Which death of a character was totally unnecessary and damaging?

[Khan]

 

Oh, how I WISH AMC had had the guts to do just that.  They could have even given her a classically soapy, Camille-esque death, with some incurable disease, and scenes filled with noble sacrifices and stiff upper lips.  I didn't care.  Just as long as it meant no more of that damn Bianca.

[AmandainNC28655]

  @Skin  I agree with you.  I think they wanted to gut a historic family for shock and awe maybe?? Or maybe it was to boost ratings?? I think what these shows realized was that killing these characters ended up causing viewers to tune out.  

[Soap-princess]

John Abbott

[titan1978]

It was pretty clear to me, maybe right around 2006 or so, that TPTB came to the realization that the genre was really dying, and they just gave up on protecting any characters for future story and the foundations of their shows.  Everything was based on one sweeps period to the next.

 

People like Brad and Colleen could have simply been written out.  Same with Georgie and Emily on GH.  Alan would have been a little more difficult.  There were certainly people I would have released from contracts before Stuart Damon (who by all accounts was a team player and would have probably taken a reduction in his next contract).

 

I guess we should be lucky that GH didn’t kill off Bobbie once JFP was so disgusted she wouldn’t let a camera film her kissing someone, because she was too old and the audience didn’t want to see older couples.

[Skin]

 

Bianca is pretty unique to the canvas (at least Eden's version was), and considering all that she went through it wouldn't be fair to audiences to watch her go through a slow death. There were other people on the canvas who could have been killed off that way who would have had the same level of impact but were not useful to the canvas during that time (Leven Rambin's Lily, and Eva La Rue's Maria come to mind). The time for Kane noble teary sacrifices was during the Michael Cambias storyline. It would have been more meaningful to the show to have Kendell take the fall for Bianca, and go to jail and then have her reintroduced to the canvas in 2006. Lord knows Kendell's character suffered during those earlier years with Zach and that surrogacy story.  

 

Another death that felt just wrong to me was the death of Jen Rappaport. I know she wasn't beloved, but the violence of her death will always feel cruel and gratuitously violent. The storyline had little value in terms of shock, and didn't have much long ranging implications. It was hard to now see Lindsay as a husk of what she once was after her daughter died and she had such a haunting quality to her that the Nora and Lindsay rivalry never sparked again. It just felt like life had beaten her down in a Blanche Dubois kind of way. 

 

Similarly killing off Reid in ATWT wasn't necessarily heat-wrenching but as if someone was idea strapped and kind of spiteful and sore that they couldn't pair Luke up with Noah and send him away on a boat to parts unknown. I don't know if that was writer lead, or if the writers feared fan backlash or what but it's such an abrupt ending that it still sticks out on rewatches on that Nuke channel on Youtube. 

[titan1978]

I agree.  The only member of that family I hated was Kale Brown’s Sam.  At that point in my soap viewing nobody had ever been shoved down my throat so much that I didn’t like.  Plenty of actors had ghosted airtime, but often these shows centered around someone because the audience was responding to them, not the just the whim of the EP of the show.

 

And it did mess up Lindsay, and all the fun was kind of gone.  Lindsay was a lot of fun to watch until then.

[ccroom50]

As The World Turns(ATWT)Dr. Reid Oliver

[Bill Bauer]

 

If you're referring to the time they first slept together, I don't think she was drunk. It's actually on Youtube and her motivation for having sex with Hal was portrayed as her grieving over Craig. 

I think death is a big part of soap opera so I very rarely have a problem with soap characters being killed off. The only exception I have to that is when major historic characters are killed off to give lazy, uncreative writers an excuse not to bring them back on canvas. Days has been very guilty of that in recent years with David, Bill, Laura, et al. 

[DemetriKane]

Y&R: John Abbott

 

GH: AJ Quatermaine

 

OLTL: Nash Brennan, Jared Banks.

 

AMC: Too many to name. Dixie, Natalie, Jesse, Leo, Vanessa, Simone, Gillian, Jenny, Josh, Ritchie, etc.

The Pine Valley deaths owns this thread to me Periodt. I can’t think of one death that wasn’t a mistake, pointless or didn’t robbed the show many years of storylines. Not one!

Yes killing off characters like Laura Cudahy and Will Cortlandt produced great big moments for the show but wasn’t worth it in the end. I believe they realize this with Laura which is why they had Brooke adopt another girl with the same damn name LOL. Will on the other hand was untapped potential and I would have preferred him to live and be the resident bad boy for another decade. Maybe he could’ve been the one to rape Bianca.

Edited February 23, 2021 by cassistan

[Soapsuds]

Atwt- Bryant and Reid.

[Khan]

Trevor's death on AMC, which is referenced upthread, truly felt like someone BTS had an axe to grind, either with the character, or with James Kiberd, or both.

[titan1978]

Man, Bryant.  I didn’t get it when they did it, and never did.  Reid sucked as well, but Bryant was a real waste because the show was still airing for many years after that one.

 

I know this one may not be popular, but I also think Rose on ATWT should not have been killed either.  I hate when a show does such a major character tied to the core and then kills them off within a couple of years of their arrival.  Hate it.  And Will as the killer never seemed like a good direction for me.  Plus I think Rose added something, certainly to Martha.

 

The only thing I hate worse is undoing a death and then killing them again. I think I will call it being Carlivatied from now on- Victor Lord, Frank Smith, AJ, Duke...I’m sure I’m missing some.

[Dr Neil Curtis]

Dr. Laura Spencer-Horton

[MinnaH]

Y&R: Brad, Colleen, Diane, Dru, Ricky

 

B&B: Macy, Darla, Aly, Caroline II

[FrenchBug82]

Absolutely agree with most of your list but for Dru.
Hear me out: I wish Dru was still here. But clearly Rowell wanted to leave and she had caused enough trouble that they wouldn't want her back. In that context, it made sense to kill Dru off rather than write her off. There would have been no way to justify her not being around all that has happened since if the character was still alive somewhere. So considering the BTS considerations, I'll allow that one.

The others had no real reason behind them other than a writer being lazy/