5 wackiest storylines in soap opera history
Soap operas aren’t everyone’s cup of tea, but they’ve been around for long enough to have earned large, enthusiastic fan bases around the world. Predictably, when a show airs five days a week for decades, some of the storylines are bound to get a little wacky. We’ve chosen some of our favourite kooky plots from soaps.
1. Bouncer’s dream – Neighbours
Neighbours is usually pretty good at keeping their plots away from the sport of shark jumping, but this particular story is just odd. You may remember the time when Bouncer the dog (a Labrador retriever with soap star good looks) dreamed that he married the dog from next door.
2. Timmy the living doll – Passions
Now, in all fairness, Passions was just one big kooky mess of weird storylines, punctuated by men removing their shirts and causing the women in town to swoon. But the weirdest storylines were usually saved for Tabitha (Juliet Mills), the town’s resident witch, and her living doll, Timmy. Tabitha would almost always enter a scene with another character holding an enormous doll. When the other characters were gone, the doll would be replaced by an actor (Josh Ryan Evans), and the two would plot and scheme new ways to mess with the town of Harmony.
3. Killer clone – The Guiding Light
Sometimes, when your wife dies in a plane crash, the only option left to you is to clone her, right? Right. That’s just what happened when Reva’s plane went down. Except when it turned out she didn’t really die, her clone tried to finish the job.
4. The lovesick orangutan – Passions
In the town of Harmony, many of the town’s elderly residents were cared for by a nurse who just happened to be an orangutan – Precious. As was bound to happen, Precious fell in love with the strapping Luis (Galen Gering) – a painfully one-sided affair. Eventually, Precious left Harmony for good, letting go of her love for Luis by throwing his photograph out of a train window. Closure.
5. Marlena’s possession – Days of Our Lives
There comes a time in every doctor’s life, when they are possessed by the Devil, as happened to Dr Marlena Evans (Deidre Hall). She went on to set fire to a church, transform into a jaguar, and was eventually saved by her ex-husband, who remembered he was ordained as a priest.
Which wacky soap opera plotline is your favourite? Tell us in the comments below!