Soaps infamously - and logically - drop storylines all the time.
Most of the time for legit reasons:
- behind-the-scenes (HR issues with a performer or between performers, performer abruptly leaves, change of headwriter or producer)
- creative issues (story does not work or audience rejects the story)
What I was interested in bringing up were stories that were clearly either seeded or started and disappeared without us ever getting an answer as to where this was intended to go and why the direction changed abruptly.
One I am thinking about what when Maura West's Diane married Victor on Y&R. They rushed the marriage, spent a LOT of time showing the terms of the prenup and started showing Victor acting bizarre and controlling (I remember a creepy scene around a necklace he wanted her to wear)... They were pretty clearly setting the stage for a story there (and maybe two stories as they really insisted she would get nothing unless the marriage lasted a year which hinted this would be a later plot point) and then... nothing. The very fact of the marriage was dropped in a hot minute and almost entirely memory-holed six months later. It was very abrupt and very weird and we never really found out what the storyline was supposed to be about.
On Another World, around the time Carmen Duncan took over as Iris returned from Australia, another character with an Australian accent popped up (was her name Sheila?) in a different storyline and it seemed like too big a coincidence. But the character went nowhere and we were never explained what the initial plan might have been.
On Days, there was once a phone call where Victor said Daniel must never know who his real father was - that was after we had learned he was Maggie's. Nothing ever came of that, did it?
What other stories do we remember were hinted at and planted seeds for and just completely dropped and never mentioned again without the reason why ever made public?
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Soaps infamously - and logically - drop storylines all the time.
Most of the time for legit reasons:
- behind-the-scenes (HR issues with a performer or between performers, performer abruptly leaves, change of headwriter or producer)
- creative issues (story does not work or audience rejects the story)
What I was interested in bringing up were stories that were clearly either seeded or started and disappeared without us ever getting an answer as to where this was intended to go and why the direction changed abruptly.
One I am thinking about what when Maura West's Diane married Victor on Y&R. They rushed the marriage, spent a LOT of time showing the terms of the prenup and started showing Victor acting bizarre and controlling (I remember a creepy scene around a necklace he wanted her to wear)... They were pretty clearly setting the stage for a story there (and maybe two stories as they really insisted she would get nothing unless the marriage lasted a year which hinted this would be a later plot point) and then... nothing. The very fact of the marriage was dropped in a hot minute and almost entirely memory-holed six months later. It was very abrupt and very weird and we never really found out what the storyline was supposed to be about.
On Another World, around the time Carmen Duncan took over as Iris returned from Australia, another character with an Australian accent popped up (was her name Sheila?) in a different storyline and it seemed like too big a coincidence. But the character went nowhere and we were never explained what the initial plan might have been.
On Days, there was once a phone call where Victor said Daniel must never know who his real father was - that was after we had learned he was Maggie's. Nothing ever came of that, did it?
What other stories do we remember were hinted at and planted seeds for and just completely dropped and never mentioned again without the reason why ever made public?