Here I Come To Save the Day! How Fans Really Feel About Soap Opera Underdogs!

Some soap characters just can’t catch a break. While General Hospital’s Sonny  is praised as the mobster who can do no wrong, Julian  is regularly vilified – even by his own family – for being the wrong kind of mobster.

On The Young and the Restless’ (YR) Victor (Eric Braeden) always gets the girl, and the company, and the positive paternity test.

Meanwhile, Jack (Peter Bergman) has to make due with the scraps, including women like Nikki (Melody Thomas Scott) who only marry/date him in between Victor reunions, and even a son who was supposed to be Victor’s, if Diane had her way.

On Days Of Our Lives (DOOL), Gabi (Camilla Banus) is everyone’s favorite punching bag (Julie is just the most open about it), and The Bold and the Beautiful (BB) has Sally (Courtney Hope) always drawing the short straw.

They are daytime’s underdogs? Do you love them? Hate them? Root for them? Here’s how almost 20,000 fans voted:

I’m On Your Side
They need me, 82% of you sigh. Who else will come to their defense, if not me? But here is where it gets really interesting.

Sometimes, who fans think is the underdog isn’t necessarily whom the show has anointed. Sometimes, it’s the bad guy who gets your sympathy, when everyone else is just piling up on them.

Like GH’s Ava (Maura West), kept from her daughter simply because Sonny is… Sonny. Or BB’s Quinn (Rena Sofer) who, sure, has gotten away with a lot of crap. But so have Steffy (Jacqueline MacInnes Woods) and Brooke (Katherine Kelly Lang), but they get forgiven at the drop of a hat.

Either way, you’ve got their backs!

You Deserve It
Aw, grow a backbone, a less forgiving 17% of the audience growls. People are going to keep picking on you unless you stand up for yourself. And until you do that, we’re not rooting for ya.