This is driving me crazy on General Hospital. Carly had AJ’s baby, told him it was his brother’s, and somehow, the local mob-boss (Sonny) ends up with custody. Meanwhile, Alexis has Sonny’s baby, tells him it’s her ex’s (who happens to be the other kids cousin) and the EX ends up with custody.
Another thing that’s driving me crazy is the Long-Lost-Sibling routine. Sonny alone has had two in the past year, and Alexis has had one, Ned has had one, I’m sure other characters have them too. It’s just super annoying, especially when they all happen around the same time. What are the chances that both Alexis and Sonny will find younger sisters, roughly the same age, roughly the same week?
No matter what kind of illness or injury a character has (gunshot to the midsection, burns, slit throat, sprained ankle, you name it) he or she becomes comatose.
Whenever anyone answers a door or bumps into another character, the only dialogue the writers can come up with is, “What are you doing here?”
Someone is known to have twice switched paternity tests while working at a hospital and they don’t lose their job. Then they do it AGAIN!
Burn victim recovers from burns so severe he was comatose but hasn’t got a single scar.
The family lawyer never wins a case and they keep hiring him.
Has there ever been a pregnant woman on a soap that did not fall down steps?
Shot, stabbed, burned, whacked in the head by a brick, in a coma, maybe never going to walk or talk again…and three weeks later they are fit as the proverbial fiddle, skiing in Aspen.
Disguises…ah yes, put on sunglasses and a black stocking cap and nobody on earth will EVER recognize you, or even notice you. It also makes you invisible so you can sneak through airports and out of jail cells.
During the summer, when high school kids are home, all the soaps dredge out their teen actors in some godawful plot about Susie who loves Billy, but he loves Hope who in reality, loves Mike who…
Nobody ever shuts or locks a door, and whoever shouldn’t hear the gossip, always just happens to be walking by the door when the conversation is in full tilt.
Soaps are mindless, ridiculous, wastes of time - and I should know because I’ve been threatening to stop watching for almost 20 years now.
Frequent cast changes for one character. I know that’s the nature of the industry, but how many men have played Kevin Buchanan on OLTL? Or Jake Martin on AMC?
And it’s not just burns either. I remember in one plot on Passions, this one girl, Charity had a heart transplant. In soap time, three days later, she “senses something’s wrong” and goes to a party to check up on her boyfriend. She’s wearing a low cut front exposing her chest down to her sternum…AND NO SCAR OR BANDAGE!!! Let’s not even worry about the whole Walking Around thing.
I also like the way pregnancies only become visible when plot needs. Four characters became pregnant around the same time…three of them are showing, but because the script doesn’t quite call for one of them to be known yet, she’s still skinny as a board.
Also, one thing that really bugs me about soap operas is the fact that they’re supposed to be all about “The Beautiful People,” yet aside from ripped abs, the majority of the men have faces like baboons, and the women aren’t all that attractive either.
I’ve watched “Days of Our Lives” since the mid-1970’s. Nobody ever mentioned the Bradys: Shawn & Caroline and their four children Roman, Kayla, Kimberly & Bo. Nobody ever ate at the Brady’s Pub. Hope Williams especially never mentioned Bo. EVER.
Then cop Roman Brady gets assigned to protect Marlena Evans against a stalker and two months later there are a bunch of Bradys that go back for years. Where were they hiding all those years?
And when someone gets killed, there are usually a huge bucnh of people as suspects. Like Colin Murphy on “Days” and Julian on “Passions” (though of course Julian wasn’t really dead).
I didn’t get a chance to get online in the past few days, so forgive my belated response…
Well, no. I don’t watch “All My Children” (at least not in several years.) But I have heard all about Erica Kane’s daughter being a lesbian and (gasp!) kissing another girl. From what I’ve heard though, the daughter character came out on the show for over two years ago. And that kiss is the most action she’s gotten in two years. I remember that “All My Children” did have two other gays, both men - one adult, one a teenager (NO they weren’t involved) - neither of whom did much except come out of the closet, then disappear into the background. “One Life to Live” also had a gay teen on it (played by Ryan Phillipe no less) who, likewise, came out of the closet and faded into the background. So I guess I should amend my initial gripe to say that the occasional gay character who appears on a soap must be a supporting character whose only contribution to the storyline is to come out of the closet, then go away.
