The Cringiest Moments In Soap Opera History
Unlike many shows, which may only air a dozen or so episodes a season, soap operas are often on air five days a week, every week of the year. That means soaps writers have a lot of airtime to fill, to put it mildly. Soap storylines can become incredibly complex, involving romances, betrayals, deaths, surprise parents, sudden shocks, and other duplicitous dealings, and that's exactly why fans love them so much. "The only way to keep viewers is to do something that draws attention," one fan wrote on Reddit, explaining why things sometimes get a bit silly.
Even the most ardent soaps fan will acknowledge that sometimes, things don't just get a bit silly; things can get downright strange. Sometimes, in searching for a storyline that will keep viewers coming back day after day, soap operas tip over the edge into the absurd, and they can induce not just dramatic gasps, but laughs. Sometimes, when things get particularly out-there, soaps tip over into full-body cringe. From stunt casting to silly serial killers, from talking animals to zombie clones, these are the cringiest moments in soap opera history.
Snoop Dogg played in Plainview on One Life To Live
Sometimes, in an attempt to juice their ratings, soaps will bring in big-name guest stars to get people to tune in. Back in 2008, "One Life To Live" decided to one-up their competitors and "Gin and Juice" their ratings, booking Snoop Dogg for a guest spot. "I've been a fan of 'One Life to Live' since I was a baby," he told "Today." "My momma always had it on the tube in tha crib growing up." He played himself on the show, performing hits like "Sensual Seduction."
The rapper released behind-the-scenes footage of his appearance on YouTube, hyping up the crowd by asking, "Plainview, what it do?" While Snoop seems to have had fun on the show, he wasn't the only one. Robert S. Woods, the actor behind longtime "OLTL" mainstay Bo Buchanan, excitedly told the camera, "It's party time!"
In other words, Snoop's appearance on the soap brought us the unforgettably cringe visual of Bo and Nora (Hillary B. Smith) dropping it like it's hot. "One Life to Live" would ultimately end in 2012, but that mental image will live on forever.
Zoe's All My Children music video was well-intentioned
While soap operas can sometimes be thought of as a relic of television days gone by, they deserve credit for featuring some of the most forward-thinking storylines on television. "Soap operas were much more progressive than they were given credit for in their era," professor Tara McPherson told Smithsonian Magazine. "Having characters come into women's homes from a different world had consequences that were certainly more positive than negative."
In the 2000s, "All My Children" featured one of daytime's first transgender characters. Zoe (Jeffrey Carlson) started the show as a member of a rock band, but when the character returned after an absence, she walked viewers through her gender transition. "The goal is to cause a conversation—and that's happening," Carlson told People. "Members of the transgender community are talking with the regular posters on the 'All My Children' chat rooms." (It was 2007, remember.)
That's all well and good, and the show deserves credit for showing viewers that trans people are people. One day, though, Zoe performed an original song called "The Me Inside," and the resulting music video is uncomfortably earnest. The lyrics bordered on nonsensical, as Zoe sang, "Now the world belongs to me / Life begins with a capital Z." It also just looks instantly outdated, featuring dramatic shots of Zoe walking the streets, while characters like Erica Kane (Susan Lucci) look on. A for effort; C (for Cringe) for execution.
A chipmunk robbed banks on The Young and the Restless
Actor Greg Rikaart, who also stars on "Days Of Our Lives," has played Kevin Fisher on more than 1,500 episodes of "The Young and the Restless." Any character who sticks around on daytime for that long is bound to have some ups and downs, which Rikaart discussed in an interview with Michael Fairman TV. "Certainly some of the stuff earlier on was more challenging, but I also appreciate and really love some of the more lighthearted stuff that Kevin gets to do [now]," he reflected.
One of those challenging storylines involved Kevin being forced to rob banks. That sounds like standard soap fare, no? What made this storyline so cringeworthy is that Kevin was forced to rob banks while wearing a giant chipmunk head ... and visions of the chipmunk haunted him for long afterwards. It even talked to him at his worst moments.
It seems that Rikaart knows full well just how out-there the storyline was. He told TV Guide that he initially thought the show's writers were mad at him because they'd given him such ridiculous material. "That story was probably the hardest thing I've ever done," he said. "It was hard to make it make sense." The Chipmunk Bandit is still legendary among fans of "The Young and the Restless." In a discussion on the Soaps.com forums, one fan wrote, "Truly the stupidest & most embarrassing [storyline] I think I have ever scene [sic] on a soap."
Marlena got possessed by the devil on Days Of Our Lives ... again
On "Days Of Our Lives" back in the 1990s, Dr. Marlena Evans (Deidre Hall) was possessed by the devil in what turned out to be one of the most iconic soap storylines of all time. She even levitated, shocking viewers everywhere. In 2020, Hall told "Today" that the possession storyline would be what she's remembered for. "I think, as I've said before, 'possession' will be on my headstone," she joked.
