Happy Birthday, Sunset Beach!

[MarlandRulez]

Wow, Susan Ward turned into a little cu*t! I knew there was a reason i preferred Maria!

[David V]

That's the main thing. I've been crtitical of soaps using camp, or supernatural/sci-fi too much (because while supernatural and sci-fi are enjoyable in their own right, the way soaps do it is often outrageously cartoonish and stereotyped)- but I absolutely LOVED Sunet Beach because it was always funny, entertaining, and mixed the campy with the traditional. Yet at the same time, the dialogue was more adult than on Passions for instance (hence you could take it more seriously), and the production values were indeed very good with plenty of location shots.

NBC did nothing to make this soap viable, when they could easily have had a good lineup of Days, Another World and Sunset Beach.

[AntiNWO]

My brother, who not's really into daytime dramas, loved watching Sunset Beach! I, on the other hand, HATED the show, and I still do. 1997 was not the time to play around & act foolish, but NBC Daytime chose that route by greenlighting SuBe. No wonder the show never gained a sizable following. It rarely took itself seriously.

I commend NBC on their admirable performance in daytime. The Doctors, cancelled! Santa Barbara, cancelled! Another World, cancelled! Texas, greenlighted, stupid move! Generations, cancelled! And before all those shows were canned, they were screwed over by TPTB. NBC wanted all their shows to resemble Ken Corday's DAYS, and that's why PSN was greenlighted: it's a perfect fit. The only smart decision concerning SuBe was it's just cancellation in Dec. '99.

[darraholic]

I had alot of friends who hated soaps but loved Sunset Beach.

[Cat]

It may not have been to everybody's taste but as a big soap fan myself, I can square liking the smooth intricacy and seriousness of a show like Y&R, with the high drama of GH (well, it USED to have high drama), with the campy, wink-and-a-nod antics of Sunset Beach. In fact, having a few random episodes on tape, I am honestly reminded how well constructed a show like SuBe was -- lots of different characters and groups of all ages, many different SLs going at once, campiness and in-jokes coupled with keeping the plot moving. A lot of those jokes rarely detracted from the show's stories or inherent soapiness. In fact, they added to them... helped drive the plot... celebrated soaps, in a way.

And that's why I loved the show. It wasn't the most intelligent, or the most serious show. But so many characters on the show kept me tuning back again and again. And at the end of the day, that's really all I wanted -- to be entertained.

Soaps do not have to be carbon copies of each other. I like a handful of shows and appreciate the difference inherent in each. In fact, I really think that NBC blew it by not having a Days, AW, Santa Barbara line-up -- or later Days/AW/SuBe because they were so sharply identifiable from the other.

[Laurie]

Sunset Beach...so miss it! First soap I really and truly got in too. I really floved the cast...Susan Ward, Timothy Adams{1st soap crush Before TK there was TA. LOL}, Eddie Cibrain, Sarah Buxton etc...

Shockwave was really the greatness! I even got my 2 cousins to watch it during that storyline.

[Bree]

I didn't care for SuBe, but considering you like GH, which results to killing babies and mob shootouts just about every other month, you really are in no place to criticize NBC's soaps.