vetsoapfan

All the remaining soaps have a number of burned out and/or irrelevant characters who could easily be axed ASAP, but you are right: GH has a TON. It's baffling. I'd want to quickly discard a huge swath of them and refocus the show on true (present and past) legacy characters with roots in the show's DNA.

You are absolutely right. I had just rewatched the following clip on youtube, too, so I don't why I had a brain glitch and referred to the lily pond scene. Probably because that fight might be the most infamous. Anyway, yes, the studio battle was the one I should have said felt well earned I apologize for the "senior moment."

It's interesting that up to 80% of true crime viewers are said to be women. It's...curious that up to half of the audience watching gay porn is also said to be straight women, LOL.🤔🫢

Yes, the show later became known for the super-couple and Reilly material, but whether that was to DAYS' credit or to its detriment is open to debate. The once intelligent, sophisticated and adult soap was vastly altered to the point of being unrecognizable. Depending on how the super-couple material was handled, I could deal with it to an extent, but I loathed the Reilly era with every fiber of my being. It's what finally me turn away from DAYS in disgust. I think giving the unsung heroes of daytime the recognition and credit they deserve is long overdue. I'll add Nancy Curlee to this list, although at least she has been acknowledge before, more than the likes of Lakin and Edelstein.

I think by then, many soaps just threw anything and everything at the wall to see what stuck. All it made was a god-awful mess.

I also thought Rita Lakin and (particularly) Rick Edelstein wrote their soaps quite well, and they are not spoken about a lot, either. While the hacks always stand out in our minds, we've had many unheralded, quality scribes in daytime TV as well. Even if no soap has been well written in many years, viewers were spoiled way back when!

To be fair, there are some catfights that are logical and justifiable, based on established history and characterization. Those are few and far between, however. The majority of them are artificially contrived and forced, thrown into shows gratuitously to get attention. That's why they have become redundant and boring, if not outright childish and stupid. I would say that the first catfight between Krystle and Alexis (in the lily pond) was earned. The endless follow-ups, not so much. I remember that! Unfortunately, although Soapdish was a comedy/parody, daytime TV really has foisted some heinously absurd plots on us. That was one time a soap made it work. Under Gordon Russell, Sam Hall and Don Wallace, OLTL's grasp on characters and its ability to write natural dialogue pulled it off. People spoke the way...people speak, and behaved realistically and well in character. Fans don't often list that writing team among the greats like Phillips, Nixon, Bell, Lemay, Slesar, etc., but those scribes were experts at their craft.

Good point: the back-from-the-dead plots are bad enough when the characters in question have only been presumed dead, but these stories are significantly worse (more idiotic and damaging) when the characters have literally died, for real, in front of our eyes, and then been brought back to life through impossible hocus pocus trickery.

I could have written this entire post, line by line, myself. You have encapsulated my thoughts perfectly. Bravo. I agree the last year DAYS was written well was 1982 under Pat Falken Smith. Did you ever read the interview with Joseph Mascolo, who bluntly said, "When Pat Falken Smith left the show, she took the quality of the writing with her"...? Subsequent writers really turned Mascolo's character into a cartoon villain, an unrealistic buffoon. Others can correct me if I am wrong, but I believe Julie Williams is the only legacy character who has never been presumed dead.

Even a nominal perusal of the history of our culture confirms the popularity of "junk" entertainment. Masterpieces like St. Elsewhere and The Wire languished in ratings hell while The Kardashians and The Jerry Springer Show drew massive audiences. I'm convinced that a huge segment of the public just doesn't like to think; they don't want to be intellectually challenged. They gravitate towards popcorn entertainment that allows them to turn off their brains and "veg out" in front of the TV. Starting way back in the era of radio soaps, critics went out of their way to denigrate the soaps and demean the (mainly female) audience. One critic wrote that the soaps were written for "slack-jawed housewives who can't be bothered to change out of their bathrobes, get off their sofas, or put down the chocolate bon-bons." It was clear that such critics were trying to elevate themselves ("Look how intellectually superior we are!") by vilifying others who "dared" to appreciate an art form the critics neither watched nor understood. I am sure the intense hatred for the soaps and their audience was rooted in misogyny. I have experienced this phenomenon as well: people who mocked daytime TV for being boring, poorly done, and devoid of substance. It was an opinion based on second-hand condemnation of the soaps by other folks who didn't have any knowledge of the genre, either. One of my friends had a long-term medical issue at one point, and was relegated to staying on the couch or in his bed for a few months. Then he started watching General Hospital with his girlfriend. She had not been involved with that show as long as I had, so pretty soon he was calling me and asking all sorts of history questions and for my opinions on current plots. He was AGHAST when BJ died and her heart went to Maxie. He said watching Lucy, Felicia, Bobbie and especially Tony break down just stunned him. ("Have soaps ever been this powerful before?" YEEEEES!) Prejudice of daytime TV is borne from sheer ignorance, like any other form of bigotry. Right, but the challenge is in getting new viewers to give soaps a fair try. People who think the WWE is the greatest thing since sliced bread are not always open to sampling The Young and the Restless, LOL. I agree. That formula has decimated the genre, and it's long past time to discard it.

