Great Pitch, Poor Execution

[j swift]

We've all heard the maxim that entertainment is created by committee.  As a result, a writer could make an excellent pitch only to have it squandered by poor acting choices, bad directing, cheap sets, odd makeup, ugly hair, terrible casting, horrible breakdown writers, or even awful background music.  I would bet that there are dozens of writers who felt unfairly blamed for a bad plot line, when in reality the idea was good, but the production messed up the execution of the story.

I'll start the list with a controversial example. 

After the trauma of her daughter being kidnapped, her husband leaving her to care for a sick relative, and her son (who was switched at birth) being killed in car accident, a female cop turns to Xanax to help with sleep.  Eventually she becomes addicted to the prescription and rather than admitting her dependency she blames her emotionally unstable daughter.  Hitting rock bottom, she looses her job on the police force and becomes addicted to gambling.  That,of course, could have been the pitch for Nighttime Hope.  As bad as the story was produced, I maintain the idea was valid.

Here's another

Soaps have a history of ripping stories from the headlines.  The NXIVM cult seized the imagination of the country through true crime podcasts and documentaries.  The cult preyed on young women by promising empowerment, but they became enslaved by revealing secrets that would be harmful if they were revealed.  Now imagine Kristina Corinthos-Davis, a young woman who felt neglected by her career-driven mother, dropped out of college, and recently broke up with her first female romantic relationship.  That story would become GH's Dawn of the Day cult story.  The writer who pitched it had no idea that it would stretch out so long, or that the actor hired to lead the cult would not be charismatic, or that story would devolve into a fight over memory chips.  Again, probably a good pitch that was poorly executed.

The obvious sarcastic response would be that the original ideas were inherently flawed (which is why Oscar Wilde said that sarcasm is the lowest form of wit).  Or this whole thread will take an unpredictable tangent into discussing the career of Coby McLaughlin.  However, my intention is that I am interested in your perspective as viewers of stories that seemed like a good idea, but went wrong in execution. 

Edited February 12, 2022 by j swift

[Franko]

I like this topic. The first one that comes to mind is Casey the alien on General Hospital. It seems like it might have worked if the writers had kept the story limited to Anna and Robin, both vulnerable in the wake of what was then believed to be Duke dying for good. Expanding the story to Port Charles' latest bad guy (Faison), while understandable (since I'm sure they didn't want to just rip off E.T.), sorta undermined the emotional aspect.

ETA: Re-reading the Curlyqgrl summaries of 1990, it looks as though the Casey storyline was always intended to have both the emotional, relatable stuff (Anna and Robin), plus the action adventure (If Faison gets Robin's crystal, he could destroy the world!). I stand by my appraisal, though. Feels like GH was trying to meet its adventure quota for the year.

Edited February 12, 2022 by Franko

[allmc2008]

Could you have just asked:

Good on paper but bad when it was played out?

[Khan]

The Sonni/Solita storyline (GL) had "good bones," as they say, but the protracted '88 WGA strike made the story so convoluted that literally no one knew or understood what it was about anymore.

[FrenchBug82]

I could literally fill in pages of stories I would mention. I am an optimist but I'd say two-thirds of bad stories start with a pitch I might have said Maybe to.
For instance, 80% of the Bold and the Beautiful in the past ten years qualifies for me. Love a lot of the ideas on paper and then the weird pacing or weird narrative choices just ruins most of it.

Controversially, that's for instance how I feel about Eric's ED story. I find the idea of a story about an older man and a younger wife struggling with his ED and what it means for their marriage and his sense of self and her coping with how to handle her sexuality is in theory a really rich organic conflict for a couple that could make for great soap.
Instead it was played fast, cartoony and then when they added the layers of offensive with the cuckolded-by-a-black-man aspect there was no salvageable it
However, while people reacted badly as soon as it was floated, I think it could have had merits if told better as psychological soap rather than twist-and-affairs kind of soap.

But I have so many. 

[Soaplovers]

Guiding light 

Reva jumping off the bridge in late 1985 looked like a good idea because we've seen the path to rock bottom play out for 2 years...and had Pam Long not left in January 1986, we could have seen Reva rebuild her life in a organic way.  However, we saw her as a nursing volunteer and her taking in the mystery man Cane before she went back to Kyle then Josh again..all in a years time.

Young and the Restless 

Patty's return as Mary Jane masterminded by Victor seemed good on paper..and she was played with conviction by Stacy H....but the writers made her crazy..and it was written as camp instead of a serious story of mental illness.

[Faulkner]

I feel like a lot of the stories of that era on Y&R (from the initial Adam story to Cane as the imposter P3) seemed promising on paper. But MAB and her co-writers (Hamner, Sheffer, JG) lacked the skill to execute them without devolving into cheap camp.

[Khan]

No, bringing back Patty Williams after a twenty-five year absence as a garden-variety psycho, who concealed her true identity in order to win back the ex-husband she once shot multiple times, was an idea that looked bad even "on paper."

Same goes for bringing back Phillip Chancellor, whom we saw die on-screen, with the explanation that he faked his death because he was in the closet.

Edited February 13, 2022 by Khan

[irishguy1985]

The JT Murder on Y&R. Yes it did start off OK and it used a great deal of the veterans but not only did it went on far too long but by the time it was near the end it wasn't making any sense.

[Khan]

Didn't it all end with JT being diagnosed with a brain tumor?  

[irishguy1985]

  I Believe so... and then there was the whole part of the storyline with Nick in a JT mask or something like that.

[Sapounopera]

Maya on B&B. This could have been iconic. Something that would draw the attention of non-soap fans.  Brad Bell managed to make it boring, the story played out like a fairytale.

Plus the casting for such a character was all wrong.

[Faulkner]

That’s where the plot went off the rails. He should have stayed dead. But Cane as a con artist playing on the grief of Jill and the Chancellors at least could have been more interesting than what played out. His characterization was all over the place, and he should have been a short-term character ultimately.

And the casting was all wrong, of course.

[Planet Soap]

Y&R 

Neil's blindness: the concept of Neil being blind and Devon sleeping with his dad's wife Hillary would have been executed way better during the WJB era.

Mariah:  Victor gaslighting Sharon with a Cassie lookalike that turned out to be Cassie's long lost twin was a sick plot that further dragged Victor's charachter down. However, it would have a been better done psycological plot -- like the George Rawlins murder-- had WJB's team written it. Morover it would have been helped by the epic background music, shadowy lighting and camera angles of the 90s.

B&B Justin tries to take over Spencer. Justin using Vinny's framing of Bill & Liam for his suicide to take over the latter's company could have played out over monts. We could have gotten longterm ramifications with Bill wrestling for control over his comany as we got with Forresters & Brooke or Jabot being controlled by Newman back in the day.

Edited February 13, 2022 by ironlion

[Videnbas]

I agree with this! The premise of pairing Rick with a trans woman could have been groundbreaking.

But there were three major mistakes in the storytelling.

The first was doing this reveal about a character whose backstory included a pregnancy and searching for the child she gave up for adoption.

The second was making the storyline too conflict-free. Maya met with virtually no resistance and ended up getting her every wish fulfilled without even having to fight for it (since all of her struggles had already taken place off screen before we met her).

The third was introducing Maya as the heroine in this storyline when she was already in the middle of another storyline where she and Rick were the villains, and then painting other characters' legitimate dislike of Maya as transphobic, as if her being trans suddenly made her immune to criticism.