No matter what soap you watch there are bound to be the same plot contrivances that move the plot (sometimes forward, sometimes backward). I was inspired tonight to create this thread after watching a commercial on SoapNet for AMC which posed the age old question "will she chose her true love or her baby"?

So...what are some of your favorite/least favorite/unavoidable cliches from the soap world?

I'm sick of WTD stories these days.There the worse.

Love triangles

It used to be that Triangles either gave you sympathy for every player, or a clear villain. Not they are just so overdone. Most are boring and so many are brothers or sisters fighting over someone like a juicy bone. It makes you wonder why anyone would care about any of the players involved. I can't think of one engaging triangle on any show. Can you?

You have a point.Good triangles used to give all the characters POV and sympathy or understand the characters motives.The triangles on GH are the worse though.I never could understand why women fought over Sonny,and Jason.

A good triangle is a thing of beauty. Haven't seen one in years, though.

The biggest soap cliche is probably back-from-the-dead, closely followed by the incurable condition (paralysis, disease, blindness, deafness) that is miraculously cured, leaving no trace behind. Knowing that no condition, not even death, is irreversable makes it hard to invest, to say the least.

Every pregnant woman is destined to take a tumble down the stairs or have some other accident that puts the baby in jeopardy. Half of all pregnant women have miscarriages. There is no such thing as a normal birth - every birth is wrought with complications.

No start up business ever fails. If a character opens up a bar, restaurant or coffee shop, suddenly it instantly becomes the hottest spot in town and every character on the show must make daily visits.

At least one character on every show was abused as a child and suffered some severe emotional trauma, causing them to block out memories of significant chunks of their lives. This enables the writers to conveniently and magically pull a heretofore unknown grown adult child out of their asses when plots are getting stale and the character needs someone new to interact with.

My favorite soap cliche is that people can stand next to two people talking and manage not to hear what they say, but can hear everything through a closed door or window.

And no one ever locks a door. Or uses a phone to tell anyone anything.

And they go to Europe w/ one tiny suitcase (everyone has a passport) and still manage to have a tiara and ballgown ready for a costume ball.

Heavy rains lead to blackouts which leads to sex which leads to a baby 7 to 11 months later with someone you can't stand.

Reminds me of H&A where pretty much every female character has been raped/molested/assulted or in some way abused as either a child/teen/adult (except Ruby although I'm sure they are going to have it turn out their Ross or Charlie molested her a kid or they'll have Angelo rape her).

I also hate the 5 minute lesbianism cliche.

What about the jack-of-all-trades Doctors? DAYS used to be the worst with this.

Oh, and DAYS also took the crown on the unkillable Stefano and the fact that every.single.Brady or Brady Spouse either came back from the dead or had a long-lost spouse come back from the dead.

GH kills me with its insta-doctors and nurses. Liz just announced that she was going to be a nurse one day and ~Poof~ she was one. And Emily's med-schooling was murky. Was she an intern? A resident? It didn't matter she was never in the hospital anyway except when she as a patient.

- Grief/sorrow/terrible loss = sexytime! and usually with someone inappropriate.

Worst example: AMC's Maria/Dmitri grief sex after her adopted child was taken away. WTF??

- People just walking into other people's houses (corollary to the "doors are never locked" cliche).

- One soap cliche I love and look for is the gift wrapped present with the box-top wrapped separately so it can be just lifted off the still-wrapped package.

- In romantic scenes, tons of burning candles suddenly appearing all around: who lit them, since our lovers did not have time? and then who put them out (fire hazard)?

- Formal weddings, complete with minister, the perfect wedding and bridesmaid's dresses, elaborate flowers and decor, printed invitations, full catering and live string quartet...all in 48 hours time.

That one never fails to crack me up.

I always laughed on Passions when people were discussing a secret and another person who they did not want to know the secret would barge in and say something like "I know whats going on!". Then they'd cut to commercial break and when they got back that person would of course be totally clueless or offbase with the conclusion they came to.



I'd say thats more of a primetime soap cliche than daytime soap cliche (at least on American ones). Except for a few pointless kisses they usually are relatively serious about same-sex stories on daytime. But I agree that it is annoying.



They also did this twice with Kendall on AMC. It was a stretch to believe the first time it happened. It was absolutely ridiculous the second time.

