ALL: Storylines that took the biggest risks and got the biggest rewards?

[Broderick]

Dark Shadows definitely gets the award for taking a chance.  Who on earth would've thought a vampire would become a successful leading man on a 1967 daytime soap?  lol.  

They took another huge risk, as well -- the 1795 storyline.  After about a year on the air, they completely ditched every character on the show (except Victoria Winters and Barnabas Collins), left them all sitting unseen around a séance table for months and months, and introduced the audience to an entirely new slate of characters from a different century.  And they went into it blazing, with no intention of showing the previous characters until the 1795 storyline was finished.  This move had the potential to alienate and confuse viewers and result in the show's cancellation.  Instead, it propelled them to higher ratings than they'd seen before.   

[amybrickwallace]

None of it should have worked, but it did. Good call!

[Planet Soap]

I don't think any of Y&R's risky deaths had any payoffs in the last 20 years: Ryan, Brad, Drucilla, Colleen, Cassie, Delia, John. I don't  To go back further not even killing Rex did anything for the show.

Worse yet, Y&R poorly invested in any children born on the show (after about the mid 90s) going on to impact story in a major capacity. So killing Colleen and Cassie was wasted potential of the next generation of characters.

Edited October 31, 2021 by ironlion

[Frank2803]

The Felicia Gallant and John Hudson affair on Another World 

It gave those actors involved the best material they had in a while 

[Soaplovers]

I think the reason the 1795 story worked was because the show wisely used Victoria as a guide.  The audience had an attachment to her since she was the introduction to the present day Collins family so it made sense she was the intro to the 1795 branch of the family.

That's the reason the introduction to Barnabas and later 1795 worked..because the show used the relatable outsider (Victoria) to usher it in.

[teplin]

Redeeming AW's Rachel and shifting the show's focus from Alice and Steve to her was certainly risky, and it paid off both critically and ratings-wise ... at least for a while.

Days moving from the intense psychological drama of the 70s to the action-adventure format of the 80s could have been deemed a risk, and it worked for them.

Marlena's possession was a big risk and it paid off handsomely. Having Marlena kill off a bunch of characters as the Salem Stalker was a big risk -- so big that the show decided to reverse itself.

 

[Broderick]

For sure -- like the audience at home, Miss Winters was the "outsider looking in" on all the weirdness and spookiness.   She helped us to understand (and care about) the present day Collins family when the show premiered, and she helped us to care about the 1795 members of the family as well when she met them.  

Still, what a creative risk to remove virtually every character off the canvas in one big Friday afternoon swoop and leave them all in suspended animation, unseen by the audience, for four months or more.  

[titan1978]

Yeah, I don’t think anybody had any idea.  She seemed competent as a kid, they gave her stuff to do, but this really had complex layers to deal with. They hired and acting coach to help her and Michael Sutton.  He was pretty green at first too, but by the last year they were just both really strong performers I felt.

GH was my show as a kid/teen, and while it was always enjoyable and fun and adventurous it did not dig deep very often in my viewing.  Riche really changed all that, and then Labine just went there.  People really had the chance to act out a lot of human emotion and almost all the actors really rose to the occasion.

[Soapfan8]

the Brooke and deacon story on Bold.

[ReddFoxx]

It wasn't necessarily too risky, but Brooke and Deacon's affair on B&B was a bold story that had good payoff. Brooke had slept with other women's husbands, but to do that to her daughter was a new low. The way it was done was exactly how soap operas should be done.

[Frank2803]

Bianca's lesbian storyline 

Up until that point gay characters were one off characters or were not part of the legacy family 

Really risky giving the biggest soap character of all time a gay offspring 

[watson71]

Killing Lucas on Another World, then turning his wife Felicia into an alcoholic on Another World.  Using a popular character in a storyline like this is a risk, but for over a year Linda Dano did a fantastic and realistic job playing an alcoholic who hit rock bottom.  The storyline won Dano an Emmy and the show was nominated for writing Emmys as well.  Felicia's intervention is on point- great acting, great writing, great directing.  Dano, Alicia Coppola, Stephen Schnetzer, and Vicky Wyndham all gave great performances during that intervention.

[BingCherry]

The return of Roger Thorpe on GL.  Revitalized the show at a time when it had become slightly stale and gave us years of amazing work from Michael Zaslow and Maureen Garrett, not to mention creating new ties among the existing ensemble. 

[Maxim]

Brooke and Deacon. 2001-2002. Soap Gold. 

[Frank2803]

Well deserved Emmy winning performance from Linda Dano. She should have more than one Emmy for her work on Another World 

Talking about breathing fresh air into a show 

You could tell the writers really liked writing for the character