Should Writers Pull the Plug on Soap Opera Murders?

Everyone loves a good whodunit, soap fans as much as anybody else. Who can forget Days Of Our Lives (DOOL) Salem Strangler, the Loving Murders, or Who Shot Susan Moore (before we knew she supposedly gave birth to twins) on General Hospital (GH), and pretty much Edge of Night’s entire run?

But when the murder doesn’t lead to a great, long-term umbrella story, just an “Eek! A dead body!” jump scare, is it time to say enough is enough? Here’s what a nearly record-breaking 15,000 viewers had to tell us!

Death Brings Drama!
It was a squeaker, but 50% of you came down on the side of the Grim Reaper, and voted that murder ups the stakes of any story, making it more dramatic and you more invested.

They can’t all be winners, like All My Children’s Who Killed Will, or As the World Turns’ Who Killed Rose (with mouthwash, no less).

But even convoluted and unsatisfying messes like that time The Young and the Restless (YR) wanted viewers to care who killed Austin and Courtney, or when escorts started dying on Guiding Light and Matt Bomer turned out to be the killer… for some reason, still keep things hopping!

V Is For (Too Much) Violence
For 49%, though, it’s too much. It feels like every time you turn around, someone is lying in a pool of their own blood, or, at least, fighting for their lives.

Maybe DAYS realized their mistake with The Necktie Killer, and that’s why they brought back Will (Chandler Massey). But his resurrection comes just as viewers are catching their breath post-Who Killed Deimos, and in the middle of the fallout from JJ (Casey Moss) shooting Theo (Kyler Pettis). Can we, at least, space the violence out a little better?

We realize that might be harder to do on GH, where death is the only way Sonny (Maurice Benard) knows how to fix a problem, but what about a little more love, and a little less hate?