To me, Love of Life disintegrated pretty quickly after Claire Labine left, but I must say that the scenes with Lynn and the baby were very effective. Primarily because the young actress playing Lynn was good, but also because that baby screamed and cried and screamed and cried FOREVER. It wasn't faked or staged, either. The poor kid was going mental on camera, and it wouldn't stop. My sister asked more than once, "How on earth did they make that child scream like that?" I was actually concerned for the kid.

Years later, I stumbled across a documentary on PBS (I think), with a television analyst discussing trends on TV throughout the years. She said that the audience attracted to the camp craze on soaps was not made up of tried-and-true soap loyalists, but just temporary viewers who were looking for a quick fix of silly madness to enjoy. They ultimately were not prepared to spend five hours a day, forever, to watch soaps, however, so they abandoned the genre and went on to find other forms of entertainment to satiate their interests. The problem then was that the soaps had alienated regular daytime drama fans who couldn't stand watching the drivel of the past few years. They, too, had moved on to other viewing choices. It was a lose-lose situation for daytime TV.

YES!!! 👏👍👏👍👏 Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes! I have staunchly made these exact same points for over 40 years, ever since the idiotic Ice Princess/The Cassadines Freeze the World crap on GH opened the floodgates to the low-brow, cartoonish camp stories which ended up permeating daytime TV. I knew that insane clown plots would garner temporary interest from outsiders, the media and kids, but not the dedicated, already-loyal and emotionally-invested viewers who had loved and stuck with soaps throughout their lives. They watched for vastly different reasons; not to laugh at the latest, outrageous stunts. It took a while (TPTB are nothing if not dogged in their determination to beat dead horses into the ground), but the cringeworthy camp phase did end up making a huge swath of the audience drift away from soaps, and the ratings plummeted. The damage is still being felt to this day, but at least sci-fi/supernatural plots are not at the forefront of the shows anymore. With Ron Carlivati gone, hopefully even DAYS won't be resorting to another devil possession.

I turned away from DAYS the moment I saw Marlena levitating above her bed. I just couldn't stand it. The DAYS I loved had been adult, subtle, layered and grounded in reality. The show I knew and the character of Marlena, were destroyed for me that day. And I must say, watching Marlena "murder" beloved characters (especially Alice Horton) was so morally repulsive, it made me sick. I have no problem with shows telling campy, absurd, supernatural based stories if they were conceived and introduced to do so. But, IMHO, inflicting this onto once-erudite and serious soaps destroys their DNA in a way from which they never recover. I do not want to see the Great Gazoo floating around Maggie Smith's head on Downton Abbey and taking her on trips to visit Dr. Who, LOL.

The problem is now widespread. With spoilers so prevalent in the media, whatever you want to watch (soaps, primetime TV, movies) is bound to be spoiled anywhere/everywhere, often immediately upon its release and before many people even get a chance to see it. If you dare turn on the TV or radio, and if you dare surf the internet, you will be hit by spoilers even if you actively strive to avoid them. Many folks spread spoilers on purpose, for fun, which is so annoying. Unfortunately for me, I only forget all the painfully bad, unforgettable moments...which I would never want to watch again, anyway. Great material, worth rewatching, would hold no surprises for me.

