EW: SOAPS KILLING OFF LONG-TERM CHARACTERS FOR SHORT-TERM SHOCK VALUE

Last week, The Bold and the Beautiful pulled off that rarest of rare 21st-century feats: a surprise plot twist (that hadn’t been spoiled on blogs and social media months earlier). B&B killed off the character of Ally, who’d spent her past few weeks unspooling mentally, including seeing her dead mother floating above her in a bubble, urging Ally to scrub her family’s company of sinners (good luck with that, Ally).

Ally’s response was to try to run down her cousin, Steffy, in the same spot where Steffy’s mother, Taylor, once accidentally killed Ally’s mom, Darla.

Instead, Steffy defended herself by, rather reasonably, wielding a tire iron, and Ally was the one who ended up dead. (We think. It is a soap, after all.)

Ally’s response was to try to run down her cousin, Steffy, in the same spot where Steffy’s mother, Taylor, once accidentally killed Ally’s mom, Darla.

Instead, Steffy defended herself by, rather reasonably, wielding a tire iron, and Ally was the one who ended up dead. (We think. It is a soap, after all.)

Short-term shock: 1

Long-term storytelling potential: 0

But B&B isn’t the first (or likely last) soap opera to sacrifice years of possible story for a buzzworthy cliffhanger. Sometimes the move is triggered by a popular actor leaving the show, and producers believing they’re irreplaceable. But why default automatically to dead as a doornail? What’s wrong with just leaving town?

We talked last week about the folly of killing babies and young children. General Hospital apparently decided to rectify knocking off little Jake, who was related to practically everyone on the canvas, by bringing him back from the dead earlier this month. The same happened with Jake’s biological uncle, AJ, a character whose birth and paternity was one of GH‘s top stories when it first put daytime TV on the pop-cultural map in 1980. AJ was killed off as an adult, then brought back from the dead. Then killed off again. (I didn’t say GH learned its lesson.)

What other shows have killed off legacy characters only to change their minds later and turn handsprings to bring them back? And what happened to the shows that weren't able to pull it off? Find out in my latest for Entertainment Weekly at: http://community.ew.com/2015/07/28/the-bold-and-the-beautiful-ally-dead/