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  • Alternative Character Interpretation:
    • Ethan Crane got this a lot, as a lot of fans saw him as an asshole who treated both of his women like shit. He refused to cut bait on Gwen for her own mental well-being while refusing to allow Theresa to move on with her life (although it's often pointed out that it's Ethan's second actor who usually gets this treatment and was more of a jerk than he initially was).
    • Theresa and Gwen. Theresa's a batshit crazy stalker who can't deal with rejection, while Gwen is the poor cheated on woman who at worst, simply can't see that the man she is in love with is an asshole who doesn't love her but keeps leading her on because his reputation can't let him dump his longtime girlfriend for a crazy stalker he's fallen in love with.
  • Arc Fatigue: What ultimately killed the show. Even with its Cult Classic status, even the most hardcore of fans found the lack of any real resolutions to almost all of the show's main storylines after years of being displayed frustrating and eventually lost interest in following it anymore. Even worse, some of the storylines that had been a staple for the show (such as the star-crossed lovers Luis and Sheridan and that whole Chad and Whitney affair) fell apart, due to the "magical power" of...
  • Ass Pull:
    • The writers pull this in the series finale. It is revealed that Gwen and Rebecca once went to Vegas together to get over Ethan. While there, Gwen got drunk and married a total stranger by an Elvis impersonator, therefore making her marriage to Ethan null and void so that Ethan and Theresa can be free to marry. Oh please!
    • Sheridan's niece Fancy Crane eventually came between her and longtime lover, Luis, her once-dead husband (and his older brother) Antonio inexplicably returns and picks up their relationship where they left off and the less said about the "Vincent" fiasco, the better.
  • Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: When Theresa is giving birth to her son she, Gwen, and Ethan break character and start singing the theme song.
  • Broken Base:
    • Fancy being introduced as Luis' new love interest. This led to some pretty nasty internet board wars between Sheridan and Luis fans and Fancy and Luis fans.
    • The fans who argue about Gwen and Theresa are always fighting over who's the better of the two and why. Despite Theresa having the majority of the fanbase on her side, this still happened nevertheless. Oddly enough, though, while Gwen's reputation with fans hasn't improved any over the years since the show's cancellation, Theresa's reputation has only gotten worse and there are those who feel that she isn't the heroine that we should all root for/emulate. Even her strongest of fans can't defend the fact that she used sexual trickery in disguising herself as Gwen to sleep with Ethan to get impregnated by him, although she's not the only character to pull this in the show's history.
  • Complete Monster: Alistair Crane is the megalomaniacal Big Bad driven by a need for control. Besides being an abusive father and a Bad Boss, he has forced his grandson to rape his granddaughter; physically and sexually abused his wife; tried to kill everyone in his family; committed several counts of rape, including a 14-year-old girl; faked the deaths of two of his grandchildren, his daughter's lovers, his ex-wife, and her sister; left his daughter to believe that she killed her mother; arranged his daughter to have electroshock therapy; and tricked Whitney into believing she had slept with her brother. He committed most of these crimes for two reasons, to find a suitable heir or simply because doing things For the Evulz amused him.
  • Damsel Scrappy: Plenty of examples from this show, but Sheridan is probably the best one. There was barely a time, particularly in the early years, where she wasn't being abused, manipulated or placed in all sorts of imminent danger for a variety of reasons. It only got worse when she became pregnant and Charlie (really Alistair in disguise) managed to knock her out by simply using a sock filled with sand.
  • Ensemble Dark Horse:
    • Tabitha and Timmy. While she is a snarky and quirky witch and occasional Audience Surrogate, he was her impossibly cute dummy/assistant that only came alive for her and was like a son to her. Plus, fans loved the strong chemistry they had with one another and for providing the majority of the show's comic relief.
    • Fancy Crane, given how her pairing with Luis caught on with fans and ultimately replaced Sheridan/Luis as the default super-couple.
    • Esme, Fancy's perpetually drunk and pill-popping best friend.
    • Fox Crane, when played by Justin Hartley. It's almost hard to believe there were a full three years of this show before he slid into town.
  • Harsher in Hindsight:
    • Quite possibly the saddest one yet: Josh Ryan Evans died the same day that Timmy's death aired.
    • David Bailey, the second actor to play Alistair Crane, died after drowning in his pool. His death occurred while the show was airing a story arc about other characters who were trying to kill him.
  • Heartwarming Moments: In the final episode, after accepting the grace and love of God, and confessing centuries worth of sins, Tabitha, now firmly on the side of good, watches Theresa and Ethan's wedding happily, while remembering Timothy as his hand reaches down from Heaven to hold hers, revealing that one day the two will be reunited again, along with Endora and all the people she loves in Harmony.
  • Memetic Mutation:
    • It's Fatuh.
    • "Wait a minute. I know what's going on here!" (Note: He doesn't.)
  • Misaimed Fandom: Gwen; she does some extremely bad things that qualify as Moral Event Horizon crossing, but some fans generally justify it by pointing out that she's driven to these things by Ethan's manipulation of her. Also Theresa pretending to be her friend just to get close to Ethan.
  • Moment of Awesome:
  • Moral Event Horizon:
    • Gwen agreeing to help her mother with the Juanita Vasquez plot, arguably.
