How Core Families Die

[Joseph]

Guiding Light Killed The Bauers

Young and The Restless let The Fosters and Brooks disappear

Days of Our Lives Had The Hortons but they nearly disappeared, The Andersons The Same

So Let's discuss how soaps commit suicide by Losing their own base losing they're core families

 

 

[Paul Raven]

Don't know that I class the Andersons as a core family. There was only Bob,Phyllis and Mary and they were introduced 7 years into the show's run. They lasted about 7 years. Julie and Linda married Bob, Neil married Phyllis and Mary married Alex. Melissa took the surname, but otherwise had no real connection. So an important family, but not core.

Every long running show has been guilty of discarding the core families, to the overall detriment of the show.

 

[AbcNbc247]

It's definitely a combination of a lot of things:

Bad writing

Bad acting

New regimes that don't do their homework or fall in love with new characters that they introduce.

Egos, behind and in front of the cameras.

Pretty much every soap that lost their core family has a different reason as to why they lost it. One of the things I like about Days is that the Hortons are still prevalent after all these years, though I do wish more of them were featured.

[MichaelGL]

DAYS has lost, Bill Horton, Laura Horton, and now their granddaughter. So basically hiring Ron Carlivati will do it. 

[Paul Raven]

One important factor for core families is the generational aspect. New younger family members are needed as the years go by. 

But on the flipside, writers don't want to saddle characters with too many children.

Some examples

AW The Matthews

Pat was given twins, who were rapidly SORASED born in 1970 teens by 75 and dropped, never seen again.

Russ had no children despite 4 marriages (later retconned)

Alice adopted Sally (who was killed off)

Susan had no children (later retconned with adopted daughter Julia who was killed off)

Bill had no children (a stepson Ricky, who was never used0

So not really much there to build upon.

The characters they might have used (the Randolph twins, Ricky were never used ,despite potential)

When there was a a renewed interest in the late 80's, Russ returned and given a daughter Josie, but he was dropped and her lineage as a Matthews was pretty much ignored.

Edited June 13, 2022 by Paul Raven

[Videnbas]

B&B lost the Spectras in the early to mid 00s after they had been on the show since the late 80s.

And even though Darlene Conley passed away in real life, that didn't necessarily have to mean the end of that entire family. But Conley's real life death had been preceded by years of gradually phasing out her and the cast surrounding her, meaning there was nobody left to carry on the Spectra legacy when the show lost her.

There were several writing choices that led to that point: never giving Macy or CJ children meaning there was no viable third generation (other than possibly Aly who was promptly killed off), never establishing adult CJ as a core character but rather only giving him a few short term storylines and then writing him off the show, killing off Macy (the obvious heir to Sally) twice in a short time, killing off Darla, and having Sally lose Spectra Fashions and end her days as a secretary at Forrester Creations.

Then the show tried to backtrack in 2017 by inventing a whole new set of Spectra characters, but the damage had been done and it never really worked. 

[asafi]

Well.. Hortons lated for decades.. and we still have Jennifer, Julie and I guess Maggie although not a blood Horton. 

anyhow Alice's death kind of put an ending to this great family.. it's sad. 

[AMCOLTLLover]

Lucas Horton? Allie? There are still a lot Hortons. Don’t know why people pretend like the Hortons don’t exist anymore

[Contessa Donatella]

Irna knew what she wanted with AW but she couldn't write it herself. Someone gave James Lipton a shot at the show & he got rid of the elder statesmen of the Matthews. Created a family called the Gregorys. In the nick of time NBC hired Agnes to write the show. (First they turned her down on her own show, AMC.) Agnes did what she always said was the hard thing to do, which was to put her seat in the chair (in front of her dictaphone) and wrote and saved the show, creating the best triangle while doing it - Rachel, Steve & Alice. Oh, yeah, she killed off the Gregorys. As writers went, James Lipton was an excellent host to the Actor's Studio.

[Planet Soap]

Alan, Emily & Edward's deaths really killed the Quartermaines until recently.

[robbwolff]

The Another World Homepage shows a lot of this is urban legend. Irna was the one who got rid of Granny Matthews and the one who created Ernest Gregory. Lipton later introduced other members of the Gregory family. Alex Gregory stopped appearing while Lipton was head writer. A month later, Agnes killed off the character. She killed off one Gregory, not the whole family as has been claimed for decades. She dropped Karen Gregory days into her run and a month later wrote out Ernest.

[Contessa Donatella]

Is it disputed who killed off Alan?

[Contessa Donatella]

I think the important part holds up & that's that Agnes saved the show & created the iconic triangle of Rachel, Steve & Alice.

[Spoon]

Same thing with GL and the Bauers.  Phillip had three kids before Rick had one.  Plus by the mid 2000s Phillip's eldest child was driving story while Rick's eldest child Jude was young and seldom seen.

Also Mike could've remarried and have children off screen conceived in the 80s.  That's if the writers gave a darn, which they didn't.

[Broderick]

I wouldn't call Bill Bell's decision to ditch the Brooks and Foster families "suicidal".   He was just ready to reinvent his show with some families who hadn't been recast a zillion times and married to each other a zillion times.  Once the dust settled, he found himself in a much better position than he'd been in previously.  (In fact, it's a shame the same thing hasn't been done again.)