Mothers and daughters (and granddaughters) sleeping with the same man.

What about the tragedies/natural disasters/murders that always seem to occur in the middle of a formal or costume ball. Its a wonder anyone would be willing to put on a tux/evening gown.

Also related to the various permutations of "overhearing" -- the cliche of a door being shut....but not all the way! there is a crucial gap as the door is left ajar. And then a character starts talking about secret or incriminating stuff ...with their back turned to the open door/vulnerability.

Basically, if a door is not completely shut = crucial eavesdropping or observation through the crack.

and

EVERY restaurant has a private dining room.

AND

If a female character is given a dress or cool outfit as a gift, usually right before an event etc., they will also mysteriously (because no sign of this in the box) receive the shoes, bag, jewelry, and undergarments to go with it.

AND

Cough = doom
Headache = doom
Faintness = doom OR pregnancy

AND

Large family mansions can magically expand or contract rooms as they are needed/not needed.

AND

ALL hospital rooms are private.

AND

All soap towns have time/space portals for traveling quickly between points A and B, no matter how far apart they are in reality. Worst example: B&B: people FLY around the LA traffic and make it across town in the time it takes to walk out a door in one scene and in another in the next scene... and the 3 hour trip between LA and Big Bear is magically compressed.

This is a fun thread!

Maria/Dimitri DID NOT HAPPEN! That's my story and I'm sticking to it!

There is no such thing as a planned for and wanted baby. Those babies usually don't make it out of the womb. The best way to have a healthy baby is the ONS. And the only way you can figure out that you're pregnant is to faint. Then, after much protesting on your part, you'll reluctantly drag yourself to the ER/OB/Cardiologist who will do a blood test and tell you 5 minutes later.

If you're a childless woman with a career, it won't be long before the stanvils start dropping. "You don't understand because you're not a mother!" Yep, she gave up a baby.

I'm talking about British and Australia soap as I don't watch American ones.

And under no circumstances do you really know who all your siblings are. Trust me, either mom or dad or who you thought was dad, or uncle, have provided you with a half-sibling, or half-sib/half-cousin/half-aunt or some such.

Heretofore unknown lookalike siblings/evil twins.



Or, if you don't want kids, you're a dried-up shrew. You're less of a woman. You're BSC and end up kidnapping babies or become a serial killer.

If two women become pregnant around the same time one will lose their baby or there will be a baby switch.

SORAS. 'nuff said.

(Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome for those of you, like me, who need definitions!)

double post - sorry!

Yep. My favorite example of this was the time when Stephanie showed up at the Forrester house and observed Owen and Donna (through an open door, of course) apparently on the verge of having sex. I believe she was in her underwear and he was shirtless but had his slacks on. After the commercial break, Stephanie is magically back at wherever she had originally come from across town. Cut to the next scene, and Owen and Donna are still at the exact same stage of the act, kissing and with him still wearing his slacks. Either Owen and Donna just moved very very slowly or Stephanie teleported.

I agree that if there is only one doctor in town, he or she has expertise in every area of medicine. Olivia Winters on Y&R does everything. Bridget Forrester on B&B has been an internist, an OB, a cardiologist, a fertility doc, an ER doc and everything in between (not to mention starting and completing college, med school, and residency all in the span of 5 years).

Same thing with lawyers. Even though Genoa City is big enough to have its own international airport, there is only one lawyer in town, his name is Michael Baldwin and he does absolutely everything. If it was a small town, a lawyer who did everything would be more believable, but Michael never will refer cases to others, he must do everything on his own. If ever there are two lawyers in town (like Rafe who was recently introduced) they will inevitably end up partnering together.

Tertiary character or extra that happens to be black? Why, s/he is invariably involved in law enforcement, whether as a prosecutor, judge, cop, or prison guard. Tertiary character or extra that is Asian? Medicine, of course!

Worst example of this: Mary/Erica on B&B: came back as a young adult when the character had been born less than 5 years previously AND had actually been BABYSAT by characters her new incarnation interacted with as peers.

And its counterpart, Soap Opera De-Aging or Age Stalling Syndrome, in which long term characters just stop aging (stay vaguely in their late 30s -- early 40s) despite their children aging enough to look like their siblings. Or, an absent character is recast with an actor MUCH younger than the historical character.

