Alan’s Soap Box: Top 10 Most Common Soap Writing Blunders

Last year, I wrote about the habits of current soap head writers. The quirks they have that are unique to them. About a month ago, I had the thought, “What about the shit almost all of them do?” Head writers do have a startling tendency to make the same mistakes as each other, and this isn’t a new thing. It has been going on for decades.
10. Villains Just Hanging Around

Villains are necessary for a soap to function. You need characters that are immoral, selfish and sometimes downright evil to help drive the story. Unfortunately, head writers have a habit of writing them just hanging around. B&B fans will never forget Brad Bell having Sheila Carter show people to their table at Buca di Beppo. Charles Shaughnessy spent the majority of his two year run as Victor Cassadine on GH just hanging around and being British. Y&R hyped Jeremy Stark up like he was evil personified and he didn’t do anything bad until it was time for Phyllis to stab him to death with scissors. This results in constant conversations like this:

Character A: “Go away, you meanie. No one in Big Smalltown City wants you here! Even though most of us really should be in prison for our various crimes, you are worse than us.”

Meanie: “I’m not going anywhere. I enjoy making you uncomfortable because I’m evil and also a petty little bitch. Now I shall eat this cupcake while my villainous theme music plays. Oh, it’s good. The frosting is a little too sweet for my tastes, but that’s just my preference. The person who baked this cupcake will be spared from my wrath.”

Character B: “How can we live our lives with this monster eating a cupcake in front of everyone? Someone has to do something!”

Conversations like that are annoying and don’t make fans feel like a villain is a threat. Show, don’t tell. I feel like writers do this because they want a villain to stay longer, but I’d rather have a villain who burns bright and fast than one who does nothing.

Also, not all villains have to be the same. You have your long term villains who are meant to stick around and you have villains designed for maximum chaos who are meant to be short term. Stefano DiMera on Days was in the latter category initially. He’d come in, kidnap Marlena, and then be presumed dead until he’d rise like a phoenix for his next stint. It wasn’t until his later years that he just stuck around Salem indefinitely. That minimized Stefano’s impact. He wasn’t designed to be that type of character. It is okay for a villain to be around for only three to six months. You don’t have to pad it out.

9. Just Throwing Single Characters Together

The nature of soaps means you have a finite amount of characters and money to work with. Executive producers and head writers can’t always bring on someone new for an existing character to date. Thus, this makes it a necessity to shuffle the cast around to bang each other. It is the fact that this often happens that is the problem. Often, it is a stopgap measure so not much thought it is put into crafting the story. They don’t think about what these characters have in common, how they are different, or what the conflict is. They just toss them together.

Look at Xander and Chloe on Days. These two don’t make sense. Xander left her in Mexico when she was being held captive by a drug kingpin. She should not be living with him or even have a passing thought about the size of his balls. Paul Telfer and Nadia Bjorlin do have chemistry, but I can’t invest in this pairing. Xander will be back to sucking on Sarah’s toes shortly until he does something else to make her mad. Why should I care about a stopgap pairing?

I just want more care in this type of pairings. If I have to watch a stopgap pairing, make it semi-plausible and fun. Otherwise people will just fast forward through it because we know it is just a fling. I don’t want to watch Katie and Carter on B&B because we all know she’ll go back to Bill when it is time for her butt or elbow to fall off. Bill will be crying about his Katie as the doctor hot glues her butt back on and Carter will be the loser. Nothing really enjoyable about this story.

8. Not Having A Plan

So much of watching soaps these days is like watching someone try to fix a car as it careens toward a cliff. I realize there are difficulties crafting long story for a soap. An actor could get sick, an actor could leave, or a dipshit network exec could tell a writer to change the story while shoving fries up their nose. I understand having to change directions under those circumstances. My understanding goes out the window when they have no serious obstacles to planning out a story.

The Hook story on GH was obviously a hamscram bullshit story. Heather being The Hook did not line up with what we were shown on screen. Either they didn’t know who the killer was when it started or it changed. That isn’t the only hamscram bullshit Chris Van Etten and Dan O’Connor have put out. Elizabeth’s story last year was one of the biggest ass pull stories I’ve seen in my decades watching soaps. Chris and Dan not having plans is why it takes two years for a story to get somewhere and the show meanders from plot point to plot point.

Back in the day, head writers would have a story bible. They’d have a year planned out already. When you compare the quality of writing from that era to now, you can see why the writing now is lacking. Even a bad story had thought and planning put into it. They thought about character moments and arcs. Now we’re lucky if a head writer has a three month plan that makes at least some sense.

7. Baby Rabies

It is somewhat understandable that head writers like telling stories about babies. There are soap stories you can tell with babies. Who is the father of the baby? What if the baby dies so people can have Emmy reels? What if a nefarious blonde woman steals the baby? What if there’s a custody battle? Though, babies have become a crutch for soaps. GH has so much baby rabies that fans want to jump through the TV and take all the women to get an IUD and make it rain condoms on them just to be extra safe.

