Are soap operas on television too often?

[EricMontreal22]

I really enjoy your posts. I agree with all of this--even Agnes herself has said that the difference between primetime and daytime is primetime shows the cause, or action, whereas daytime is all about the CONSEQUENCES of the cause or action (something primetime--especially when she said this back in the mid 70s when The Waltons was about as serial-y as you got--is famous for washing over).

Abotu pacing--having just seen a week or so of Summer 1981 AMC episodes I don't think what Pratt's doing *is* all that different. We haven't had a major exceleration in terms of story on AMC, (well we have since B&E's tenure but that's cuz nothign happened when they wrote ) but in terms of episode pacing--and i was surrpised that 1981's AMC did many similar things--you see Opal telling Jennie that she has a job in Center City at a place called Foxy's and the Martins lent her the car to get there, next segment they're at Foxy's already fighting with the owner who's asking about her age. It's all relative of course, but AMC does seem to have almost always had a faster pace--Bell if anything took the pacing of Irna Phillips's shows and (masterfully) slowed it all the more. James Reilly took this to an unfortunate extreme (it drove me crazy how on Passions--a show I wanted to dig for its campiness and outrageousness--would literally have the SAME dialogue played out over and over for days and fans called it clever writing). But I don't think Pratt's new model is as far off from AMC's history as I at first feared (and happily--so far anyway--he's shown us he can slow down some scenes when needed) although I get your worry.