All: When did each soap start to decline?

[NYC123]

In your opinion when did each show start to decline?

AMC: 2003. Ever scince then AMC has not been able to recover from all its damages....

ATWT: 2006

B&B: Its still in good shape

DAYS: 2004

GH: 2005

GL: 2003

OLTL: Well it started in 2003 but ever scince Ron came aboard its GREAT!!

Y&R: 2007-2008. Every scince LML was gone SO MUCH BETTER!!!

[LeClerc]

AMC: 1998 (McTavish returns)

OLTL: 1998 (Phelps becomes EP)

[LoyaltoAMC]

Soaps are so different than prime time in that they can "jump the shark" many times and still recover. It's the cyclical nature of the genre.

AMC: 1985 (to recover in 89 with the Behr/Nixon combo); 1998 (McTavish is back; recovers somewhat when Agnes returns a year later); 2001 (Agnes is replaced by hacks Passanante, then Culliton, then Rayfield/Cascio; ironically recovers somewhat when McT returns); 2005 (The baby switch is over, and the bottom falls out; the show has yet to recover at all)

[tanyia2]

GL: The years with The cloning,Reva jumping through paintings,St. Cristobal,Manny and of course Kreizman and Wheeler years.

Y&R: Latham period

[All My Shadows]

ITA. It can be argued that once a soap jumps the first time, it never truly goes back to it's initial greatness, but I do believe that any soap has the ability or opportunity to get off its last legs and stand tall again. Of course, with some soaps, they've been at rock bottom for years and it seems like it'll take forever for them to make the steps towards recovery.

[quartermainefan]

I only know a few soaps

AMC I think is easy. The Will Corlandt murder mystery was AMC's swan song to quality. The 1990s was the ruination of Pine Valley as the core families disappeared (Chuck and Donna wherefore art thou? Thanks for the fun as the meanest man in town Palmer, now go sell some fried chicken!) and the small town of Pine Valley with the daughters of fine lineage and grand old homes changed and suddenly PV was morphing into this cosmopolitan community. By the turn of the century Joe Martin was living in South Beach! There was no longer a need for Erica to travel to NYC, because now the hottest spots in the country are right next door to The Serving Spoon and Myrtle's boarding house.

OLTL? To each their own, but roughly the story with Ryan Phillipe that destroyed Clint Buchanan was it for OLTL. Again, the smalltown feel started to disappear, all the friends we knew were going (Seeya Wanda, farewell Rafe) and the town got taken over with models, screenhogs and Todd Manning.

GH? Three drops in quality. The first was roughly 1985 when the lightheartedness started to disappear. This was the period when the show basically said goodbye to Heather, Rose, Joe, Anne, Scotty, Holly, Celia, Jimmy Lee, and so on, and they got replaced by Lucy, Anna, Sean, Duke, later on a returning Scotty, and friends. Still good, just not as.

Then the second more permanent drop in quality came about 1991-1992 when Anna and Robert were killed off, all humor disappeared and the adventures just stopped. Old standbys like Felicia, Frisco, Sean and Tiffany found themselves as action characters trapped in a tragedy based soap. The Quartermaines recent recruits Tracy and Lord Larry would soon leave, only to be replaced by fun-deprived characters like Ned and AJ. And then came the Eckharts.

The 90s did see well written dramas one after another though (Stone, Monica, BJ, Carly/Tony/Bobbie) and then just like that the quality disappeared overnight never to return again. So basically GH went from a fun well written soap, to a less fun well written soap, to a no fun but well written soap, to a steaming pile of crap.

[MTSRocks]

True.

I disagree with Y&R jumping the shark when LML came on board, because in the beginning her stuff was good, and the show regained momentum. Sure, a lot of the stuff she wrote qualified as jump the shark 'moments,' but it all goes back to what "LoyaltoAMC" says. I do agree that a lot of LML's material qualifies as jump the shark moments (Reliquary, John's death, Pheila etc), and the show is still redeeming from her madness. However, I think Y&R deteriorated in quality after Cassie's death. The show stood at a standstill, and a lot of absurdity pursued. However, I will agree that out of all the head writers, LML's damage was by far, the WORST.

[DaytimeFan]

Y&R: 2005-2007: The End of the Smith and the Latham reign of terror. The show is rebounding but it's still got a ways to go.

DAYS: 2002-2003: Rex & Cassie, Magic Goo, Dena Higley...ugh.

GH: 2003-present: Frons put his stamp on the show and it shows.

