Daytime Soap Operas
2019 The Year That Was

Best & Worst of 2019: THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY

Best Obsession

B&B’s Love Of Old School Cliffhangers. This soap is frequently guilty of seeming like its in a comatose state, but then out of nowhere, after weeks of nothing, Douglas will suddenly announce to Liam that Phoebe is Beth or Thomas will run a teenager off the road or Brooke will shove her stepson off a cliff or Thomas will fall into a vat of acid. B&B often disappoints on the follow through of these cliffhangers, that fall off the cliff led to no repercussions for Brooke or lasting injuries for Thomas and the outcome of the acid felt lame and overly easy when the show could have gotten months of story out of a severely scarred Thomas lurking Phantom of the Opera style, still, even if the lack of creativity or lasting consequences in the follow through is grating, the moment that leads up to it is what B&B currently does best, they are masters of leaving you with a shock.

Most Disappointing Wedding

Days Of Our Lives Jack and Jennifer, Justin and Adrienne. The tirade of an ex should not be the lone memorable highlight of a double wedding for two legendary supercouples. Budgets aren’t what they used to be, but there are plenty of regular people on Instagram and Pinterest who make up for what they lack in money with creativity, a commodity which surely professional set decorators and costume designers have in abundance. Instead, we had two decades long love stories culminate in a second-hand ceremony (after Eli and Lani bailed) in nothing special dresses. And to rub salt in the wound, Adrienne was dead mere episodes later so a more romantic do-over may prove challenging.

Best Bucking Of A Trend

General Hospital’s teenagers. Unless you count Y&R’s barely seen Faith, in an era of hit YA books and streaming adaptations, soaps have inexplicably slammed the door on teen stories, except for General Hospital, where the teen scene is not only thriving, they’re some of the most compelling characters on the canvas. Oscar’s illness and subsequent death not only delivered some of GH’s most emotional moments of the year, it gave us a handful of Quartermaine scenes as well which there can never be enough of. Following the loss of her boyfriend, Joss’s grief has been believably full of mixed emotions, moping, drinking at Halloween, feeling like she has it together only for a small reminder to have her well up in tears. With adult characters, I need a bit more time to pass before they romantically move on following a death, however, I’m all for Joss exploring her sparks with Dev, not only would her mom and dad be disapproving (always good for a teen romance), but Dev is just plain intriguing with his vague past, history of pick-pocketing, and con artist tendencies, plus you can tell he genuinely does care for Joss. Then there’s Trina, who, like Dev, we still don’t know much about but she’s an energetic presence, a supportive friend, and I love, love that she works for Ava. Lastly, Cam, one of my favorites of any age on GH is such an endearing screw up whether he’s curled up in a corner crying over his friend, the numerous times he earned a community service sentence, or pleading the case for his family with Drew/Franco. For me, soaps are at their best when they’re telling generational family stories and you can’t do that if your show lacks one of the most dramatic generations, not to mention, if you want your soap passed down from one generation of viewers to the next, it probably helps if the youngest generation sees characters they identify with or crush on as a gateway into it.

Most Short-sighted Storytelling

The Young And The Restless. The feud between Newman and Jabot has been the driving force of Y&R for thirty years, so the show decided to have both Victor and Jack abdicate their thrones. Victor remains the most popular character yet they’ve essentially put him out to pasture. Jack is back at Jabot, however, he seems to be letting Kyle, Summer, and Theo make all the decisions so Y&R’s best actor is now reduced to a figurehead. Victoria emotionally blackmailed her father into retirement, not exactly an endearing nor earned move, and to top it off, now that Victoria has the one thing she’s been striving for all these years, like Victor, the writers don’t seem to know what to do with her anymore. Devon had a chunk of his fortune stolen, but since he still has his multi-million dollar company, he isn’t broke, he doesn’t have to work his way back up in the world, this story changed absolutely nothing in his life. They brought Chance to town without Nina, Jill, Phillip, or even Cane, he has almost zero ties in Genoa City, doesn’t that just scream compelling story? Oh, but he has done law enforcement, so he, too, could horn in on Paul’s job and further deprive viewers of a character they actually want to see. Both Chloe and Chelsea left town in trouble with the law yet all was cleaned up in the blink of an eye rather than, you know, actually playing it out as story. Rather than have Billy take a job with Victoria that would say, lead to them clashing, he works for some unseen employer and all his scenes involve talking on the phone, texting, or talking to himself, riveting stuff. It could have been interesting watching Lola work her way up the culinary ladder, instead she was handed a head chef job she hadn’t earned which negated the one good conflict she had with hubby Kyle, their finances. Abby has two businesses yet zero story. What’s the point of Theo being Dina’s grandson, he isn’t an heir to Jabot so it doesn’t explain or deepen the contrived/ill conceived conflict between him and Kyle. If Theo were to look into the Mergeron merger and whether Dina sold her company while in the early stages of Alzheimer’s that might be a story for Devon, Theo, and the Abbotts, especially if Theo ended up controlling Mergeron and pitted it against Jabot. Ever so many stories conceived by Y&R this year have led to a dead-ends, it’s as if no one bothered to ask if we do this then what comes next, even though the genre demands story after story.