On B&B, one character went from LA to Madison, WI in less than 25 minutes. Brooke and Ridge were going to dinner in LA and arrived at the dinner when the other character got off the plane in Wisconsin .

GH constantly has characters traveling internationally in less than 30 minutes. Apparently there are wormholes between upstate New York and Italy, not to mention Mexico.

SORAS drives me nuts. I think the most egregious example was Leah on GL, who was aged to be older than her two OLDER brothers.

As an adoptive parent, I deeply resent the soaps' tendency to emphasize biological ties over all others. Adult adoptees show up and begin calling the birth parents "mom" and "dad" and never mention the family that raised them again. I had such hopes that OLTL was going to do an intelligent SL about an open adoption with Starr's baby, but naturally the best possible outcome is for the unwed teenage mother to parent. Granted, she's a teenage mother with significant resource who is, I believe, about to marry the teenage father of her child - but nevertheless.

I agree. Adoption is usually portrayd terribly on soaps. Even when adopted people on soaps have decent parents they have issues over being "rejected" by their birth parents and are quick to forget the people who raised them. Real families are defined by biology. Although AMC is good at portraying Tad Martin and Scott Chandler as real members of their families but that is the exception to the rule.



That one bugs me. I can't get over how Liza on AMC is now played by someone over ten years younger than the previous actress.

Okay, I haven't watched B&B in years but shouldn't Bridget Forrester be about 13 right now? I know, I know. SORAS is completely out of control.

Also, this?



This is especially horrible since Lisa is a contemporary of Tad's -- in fact was dating him while he was boinking her mother -- and the recast looks at least 15 years younger than Michael Knight. Grr.

B&B is notorious for this too. The Kristen recast was so ludicrous -- there was no way the new actress could have been married to Clarke 15 years before (and involved with Mick years before THAT), because she'd have been in elementary school. And now Katie Logan is essentially the same age as her niece Bridget -- despite having been an adult when Bridget was born and having babysat her -- such that they have been rivals for the same man.

It makes my head hurt, almost as much as characters who are WAAAAY too old becoming pregnant.

The Soap Opera De-aging Syndrome bugs me when the parents that this is being applied to are put next to their SORAS-ed children. Rick Forrester is 28 years old, which means that Brooke Logan has to be at least 50. Yet they clearly want us to believe that Brooke is still in her early or mid 40s.

How old is Erica Kane supposed to be? I believe she first appeared on the show in 1970 as a 16 year old teenager. When I was watching AMC circa 1990 I was 18 and she was about 36. Now close to 20 years later, she should probably be about 55. Yet I remember that she had Kendall when she was 14 and I thought Kendall was established as being 30. So does that mean that they are trying to make us believe that 65 year old Susan Lucci is portraying a 45 year old woman?

Another cliche that bugs me... magical sperm and eggs! Never mind how old the characters are. Victor Newman is in his 70s yet still fathers children despite having two vasectomies. Ashley Abbott has got to be at least 50 and yet here she is, pregnant with Victor's child. When was the last time you saw a 70 year old man and 50 year woman in real life who are expectant parents? Then again, Ashley is also a SODAS example, it seems they want us to think she is about 40.

Right, and Billy is like 28 or something even though Ashley was an adult when he was born. Why, oh why do we watch these things?

Erica Kane is the worst. Back when the introduced Kendall in 1993, she was supposed to be 15, and Erica gave birth to her when she was just 14. That made Erica... 29 years old, when the actress herself was 46 years old! They bumped Kendall up to 23, which today means that Erica would be 52 and Kendall 39. I don't watch AMC anymore, but does that jive, AMC watchers?

I think they deSORASed Kendall again because I think she is currently only supposed to be in her early 30's.

AND she's allegedly still able to have children.

But it's WORSE with B&B's Taylor! When Rick was born, Taylor was already an established and esteemed medical professional who had her own practice for some years. So she was at least 30 and possibly older when Rick was born; and Rick was established as 28 a couple years ago in the beginning of the Phoebe/Rick story. So now Taylor should be about 60 or more! and that made my head hurt when they hooked up Taylor and Rick with a 30 year age difference between them (that and that she had been a parental figure to him)...and yet, like Brooke, they want us to believe Taylor is somewhere in her 40s?

Must.Not.Think.About.This ...head will explode.