    • Theresa's rape of Ethan (disguising herself as Gwen and drugging his drink). Same goes for Sheridan: Fancy tries to prove to Luis that her attacker came back into her room, and to prove it, she says a button got ripped off from his shirt when she fought him off. Sheridan sees it first on the floor. She grabs it and keeps it for herself in order to try and convince Luis that Fancy is crazy and is only trying to get attention.
    • Kay also pulled the exact same trick, only she used Hecuba to magically disguise herself as Charity to sleep with Miguel. Perhaps it's even worse in her case, as she ended up pregnant as a result and announced it at Miguel and Charity's wedding. Also, naming the baby girl she had Maria Ivy after her mother's rival due to Grace showing apparent favoritism for her dead sister's orphaned niece over her may qualify, too.
  • Portmanteau Couple Name: ET or Therethan (Ethan/Theresa), Shuis (Sheridan/Luis), Charguel (Charity/Miguel), Chadney (Chad/Whitney), Gram (Grace/Sam), Savy (Sam/Ivy), Juvy (Julian/Ivy), Evian (Eve/Julian), Therox (Theresa/Fox), Gwank (Gwen/Hank, but although they were never a couple, fans liked the idea of the two together).
  • Quirky Work: As lampshaded in the quote on the main page by Charlie Brooker, it was certainly more outlandish than your average soap opera that mostly stays grounded in reality.note  From hilarious sendups or spoofs, including The Wizard of Oz, Chicago and even The Osbournes being randomly incorporated into serious storylines, to other zaniness such as a seemingly kind old woman really being a witch with a sentient dummy and another woman using a bag of sugar to fool people into believing she's pregnant, it pushes the show into new territory.
  • Replacement Scrappy: Cracked Connie, Tabitha's other dummy that was brought on shortly after Timmy/Josh Ryan Evans' death. Fans reviled this new addition and she was thankfully pulled after a very short time.
  • Retroactive Recognition: Justin Hartley of This Is Us got his start on the show, as did Jesse Metcalfe before he moved on to Desperate Housewives.
  • Ron the Death Eater: Gwen, full stop. While she isn't completely normal or innocent, both the fans and eventually the writers looked at her as the devil from almost the beginning, although Fridge Brilliance shows that Gwen would not have been so Flanderized if Theresa had not butted into the relationship to begin with (plus having someone like Rebecca for a mother as well as an absentee/dead father certainly doesn't help.) Remember that Ethan didn't even like Theresa in the beginning and thought she was a bit crazy. Charity also got this treatment, since even the writers eventually preferred Kay with Miguel.
  • So Okay, It's Average: The DirecTV episodes.
  • Special Effect Failure: Magically throwing around a vase through bad compositing.
  • Squick: When Sheridan gave birth while in captivity, Charlie (dressed as a clown) was the only one there to witness the birth and coach her on. We later learn that she was really Alistair, meaning that he saw his own daughter give birth. Blegh.
  • Super Couple: Ethan/Theresa, Sam/Grace, Miguel/Charity, Sheridan/Luis.
  • Tear Jerker:
    • Gwen's utter devastation of her stillborn daughter Sarah in LA and her aborted son Nathan from the "Who's The Mommy?" storyline.
    • Grace's miscarriage of her surprise pregnancy in the aftermath of learning Ethan's true paternity. She was so heartbroken that she nearly died from her grief. Then years later, it's discovered that she was killed in a train bombing orchestrated by Alistair Crane while traveling with her fake husband and their fake son. She was one character who was mostly sympathetic and not involved in any of the underhanded dealings of the town who had received one of the saddest fates.
    • Timmy's death, especially with Josh Ryan Evans dying as well. His last act (giving Charity his heart) displayed that he (and by extension, Tabitha, who he served as a Morality Pet to) was Good All Along and even in the years after his death, characters still reminisced about him fondly and what he meant to them.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Fans would have liked to see Hank and Gwen as a couple, to give him some extra screen time, her a chance to be with someone other than Ethan and for them both to gain some Character Development. And let's not get started on Hank, or Fox for that matter...
  • Unintentionally Sympathetic: Tabitha and Timmy. Yes, they were trying to stop Miguel and Charity from being intimate to the point of trying to kill her and she had done other horrible acts including killing Charity's mother in a house fire, but they only did it to both survive themselves and to not incur the wrath of "the boys in the basement", whose punishment for their failure would involve their deaths anyway or something far worse. Plus her ultimate and genuine Heel–Face Turn (due to his afterlife presence and influence) helps a great deal with this.
  • Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Martin Fitzgerald and Katherine Crane fit this trope to a T. Although you may feel sympathy at first for the latter regarding the tremendous amount of abuse that she suffered at the hands of Alistair and somewhat understand why the former wanted to protect her, the fact that they let their families believe that they were dead (and in Sheridan's case, manipulated into thinking that she herself had killed Martin while she was still a child) makes it difficult to do. Worse, while the Cranes inherited Katherine's abuse, causing them to (initially) grow up to be spoiled and ruthless human beings, the Lopez-Fitzgeralds were left hand-to-mouth while a heartbroken Pilar had to single-handedly support the family as a maid working for the Cranes. Even upon them returning and Pilar confronting them, Martin flat-out tells her that he no longer loves her.
  • The Woobie: There are several. You have Theresa, Pilar, Gwen (she does have moments of this), Charity, Grace, Sheridan as well as her mother, Katherine, Fancy, Timmy, Whitney and Simone...

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