Murder Most Foul: Are Soaps’ Killer Mysteries Packing Any Punch?!

You know this old chestnut: The bad guy makes everyone in soap-town’s life completely miserable and then — wait for it — ends up dead. Shocker, right? Um, not always.

There are many things that soaps do better than any other medium — like sweeping romances, touching family moments–and lest we forget–love on the run. But murder mayhem? Well, it depends, but is it something soaps should bother with?

After all, who would live in these towns if the murder rate was as high as it seems? Take Salem on Days of Our Lives, where Deimos (Vincent Irizarry) and Andre (Thaao Penghlis) bit the dust just in the last year alone.

Let’s not even get into Port Charles on General Hospital, where the mob rules. Warring families cause a sweet boy like Morgan to go poof in a car bombing because they really wanted to kill that nasty Julian Jerome (William deVry)… and by ‘they’, we mean his own sister, Olivia (Tonja Walker).

The Bold and the Beautiful seemed to be trying to do an attempted-murder mystery but that lasted about five seconds before the culprit was revealed. Was that a smart move? The Young and the Restless did the same with Victor (Eric Braeden), even though “we” knew it was JT (Thad Luckinbill).

We definitely know who in turn killed JT just a few weeks later.

Soap Hub asked fans if they’re tired of murder mysteries and here are the results.

Stop It
For 69%, you are so done with these plots. First of all, you enjoy the bad boys (and girls)! They make stuff happen and keep things moving along. To kill them is… well… to kill great story, and you don’t like that. Surely, these writers are talented enough to keep these fun characters around.

Kill Them
The rest, 31%, find these murder mysteries compelling as you try to figure out along with your faves who could have possibly offed that character! You like to put on your detective hat and predict the outcome. It’s more fun than watching characters talk about their corporate shenanigans.