Worst Obsession

B&B’s Hope Fixation. Yes, having your baby stolen and being told she’s dead is huge, it makes sense that other characters would spend some time talking about it whether out of sympathy or gossip, but to have Hope be all that anyone on B&B talks about is beyond ridiculous. Surely the other characters have lives of their own to discuss, not only would it be a thousand times more believable to have a self-absorbed character like Bill turn the conversation back to himself, this show desperately needs more going on. Featuring only one story for eight months leads to tedium, viewers weren’t so much waiting anxiously for Hope to be reunited with her daughter (if they were anxious about that would the show have lost viewers during that time? They weren’t on the edge of their seats, they were out of their seats and off doing something else due to boredom). It was more like fans were tired of waiting for that story to end so that maybe something else would begin (hence the viewer uptick the day the story ended). If the writers are that obsessed with Hope then by all means keep her as the A story, but for the sake of viewers who don’t find her passive naivety quite so fascinating, you need to offer up a B story to engage everyone else, so that they’ll say hey, I may not love Hope, but I’ll tune in for this other story. And don’t tell me it isn’t possible due to the show’s short running time, check out any current sitcom, any Australian or British soap opera, any episode of Loving, Ryan’s Hope or yes, even B&B from decades past, it’s entirely possible to juggle more than one plot over the course of twenty-two minutes, in fact, it’s necessary.

Least Ageist

Days Of Our Lives. While every soap has their share of veteran performers, Days is the one that seems to really recognize their value, understanding that even if they are at a later stage in their lives, there are still interesting stories to be told about and with them. Maggie’s warmth and friendship humanized Xander plus she took a dramatic tumble off the wagon this year. Julie’s casual, unintentional racism led to a massive medical crisis and later she reached out to a floundering JJ. Doug faced the possibility of life without his beloved Julie and his conversation with Gabi about donating Stefan’s heart ranked as one of the finest moments of the year. Victor choked Ben with a tie, hired a hitman, interfered with his granddaughter’s love life, had marital troubles, and fired family members every time he felt like it. Oh, and at one point this year Doug and Julie intended to Netflix and chill, so it isn’t all drama for Salem’s older set, there’s romance and humor, too.

Most Unsatisfying Endings

General Hospital. Yes, technically soap operas don’t have endings until they are tragically canceled, but most story arcs do have a beginning, middle, and end. This year GH has excelled at the build up of the beginning and middle, but they struggled at sticking those landings in the end. We set up Shilo as a character that Sam, Jason, Sonny, Kristina, Willow, Chase, Drew, Peter, Alexis, and Shilo’s myriad followers would all be inclined to murder and then Sam kills him in self-defense, there is no murder mystery despite all the build up to one, though they did throw Sam into prison for months of storyline Siberia for no apparent reason. Personally I still felt like there was a ton more story left for Drew and Kim after Oscar’s death, especially considering the caliber of the actors, GH didn’t see it that way though, which, I guess is understandable given the unwieldy size of their cast, yet instead of scripting some beautiful finding each other in their grief going off into the sunset love story for Kim and Drew, they had her spiral into an almost rapist who left town mentally unwell and alone, meantime Drew, off-screen was presumed dead while Monica, Drew’s sorta mom, without missing a beat glommed onto Drew/Franco as her new “son”. Then there was Carly’s pregnancy with months of worry over Spina Bifida only for the concern to be wiped away practically the instant Donna was born, now I’m sure that’s accurate that there are cases so easily resolved by surgery, however, this is a soap opera, with two of the greats as Donna’s parents, and an opportunity to tell a story that hasn’t been done in daytime or possibly anywhere in pop culture of someone living with Spina Bifida yet they bailed on it and went for an easy tidy ending instead. The saga of Alexis and her nefarious trainer had a fairly long lead up only to abruptly end with a car accident five minutes after Alexis discovered Kendra’s true identity. What was the point of all those little suspenseful scenes along the way if it was going to be resolved so quickly and without really digging into the emotion of any of it or even really involving Kristina? Lastly, and this one pains me more than the others, we had the very welcome return of Hayden, we saw her bonding with her sister Elizabeth, we had the intrigue of her scheming with Jax and Nicolas, we had her off the charts chemistry with Finn, and we saw her for five seconds being a mom to adorable Violet, only for GH to suddenly have Hayden skip town without so much as a proper goodbye to anyone, and most unbelievably, she left without her daughter. All I can say is, I sure hope GH puts more thought and care into the ending for the Wylie story given that fans have invested more than a year in it and they need to do right by a boatload of characters connected to the little guy.

