Daytime Soap Operas
2020 The Year That Was

Best & Worst of 2020: THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY


Best Acting at Warp Speed

Jacqueline MacInnis Wood (Steffy, B&B). I have no idea why B&B thought they needed to tell Steffy’s drug addiction story so quickly, there was little build up between her taking the first pill and needing an intervention, and you know, maybe B&B’s claim that it does happen that fast for some people is true, I don’t know, but I do know for sure that no one would recover from a drug addiction in one week. The pacing of this story was such a shame, with Jacqueline MacInnis Wood delivering the best performances of her career she more than earned the right to hit all the emotional beats of such a harrowing journey in real time, not have it feel as though someone hit the fast forward button. It’s fortunate for her that the Emmys are set up in such a way that it’s about fifteen or so minutes rather than the entire body of work for your year because B&B didn’t do right by her or by the individuals and families who deal with this disease, that it worked, that it resonated, that the scene with the knife proved more compelling than over-the-top, that was solely due to the dedication and talent of this actress.

Most Unsatisfying Exits

Ciara and Hope, Days. This is not about the personal/business decisions that went into these exits, this is strictly the way their stories closed out on screen. Post wedding with first Ciara frantically searching for Ben then Ben frantically searching for Ciara, I had zero desire to watch all that unfold. I appreciate that Ciara is a capable action hero like her mom, however with the days running out on the actress’s time on the show, I wanted to see Ciara in her marriage (not in fantasy), I wanted to see her interact with those who matter the most to her, Ben, her mom, her brother, Rafe, Doug, Julie, etc., not a random lunatic. The kidnapping/presumed death could easily have been reduced to two episodes allowing the weeks leading up to that to be Ciara moments that fans would genuinely cherish. As for Hope, circumstances were such that Kristian Alfonso was unavailable for a final scene, which yes, made it extremely difficult to give viewers the closure they needed, still, I think Days could have done better. Hope and Jennifer were cousins and best friends, on paper it seems like a decent send off to have Jennifer read a letter from Hope, but on screen with Melissa Reeves absent, that connection was no longer there. Cady Mclain (super talented, not knocking her), was too new to the show to carry off such a moment, too new for the viewers to identify her as Jennifer. If you gathered Doug, Julie, and Shawn at Tom and Alice’s, had them each read part of a more expansive letter illustrated by flashbacks of Hope on the show, devoting an entire episode to just that, celebrating her, it would have at least been somewhat closer to the goodbye fans deserved and perhaps it could have been the beginning of holding out an olive branch to Kristian Alfonso. It isn’t too late for Hope to send another letter, it isn’t too late for the show to make this a little more right.

Most Neglected Character

Lucas, General Hospital. GH has such a massive cast that its easy enough for some characters to get lost in the story shuffle. However, it’s impossible to understand how or why Lucas was lost this year. Lucas’s husband went to jail for switching their dead baby with a live baby. Lucas had to relinquish custody of that baby to his nephew. That’s trauma on top of trauma (on top of recovering from a head injury) and yet we barely saw Lucas for the rest of the year. I’d like to think Lucas’s story/feelings weren’t purposely discounted because somehow as an adopted father and a gay man he doesn’t count as much as the other parents in this scenario, but its tough not to wonder when he got sidelined while Willow with no blood connection to the child was immediately ushered in as Wylie’s mom. It’s interesting that there was never a thought to giving Wylie two platonic fathers since like Willow, Lucas was very much innocent in everything that went down, and like Willow, he experienced the shattering loss of a child, actually two children, having adopted Willow’s and raised Wylie, though you wouldn’t know it because we barely saw him grieve. And where was Lucas through Wylie’s heart surgery? Where was Lucas when Michael battled Nelle in court for custody? I would think as Wylie’s once upon a time dad he would have had a vested interest in where that child ended up, but nope, he was nowhere to be seen. Then Nelle, in an effort to win the case, married Julian, Lucas’s dad, and still we heard barely a peep from Lucas, all the while I thought, wouldn’t it have been a much more surprising twist had Lucas shown up as Nelle’s new hubby as a means of trying to protect Wylie from her? But again, no. Fast forward all the way to Christmas and yeah, GH finally paid the bare minimum of lip service to what Lucas had been through, claiming he’d stayed out of sight to give Michael room to be a dad (something that Willow was in no way expected to do, nor does it explain why the viewers didn’t get to see him emotionally struggling to stay away from Wylie) and Michael invited Lucas to be an uncle to Wylie (again, Willow was invited to be the child’s mother, huge difference there). I want to believe GH pushed Lucas to the sidelines unintentionally, that they didn’t mean to diminish what it is to be an adoptive parent or to be a gay parent, that they didn’t mean to make it seem as though the gay dad can just turn off his attachments like a light switch while the hetero mom is the one who truly suffers when grieving a child but unfortunately it sure felt that way. While perhaps its now too late in the game to fix how they mishandled Lucas’s emotional response to losing Wylie, it isn’t too late to start in general doing better by the show’s very few LGBTQ characters who are all too often left standing on the outside of stories.

