What's the Frequency?
out like a sore thumb. If you've spent that much time trying to make a story work, you better darn sure have the guts to finish IMO. It may take more time, but the alternative can sometimes be equally messy or jarring. So in a way, it is good news that I think only about 10% of fans' annoyance with story and character overload has to do with the actual quality of the story.
But if that is indeed the case, why is it then when a character, storyline, or couple is shoved down our throats are viewers often feeling suffocated? Maybe it isn't because of the sheer frequency of airtime or poor development, but the sheer lack of any emotional variety. Why did OLTL's Flash fail so badly? Sure, the short answer she was simply a poorly written character, but the more complex answer is that she was just there and nothing ever changed that. Flash never developed any layers, even when we learned of her true identity, not even in the cameo appearance her father made during the music box killings. Sure, she was annoying, but it was because she was nothing but annoying that so many fans wanted her head. The writers in my opinion never even attempted to venture out of the basic concept of Flash. No writer ever asked himself where he could go with her so she remained unchanged, with no shades of gray.
Besides, I think we've established it's not just new characters and insta-couples that suffer this fate. As a matter of fact core characters and immensely popular couples probably suffer from this the most. We're always complaining that these days we don't see our favorites enough because, well, we don't. In the past, however, showing our favorites day after day wasn't an automatic success if the storylines weren't fresh. Within the last decades stagnate writing; uber-villains and supercouples have both made fans weary because there was little change. ATWT's James Stenbeck for so long did nothing but die and come back to torment, die and come back and torment, and then die again, that people began to wish he'd never come back. Only when he was allowed to do something unique, to influence his son's psyche in a way he hadn't been able to since Paul was a teenager, did his character come back to life (no pun intended). By keeping The Bold and the
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