Primetime Soaps

[Cheap21]

Oh I liked Titans. I felt it had so much potential but probably being on NBC was the ultimate thing that hurt it. How long did it last? Felt like only a few episodes. Not enough to make an impact

Anyone watch Pacific Palisades? Another I felt had potential and Im surprised Fox didnt give it the chance it gave Melrose

Please register in order to view this content

[DRW50]

It seemed like Fox was moving out of the soap business by then. Preemptions did horrible damage to that show.

[SFK]

My mom and I watched Pacific Palisades weekly. When it and later Pasadena got unceremoniously yanked, I think we kinda gave up and resigned ourselves to the fact that those good old days of primetime sudsers were over. My mom was a BIG fan of Savannah too. The shows got younger focusing on twentysomethings during that '90s wave, and then of course they went even younger but that never seemed to bother my mom too much (she even watched The O.C.), she was just always up for a good soapy story and these days you're lucky if you can even get that, regardless of character age.

[Sylph]

Primetime is full of soaps these days. Damages is a soap. Lost is a soap. Brothers & Sisters is a soap. Countless others.

[SFK]

There are soaps, and then there are soaps.

[Bright Eyes]

I ask this because I never watched the show, but isn't Damages a procedural?

Either way, I think The Vampire Diaries is a great "soap" right now. There's backstabbing, rivalries, romance, plot twists and all the episodes usually end with a cliffhanger. It's heaven really, for me anyway.

Edited February 7, 2010 by Amello

[DRW50]

Lost is more of a serial.

[Sylph]

True. That's why you need to say I want a feuding families kind of soap.

It's a serial, it's a soap. It tells how the past of characters influences their present. A classic soap opera trademark.

[DRW50]

Don't they do a lot of flash forwards on that show, and try their best not to use a narrative?

[Sylph]

Well, not in my world. It has elements of a procedural, but a lot of soapy twists, turns, long-term (seasonal) stories, uses non-linear narrative devices...

We've had flashbacks, flashforwards and this season we have flash-sideways. It has a narrative, the haters say it doesn't.

[Bright Eyes]

What the hell is a flash-sideways?

[Sylph]

Parallel timelines. One where an event happened, one in which it didn't. And they go concurrently.

[EricMontreal22]

Vamp Diaries is way better than I ever expected--if only the ouldn't kill off a new character every single ep.

Damages is kinda overated, IMHO, but Sylph is dead on--it's a legal soap. It has very few procedural qualities.

The flashes inform the narrative--are a part of it. I don't even understand your comment

[EricMontreal22]

There is a difference though, I think. This came up a while back when I was discussing my love for the Herskovitz/Zwick domestic dramas--they're serials yet they don't feel like "prime time soaps".

I did--it seemed to be Fox's attempt at a Knots Landing in the post Melrose era.

[All My Shadows]

The Vampire Diaries is fantabulous. Favorite new show since Friday Night Lights, and definitely my fave on network TV. And its ratings are awesome, too (for The CW).

As far as what are soaps and what aren't soaps, I think the media (and maybe fans?) uses one of two definitions to describe something soapy: 1 is all about the melodrama, "OMG she slept with her husband's uncle's mother's son's nephew's brother!!" stuff, and 2 is simply that it's serialized. I've seen 24 called a soap based simply on its serialized nature, yet there are two-hour movies (Sirk! Curtiz!) that are called soaps, and they're not serialized. It really begs the question...what is a soap? Is it one of those, both, or neither one?

See, to me, Little House on the Prairie is pure soap. Like, 99 and 44/100 percent. It wasn't really serialized (though there were always long-term plot points), but to deny it of a soapy label would be like spitting on the grave of Landon himself. He worked really, really hard to make sure the people of Walnut Grove had really horrible lives. And, really, that's what soaps are all about.