Since there's been so much praise (rightfully so) of OLTL lately, I found a review of OLTL's current state from Soaps By Remote and found it to be fairly objective. It's definitely not something you'd expect Nelson Branco to come up with....

This person heard about the hype the show was receiving and decided to give it a 10 day trial, and his verdict is in! I think it's particularly nice to see someone's response to a show that he/she is not too familiar with, but tunes in because there's good buzz surrounding it.

http://soapsbyremote.typepad.com/

OLTL Experiment: the Verdict

I’d been struggling to come up with the appropriate rating system to express my take on the last two weeks of One Life to Live. A rating out of ten? Stars? Thumbs up/thumbs down? Pass/fail? In the end however, I’ve decided to keep it simple.

The verdict is this: at the moment One Life to Live is damn good soap.

Why?

At the moment it is delivering all that’s good about soaps.

The second post I ever wrote for this site – back in the deep dark depths of 2006 – started with as follows: In my humble opinion, the three things at the heart of any soap opera are Family, Romance and Friendship. Sure there is tragedy and humour and adventure, but those are all born out of the big three.

On OLTL I haven’t seen any tragedy yet, but I’ve seen all the rest.

And while I can’t speak to it personally, I gather the show is also delivering pretty well on that other element that’s great about soaps: the ability to draw on years or decades worth of history to inform or drive stories.

The pacing is good, the dialogue isn’t clunky. There are clichéd soap stories – the love triangle – being dealt with in ways that may not be ground-breaking but so far are entertaining. There are characters with layers, characters who are grey, characters who have flaws that can be seen and spoken to by the general Llanview populace rather than just the pained audience.

There is family conflict and support, friendships on display on a daily basis, romance, drama, and humour. There’s a socially relevant story going on that doesn’t feel like it’s bashing me about the head. There are umbrella stories.

It’s balanced in tone between the drama and the humour, the light and the dark. Coming from the relentlessly dark place that General Hospital has become, that may be the best thing of all.

It’s good and soapy, plain and simple.

It is not, of course, perfect.

There are stories that are more interesting than others, and couples and characters more or less appealing, but that’s just the nature of large canvas soaps and for every person who dislikes a story or a couple there will be another who loves it. So I don’t ever expect to be liking everything about a show. That aside, there a few signs of more fundamental flaws.

While Viki and Charlie are front and centre the show appears to be suffering from the same abuse of veterans syndrome as most shows other than Days. For example, since Cole, who I gather is in her care, ran away, we haven’t seen Nora once. Or Clint.

It also is suffering a bit from having front burner characters on every day; Starr, Cole, Jared and Natalie were all on nine of the ten days of the experiment, at the expense of a more balanced use of cast. That can be a problem very quickly even if slightly more forgivable during sweeps than at other times.

At the beginning of the experiment I asked two questions. The first, is the show as good as I had heard?, has been fairly comprehensively answered in the positive.

The second, can a new viewer pick up and be sucked into a show with which she has no history whatsoever? is best answered like this: I want to see what happens with the wedding, and the return of David Vickers, and this police sting.

So I’m going to keep watching for a while. Just to find out what happens during sweeps. And the aftermath of sweeps. And maybe in two months time.

So, congratulations Ron Carlivati and team, you’ve found a convert. And thanks to everyone who linked over here during the experiment, and joined in the comments – feel free to dive in and fill me in on all the history now – this has been a fun project.

And it’s been a while since I’ve been able to say something about soaps was fun, rather than boring and/or relentlessly dark.

Edited May 14, 200817 yr by Y&RWorldTurner

Right on - thanks, A!

I don't disagree with any of the "negatives" - but it's nice to see we're not all just looking at LLanview through rose-colored glasses, and it is as good as we think it is.

Thanks Alvin. I agree, this was a fair assessment, and it's nice to see people who don't worship at the alter of RC give a fair review.

Very fair.

I can't be objective, having watched for so long. Nice to know others are seeing what I see.

Now that's objective!

Same way I feel about what has been done to the vets, and glad to see someone say something about OLTL's "balance"

Now that's objective!

Same way I feel about what has been done to the vets, and glad to see someone say something about OLTL's "balance"

Oddly enough, in comparison to just about every other "old" soap it is doing very well in that respect.

OLTL has it all over every other soap on air in terms of vets.

Not seeing Nora and Clint for a little less than a week and a half after months of heavy story doesn't scare me anymore. And I say that as a HUGE HBS fan. Nor is it indicative of a lack of balance. There were extenuating circumstances with Viki and Charlie too, IMHO, specifically that they were so frontburner for about five or six months (like Marcie) and then had to chill during the strike (like Marcie). On the burner, off the burner, etc.

... and for those of us who have seen the promos we know there is big Viki drama coming up, on several fronts. Like you, I am not worried.

Not seeing Nora and Clint for a little less than a week and a half after months of heavy story doesn't scare me anymore. And I say that as a HUGE HBS fan. Nor is it indicative of a lack of balance. There were extenuating circumstances with Viki and Charlie too, IMHO, specifically that they were so frontburner for about five or six months (like Marcie) and then had to chill during the strike (like Marcie). On the burner, off the burner, etc.

ITA. I understand why to a new viewer it may seem like some characters are getting favorable treatment over others, but it's only because they're following the idea of putting characters on, taking them off, putting them, etc. Clint and Nora were getting some heavy screen time just a month or two ago, so them not appearing very often now isn't something to worry about. Of course, the ideal situation would have Nora responding to this Cole thing, and by not having her do that, they're almost sorta putting her in a storyline bubble, but I have no doubt that she'll get involved soon.