Best Single Focus Episode

Y&R’s Sharon, the night before checking into the hospital for cancer treatment. Too often when an episode focuses on just one character, like the Billy episodes, it feels indulgent and unnecessary, a waste of the viewer’s time. Sharon’s episode was the opposite experience, it came across honest and real, like every moment mattered. The ticking clock, her observation about it being like packing to go give birth only not, the tossing and turning, breakfast with her family, even her dreams/nightmares had a ring of authenticity. While I’d happily never again enter one of Billy’s dreams or hallucinations, I’m all for more slice of life episodes like this one.

Worst Dialogue

The Bold and the Beautiful. With the exception of Bill, who is funny, sharp, and uniquely him, for the most part, the dialogue on B&B is written with a maddeningly limited vocabulary. They overuse words that people in actual life don’t use often, “remarkable,” being the worst offender. Over the span of a week or even a day, you’ll hear that Hope is a remarkable mother, Liam is a remarkable husband, Zende is a remarkable designer, Flo is a remarkable woman, etc. Now, ignoring that we’ve seen little evidence of any of these people qualifying as remarkable, when was the last time you heard someone in life describe someone with that word? Maybe I’d be okay with all of these characters being remarkable if it was just one character overusing that word because that is real, plenty of us have a particular word or two that we go to time and again, however, it isn’t just one character declaring everyone remarkable, it’s everyone on the canvas using that word. Does anyone out there really think that Eric, a senior citizen from Beverly Hills, should all the time be using the exact same turns of phrase as his surfer step-son who was raised in Vegas without wealth? No. Absolutely not. Eric should use different words and phrase things differently than the younger Wyatt does. Wouldn’t the many, many scenes of Liam and Steffy discussing cheating on Hope be more interesting if they weren’t both saying the exact same thing, that the night of cheating was “wonderful,” are you seriously telling me, that’s the real truth of how Steffy feels about what went down? And why does nearly everyone on this show speak in such flowery formal terms? Brooke and her sisters are from the Valley, why do we never hear any evidence of that? Zende spent the beginning of his life in Africa and frankly, I’m not sure where Carter spent his formative years but I know for certain his upbringing must have been different from Zende’s world travels yet you could easily swap their dialogue and who would be the wiser? These are individual characters with their own histories, the way they talk should reflect that. It’s so unrealistic that every single character speaks so similarly, even acclaimed shows like Gilmore Girls and West Wing would have been that much better had ninety percent of the characters not sounded as if they shared the same brain. B&B’s characters and the acting would be so much improved by just giving them a little more distinction to work with in the scripts.

Best New Siblings

Laura, Martin, and Cyrus, General Hospital. Let’s be honest, Laura with Kevin, Laura as mayor, Laura as the rock steady shoulder for her kids, it’s nice to see her around town, but it all leans towards boring. However, when you suddenly give Laura two brothers, one a southern fried lawyer, the other a drug kingpin, two of the most fascinating characters to come along in a long while, well then, finally, after far too many years, perhaps since Nikolas first came on the scene, GH has come up with some truly interesting material for Genie Francis. The dynamic she shares with each brother is entirely different yet equally enthralling to watch, she brings a humanizing element to their outsize personas and they (well, mostly Cyrus) add an edge to her. Whoever came up with this idea, just brilliant, I hope it leads to a longer life on the show for both Michael E. Knight and Jeff Kober, and I hope GH actually writes for this trio, I want to watch these relationships develop, to live up to all the complicated, intriguing possibilities.