I thought about giving BTG a try when it was first announced, but I guess a combination of being really busy and having been burned out by decades of bitter disappointment in modern soap opera style, kept me from delving into the show. I'm glad you are enjoying it, though. I really do want the soap format to survive and thrive, and hopefully make a strong comeback. Laura was a pain in the butt when she was a teenager. She was arbitrary, touchy, headstrong and refused to deal with conflict like an adult, even though she demanded to be treated like one. That being said, the character was a very recognizable and realistic teenager like we have all encountered and known in our lives. Bobbie truly felt that she was better for Scotty than Laura was, and she wasn't totally wrong for believing this, considering how Laura ended up betraying her true-blue young husband and running off with a hoodlum rapist. The fact that characters were drawn in shades of gray, and made you root for them as well as want to smack some sense into them at other times, made the soaps much more compelling and believable. Neither woman was totally innocent/blameless in any of this, and we could understand the motivations driving them both, so our loyalties and opinions could shift from time to time, which kept us on our toes and the show engrossing. The fact that Jill and Katherine ended up hating AND loving each other lead to an endlessly fascinating roundelay of emotions for the audience to enjoy. Having Phillip later turn up alive, and having hidden himself for years to cover his sexual orientation, was a cheap and tacky (i.e. ridiculous) choice, but it could never erase the years of fine drama that had preceded it. James Reilly just left a bitter taste in my mouth, and I loathed basically everything he did on the soaps, but I recognize he had his admirers. I've just never been able to tolerate unbelievable camp and fantasy on soaps, which destroy the "reality bubble." The soaps in the 1970s were surprisingly frank in their depiction of mature, adult storylines and sexuality. It's so weird that they became much more conservative and restricted in later years.

No, I have not really watched BTG except for the first episode. By saying that it "brought a lot of that back," do you mean it offers over-the-hill camp like the 1980s+ soaps gave us, or the more naturalistic, down-to-earth style of daytime drama from earlier decades?

Even though Twin Peaks did have its missteps along the way, its first season was excellent, and the bits we saw of BOB were truly terrifying (particularly when he quietly entered Donna's house and crawled over the living room couch to get to Maddie. EEEEEEK!) The episode that featured the big reveal about Leland was one of the most intense and horrifyingly violent episodes of television I have ever seen. Right in the middle of it, my telephone rang and I almost hit the roof. When I answered, my friend didn't even say hello. He immediately hissed, "I am losing it! I can't watch this alone!" We never actually saw Dorian kill Victor Lord; when the character died, it was off-screen. We did know, however, that she was doing a lot of manipulating back-stage, and trying to isolate him from everyone. She was up to no good, and it certainly looked like she had taken his life. That implication was woven into the show's canon for years until later PTB chose to do some revisionist retconning. I know about the recast (I watched her), and fully acknowledge that the actress was decent. I just don't know how well she was accepted by the overall audience. I mainly heard comments along the lines of, "She's a lovely young woman, but she just isn't Bianca." To each his own. LOL! When I was in prep school, I had a film course in which the teacher screened the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It wasn't as explicitly gory as I had been told (still disturbing enough, thank you), but UGH. It had a certain...quality that really creeped me out. When I returned home, my father was in the yard trimming the hedge with a chainsaw. I took my dog, went to my bedroom, and stayed holed up in there until I KNEW it was safe to come out.😬 It really was a dumb move for the show to make. They should not have killed off such an integral character in the first place. That shower scene and the explanation that followed ("It was a dream!") were pretty embarrassing, IMHO. I never would have killed Bobby off, but after the character was confirmed dead, I would have kept him that way. I get the sentiment. The moment I saw that AW had recast Alice Frame in 1975 (and dropped Jacquie Courtney), I stopped being a daily viewer of that soap. And after the last of the Brooks family members left Y&R, I bowed out of that show too.

I had never heard that tea. I'd have remembered it, considering how much I loathed Chuck Pratt.🤢 Actually, Lind really did do a good enough job, but she just wasn't Bianca. After Kate Mulgrew left Ryan's Hope, the show recast her role with Mary Carney. Carney was a fine actress, but no one else but Mulgrew would ever be Mary Ryan. (The less said about Kathleen Tolan the better.) Whom did that old rascal NOT sleep with, LOL? It was really well served by that great cast. Discarding attempts at social relevance and current events hurt the soaps a lot. They used to deal with mature, adult subjects significantly better than primetime TV. Nowadays, they don't seem to make a point about anything.

