BIggest 'waste' of a character

[GuidingLite]

Over the years GL brought on some wonderful characters...that they eventually threw under the bus or off a cliff by turning them psychotic or killing them off....of the following, which do you think was the biggest waste:

1. Teri DeMarco being revealed as Annie Dutton and then the real Teri not coming to Springfield

2. Ben Warren being killed off

3. Sandy Foster revealed to NOT be Jonathan....but rather a psychopath....

4. Alexandra was the drug pusher for 'Antimonius' AND Reva's stalker...

5. Other (please explain)

[Friz4ever]

Mindy. She and rusty could have been a super couple. Edmond (David Andrew mcdonald). He was the perfect antihero. He and Beth were magical. Jenna bradshaw. She was buzzes true love. Finally sonny Lewis.

[savytabby]

Wow, I agree with everything you said Friz4ever. I would add to that Claire Ramsey, especially when the actress returned during the Alan/Olivia/Josh/Reva story, and Selena and her daughter (whose name I don't remember). I especially agree with Mindy, and I would add her Aunt Trish to that list as well. The Lewis women could have been as big of powerhouses as the male Lewises (ie Billy and Josh), but TPTB just were not invested in them. Very disappointing.

Of the OP's choices, I agree with Teri DeMarco. I listed some of my 'Other' choices in the above paragraph, but I would add Noah and the guy from the island (who rescued Reva after Annie left her on the plane). I would also add the Reardons -- Matt, Nola, and Bridget. They were recurring towards the end of the show and they just did not write for them. Very said, and very said that Dylan and Bridget did not get their HEA.

[Emerald Greens]

I agree with all of this my additions would be

Ben Reade - making him a serial killer was all kinds of wrong.

Maureen - killing her off

Holly - making her the child snatcher and not getting over Roger enough.

Gus - making him a Spaulding seemed to diminish him . Either make really mean something or don’t go there.

I was glad Rick and Mindy ended up together but I loved Rusty they could have kept him around and found another love interest for him. I didn’t like them killing of Rose either.

I missed Roxie too.

They needlessly trashed Kyle for Josh’s return

Killing off Hilary Bauer and Jackie Marler too I didn’t like . Later making Justin manipulative.

So many!

[GuidingLite]

Oh, there are several that would qualify for 'most ridiculous character about-face'...

Holly being the child-snatcher....
Beth holding Gus hostage at a cabin....
Amanda Spaulding, the Malibu Madam....
Ben Reade, serial killer....


None of these stories were well-thought out......

[Emerald Greens]

I could probably take some of the things that happened not every sl is perfect or even good but some of it could be avoided.

[savytabby]

Oh, there are several that would qualify for 'most ridiculous character about-face'...

Holly being the child-snatcher....
Beth holding Gus hostage at a cabin....
Amanda Spaulding, the Malibu Madam....
Ben Reade, serial killer....


None of these stories were well-thought out......

While none of these stories were well thought out, that is different from these characters being the "Biggest waste of character". All of these characters were very good characters with great potential, but the story direction that TPTB chose to go with them were definitely head-scratchers. Amanda's and Holly's stories were better than the others because there was fall-out and follow-up with those reveals. I wasn't watching regularly during the Ben serial killer sl or Beth holding Gus hostage -- I don't remember that at all.

My take on the question "Biggest Waste of Character" is the characters they brought on or brought back and didn't do anything with, i.e. Mindy and Trish Lewis, Claire Ramsey, Noah, and the guy who saved Reva after the plane incident, as well as others that I can't think of at the moment.

[GuidingLite]

HI Tabby - my meaning was when the writers took a completely different direction with a character and trashed them and their potential - like Amanda going from emotionally frail and sheltered to returning as a madame....Holly, who had the potential to be a matriarch for the show after Bert and Meta died....made into a kidnapper....Ben who had leading man potential becoming a serial killer....Beth kidnapping Gus....they turned all these characters into either villains or psychos.....when they all had much greater potential....

[Emerald Greens]

I can see both ways of looking at it . Certainly a character can have potential and they don’t do anything with it.

The other way is basically diminishing a character like Gus or taking them in direction without laying the foundation for it like Ben or Holly. Taking characters that have potential to become more instead of squandering it for shock value. I can never accept what they did to Ben . Holly at least was able to recover somewhat from it but it was still a bizarre move from the writers.

[Smithey]

All of these and more. In my opinion, every single character was wasted the last few years of the show. EVERY character, not just one. The show should have ended years before and gave a proper burial.

[Emerald Greens]

I still miss GL I would have preferred someone brought in and revive it or at least give it a chance maybe another six months to a year.

[Smithey]

What I heard is that PGP wanted out of the soap opera business for a while before GL and ATWT ended. To date, they won't even discuss handing off the properties to anyone. Doesn't make sense.