As far as black characters, I remember “Children” had one regular black character named (I think) Noah when I watched it. He was the typical soap “black” character: dreadlocked, bad attitude, from the “wrong side of the tracks”, etc. At least his aunt (who also had it in for all white people) was played by Lynne Thigpen. She only appeared infrequently though.
I’ve never seen “Passions” or “Port Charles”, but (amazingly) vampires are nothing new on soaps. A 1960s soap “Dark Shadows” (which still gets reran on the SciFi channel) had a vampire as the main character. The ‘Susan Lucci’ character on the show was a literal witch, and when characters came back from the dead, they really came back from the dead, crawling out of the grave and all! Just goes to show there’s nothing new under the sun (or in the dark of night, whichever )
I’m always amused when it’s morning on one side of town, and on the other, it’s evening. I’ve only seen it a couple of times, but I remember that one time, characters were having breakfast together, while on the other side of town, another character was getting ready to leave work for the evening.
I never really watched them except for in college when I would meet friends after class to go eat or whatever. We would meet in the “TV room” and soaps were always on. Anyway, one show, don’t know which one, had some guy hiding from baddies go have plastic surgery to change his appearance. Not only was his face different, he had a totally different body type, different face shap and different hairline, color etc.
7a. If a child is born 10 years after another, later in the series, that person can be a whole generation older than the first.
The police are either incompetent, corrupt, or both, with on occasional exception made for 1 or 2 main characters.
13a. Crimes are only proven by main characters - never by normal police work.
13b. The police never seem to catch on that most of the people who die, aren’t really dead - and usually don’t pursue anyone for fraud when the dead person comes back.
And, Lissa? I think you’re post there about missing family members is:
Selective Memories (or, “out of sight, out of mind”). If the actor is not employed currently, no one remembers the character existed. If a handful of people suddenly remember someone, they are going to show up within the week.
DAYS OF OUR LIVES has been one of the most cowardly on this. They’ve brought in at least two characters intending to make them gay: Marlena’s son Eric (Jensen Ackles) and her stepson Brady (Kyle Lowder), both of whom were injected with those mysterious Soap Hormones that made them age from 4 to 17 overnight, intending to lead up to the revelation they were gay. When Eric first came on the show, he would get mysterious calls from a male “friend” back home who was upset at him for leaving and really missed him, and Brady was the subject of a “crisis” much longer and drawn out than Bloody Mary’s pregnancy as his father and the ghost of his mother (yes really) tried to decide what was wrong with him. In both cases, the cute young studmuffin actors proved so popular with young ladies that they received a much better orientation change than Exodus has ever been able to manage, and Eric’s friend in Colorado turned out to be some sort of gambling connection or some such while Brady quickly fell in love with one of the local trouble teens.
Of course nothing will ever top Marlena’s possession by Satan.
Let’s see: a very short and off the top of my head listing of people who have been declared legally dead for several years in Salem (which, incidentally, is located convenient to Los Angeles, Washington D.C., New York City, and Denver) but- SURPRISE!- are really just on an island somewhere being brainwashed and often undergoing plastic surgery that changes not only their facial features but their height, body type, eye color, hair texture, and finger length:
Stefano DiMera (presumed dead at LEAST 7 times- you wonder why they keep holding memorial services)
Marlena Evans
Roman Brady
John Black
Hope Brady
Kate etc etc Kyriakis etc
Carlie (can’t remember the last name, but she was also buried alive for a while by archenemy Vivian, who also managed to implant Kate’s egg into herself and give birth at the age of 69)
Marlena’s twin
Lucas Brady
and lots of others.
If the odds of knowing one person who has faked his/her own death are scarce, I wonder what the odds of knowing more than a dozen people who’ve done so are?
And how many rapists in real life do you know who became likeable and romantic people later on? (On DOOL, both Patch, Jack Devereaux, and Tony DiMera all three matched this, while the first sex between one of the most famous duos in soap history- Luke & Laura- was an act of rape).
And how many times do you attend gallery openings or other hoity-toity events that you know will be attended by people that you not only hate but who’ve put you and your family through criminal hell?
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