The following year, "Days" announced that they would be revisiting Satan's battle with Salem. Marlena was possessed again, and this time the devil jumped around, also taking over fan favorites like Doug Williams (Bill Hayes). A number of former characters even returned from the dead, haunting Salem on Halloween night as zombies. While Marlena's first possession was shocking, the show's attempt to re-capture the magic inspired considerably less excitement.
Still, Hall was just as proud of her second dance with the devil. "It's been fabulously entertaining and very cleverly done," she told The TV Watercooler. Fans, on the other hand, weren't particularly happy about "Days" going back to the possession well. "I thought this storyline was beyond dumb," one viewer tweeted. Another wrote, "It was stupid twenty-five years ago, it is PATHETIC today."
Fans revolted when Guiding Light cloned Reva
The year was 1998, and viewers of the daytime soap "Guiding Light" were in a tizzy. TV Guide had revealed that the show was planning an elaborate new storyline that would hopefully recapture attention, but some fans of the show begged the show to reverse course, and quickly. "Guiding Light is planning to do a story that will change the face of the show forever," wrote one fan site. "They are planning to clone Reva."
The fans organized, attempting to put a stop to Reva's clone before she even existed. After all, the show had not been supernatural or had any amount of science fiction until that point, so fans viewed this story as an attempt to change their favorite show's genre. "The only chance to salvage the show is to stop this story dead in its tracks and stop insulting the viewers," the fan site wrote. They circulated a petition urging the "Guiding Light" showrunners to rethink the story, collecting more than a thousand signatures in a week.
"Guiding Light" cloned Reva (Kim Zimmer) anyway. The clone grew rapidly until it could successfully take Reva's place ... but the trouble was, Reva was still alive. Thankfully, the storyline didn't last too long. A few months later, Dolly died in Reva's arms. "I love you, Dolly," Reva said. "And losing you is like losing myself, because you are a part of me." We can only imagine how hard the fan-site owners cringed.
Zombie Charity was one of Passions' oddest figures
Before he played the hunky gardener on "Desperate Housewives," Jesse Metcalfe was best known for his role on "Passions," NBC's supernatural soap opera about the New England town of Harmony. Metcalfe played Miguel, a bit of a playboy with a heart of gold. Among the many women he fell in love with was Charity Standish (Molly Stanton), a woman with magical powers. Charity, Miguel, and Charity's cousin Kay (Heidi Mueller) often had a love triangle going on. In order to ruin Charity's life, Kay created a zombie version of Charity, which she thought for sure would end any interest Miguel had in her romantic rival. To her disappointment, Zombie Charity was still able to seduce Miguel.
If this all sounds ridiculous, you're not alone. Soap Central's recap of the storyline is understandably absurd, including lines like, "Miguel, wanting to make everything just 'perfect' for his lady love writes her a poem ... This is frustrating to the zombie." Things finally came to a head when the real Charity confronted Zombie Charity while Tabitha (Juliet Mills) and Timmy the Living Doll (Josh Ryan Evans) looked on. "It's check-out time," Tabitha proclaimed, before the lightning bolts began to fly. Folks ... what were we even doing?
A dog talked on One Life to Live
Tuc Watkins played David Vickers on 275 episodes of "One Life to Live," acting on the show starting in 2002. A few years later, Watkins found himself in competition with a scene-stealing co-star, also playing a character called David Vickers. This time, however, David Vickers was a dog. Furthermore, after her owners discovered that she was female, she began going by Princess David Vickers instead.
Princess David Vickers (the dog) was played by a Shih Tzu named Tallulah Bean, and her owner — credited simply as "Vanessa" — spoke with Soaps.com about her experience. "It cracks me up to watch Tallulah on TV," she said. "I had friends who were huge fans of 'One Life,' but I had never watched before. Of course, I'm an addict now."
Vanessa may have been cracking up at her dog's on-screen antics, but fans weren't too sure about the storyline. Did we forget to mention that Princess David Vickers is not just a dog, but a talking dog? In one episode, she had a full-on telepathic conversation with a baby, dropping a stunning revelation about the baby's parentage. If that wasn't uncomfortable enough, the baby telepathically talked right back ... a match made on cringe TV heaven.
Days Of Our Lives moved its characters to Melaswen
In the fall of 2003, death came to Salem. For months, "Days Of Our Lives" was stalked by a serial killer, a gloved madman who murdered characters like Victor Kiriakis (John Aniston), who got a toaster to the bathtub; Alice Horton (Frances Reid), who choked on one of her famous donuts; and Cassie (Alexis Thorpe), who got stuffed in a piñata. Fans freaked. "Be angry at me! Hate me!" teased writer James E. Reilly to Entertainment Weekly. "It shows that you are involved."
It's not shocking for people to die on soap operas. It's not all that shocking, either, for people to come back to life. Still, "Days" pushed the envelope a bit too far by killing so many people ... and then resurrecting them all at once. Everybody was still alive, it turned out, on a mysterious island named Melaswen, which we regret to point out is "New Salem" backwards. As if that weren't silly enough, the piece de resistance of the whole storyline was a sequence in which Marlena — revealed to be the killer — remembered how she arrived on the island: a magical coffin ride!