[All My Shadows]

It's funny, but as someone who barely ever put one eye on AMC prior to 2001, I absolutely agree with you. The countless hours I've spent watching clips of and reading summaries of AMC's first 20-25 years, I've noticed without a doubt a major change take place in the early-to-mid 1990s. The show became much more urban and lost a lot of its charm, a lot of its closeness. You can read about how the characters all knew each other and how the storylines were linked together and influenced other storylines. Nowadays, there are characters on the show who don't know the first thing about other characters. Storylines are given concrete boundaries and those boundaries are never crossed; it's as if the storylines are all planned by different writers with no intention to have the characters interact outside their stories. Pine Valley is a very different town from what it was back in the 1970s and 1980s, it's changed a lot.

You bring up a very interesting point about the trips to NYC. I never realized how vital those trips were until recently...they were more than just random day-trips, they were meant to serve a purpose in the story. It was in NYC that Erica met Jason Maxwell, her lover that Mona would ultimately murder. Jenny and Jesse went to New York for their infamous summer on the run. You'd rarely find something like that. Hell, you'd never see a friendship like Jenny and Jesse either. And with the growth of Pine Valley, the opening up of the show's canvas, and all that, the show began to lose its identity, I think. AMC was no longer a "grande dame" soap where older women traded barbs over tea while younger characters fell in love. It's why you can switch the names of all the ABC soaps around and nobody who isn't a regular soap viewer would no the difference.

[Dan]

GL: 1994

Nancy Curlee left the show around May 1994 and Patrick Mulchahey took over the show. He had disagreements with JFP and a complete roundrobin of HWs allowed the quality to drop. (At some point, 6 people simultaneously filled the position.) Then, Douglas Anderson took over in late 1994 after ratings had dropped. JFP and Anderson had the brilliant idea of ghost and then Amish Reva. That didn't work, so both JFP and Anderson were out and Michael Laibson and Megan McTavish were in.

Now the [!@#$%^&*] REALLY hit the fan and ratings dropped to the point that CBS mulled over cancelling the show. IN 1996, Ken Fitts was kicked out at PGP and MADD was in. MADD brought on Paul Rauch and Michael Conforti/Victor Miller were the interim writers until Esensten/Brown took over. I will give them credit: they brought the ratings up and did something with the quality of the show in their first year. Even though there were still some flub ups (psycho Nola). 1998 brought on the clone, which did raise ratings, but dropped the quality of the show, which didn't recover.

Claire Labine was brought in 2000, but save for a few sparks of the Labine quality (Jim's death), the show still sucked. Labine was actually responsible for one of the most sacriligious moments on the show pre-Weston/Kreizman when she had a shootout in the classic Bauer kitchen.

Lloyd Gold and Christopher Dunn were brought on in 2001 and for awhile, the quality of the show rose with the culmination of the Phillip/Harley/Rick story. But once the fall hit, time travel Reva and Danny/Michelle's mission impossible stunk up the show.

Millee tagagrt was brought in that February and the results were immediate. San Cristobel was gone. Stories began getting on track. Ed returned. Carolyn Culluliton's return to the show brought a further renaissance for the show in the fall. For once, the show had heart, intelligence, and substance. it wasn't perfect, but it was the closest thing since the Curlee years.

Then, Ellen Weston came on in March 2003 and wrecked it all. Then Kreizman in 2004 brought GL to unsalvagable territory in his almost 4 years at GL.

[leevo64]

GH started to decline when Megan McTavish took over in 2000-2001. We lost momentum for most vets, couples were ruined and the show never regained its heart and soul.

[Shawn]

Days forever dropped in quality the day JERk took over as sole HW.

Since then, it has had some great moments and over the last year has begun to return to its former great self, but MarDevil will always be a stigma in Salem.

[DeeeDee]

Y&R - 2004. Just...no.

B&B - The Brooke/Deacon affair.

AMC - Bianca's Rape.

GH - Sonny.

OLTL - Rappadavidsons.

PC - Rafe & Lucy/Ian.

[LoyaltoAMC]

I don't think that Anderson and JFP were responsible for Amish Reva. I'm pretty sure that that was McT's brainchild. I don't think that Zimmer returned to the show until after Phelps was replaced by Laibson (in P&G's move of musical chair EPs with AW/GL/ATWT). Anderson's big moment I believe was the blackout. I didn't enjoy B&E's stint as HWs, though I know some did. They seem to lack vision and heart in their writing. It's very assembly line-ish, totally plot driven, and by the numbers. They're staying true to that form on AMC. Getting back to GL, it really hasn't been good since the Curlee/Demorest/Reilly/Broderick days, although my favorite periods were Pam Long's 2 stints. Yes, the Millee Taggart stuff was decent (and I'm not a huge fan of her's).

[Port Oak Valley]

I agree most of McTavish's stuff was unwatchable and vets were backburned. I think it was under her reign that Jackie Zeman was first backburned to which she never returned to have any story again of course JFP was also the new EP so that must have had something to do with it.