It is misogynistic to just make a woman’s worth all about children. One of the reasons why people hated Willow on GH wanting to sacrifice herself for her baby is that it felt like a Republican play. Willow even canonically defined herself as the mother of Michael’s children. Emphasis on his children. Not their children. Even while having a near death experience, that woman can’t center herself in the narrative. It could be a good story to work through Willow’s issues with putting others over herself, but the writing lacks the nuance to go there.

GH isn’t the only soap with a baby story addiction. Days has Nicole having her miracle baby at almost 50. At least they had the grace to do this before Nicole was menopausal, unlike when Guiding Light had Reva giving birth after she went through menopause. Y&R had Sally getting creampied by brothers in the worst triangle on that show in years.

I will note that not all of this is on the head writers. They could pitch a more daring story and they’ll be shot down and told by the network to stick to babies and the traditional soap fare. They are complicit in the absurd amount of baby stories. Maybe if we took like a two year break from pregnancies on soaps, the audience would be more enthusiastic about babies. There are certainly enough kids on soaps that the next generation wouldn’t suffer for it. Give us a break.

6. Not Developing Younger Characters

Soaps will have babies shooting out of women left and right, but when these kids grow up, will they write for them? Unless they are on GH, no. They won’t. Brad Bell is fixated on every adult child of a 50 plus year old character on B&B wanting their parents to pleasure each other’s bodies. Josh Griffith will fire a young Y&R actor after just having them play patty cake for six months and talking about life goals like they are in a damn job interview. Days is more focused on having the veteran characters play the greatest hits from the 80s and 90s.

I understand up to a point why shows don’t want to give focus to people who don’t have liver spots. They think fans just want to see Victor Newman and Dr. Marlena Evans and we absolutely do, but fans also want to see the legacy characters. You can tell stories with a 25 year old that you can’t with a 60 year old. Young people being slutty messes is fun. When you have 50 year old Nick on Y&R in a Who’s The Daddy story, it is painful to watch because he’s too old for that. His son Noah should be having stories like that, but they’d rather send him off to Europe again until it is time to recast him for the fourth time since he was aged up.

5. Having The Same Damn Conversation Everyday

This isn’t on the script writers. They write the script from an outline by a breakdown writer that comes from a weekly thrust via the head writer. If characters are having the same conversation every fucking day, it is on the head writer. Conversations like Phyllis complaining to everyone on Y&R about what a monster Diane is or the daily “Respect my marriage!” talks on B&B. I understand that soaps have five days a week to fill so there’s going to be a certain amount of repetitiveness. That being said, soaps should actively try to not make it seem like you copied and pasted dialogue into several scripts.

4. Making A New Character Related To An Established Character

We know why soaps do this. Soap fans take new characters coming on personally. If they hear a name they don’t recognize, they’ll act like the head writer and executive producer burned their house down and fucked their husband right in front of the torched home as the neighbors cheer them on. So to appease the irrational fanbase, they attach the new character onto a character the audience already likes. If successful, it can be like Kendall Hart’s entrance on All My Children or Days giving John an Asian gay son with Paul. If unsuccessful, it is attaching a parasite to a beloved character.

I think the biggest recent failures of this type of blunder are Gwen on Days and Cody on GH. With Gwen, Ron Carlivati tried to pull a Kendall Hart arc on a character when that clearly wasn’t the original plan. It has been three years and fans still want Gwen to be shot into the sun. With Cody, they brought on a sleaze ball with a retcon that made no sense to what was shown on screen in the 90s. They’ve recently been doing work to make Cody somewhat likable because they knew they shit the bed last year. Is it enough to salvage Cody? We’ll see.

I think head writers should be more willing to make a character just be totally new. They don’t need to be related to a past or present character. GH fans have been speculating about who could be Dex’s parents, but I don’t want that. Dex does not need to be the butt baby of Stavros Cassadine and AJ Quartermaine to be a successful character. Just develop him as a character. Audra on Y&R doesn’t need to be the secret love child of Miguel the butler and Leanna Love. It is fine for someone to just be new to town. You aren’t going to get colon cancer if you watch someone who isn’t related to a name you know.

3. Having A New Character Do Terrible Things To Established Characters

This is known as the Babe Carey Problem. Head writer Megan McTavish on All My Children had Babe keep Bianca’s baby Bess AKA Miranda from her while Bianca thought she was dead. All while having Babe be Bianca’s best friend and saying stuff like “Bess has two mommies!” It was deplorable, and not even having Bianca proclaim that Babe is love made her look any better in fans eyes. Writers still haven’t learned anything from that.

