Off the rails: Seven of the most bizarre (and ridiculous) storylines on daytime soaps

By Eric Kohanik, ReMind Magazine

Soap-opera storylines hit highs and lows. And some have given new meanings to the term “ridiculous.” Here are seven of the most bizarre ones:

1. One Life to Live
A fixture on ABC from 1968 to 2012 (and briefly revived on Hulu in 2013), One Life to Live covered many typical themes. But it jumped into a weird science-fiction mode in 1989, when Victoria “Viki” Lord (Erika Slezak) ended up trapped in Eterna, a futuristic underground city where, it turned out, Viki’s high-school sweetheart, Roger Gordon (Larry Pine), had secretly been raised as a kid.

2. Port Charles
In 1997, ABC’s General Hospital gave birth to Port Charles, a dark spinoff that only survived until 2003. Dominating its storyboard were zany encounters, often involving Lucy Coe (Lynn Herring) battling vampires.

3. Days of Our Lives
A longtime fixture on NBC’s Days of Our Lives, Marlena Evans (Deidre Hall) has certainly faced a lot of outrageous twists. The most ridiculous one surfaced in 1995, when Marlena ended up possessed by the devil, complete with hokey, glowing eyes. Unfortunately, the storyline raged on for several months.

4. Passions
The last daytime soap to actually debut on broadcast television, Passions only lasted from 1999 to 2008, starting on NBC and then drifting over to DirecTV for its final few months. Some might say that EVERY episode was dumb, thanks to the supernatural elements that befell the residents of a town called Harmony. At the root of the dumbness: a witch named Tabitha Lenox (Juliet Mills) and her little sidekick, Timmy (Josh Ryan Evans), who was a “doll” she had magically brought to life.

5. Guiding Light
Starting off as a radio soap opera for 19 years, Guiding Light became a TV fixture on CBS for 57 years, from 1952 until 2009. During 21 of those years, Reva Shayne (Kim Zimmer) became a popular character who endured many ordeals, including a few instances where she was presumed dead. One of those, in 1998, boiled over into a wonky storyline that found Reva coming face-to-face with a clone of herself that had been created using one of Reva’s frozen eggs.

6. The Young and the Restless
CBS’ The Young and the Restless has been home to one of the weirdest hotties: Sharon Newman (Sharon Case). After having been married to Nicholas Newman (Joshua Morrow) and then his half-brother, Adam (then played by Michael Muhney), Sharon took her relationship with her father-in-law, Victor (Eric Braeden), to a weird new level in 2012 by marrying him as well — not once, but twice.

7. General Hospital
It is the longest-running soap on American TV. But one of the dumbest storylines on ABC’s General Hospital emerged back in 1990, when an extraterrestrial named Casey Rogers (Bradley Lockerman) became friends with Robin Scorpio (Kimberly McCullough). Casey’s quest to return home depended on the powers of a special crystal that went missing and was eventually recovered.