In hindsight, what moment would have been the perfect ending to your soap (before things got awful)?

[Soaplovers]

Dark Shadows:

When Barnabas, Julia, and stokes came back from 1840 to 1970/1.  They're greeted by Liz, Carolyn, Quentin, David, etc alive and well.

And maybe a mention that their efforts also resulted in Vicki being alive and mentioned off screen as living happily ever after..and being revealed as a Collins relative and happy with Burke. 

[Melroser]

I hated that plot as the ending. Maybe if the wedding had been more serious and they extended the character messages to Cass and Lila (really to the audience) it would have better.  Rachel should have been the featured character on the last ep. She could have been sitting with Matt and Amanda talking about how the wedding stirred up memories and she misses the rest of the family. Then show flashbacks of Mac, Ada, Jamie and Steve, and others. 

[j swift]

I think the other side to this question, (and maybe it needs its own topic), is when has a soap opera made a comeback from a low point in its history? 

Some might cite Gloria Monty's fabled first run at GH.  However, her success was due in part to creative decisions, as well as, the heightened interest in the rest of the ABC line-up, a very successful marketing campaign with "love in the afternoon", and mistakes made by competing networks in not modernizing their soaps.

I would be happy with many of the ending cited in this topic, if it meant that more writers and producers got the opportunities to create their own soaps after these culminations aired.  But, I would hate to see Y&R end after the Jabot takeover, if it meant a third hour of CBS gameshows.

[titan1978]

You could say the same happened at DAYS when Reilly arrived, or even a decade earlier on the same show when they started centering more on the supercouple thing and their ratings started to climb again after a long period of misfires.

Even Y&R was just kind of plodding along until the last year of Bell’s work and Alden being more vocal as the co-HW, before taking over completely.

[SouthernChick]

I would have ended DAYS in July 1999 - with John and Marlena’s wedding being the final days.

[DemetriKane]

AMC 

Ending right after the Montgomery Kane 2005 family wedding would have been an appropriate time imo. 

Edited December 27, 2021 by DemetriKane