Esme on GH drugged Trina, made revenge porn of Josslyn and Cameron, distributed it online, and framed Trina for it. Yet the show has given Esme amnesia and has Laura propping her. Giving Esme a blank slate memory wise and a beloved character to be nice to her doesn’t erase that she committed a sex crime and weaponized the police against a Black woman. Most fans aren’t seeing this and thinking “Oh, she was amnesia and our Laura is calling her sweetie? She’s fixed! This poor unfortunate young mother should be given a second chance.” Fans aren’t dumb. Okay, let me amend that. Most fans aren’t dumb! Not quite accurate. Let me try again. Some fans aren’t dumb!

Maybe if they had let Esme pay for her crimes, fans would be more interested in her sticking around. If they had let Trina and Josslyn slap Esme around and sent her to prison for a bit, it would be less maddening to see her in Port Charles. They took the cowards’ way out and it hasn’t gone over well. This is sad because Avery Pohl is a great actress and they could make Esme a mainstay with the right writing. Other characters have done worse like Ava killing Connie. Though, fans didn’t give a shit about Connie and Ava has suffered. Esme hurt characters fans actually care about, and the show needs to act like it.

2. Keeping A Couple Together Even When It Is Time To End It

It is maddening how common this is. B&B still acts like Brooke and Ridge are the destiny couple even though Katherine Kelly Lang and Thorsten Kaye only have chemistry when they are fighting. I have more chemistry with my right hand than Nick and Sally on Y&R do with each other, but they are going to keep going having boring sex and acting like Adam is a jackass for wanting to be involved with the baby. Finn on GH is Liz’s worst love interest and one of her baby daddies was a brain damaged hitman who wore the same outfit for 20 years. Why can’t writers and producers accept reality?

Keeping a couple together when it clearly isn’t working is stubbornness. They don’t want to admit they were wrong so we have to suffer for it. The other factor is they might not have anyone else to put with them so they are stuck together. Honestly, I don’t think a character being single for a while would hurt. If they have been on for years, they can be single for 6 months and support other people’s stories. Do that instead of keeping a bad pairing going.

1. Undervaluing Black Characters

Calling this a blunder is too soft a word. It is a part of systemic racism in the industry. To be fair to soap writers, producers and network execs play a part in this. They could pitch more stories for Black characters and the network can veto it. But I’m not letting writers off the hook. They are to blame in this as well.

On B&B, there are three Black contract actors. Two of them just exist to talk about the white people. The last time Paris had a story she was humiliated at her wedding by having the white woman who gave her laxatives interrupting it. Zende is just there. Carter is dating Katie, but before that he was having his 80 year old white man telling him to fuck his wife. I really think the only reason Brad Bell has Black characters is so CBS won’t get mad at him.

GH has made strides in how they treat Black characters, but there are still improvements that could be made. Tanisha Harper has been playing Jordan for a year now, and Jordan hasn’t gotten any dick. She is arguably the most beautiful woman on the show and the most action she’s gotten is a kiss from her ex-husband Curtis who is now married to Portia. That’s sad. And Jordan’s son TJ is getting a story with his partner Molly not being able to get pregnant. I want more than that. Tajh Bellow is just as handsome and talented as Nicholas Chavez and he should be a romantic lead on GH.

Y&R has a complicated history with Black characters. Bill Bell wrote for them back in the day, but half of them would be illiterate. It is racist to do multiple stories about Black people not being able to read. The current state is a mixed bag. Nate being a scheming slut who is climbing his boss to climb the corporate ladder is good soap. I like Nate and Devon still being at odds. Yet the Winters family needs a grounding character. They should call up Veronica Redd and have Mamie be a semi-regular presence. I want Mamie to cuss her family out.

Days had a Black woman drugging biscuits and kissing another Black woman because her white boyfriend is pimping her out for revenge. Did no one think of the optics of this story? Did no one think how Black viewers would feel watching that? Ron Carlivati really needs a co-head writer if he’s going to continue to be employed. Someone with more common sense because Ron can be his own worst enemy sometimes.

Dispatches From Soap Land

*Annika Noelle deserves a Daytime Emmy for the work she’s been putting in. And not Outstanding Supporting Actress. She’s a lead on B&B and she should submit there. If Heather Tom wants to submit in Lead, someone needs to remind her she’s barely on and hasn’t been a lead in years.

*Since Linden Ashby has already stopped filming at Y&R, Cameron returning will likely only last a month. Hopefully Sharon doesn’t just go back to pouring coffee after he’s done terrorizing her.

*Kate Mansi did great as new Kristina on GH. I don’t know why Lexi Ainsworth was fired, but I got the vibe executive producer Frank Valentini just didn’t see it for her, hence Kristina often being a non-factor. Hopefully with Kate being on contract, Kristina can be a real presence on the show.

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