The storyline flopped so hard that fans speculated something major must have happened behind the scenes. "I'm glad they came back," one fan wrote on the Soap Opera Network forums. "I'm not glad the story ended up looking like swiss cheese with all its holes in the end."
James Franco's General Hospital serial killer wasn't a winner
At the height of James Franco's performance artist phase, where the "Spider-Man" star racked up degrees, wrote books, and pushed the limits of what it meant to be a movie star in the 2000s, he took a role that surprised fans. He was working on developing a film about an actor on a soap opera, so he told The New Yorker that he had his manager call up "General Hospital" and ask them for a role. "I wanted their full treatment, so all I said was that I wanted to be an artist and I wanted my character to be crazy," he explained.
Sure enough, his character — the fittingly-named Franco — turned out to be a serial killer and all-around weirdo. Franco (the actor) piled layer upon layer of weirdness to his performance, influencing the showrunners enough that they made Franco (the character) into a performance artist as well. According to The New Yorker, it all culminated in a live performance art piece in Los Angeles called "Francophrenia," where actor and character presented an art show comprised of restaged pieces from the actor and character's lives. As the magazine put it, "There was no one who was not confused."
Franco no longer plays Franco, and the role was rehabilitated by the show. When Roger Howarth took over the part, Franco the character was revealed to have had a brain tumor that made him crazy (and insufferably pretentious, apparently).
Dallas brought back Bobby in a big cringeworthy moment
No discussion of cringey soap opera moments would be complete without mentioning that not all soaps air in the afternoon. Especially during the 1980s, primetime soaps like "Dynasty" and "Dallas" were massive hits, inviting viewers to tune in each week for dramatic storylines that rivaled anything on daytime TV. "Dallas" in particular took a big swing that would live on in television infamy. At the end of Season 8, series star Bobby Ewing (Patrick Duffy) died after a car crash.
That sent Season 9 into a tailspin, and viewers watched with excitement as everyone picked up the pieces after such a tragic loss. At the end of Season 9, however, fans were shocked to see Bobby's wife Pam (Victoria Principal) wake to find someone unexpected in the shower. It was Bobby, alive after all, and his presence confirmed that the entire season had been nothing but a dream.
The cringeworthy reversal angered plenty of fans. According to star Steve Kanaly in People, about 10% of the show's audience never came back, feeling misled by the dream reveal. Fans weren't the only ones disappointed in the shocking episode. "Various cast members were pissed because their storylines were lost as a result of that," Kanaly revealed. "And it had a big impact."
The Bollywood number on Passions was a bad look
Fans were willing to go along with a number of ridiculous moments on "Passions." The show had witches, zombies, and a talking doll, but one of the cringiest moments in "Passions" history has to be that time Gwen (Liza Huber) thought about what her life would be like in India. In a long sequence that's uncomfortable to look back on, she imagined the country as a massive Bollywood production, complete with dance numbers and (even more) melodramatic acting.
NBC was proud of the sequence; they even had a whole section of the "Passions" website devoted to showing how they pulled it off. The actors, too, were proud. "The creative well runs dry sometimes when you're playing the same character," Huber said in a behind-the-scenes interview. "Having a different costume, transforming myself through this exotic make-up... it really got the creative juices going again." Incredibly, the sequence even won them a Daytime Emmy for Outstanding Original Song.
Nowadays, of course, we would comfortably call this "cultural appropriation" of the highest degree. Fans knew it at the time, too. On gossip website Oh No They Didn't, fans discussed the questionable optics of the sequence. "Americans always look kind of silly when they try to do the Bollywood thing," one viewer wrote, putting it kindly. Another was more straightforward in their reaction, writing, "What the hell. Bollywood would not approve."
Thomas romanced a mannequin on The Bold and the Beautiful
Daytime soaps got a little weird during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Unable to film the way they were used to, many soaps were forced to get creative in order to have numerous actors on set at one time. "The Bold And The Beautiful" solved this problem with mannequins, putting wigs on dummies in order to film over-the-shoulder shots. "I think Denise Richards actually likes it better," joked Thorsten Kaye to Access Hollywood. "I think she gets more from the mannequin than she does from me."
This filming style eventually led to a storyline where Thomas (Matthew Atkinson) fell in love with a talking mannequin, which he thought looked a lot like Hope (Annika Noelle). In one cringe-tastic episode, Hope walked into the room to find Thomas deep in conversation with the mannequin. "You're not making any sense!" she told him, while he shouted, "She's evil... Evil!" in the mannequin's face.
Understandably, fans were bewildered by the silly storyline. "I can appreciate a little weirdness," one fan wrote on the Soaps.com forums, "but it's time to stop the madness." Thomas was eventually diagnosed with a brain tumor, which is a classic soap opera way to explain some erratic behavior. Two years later, however, the Hope dummy returned, proving that on soaps, no one stays dead for long ... not even living mannequins.