Worst Couple

Billy and Lily, Y&R. Even if I could get past their rhyming names (I can’t), there are still so many other ways their relationship feels fake and forced. Jill has always championed Cane in business and with Lily, so I’m supposed to believe that she would hand ChanceComm to Billy and Lily instead of Cane and Lily? Lily who has been in jail and Billy who has been in a mid-life spiral were both supposedly eager to prove themselves yet the professionalism lasted all of five seconds before the sexual innuendo started flying, suggesting that ChanceComm was never about much needed growth for both of these characters but instead simply a vehicle to shove them together romantically (and it is shoving when writers employ zero subtlety). Then Billy became suspect in a shooting and suddenly Lily became a more thorough investigator than Rey all because she believes in Billy more than anyone else ever has. Lily believes in the man who let Cane take responsibility for Chloe’s pregnancy causing the breakup of Cane and Lily? Lily believes in the man who relished the opportunity to squeal on Cane and Victoria’s kiss while Lily was in jail, which sure, maybe Lily saw that as a blessing for herself to have her eyes opened, but this guy enjoyed busting up her family all to stick it to Cane with no regard for how it would hurt Lily’s children, this is the thoughtless person she wholeheartedly believes in? If you insist on these two together (and they are insisting, Lily thanking Billy for jewelry with her body is ickily insistent), at the very least Y&R should play up major trust issues for Lily given her history with Cane and given Billy’s history of being even more untrustworthy than Cane. But no, even an ounce of honesty is too much to ask of this contrived coupling.

Best Story

Allie’s rape, Days Of Our Lives. This has been a standout story due in large part to the ripple effect its had throughout Salem. Nicole, Grandma Kate, Grandpa Roman, dad Lucas, they’ve all been there as advocates and support for Allie. The connection between wrongly accused Tripp and his dad Steve has never felt stronger. Steve and best pal/Allie’s grandpa John saw their friendship severely tested. And while it’s challenging to the viewer to be repeatedly reminded that a character we’ve come to love, Jack, once raped Kayla, it’s the right thing to do to not erase it from the show’s history, it’s there, it’s ugly, it should be addressed, it should be felt, plus revisiting that has made for tremendous drama, it’s put Kayla on the opposite side from her husband, it creates issues for them that feel organic rather than the standard contrived thing of throwing another person into the mix when we know deep down these two will only ever really want each other. I am still hoping we’ll see Allie go through ongoing counseling (it would be good to see that for Kayla, Jack, and even Charlie, too) as its important to show the lasting emotional impact, something soaps haven’t always done well enough in the past, but so far the show has done an excellent job of crafting an expansive tale that’s managing to be both sensitive and riveting.

The Bold and The Beautiful

Highs - “Land the plane, Wyatt,” Bill waiting for his son to spit out that he’s back with Sally - “You know, I can’t tell if you’re a genius or a psycho,” Vinny to Thomas - Bill and Brooke’s kiss revealed on the digital frame at a family gathering - “Is she dead yet?” Bill, very blunt about Sally’s health - Steffy’s motorcycle hit by Bill’s car - Flo wrote help me on Sally’s underwear, the only entertaining moment Flo has ever had - Matthew Atkinson oddly did some of his best work opposite a mannequin - Paris, I like her energy, her acting style feels fairly natural, she has potential.

Lows - Wyatt chose Flo over Sally - Quinn put alcohol in Brooke’s drink yet nothing came of it - Quinn and Thomas joined evil forces yet nothing came of it - Bill hitting Steffy with his car didn’t lead to a story for him - Flo who assisted in baby-stealing wondered how Sally could do something as terrible as faking an illness. Seriously - Julius, the least reasonable person on earth encouraged Zende to move on from Nicole. On what planet would this have happened? Julius would totally interfere (and the show would be better for it) - Whoever decided to let a smoke alarm go off for most of an episode should be locked in a room and forced to listen to it over and over like the viewers were - Liam couldn’t tell that a lifeless mannequin wasn’t his wife and wasn’t passionately kissing Thomas back, the phrase dumb as a bag of rocks comes to mind, though it might be an insult to rocks.