Anyone can gain access to anyone's medical files and have the medical knowledge to change test results correctly. I'm not a doctor or nurse but I have seen my files and the terms are a little more complex then, say, Jason is the father or Sue has an irreversible brain tumor.

Taylor may be about 50-60, but her new face is only 5-10, right.

Family relationships that are so complicated that you can't even explain them without a sentence that runs so long that you can't remember where you started. Nearly incestuous relationships, like when Natalie knows that David is really her uncle, but David doesn't know and thinks that Natalie is actually boinking her uncle Jared, although David was hitting on both of his neices who are twins but maybe not related because they were raised by different people. Then, only Nigel knows everything, although he won't tell us until they're tired of the storyline and want to move beyond it.

Well at least H&A have solved the problem of the ages of that parents by either having most parents 13/14/15 when they had their kids or having no parents at all, see Ruby, Nicole, Drew, Belle and their various mothers/fathers. They are all older teenagers with parents in their early 30's.

I love this new topic. When my husband retired several years ago and started watching Passions and Days of our Lives with me, I tried giving him some background. Oy vey!! I told him to just watch it for a while and I'll fill in the blanks--well, here we are in 2009 and he knows DOOL very well and enjoyed Passions too. Some of my favorite/annoying cliches:

• Switching embryos--easy as basting a turkey.
• Changing DNA--who needs college and special training?
• SORAS-soon, a character will be his/her own parent or child.
• When we are supposed to believe that 60+ people are in their 40s (I'm looking at you Marlene)
• The loooooooooooong looks just before a commercial break.
• There are many more, but keep on adding to this--looking forward to reading more.

Rape, it cannot be said enough, is too often used and has been a cliche for at least twenty years. It's always by a person whom the heroine just can't avoid, such as Sharon Collins being raped by Matt Clark, or Cricket/Christine being raped by Derek, both on Y&R. Passions had Theresa being repeatedly raped by Alastair, and Sami being raped by Alan on DAYS. They were constantly confronted by their attackers, especially in Sharon's and Theresa's cases. Never does the rapist just avoid the victim or move on.

I was actually shocked when Margo was raped by a drug addict on ATWT and he was summarily arrested and prosecuted. And for creativity, Sunset Beach wins hands-down for the "turkey baster" incident. Otherwise, it's just an easy go-to for writers.

Another cliche: affairs. For some reason, affairs seem to be the way to maintain triangles on soaps. Never does someone have the honor to stick by the person they're in the actual relationship with. There always has to be those scenes with the cheaters sneaking away to a fancy-schmancy hotel room (or a barn, tree house, cabin, cabana, yacht, etc.), then laying in the rumpled sheets afterward. Creativity points to DAYS for the "spectral sexy!bed spinning through space" when Carrie and Dr.Mike got it on, but even that was just another affair.

One cliche I'm particularly fond of that is a Y&R specialty is the incredibly intimate conversation with both actors facing the camera. I'm always waiting for the person talking to the back of someone's head to either whip that person around and say, "look at me, dammit!" or else to start walking around so they can be face to face. Which could be pretty funny, if it ended up with both of them turning in a constant circle.

What about when a character starts off bad then is all of a sudden redeemed and made the hero/heroine of the show. I'm looking at you, Luke Spencer.

And no one is ever blind or paralyzed forever on a soap opera. You will eventually get knocked on the head to regain your sight or the love of a good woman/man leads you to will yourself right on out of that wheelchair.

So, so true. And you know, if soaps are looking for better ratings or more attention, they should get back to storytelling where there are actual consequences. You know what would be awesome on One Life to Live? If Matthew (kid in wheelchair) wins his right to have life threatening surgery to regain mobility -- and actually dies. Think of the attention it would garner. Think of the dramatic potential for Bo and Nora. Of course, we know they never would.

How many years ago was BJ killed on General Hospital? And people still talk about that one.

Amnesia! The convenient solution to characters disappearing off the canvas for weeks, usually when the actor wanted an extended vacation. It doesn't seem to happen much in real life, but in soapland, seemingly at least one character every three months forgets who s/he is and is wandering around somewhere, or holed up in a hospital bed as a Jane Doe, or being cared for by strangers. On Y&R, in recent memory both Nick Newman and Katherine Chancellor were hit with the old amnesia bout, and currently it looks like Nikki Newman probably suffered the same fate when the actress had a contract dispute and quit the show for three weeks. The character got hit by a car and disappeared. When the actress gets back on the set, there must be some kind of convenient explanation for where she's been, and my guess is that they are going to go the old amnesia route.

