Primetime Soaps

[soapfan770]

Is Hotel worth re-watching? I'm trying to find something soapy worth revisiting that wouldn't take too much time, and I've had the complete series on DVD I picked up from a flea market years ago that's just collecting dust. I recall watching a few episodes back in the early SoapNet days but wasn't terribly impressed by the guest star stuff taking away from the actual continuing storyline i.e. Peter and Christine's courtship. 

There's not even a Hotel discussion thread on here LOL, so I have my doubts. I'll at least watch the pilot with Bette Davis. 

[Contessa Donatella]

Not a soap but a very soapy family drama, did you watch "The Fosters"?

"Kindred: The Embraced" is a short-run vampire soap, excellent, all episodes on YouTube. It probably would have been a continuing thing but the lead was killed in a vehicular accident. Kelly Rutherford, Jeff Kober, Stacy Haiduk, more I'm blanking on. 

And, "Hotel" just didn't keep my interest. I guess I watched 5 episodes. 

Edited March 8, 2024 by Contessa Donatella
typo

[Chris B]

I bought the Hotel box set because it was so cheap but it gets boring to me because it’s not serialized. I’ve watched the first season and now I will pop an episode on if I’m bored. Some of the episodes are good and it’s fun to see the guest stars but it’s nothing special. 

[soapfan770]

Haha glad I’m not the only one who bought the box set cheap lol.

And I’m confused how Hotel got labeled as a soap opera to begin with…

After I mentioned it I did end watching the Bette Davis pilot with also Morgan Fairchild in it (it’s the 80’s!) along with the first episode with Anne Baxter this evening here…Both were very entertaining but I also don’t have any real desire keep going at this episodic pace until 3 seasons later when the Cabots feud with Peter

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In the meantime I feel like I should revisit MP, or one of the 2000’s soaps. I recently tried also rewatching 2017 Dynasty but it was hard to rewatch knowing how the 1st season ended up being entirely retconned from existence. 

Edited March 9, 2024 by soapfan770

[Khan]

So am I, lol.  To me, "Hotel" is more like an anthology series, like "Fantasy Island" or "The Love Boat," with the hotel staff providing a sort of connective tissue to all the stories and from episode to episode.  And like all anthology shows, some episodes or stories are great to watch, and others...aren't, lol.

[Contessa Donatella]

Totally true & it's not even a soapy drama. 

[kalbir]

I watched some of Hotel a few years back and I was not impressed. I thought of it as The Love Boat on land but a little soapier. It got the soap opera label from being Dynasty's lead out.

[All My Shadows]

I know a few months ago, I said the exact same things about Hotel and not understanding why it gets the primetime soap label lol

I, too, have the complete series box set and have only watched a tiny bit of it. It not being a real primetime soap makes it hard to keep watching episode after episode. It's a much more casual watch that you'll enjoy sometimes and maybe not at other times. I think it's true place would be co-opting some time on Pluto TV's Love Boat channel for a few hours each day (like how the Happy Days channel switches to Laverne & Shirley and Mork & Mindy for a while). It's a channel surfing show.

[Khan]

I agree, and would add "Fantasy Island," too.  (I'd also add a channel for "Charlie's Angels," "Hart to Hart," original "S.W.A.T.," "T.J. Hooker" and "Vega$," but that's off-topic.)

"Hotel" was definitely designed to be watched once a week on primetime and once or twice a day on reruns.

[Khan]

"Hotel" was definitely soapier than TLB - and to me, that was part of the problem.  TLB was smart to feature a variety of stories every week: one story could be lightly comedic or romantic, another story could be more serious or topical, and then you had the interludes with the Pacific Princess crew, which satiated the sitcom fans out there.  (And then, of course, in the last years, you had the infamous Mermaids, which I guess you could classify as musical comedy, but the less we say about those broads....).  On the other hand, every story on "Hotel" seemed to me to be a variation on some Douglas Sirk movie from the '50's, only not nearly as deliciously campy, lol.

Anthology shows like "Hotel" and "The Love Boat" live and die on their regular and recurring cast members.  TLB's crew was stocked with several great actors playing well-defined characters (although I could've done without Vicki and Ted McGinley's character, lol).  Even "Fantasy Island" had two actors - Ricardo Montalban and Herve Villechaize - whose unique chemistry kept you tuning in every week regardless of the quality of the individual stories.  But "Hotel"...?  About half of their regular cast was okay to watch, and almost none of them played a character with any real substance, which was especially noticeable whenever the stories in a particular episode were dull (which was entirely too often, IMO).

[All My Shadows]

I think the cast was too big, to be honest. There were seven of them! Obviously you're gonna have Peter and Christine, but Billy *and* Julie *and* Dave *and* Megan *and* Mark? Not to mention Anne Baxter. Had it been a true soap, then sure, but as the continuity for the guest characters, there was no need for that many people. At the very most, they could have kept it to Peter, Christine, Billy, Mark, and Julie, and then each character would have had a purpose within the bigger picture of a hotel stay.

I'd love love love a combination Love Boat/Fantasy Island/Hotel channel. Pluto really has the tools to create two Spelling channels - one for the soapy dramas and one for the action/adventure stuff. I'd watch both constantly.

[Soaplovers]

I wonder if the original intention was to have Hotel be a hybrid soap/anthology show... but when Bette Davis wasn't able to continue on.. the show got reworked into more an anthology show.. with a few soapy elements thrown in later on the show.

I guess the slow burn love story with Christine and Peter was one of the long running threads on the show.. but the hotel take over attempt didn't happen till much later.

A question I have is this... were there any dramas in the 80s or 90s that you could have see becoming more primetime soapish?

[j swift]

Fantasy Island is the first show that comes to mind, maybe because of its similarity in structure to Hotel.  I haven't seen the film or the reboot based on the series, but I understand that they both contain soapier elements about the motives of Mr. Rourke. 

I think LA Law is the Bochco show that leans the most soapy.  The love affairs of Susan Day and Harry Hamlin's characters, as well as Jill Eikenberry and Michael Tucker, provided an ongoing serialized drama that I always enjoyed along with the case of the week.  I was riveted by their post LA Uprising season. 

However, I always make the pitch that serialized stories alone don't define a soap.  Which is why I would never consider A Different World or Friends to be soaps, even though there were cliffhangers.  I think you need melodrama, heightened emotional acting, and long term story arcs to define a show as a soap opera.

[Khan]

I agree.  Between the regulars at the hotel and the guests of the week, it was too many characters for the producers to service.  And wasn't there a storyline about newlyweds Dave and Megan fighting about Dave's gambling problem?  Between stuff like that, Peter and Christine's slow-burn romance and the takeover attempt, it might as well have morphed into "Hill Street Blues" or "St. Elsewhere," but in a hotel.

Definitely "St. Elsewhere."  I mean, my God, they even had an arc about a rapist stalking the women at St. Eligius!  (And to this day, I still don't know if Dr. Peter White was the rapist, or if it was another guy, or if there were, in fact, two rapists terrorizing people simultaneously).  

[Soaplovers]

St Elsewhere was one step away from being a primetime soap.  I viewed it as such because even some of the patient stories were multi-episodes.