I think that's an experience many soap fans have in common: there are certain scenes which become imbedded in our memories, and which we never forget. Do you remember who the head writer at OLTL was at that point? Was it Michael Malone? Harding Lemay failed at getting permission to have the offspring of a core family be gay on AW. He probably would have done a fine job with it, but AMC's handling of this similar story was quite the success. I never understood why they later tried replacing Bianca.🙄 After the character's involvement in such a groundbreaking story, I highly doubted the audience would embrace a replacement.

ITA. While I believe the show ran out of steam towards the end, and tried too hard to offer more and more outlandish material at the expense of character development and exploring all the quieter moments of their stories (which had made the first few years so mesmerizing, IMO), DS worked wonders with the restraints it was under. There's a reason it became such a fiercely-beloved cult classic, warts and all.👏 The fact that this show and most of the run of The Doctors (including its best years) survived is a blessing and a miracle!

The Wendy Riche/Claire Labine era of GH was the last time any soap truly attained the level of greatness, IMHO. BJ's heart saga and Stone's battle with AIDS are exactly what I think of when I think of soap masterpieces. So many moments still resonant to this day. I'll never forget Felicia finding out what was happening, runni ng upstairs to find Bobbie, and then sinking to the floor shrieking/crying, "Not Barbara Jean! Not Barbara Jean's heart!" Mac hugging Stone made me love him dearly. OLTL really milked the Victor Lord business and Viki's alters way too many times, and it all ultimately became absurd. (Victor supposedly being alive...UGH! That was one of the show's worst and most egregious stories ever.) But the period you mentioned was well done, with a lot of good acting. It's true that the Victor Lord we longtime viewers knew from 1968 to 1975 bore no resemblance at all to the monster he was later said to be, and that irritated me, but some writers handled the revisionist history better than others. I just wish TPTB had left well enough alone, and allowed VL and Viki's alters to remain in the past after they had already been milked bone-dry. The Victor-is-Alive dreck was just embarrassing. (I appreciated hearing, much later on, Dorian remarking, "If that really was him," in reference to the suddenly-reanimated "Victor Lord". There was no way to fix the plot at that point, but at least the show was giving us a throw-away line offering hope that all that garbage wasn't even real. Complex villains, whose motivations we can at least somewhat understand, are always the most captivating. To me, Rachel Davis, Roger Thorpe, Iris Carrington, Erica Kane, Barnabas Collins, etc., captured the audience's imagination because no matter how badly they behaved, we could see their soft underbellies and understand their pain. "Suffering antagonists" are more magnetic than one-dimensional, cardboard caricatures, which many soap villains tend to be.

Yes. At the time, I started to have a glimmer of hope that the light was finally going to return to its former radiance and shine brightly for a long time to come. The return to glory did not last long, alas, but we were lucky to have gotten that brief renaissance.

I agree. While plots themselves can be riveting, we will care about all the twists and turns of the stories so much more because of our emotional involvement with the characters. The great writer Henry Slesar of The Edge of Night acknowledged this in an interview once. He opined that no matter how well he crafted his stories, they only worked effectively because the viewers cared for the people involved. He said that without our attachment to the likes of Mike and Nancy Karr, the audience would end up no more moved by the stories on soaps than by the articles we read in the morning newspapers. The plots, themselves, would not have the same deep impact. Your analysis of Dark Shadows was on the mark. The show surged in popularity upon the introduction of Barnabas Collins primarily because he was such a complex, tortured, fascinating character to watch. Despite his obvious trouble in memorizing the mountains of dialogue he was given day after day, month after month, Jonathan Frid played the character beautifully. But once characterization was sidelined/shortchanged and more and more time was spent on flashy gimmicks and shocks (the show had been more subtle in the original vampire story), DS burned itself out. TPTB who decided that offering gimmicky plot devices over layered, complex characterizations was the way to success understood neither the soap genre nor its audience.

And for many years, the successful soaps existed in a "reality bubble," staying more or less within the bounds of events that could take place in the real world. We had ordinary people next door to watch on-screen, and we never knew from day to day what would happen to them. It was easy to get immersed in the stories and identify with the characters' problems. There were no clones, extra-terrestrials, time travelers, devil possessions, mad scientists freezing the world, towns filled exclusively with the uber-rich, etc., all of which broke the magical reality bubble of the genre, and reinforced the idea that everything we were now watching had turned to cartoonish farce. To me, the advent of over-the-top camp alienated a lot of the die-hard soap fans who had loved the shows for their lost, immersive and HUMAN qualities. But for decades, we had experienced something magical!