Faulkner

Tiger’s really a paradigm-shifting pop culture icon, and the possibility of ending a 10-year major drought would have been huge. The only person in tennis who comes close right now in America is Serena, which is why the ratings for the final Saturday of Wimbledon were so good. I think it’s hard to draw a definitive conclusion about this year’s men’s final, as it was up against a World Cup final watched by nearly 12 million viewers.

TV Cord-Cutting Accelerating at Much Faster Pace Than Predicted

Just random and rather late: The View opening is hilarious. Whoopi holding out the bouquet; Sara’s little coquettish hand wave with the lonely rolling chair in the background; Joy’s TA-DAH! pose; Sunny’s painful-looking rope climb; and Meghan opening her mouth so wide you can see what she had for breakfast. It’s like the director asked them to make the stupidest gestures they could think of, and that’s what they used. I know it’s been used for ages, but it always strikes me as funny.

I think that’s largely true, but I didn’t find many of the other soaps watchable at all during that time period. The GL cast felt like they were performing with some kind of collective purpose to me. Like damn the world: we are going to get dressed in closets and perform in the woods with cheap cameras up our noses, and we’re going to do this with some dignity. (Not that there weren’t dark spots: I’ve never seen a performer as charismatic as Beth Ehlers become as hardened and brittle so quickly. I mean, maybe Julia Roberts? Lol.) Whereas many of the other shows post-‘97-00 felt... soulless, like DAYS, OLTL, post-Alden Y&R, and especially GH, which had good dialogue writers supporting a show that was morally bankrupt.

Oh ok. I was very unhappy with San Cristobal, Beth/Phillip/Harley, clone Reva, Teri/Annie (in spite of Signy Coleman’s best efforts) and the mob on GL, which why I didn’t enjoy a lot of B&E. It just felt like they thought the show needed this huge reset (maybe it did), but they took some of the worst elements of ‘80s sci-fi/action-adventure soap and Reilly-era DAYS to do it. And Labine loved her some mob, so it didn’t surprise me that she carried on the Santos stuff. What really made GL at all watchable in those last 15 years were the actors and their chemistry with each other. They elevated a whole lot of really iffy and desperate writing. GL took a lot of risks to save itself, but maybe it needed a DNR order at some point.

Thanks! I appreciate differing opinions. I only started watching during Curlee & co. To me, her stuff was perfect ensemble soap, at least until things began really unraveling around 1993. B&E above the Dobsons? I loved B&E’s first year, but ‘98-00 was ROUGH aside from a few stories and characters I enjoyed, like Selena and Drew. McTavish is forever on my sh!tlist, and I was disappointed in Labine after her often sublime (if uneven) GH and her underrated (IMO) OLTL tenure. Even though I was too young to see Pam’s GL, I can certainly see why she’s revered, even though her Santa Barbara and especially her OLTL were weak. I missed a lot of the 2002-03 Taggart era because I was in college. I can admit that Kreizman had his moments (and was helped by a strong cast), but I really felt like the show had already been too damaged at that point.

I find Maria VERY hard to like, but those paparazzi shots are icky. A little reminiscent of the William/Kate sunbathing photos from a few years ago, even though Maria isn’t showing anything that couldn’t air on daytime TV.

Forgive me if you’ve already posted this, but what did you think of Nancy Curlee?

She certainly played Victoria Rowell/Dru a lot, but I remember a lot of people complaining that she became a demeaning stereotype especially with her behavior towards Carmen Mesta (cutting up her clothes, the drunken rant at the party, roughing her up in the break room, etc.) Rowell played all that to the hilt, though.