Wishes - Eric, having heard complaints about Forrester factory conditions goes undercover as a worker to check it out for himself and falls for a seamstress who thinks he’s struggling to make ends meet just like she is - Paris with her experience in social work helps Zende dig into his background as an adoptee and they fall in love over the course of that long journey, emphasis on long - Flo discovers that having a child of her own may be a problem compounded by the arrival of an ex from Wyatt’s surfing days whose child’s mannerisms are suspiciously similar to Wyatt’s.

Days Of Our Lives

Highs - Mother’s Day - “She doesn’t look how I remember her, it’s almost like she’s a different baby,” Sarah. - J.J. placed the ring in Hayley’s palm - Sonny gave E.M. Forster’s typewriter to Will, a nod to their wedding vows - Doug’s 50th Anniversary - Ben’s “last meal” with his dad - “I’m Tom Hanks compared to Victor Kiriakis,” Xander - “Consciously remembering? Is this something she learned from Gwyneth Paltrow?” Kristen - Anna hit “Stefano” with her shoe, reinstating Steve’s patch - “Rolf? Who is that? A muppet?” Jake - Rafe in the scenes where he had to give up David - Lani and Eli’s wedding, especially her hair, their attire, and jumping the broom - Steve and Kayla’s airport reunion - “You could be the next Chris Gaines,” Bonnie to Justin - Bonnie growing by leaps and bounds as a human this year while maintaining her edge and humor - “I’m teaming up with Jed Clampett,” Orpheus about Clyde - Doug & Julie at Thanksgiving and Christmas - “Salem really needs to hire a new coroner,” Nicole.

Lows - Princess Gina - Chad under “Stefano’s” control - the April Fool’s episode, while it featured some welcome returns, I’m not a fan of episodes that don’t advance story - Abby yet again drugged and manipulated - It took 54 years for Days to televise a wedding with a black bride and black groom. Shameful - “I’ve been ready for about two decades,” Nicole said and so had the viewers been ready, unfortunately a pub wedding and Eric flying off to Africa isn’t remotely what we had in mind - Lani’s devotion to Kristen - Sami unleashed Jan on her family, and worse, unleashed her on us viewers - Jack had sex with Kate while Jennifer was in a coma. So now Jack has slept with Jennifer’s mother and her father’s mistress. Add in raping Kayla back in the day and somebody sure doesn’t want it to be easy to like Jack.

Wishes - Jennifer and Jack in The Spectator office struggling to work together while apart romantically - Emme Rylan joins the cast as Theresa and shares living quarters and work duties at the pub with her Uncle Roman who sees her as a chance to right the wrong turns his own daughter took, but she’s as hard to mentor as Sami - We finally meet another of Justin’s boys, who gets romantically involved with Allie, adds to the friction in the family business, and is not a fan of Bonnie.

General Hospital

Highs - “I’m not some ogre who eats children,” Nelle. - We found out Gia is an immigration lawyer in Texas - Trina vomited after the kidnapping/shootout, a rare realistic response to violence not seen nearly enough on television - ELQ had an office again (well, a lobby), better than years of nothing - Robert, Finn, & Violet having tea and scones – Clint Buchanan commented about Brook Lynn – Nelle pointed out what a hypocrite Carly is - Cam and Trina kissed - Violet’s birthday party for the simple fact that it had purple everywhere, not gray - Robert gave Violet a didgeridoo - “The Borgias were family, they still poisoned each other,” Ava to Nikolas – “You little rodent!” Robert to Spinelli. - The long goodbye to Mike - Who’s rhubarb did you rub the wrong way,” Martin Grey to Valentin - Brianna Lane filling in as Brook Lynn - Finn’s family secrets.

