When was your favorite soap broken?

[mikelyons]

AMC: The rape of Bianca Montgomery. That was when I turned off All My Children for good. It was ugly, vile, and unnecessary. 

 

OLTL: Jill Farren Phelps lands at One Life to Live. The show never recovered.

 

Y&R: Y&R was broken for me when Lynn Marie Latham came in and threw out the lighting grids, the music, the costumes, and flavor of the show. Coupled that with CBS' unending interference, it was a quick decline to the bottom on every front. 

 

All Soaps: Endless doppelgängers, baby switches, back from the dead stories, raping heroines for shock value, recycling awful writers and producers, hiring actors who can't act, and on and on and on... 

[KristinG79]

Brad Bell taking over as EP/HW of B&B.

[SteelCity]

Days of our Lives post Salem Stalker. From the denouement on it's seemed like the show is in a constant rebuild mode and nothing really works. I would also venture to say that the death of Days came from giving James Reilly carte blanche to tear the show apart.

[Fevuh]

It's crazy how times have changed.  I think well - that was 1986/87...but that's now 33 years ago.  But Capitol was cancelled with a rating between 5.1 and 5.8 and CBS was disappointed.  Imagine what they'd give for those ratings now.  And Capitol I don't think ever went above the middle of the pack.  And B&B started out getting similar ratings and I don't know that it's ever gotten better ratings than Capitol.  Everyone else's ratings went down and that's how they moved up in rankings.  

[titan1978]

All of them would be salivating for those kind of ratings.  But we can’t compare them because those people are not watching today.  A middle of the pack soap with today’s audience is what, between B&B and GH? So 1.8 to 2.5? I wonder if the show Conboy was producing was just too expensive.  He was from the lavish school of production.  Not that Bell was cheap.  But a network suit knows what they are getting with Bill Bell.

 

Didn’t B&B get into the 6’s though?  I seem to recall them being higher than 5’s when Y&R was in their 90’s glory and Reilly had driven the DAYS numbers up to second place.

[mango]

GH -- When TPTB thought it would be a meaty story having Emily raped by her husband's doppelganger. It was vile. I forget if it was Pratt or Guza claiming that they would tell the story with "respect" and "dignity" to honour sexual assault survivors only to have it brushed under a rug for whatever reason. Nikolas being Emily's rock lasted only a second, and he was quick to have an affair because Emily wasn't ready for intimacy. Whether it was because Tyler Christopher needed the time off for other projects or wanted more of a challenge by playing both characters, nothing really recovered after that point for me. It probably didn't help that the actors broke up in real life, but the 180 was jarring with Emily moving on with Sonny of all people, and her being wowed by his magic penis all of a sudden. Emily and Nikolas' eventual reunion was a disappointment, leading to her murder, ghost/brain tumor whatever it was, and Emily's twin coming out of the woodwork. 

[Gray Bunny]

 

Oh yes, definitely. In fact, a lot of soaps were hitting 6's as late as 1993. Looking at the numbers, a lot of shows (save for the P&G ones) were on an upswing around '93 and the first half of '94 until OJ..... 

[titan1978]

Everything in this post is a horrible reminder of why Guza and JFP drove me away for months at a time and eventually for years back then.

 

Emily and Sonny (puke) was just about the worst thing they tried to make happen on this show.  And Jason and Carly being horrified by it was maybe the last time there was really drama between them that seemed like it would keep them on opposite sides forever.  

[soapfan770]

ATWT: There could be a ton of moments in ATWT’s last 14 years I could pinpoint, but one of last sticking points for me was Jennifer Munson’s death just for an Emmy grab in 2006. The show lost all momentum after that, ranging from fun loving Maddie becoming depressing in a serial killer story to stupid Jade and her rivalry with Gwen & Cleo to Danni sleeping with “daddy” Craig to the Z Twins to Damian drugging Meg to Blackie. Ughhh!  
 

B&B: Stephanie lets a drunk Brooke get raped by some perp. Or better yet, anything Thudley Bell has done since killing off Macy. 

Days: I could stretch back to the Tom

Langan era or even Mike&Carrie’s flying bed but I won’t. That much hyped reboot in 2011 when a bunch of unnecessary characters came back for horrendous stories. TBH I may have been in the minority but I was fine with what Days had and actually enjoyed Rafe & Sami becoming the new Roman & Marlena even through it seemed off; Chad 1.0 and Will SHOULD still be together! I hope those fickle shitty Days fans got everything they asked for, even going back to the Days fans that complained about the change in Marlena’s bed sheets back in ‘05.
 

GL: @Khan mentioned only love can save the world, but I’d argue that the hairy hands opening was the WORST, even worse than the 2003-05 opening and made worse after how nice the 2005 opening was! Anyways I think the Conboy & Westin era did this show in but it was compounded even worse by the WEDNESDAY episodes. 
 

Y&R: The moment Cassie died in May 2005 just because it was sweeps month. Thanks a [!@#$%^&*] lot John Smith!!!’

 

[edgeofnik]

AMC was my first soap. Even when I gravitate to CBS & NBC over the years, I always would check in. But I honestly refused to watch it again after the Bianca rape. I happened to watch part of that episode, not knowing what was planned. I did watch a few revival episodes, but I refused to ever watch it on ABC again. 
 

AW & GL seemed to hit a flashpoint with the pointless killings of Frankie & Maureen, respectively. For some reason, those really seemed like ‘no turning’ back moments. 
 

Y&R was never the same to me after the Lauren doppelgänger. It was the first time I intentionally avoided the show for a long time. Marco sent me away for a year.
 

For some reason I never quit ATWT. Unlike some of the other soaps, the bad eras didn’t sink the core for me. Yes, some bad/annoying characters or weak s/l but the show still stayed fairly grounded. 
 

 

[Vee]

 

I think much of the '90s DID story is a masterpiece and an inevitable conclusion, and I don't agree Viki's character never recovered. But I also can't necessarily wholly argue with a lot of these very valid points.

[DRW50]

 

You've made a lot of good points about the story and its strengths over the years, and how many elements were already there long before Malone addressed them. I don't want to put too much blame on Malone, because better writers and producers could have made better product with what he set up. I mostly just chose this as one jumping off point, but I can see where many would rather just focus on JFP, who gutted so much of the canvas. 

[Mitch]

Totally agree, even with Mo dead, Alex a shrew, Buzz chewing the scenery, Clones, etc. GL was still GL.  I think that Conwest just totally f*cked it up and Wheeler had no clue or the capacity to change course. Alex as a drug dealer? Ben the serial killer berated by Whomever Brad Cole was playing that week,  Antimonious, Rick and Phillip having a hand in Ross' death and yes, Jammy, Gush and the Coopers suddenly becoming the ultra clean core family (remember the few months they took over the Bauer house) killed it

 

However, I do have to say that San Cristobel really opened the crypt door for the show. Its like a bad early 90s show like Sunset Beach was grafted on to GL and we had two locations, with two sets of characters and the only link being Reva. 

[titan1978]

I didn’t watch GL back then.  But I had been through the late 1980’s and early 90’s on OLTL with Rauch.  And just seeing this story in soap mags, etc, it really screamed Rauch.  Take Reva out and put Tina or Viki in her place and the entire thing could have been on OLTL in 1990.

[Fevuh]

Another bad period on GL was making Holly a crazy stalker and kidnapper.

Awful.  I never thought of Holly the same.