Best Recast

The Young And The Restless’s Mark Grossman as Adam. It’s a tall order to take over from two popular actors, add in some shaky writing (amnesia, Vegas, having him and Chelsea apart even though they were together when he “died”) and it’s all the more impressive how quickly and seamlessly Mark Grossman took ownership of Adam, how good he is at playing so much history that he didn’t experience in the role. The sparks with Chelsea, the love for his sons, the animosity with his siblings, the admiration/contempt for his father, it’s all there in the way he looks at them, the way he speaks to them, it’s almost as if he’s been there all along even though my memories of the other two actors remain very clear. Y&R has had a few missteps in recent years, but the recasting of this vital role wasn’t one of them.

The Bold And The Beautiful

Highs - “What? Better looking than usual?” Bill to Wyatt. - “You can’t treat love like musical chairs,” Brooke, so ridiculously hypocritical that it’s one of the most brilliantly entertaining things she’s ever said. - “Donna’s as dumb as a pile of bricks, Katie’s at death’s door every other week and Brooke, she’s just a slut from the Valley,” an assessment of the Logans by Thomas. - “It’s just me, I’m boring,” Liam giving daughter Beth an accurate description of himself at Halloween. - Steffy when Hope took Beth/Phoebe away from her

Lows – Weird competition between the “Brits” over who can sound the most American – Shauna, among others, claiming that a job at Forrester is Flo’s birthright. Um, no. None of her parents are Forresters. - Sally randomly called Wyatt, Liam. Wouldn’t she at least say Thomas since that’s the guy she was deeply in love with whereas she was into Liam for about twelve seconds. - Steffy was Hope’s maid of honor. Seriously? - “Who’s prettier mommy in heaven or Mommy Hope?” and all the other times Douglas says Mommy Hope. - Why on earth would it have been Ridge’s decision as to whether Flo got immunity? It wasn’t his baby, or even his grandchild that she helped sell. - Shauna kissed and creeped on a passed out Ridge, imagine if a guy had done that to a woman, same with Steffy having sex with a clearly inebriated/drugged Liam.

Wishes - Dr. Armstrong pursues Brooke and since he’s played by Vincent Irrizarry, his morals are fairly flexible in that pursuit – Dr. Armstrong’s black sheep son, a con artist masquerading as the new CFO of Forester, sets his sights on Steffy’s bank account but falls for her in the process. - Bill muscles into the Douglas custody situation. That’s his beloved niece’s son, he believes Thomas is psychotic and now that he’s trying to do right by Liam he doesn’t want Thomas anywhere near his son’s marriage, thus a story that pits Bill against Thomas, Brooke, Hope, and Ridge, and it could tear Katie in two, as a Logan she should support Hope and Brooke, as a woman with health issues, Douglas is her chance at a second child (and we know how quick the kid is to call someone else mom).

Days of Our Lives

Highs – Chad’s goodbye to Sonny and Will – Stefan explaining to Holly that her mom is in heaven – Julie and Doug’s anniversary – Lani realizing Jordan’s son can’t replace the child she lost – Claire’s unraveling – every single second of Sheila – Melinda confesses that she’s Haley’s mom – Jack’s political mud-slinging – Caroline’s memorial episode -”Didn’t your mom ever teach you not to go through a woman’s purse?” Sonny asked. “My mom was Sami Brady,” Will replied. - Susan at John and Marlena’s party – Robin Strasser as Vivian - Eli’s frank race discussion with his grandma - Ben and Will in prison – Lani and Kristen in a convent – Kate waiting tables at the Brady Pub - JJ a mess physically and emotionally - “Brady Pub? I can already smell the grease and burnt cheese,” Stefano said. - “What exactly are you princess of? Hoboken?” Kate to Gina.

Lows – Rex a serial cheater, completely contrary to the guy he used to be – Rafe and Carrie had sex for some random reason – Ted and Hope’s unexplored potential, this is a show where viewers have come to like Ben and Xander, who knows what might have happened with Ted – Halloween - Lani is a cop, if someone had a bomb or a weapon in Horton Square she’d do everything possible to stop them, yet instead of making any attempt to disarm Gabi of a cellphone, she just left town? - not even a hint of Hope after the time jump

Wishes – Bonnie actually switched places with Adrienne again, so just when Justin is set to marry and Will is set to fry (is he on death row?) Adrienne breaks out of wherever the now dead Bonnie stashed her. (I’m willing to go with another doppelganger scenario if it means Adrienne lives). - Lucas returns with his handful of a daughter (half Lucas, half Sami, she’s bound to be trouble) and she schemes to find him a wife and a job so dad has less time to keep an eye on what she’s up to – Gina finds herself drawn to New Orleans and when she happens on a guy who looks just like Bo (either actor), Gina tries to fight it but flooded with love and Bo memories Hope reclaims her own body. It turns out Bo didn’t have cancer, he was the first body Stefano attempted to take over and the failed experiment left Bo a shell of himself, and the only way to restore him is for Hope to recreate all the memories of their adventures and romance.