I also felt there was some comfort in being part of some imagined community all watching a program at the same time. Aside from something like Game of Thrones, which has a mass audience who feels compelled to watch live to avoid spoilers about who slaughtered whom last night, there isn’t much reason to rush home or allow a TV network to dictate when and where you watch something. If you missed something like Killing Eve or The Americans or Barry, you can always view it on your cable’s VOD, app, or website or buy it on iTunes or wait until it becomes available on a streaming service. Previously, you had to tape on a VCR, wait until summer reruns, or, later on, buy the season DVD if you missed something. But it’s so freeing. It gives me the freedom to watch things when I want them when and how I want them. If a show is preempted for whatever reason (rare in primetime but all too frequent in network daytime TV), I know I have other means to watch. But I still feel like something is lost when people aren’t all watching at the same time. You can still have fruitful discussions about a particular episode you just saw, but much more often than not you’re doing a dance in which your friend is farther along and trying to not to spoil something that happens down the line. I also prefer sometimes to give an episode time to breathe and sink in before immediately moving on to the next one, although bingeing does often allow you to see the overarching structure, with all the tiny callbacks and Easter eggs, more clearly, as you’re less likely to forget what you just watched. There’s also almost too much choice now, and we know from human psychology that having too many options can be paralyzing. Just like with music and Spotify, tons of good stuff falls through the cracks simply because there’s so much churn. And what rises to the top has a certain sameyness, just as Spotify has created a genre called “Spotifycore.” There’s beginning to be a “Netflixcore,” and as these streaming services become more like networks and more risk-averse, streaming programming only going to become more beige. But a whole audience coming up right now will know nothing else but content on demand and on streaming services. As we know, YouTube celebrities are way more popular than film/TV celebs for people under 30. But having been born seven years too early, I couldn’t pick 80 percent of these people out in a lineup. Yet they are huge stars who command seven and eight-figure salaries.

My thinking: I wonder if it would have been tough given the still-elderly demos of the soap audience when streaming services were still nascent. The early adopters of these services had been traditionally much younger. I suppose when Hulu started 10-11 years ago, creating high-budget content exclusively for streaming was still a wild fantasy (the HoC reboot was still six years away), and they had little understanding of how to monetize content. (They still don’t actually, to be honest. The content bubble will soon burst). Putting established soaps online would have been a big risk, mostly likely a loss leader, and given how little regard these networks have shown soaps, it was probably not one worth taking. May as well get rid of them altogether at that point. I think, later on, the Prospect Park resurrections were likely more successful than most people anticipated, but they couldn’t sustain it for various reasons. I just think it would have taken some very passionate cheerleaders or a Steve Jobs-level visionary who would have bled to death to present a compelling business case for the viability of bringing soaps online. Too many headwinds otherwise. In short, I just don’t think anyone was or is willing to stick their necks out there to save these shows.

I forget who it was, but the comedian who was presenting the next award sort of derisively repeated Moore’s line, “When I was on As the World Turns...” and got a big laugh out of it.

And Julianne simply offers it up, without being asked. Like when she reminisced about getting her break on ATWT when she won the SAG on her way to winning the Best Actress Oscar. All that in a room filled with snooty and pretentious Hollywood types. Some comedian mocked her afterwards, but I’m sure she was unfazed.

Oh totally. I know some who associate their tenures on soaps with dark periods of serious drug abuse (particularly those who did daytime in the ‘80s) or trauma they may have suffered on set.

Such scraping the bottom of the barrel with these BH additions, although I like Teddi. It’s like putting rusty metal patches on a sinking ship. I just don’t see how the show survives with its current dynamics, with Kyle/Lisa V.’s love/hate dance eating the show and deeply unlikable folks like Lisa Rinna, Dorit, and Erika still around.

Totally. Both sides can be shady. Folks like Julianne Moore and Justin Hartley are just a few of the exceptions who still shout their soap backgrounds from the rooftops, though. Hartley seems to talk about Passions in every interview.

I will say, having worked in media, this remains true:

One reason why I think reducing the number of eps a soap produces each year and taking breaks would fail is that soaps are very much a habitual phenomenon. Even monthly breaks just give viewers the opportunity to form other habits. Primetime shows that increase viewership despite year-long like Breaking Bad or Game of Thrones are by far the minority. Most shows (even good ones) lose significant viewership each year, and it takes a lot of marketing budget to rope viewers back in, budget that most networks wouldn’t have even with reduced production.