Similarly.... Brain Tumors and Blackouts! Commonly utilized during an old fashioned murder mystery. The killer can never be the obvious villain in town otherwise it would be boring. The killer will invariably be someone who is least expected. Need a convenient explanation for why an otherwise fine upstanding citizen is all of a sudden a cold blooded killer? Why, they have an undiagnosed brain tumor that caused them to do all these things! Or they had some mysterious blackouts and can't account for their time. Because they didn't REALLY intend to kill so and so and it was all the brain tumor talking, they will of course be redeemed and rejoin mainstream society. Just like its cousin amnesia, the brain tumor that influences evil dastardly acts is something that just doesn't seem to happen in real life, but happens all the time in soap land.

I am okay with the SORAS cliche, and I see why they do it, but they need to learn to use it with RESTRAINT and more consistantly. There should be an established set of rules, so that some point down the road the parent/child at least seem to have a decade between them.

My rules would be:

1) No SORAS is allowed until at least SEVEN YEARS after the child was born onscreen. Seven years is enough time for the audience to get used to the parents as "mature" (even if the SL was an unplanned teen pregnancy). Plus, don't the writers WANT a good seven years of writing juicy custody battles, baby switches, childhood illnesses and near-deaths, etc?

2) Have the child not be seen on screen for at least a year so that the audience isn't jarringly seeing a 4 yr old actress on Monday and then a 28 year old actress on Thursday. This is when going to live with an out of town relative or a Swiss boarding schooll come in handy.

3) Please only SORAS the child to a TEEN who looks like an actual adolescent! Yes, I know twentysomething actors playing teens are the norm, but at least try to cast an actor who doesn't look 30--however attractive they may be! Especially if the actors playing the parents are very young! A hot 25 year old actor who could pass as older shouldn't be playing the son of a hot 30 year old actor who could pass as younger!

Ooh! How about the "bedside promise to God" cliche? Where Character A is at Character B's side after Character B contracts some dreadful malady, and Character A tearfully promises to do anything, anything, even....stay away from Character C, as long as Character B lives. And then of course Character B does live, and Characters A and C are forced to gaze longingly at each other from a distance because A promised to stay away.

Actually, any scene in a hospital chapel where a character begs God to spare their child/spouse/sibling/parent/lover/television repairman would apply. Now don't get me wrong, sometimes those scenes can be very powerful and moving, but other times, it's like, "Okay, let's watch ____ go for his/her Emmy reel."

A fun game to play with soap cliches is to ask yourself if you've ever done that thing or even know someone who has. I've *never* overheard a conversation pertaining to me. Yep, over 40 years on earth and I've never overhead anyone talking about me. You wanna know how? I don't want to, so I don't creep up on people or linger outside doors.

The Anti-aging through recasting freaks me out. I watched ATWT from birth through my twenties, and Tom Hughes was always the same age. You know his front burner days are over because they've finally allowed him to age. The weird part with this condition is, their children finally catch up at some point and look appropriate. That baby Kim Hughes had at 55 is now a comfortable adult child for her at 70.

This isn't really a cliche, but I have to laugh when a show ends with a couple in a room, and when they return the next day, to continue the scene, the female's hair has been cut/recombed/colored. Also, whoever is in charge of clothing and props, make sure the characters are wearing the same jewelry, etc for the same conversations-on DOOL recently, EJ was wearing hs wedding ring in the den, walked into the foyer with Nicole (no ring) went back into the den--yup, ring back on. Obviously, the scene in the foyer was done some time after the one in the den, but little things like that are jarring. Or is it just me?

Related to the continuity and time portal travel issues is the oft-used cliche of soap time expanding and contracting such that events that in reality take oh, 4 hours or so, become a month's worth of shows -- the infamous "dayweek" or "monthday" phenomenon. This is most used in sweeps disaster (blackout! bombing! fire! hurricane/tornado! hostage-taking! and so on) or big party/gala event (huge wedding! costume or charity ball! fashion show!) stories.

All of these are so good.....

How about when you enemy turns out to be your child/parent - see Katherine/Jill (even if the retcon was retconned); Kendall/Erica; Alexis/Sam