in over their proverbial heads with the setup from day one, proved that GL had truly, TRULY reached the point of no return.  The show had chopped off too much of itself just to keep going.  If GL were going to survive Peapack and beyond, the show would've needed a thorough overhaul -- something akin to how it had reinvented itself after phasing out the Rev. Ruthledge and his flock in the mid-1940's -- that, frankly, it didn't have the time OR the money for.