Lows - Dreariest sets in daytime. Sonny and Carly’s renovated penthouse is gray and brown, shocker, at this point Port Charles is pretty much all weird foliage and gray/muted earth tones, there was barely even any color at Christmas. I could understand one character decorating their home as if it’s a soulless hotel, but when every set other than Kelly’s looks that way, it seems the set decorator is more intent on pleasing their own tastes rather than thinking in terms of character and in terms of what might pop and/or feel inviting on television screens. – Sonny at Taggert’s funeral. Ridiculous. - Brook Kerr and Lindsay Hartley never crossed paths - Alexis lost her job. Alexis has osteoporosis. Her lover overdosed in her bed. She leapt off the wagon. She had sex with a married friend. She fell out with family and friends. The love of her life (arguably) was hunted down and murdered. Nancy Lee Grahn is a fantastic dramatic actress, but enough already, let her smile sometime - Michael punched Chase for ensuring that Michael won his custody battle. Michael has never been more his mother’s son than in that ungrateful moment - If budget cuts meant cast cuts (Dev, Dustin, Lulu, Julian, all with seemingly plenty more story to tell), okay, we’ll grudgingly accept the losses but maybe don’t throw extra salt in the wound by showing Julian zipped up in a body bag, we’re in an era where fans actually stick to their vow to quit watching, don’t go out of your way to throw fuel on these fires.

Wishes - Sparks fly between Britt and Michael via the hospital board, Carly hates it, she can’t push around Britt and all of sudden Obrecht nominates herself as Carly’s new best friend, like its a done deal that their families are uniting - Lucy brings Brenda to town as the new old face of Deception - Cyrus is Brando’s father.

The Young and The Restless

Highs - “Do you think she doesn’t like to pay rent?” Victoria on Chelsea moving from Nick’s place right into Adam’s penthouse - Remembering Cassie on her birthday - Victor referred to Billy as a middle-aged punk - Eric Braeden 40th Anniversary - Faith being bullied - Theo went to Paris! - Adam unraveling and Victor’s pained expression in having to commit him - Amanda seeking out her birth family, this has the potential to round out the character a bit more – Dina’s passing, slightly convoluted with the jewelry being yet another secret she’d kept but still, nicely performed by all the actors - Real life couple Melissa Ordway and Justin Gaston (filling in for Donny Boaz) made for one of the better weddings of the year. That wedding also featured one of the best wedding dresses of the year, too.

Lows - Kyle and Lola broke up ten minutes into their marriage and he immediately had sex with Summer - I don’t care about Tessa, still Mariah cheating seemed off - Cane cleared of stealing Devon’s money, yet still hasn’t returned even though he left in a quest to clear his name - teen Jared introduced but ultimately they’ve yet to go anywhere with the character other than having his overdose weirdly serve as an aphrodisiac for Nate and Elena - Every single war over that hotel, maybe without that lobby set, one more character could have their own home, so there would be one less character in the game of guessing who’s identical hotel room we’re in - Phyllis once upon a time a groupie who killed/attempted to kill/lied about paternity out of desperation to hold onto a man, now spends every episode whining that she would never wants a man to take care of her. Sure - Why make Chance a cop when the show already struggles to find enough story for Rey and Paul? - Yet another indulgent Billy-centric episode where I found myself thinking I wouldn’t mind if he stayed in prison forever, off-screen, I do not need any more of his poor little rich boy naval gazing.

Wishes - Kristian Alfonso cast as a once aspiring model who thought Jack had feelings for her during his lothario days but he loved and left her and hurt and angry she never told him they had a daughter. Now she’s raising her teen grandchild alone (her daughter’s whereabouts unknown) and money’s too tight to turn down a janitorial job at Jabot, cleaning up after a man she despises, a man who at first doesn’t even remember her let alone suspect that they share a child and grandchild - Cane hurries home as Juliet’s family has decided to fight him for custody, figuring a wife would be his greatest asset in the courtroom and Lily the most believable candidate, he begs her to re-marry him. Lily agrees for the child though she’s intent on it being in name only but the pair slowly starts falling for each other all over again, meanwhile there’s a twist in the custody battle, the boy isn’t actually Cane’s biological son, Juliet lied about what happened that night, the bio dad is actually Chance (who Juliet met on her work travels and due to his dangerous job she passed his son off as Cane’s), so it becomes a three-way custody battle, Juliet’s family, Chance and Abby (who are struggling to conceive), and Cane who has loved the boy as his own for far too long to just give him up - Abby hires a sous chef against Lola’s wishes, she hates having another opinion in her kitchen especially one that sometimes shows her up, not only that, like Kyle, he’s another entitled rich kid, he’s Abby’s nephew Reed, whose mom, Victoria, isn’t pleased her son went into the culinary world instead of business, nor does she like the way he looks at the slightly older Lola.


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