[Emerald Greens]

I remember that they wanted out and I guess no one else willing to take them over it was easy enough for the networks to cancel .

[witchboy]

They really seemed to lose interest in Dylan Lewis. I really liked him and thought his place in the Lewis and Shayne families had a lot of potential.
I thought it was a shame that both Jackie Marler and Elizabeth Spaulding were written out before Phillip's parentage was revealed. It seems like at the least they could've brought Elizabeth back for that considering it was the pay off to years of story that Jackie and Elizabeth had been front and center for.

[GuidingLite]

I felt so bad for Phillip when Jackie died before he got a chance to experience her as his mother....he did develop a relationship with Justin eventually, as with his sister Samantha, but he never got to call Jackie 'Mom' as he thought she was only his step-mother for a time.

I think if any of Alan's ex-wives had come back to town, I would have preferred Hope....because she was a Bauer by birth and Alan-Michael's mother....and was treated so terribly by Alan....I would have loved a Hope/Alan/Holly triangle to have formed after Ed left town - I didn't like Holly with either Billy or Buzz....but she and Alan would have been quite the couple...and Hope returning to Springfield and finding herself once again attracted to Alan would have been quite a story....

[Smithey]

If I recall, didn't they kill off Jackie because of a change in writers? I think the executive producer at the time had abruptly fired Jane Elliott (who played Carrie Todd) and Doug Marland resigned in protest. Right after, they wrote off a bunch of characters, including Jackie AND Carrie.

Always wished they would have brought Hope back since she was a Bauer AND married to Alan.

Speaking of Bauer/Spauldings that were wasted, when they brought back Alan Michael (Michael Dempsey) at half the age he was supposed to be was a major waste of character.

[GuidingLite]

I loved Carrie Todd.....she was SUCH a great character - and I wished that years later a 'long-lost' child had shown up in town that was Carrie's and could either be Ross's or Josh's....or Justin's....Carrie claimed that she and Justin had had sex (they didn't) but what if they really HAD had sex and lied about it? So you have a child with a cra-cray mama and three potential fathers.....I loved the introduction of Dinah as Ross and Vanessa's daughter, but the Marler's could easily have stood another family member in town.....aside from Ben Warren and making Drew Jacobs his daughter...since both left town (one dead, the other not)....

As for Alan-Michael....I liked Michael Dempsey in the role (better than Michael Dietz) but HATED the pairing of him with Marina Cooper...that was BEYOND nauseating as he had thought at one time he was her father! I so hated the never-ending pairing of Spaulding with Cooper....with the exception of Harley with both A-M and Phillip....I was never a big Gus and Harley fan...they were okay, but....I loved her with the other Spaulding brothers...and of course once they revealed that Gus was Alan's son they HAD to de-age A-M...Gus was Alan's 'first BORN son' so they had to make him younger than Phillip but older than A-M...and considering they made him Rafe's father, the product of a high-school relationship...and Rafe was just a teen....they couldn't make him (Gus) older than 35, 36 years...maximum....so A-M couldn't be more than 30, 31...right around there...it fit better with the actual birth of A-M being in the early 80's, as he should have only been 21 or so in the early 2000's, but still...it was lame...that whole 'Gus is a Spaulding' thing was just dumb.

[Smithey]

Agree with everything you said. I've said this before, but the years with Ellen Wheeler were just atrocious.I try to forget anything happened after Richard died because everything went to pot right after.

[KatLovesSoaps]

Biggest waste was killing off Tammy when she should have just left town with Jonathan.

[GuidingLite]

Another character that they wrote out when they should have kept him around, in my opinion, was Nick McHenry Spaulding.....there could have been so many potential pairings with him....Blake (after Ross died), Beth (put Beth in some kind of accident or trauma and she believes it's 20 years prior and Nick is Lujack....not dead after all)....he could also have fit well with Harley if they'd kept her around....or Olivia.....or DInah.....that was a waste of a character to me, to just send him off and never hear from him again...I know he was married to Susan when he left, but...they could have split off-screen....or he could be a widower....

[savytabby]

ICAM with you GuidingLite. I love VI's Nick and Kimberly Simms' Mindy. They were hot together. But even without Mindy, there were an endless supply of stories for him. Considering how close he had become to Alan-Michael and Lucy, I was disappointed that he and Susan didn't come back for their wedding. It would have been cool to see him going against GA's Phillip as Nick.

[GuidingLite]

He'd have had so many great stories....he even could have been paired with Cassie and it could have been DInah/a man/Cassie all over again....like when Hart fell for Cassie and left Dinah....

I was actually shocked when they killed off Hart, too.....Roger Thorpe's son....he had a ton of potential still - that one was almost as mind-numbing as Maureen Bauer being killed off.....at least to me....some characters, when they kill them off rather than send them off-screen, make so little sense on soaps....seem like such a travesty...