General Hospital

Highs – any moment shared by Sonny and Mike - Franco and Aidan baking - “An impish looking fellow” a Dawn Of Day disciple’s description of Spinelli – Ava literally stabbing Ryan in the back – the 56th Anniversary episode full of clips and characters reminiscing – all the nods to other beloved ABC soaps, Nora, Matthew and Destiny engaged, Dani a paralegal, Hayden reminds Martin of someone from another life, Lucy selling Alden Manor, Fraternity Row, Erica Kane, the case of Billy Clyde Tuggle, burgers at Roadies, etc. - Scotty’s ideal woman knows Dirty Harry, Debbie Harry, and can quote a line from Jaws. - Tony’s ghost visited Lucas – Valentin reading Little Women to Charlotte – Mike watched Barney Miller - Aunt Stella talked interracial marriage and the Loving law with TJ. - “Obrecht would happily bake Hansel and Gretel into a pie if she could,” Michael said. -A Christmas Carol.

Lows – somehow Sean and Mac never noticed that all Ryan’s victim’s were missing their driver’s licenses? That just came to light this year? I don’t think so. - backing away from Aidan’s sexuality and/or gender identity, much as they did with Kristina – Franco and Elizabeth wed in jail – The closure for Dante and Lulu still didn’t actually provide closure – so little Felicia in the Ryan story – tying way too many Halloween costumes to parent company Disney, a little creativity/thought put into matching costume to character please. - To endear the new Nikolas to the audience we need to see him with his loved ones, Laura, Spencer, and Lulu, not have him lurking for months. – Carly and Ava both lost children yet neither felt an urge to tell Laura her son is alive – the Quartermaine mansion now looks like a cold, lifeless hotel lobby with the wrong staircase.

Wishes – Trina suffers a tragedy, Ava adopts her only to discover Trina’s related to Stella and Curtis, but Ava won’t give up her second chance at motherhood without a fight igniting a custody case with Scotty vs. Martin as the lawyers. - Martin develops a crush on Lucy and tries to usurp Scotty as her business attorney, showers her with romantic gestures, adopts a goose (like Lucy’s) and repeatedly auditions for the Nurses Ball despite no talent – Kristina trains with Stella to be a social worker wanting to help others after her experiences with abuse and a cult, however she gets too close to nurse Amy in a dangerous living situation and that also brings Amy’s brother Chett into Kristina’s orbit. Kristina ends up romantically torn between the siblings.

Young and the Restless

Highs – Anniversary episodes for Peter Bergman and Melody Thomas Scott - the tributes to Neil/Kristoff - Abby took a hammer to Arturo’s truck - Mia, Arturo and Kerry left town – the storm/blackout episode, I liked that it mixed up some scene partners, I much prefer that approach to future romances and/or friendships, put characters in scenes together and see if anything sparks and if not try another combination rather than forcing it. - Traci didn’t get rebuffed or humiliated in the Cane situation, she set the terms that they would just be friends going forward

Lows -all things JT, the trial, the prison break, the brain tumor – Victoria and Cane kiss – any singing moment (except Traci at Christmas) – Jabot Collective, Influencers and Don Don – Everyone acted like Summer giving Lola her kidney was some selfless sacrificial gesture ignoring that she would have let Lola die had Kyle not offered himself in return – Phyllis insulted that Adam would ask her to seduce Nick? Really? She’s usually so morally upstanding? - Billy inexplicably triggered by chewing gum and what’s with those mid-life crisis voiceovers? Anybody else desperate for fun, playful Billy? - Halloween was zombie costumes minus makeup that would identify them as zombies and an hour of bad sketch comedy. No to both.

Wishes – Wanting Victor out of her hair at home and knowing he’ll be healthier with a purpose in his life, Nikki sabotages Victoria at Newman, she just intends to make it bad enough that Victoria invites Victor in as co-CEO, but it blows up so much worse than that – An angry Keemo attempts a Jabot takeover after all these years of being ignored by his dad, Jack, and he strikes up a secret romance with Summer (too swept up to realize she’s being used) as his way in. - Christine, at loose ends without her career, shifts her focus to motherhood taking in a delinquent teen who pushed all of Paul’s buttons as a cop and as a father (since he feels like he let down his son Ricky), meantime the teen bad boy and good girl Faith develop a Romeo and Juliet thing much to Nick and Victor’s dismay.

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Ambie (OK, USA)

As usual, I love your observations and ideas.

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