Character Saturation/Dictatorship

[y&r_fan]

Umm... WOW. You really are a piece of work. And so off-base it's laughable.

[DaytimeFan]

Sacrilege! June Brown is a doll and I hate that because she's a senior 'they'll have to do it soon'...anyone can get killed crossing the street. Age is nothing but a number.

The difference with British soaps is that they don't focus story on a single character for more than a 13 week cycle...characters take 'rests' all the time and fanbases, generally, are not entertained to the degree that they are in the States. They are simply different in all aspects. They are not about a 30, 40, 50 year narrative like US soaps are. They are about 'the moment' rather than 'the character'. Of course, characters are essential and many are beloved, UK soaps are more plot driven but it's intelligent plot that makes sense for the character.

[DavidEvanSmith]

Do any of you consider your lives boring? The cast of characters in the show of your life "stale"? I'm in an entirely different place now than I was even TWO years ago, and it's fascinating. Have you had no new adventures after the first five years in your memory? How many "great loves" have you had? Just the one? How many careers have you embarked on in your life? Have you always known what you wanted to do? Ever change your major in school? Drop out? Been down on your luck? Given into peer pressure? Lost contact with a family member after a monumental blowup? Made a life-changing choice you wish you could take back?

For me, this talk of characters running their course and needing to die or disappear before 10 years is an affront to the genre and purely lazy in regards to creative writing. And it shows that daytime and its viewers are out of touch with basic human drama.

Let's take, for a random example, Emily Quartermaine on General Hospital. Had she run her course? What happened to taking a character in a new direction? What happened to shifting gears and exploring a new side to a character's life? Instead of her going to medical school OFF-SCREEN, why not explore what's going on there, introduce a new set or two, introduce a younger professor that Emily has inappropriate feelings for, or a sexy classmate that understands the pressures of the medical field better than sheltered prince Nikolas does. Rather than transplanting Leyla from Night Shift, she could have been a med school classmate of Emily's and NOTHING about Leyla or Emily really needed to be altered for that to have been Leyla's path onto the show, because Leyla's done nothing since she got onto GH anyway. Or if they decided not to make Emily a doctor she could start feeling too much pressure from school and turn to drugs, or rock and roll, or admit it wasn't her dream, she was just trying to make her adoptive doctor parents proud or honor dead Alan's memory, and Emily REALLY wanted to be a musician or a writer, and then THAT career path takes her onto new adventures, new people in her life, new obstacles that teach her and the audience about who Emily really is.

Where is the creativity, and when did daytime stop following characters THROUGH the trials and tribulations of their entire lives and only start telling stories of portions of peoples lives (usually romantic)? Looking at old episodes from decades past, characters were shaped by their: Jobs, Families, and Romances. Now, jobs and families come in distant second and third to the musical beds that passes for romance on daytime. No longer do characters REALLY want anything other than to be in blissful love, which can't even realistically happen on a soap because soaps RUN on the fuel of drama and turmoil. Characters like Josh Madden on AMC can be a doctor, a TV producer, a business executive, in the span of three years, and being the son of Erica Kane STILL can't save him from being written off. At least he wasn't killed, just written out under the THREAT of being killed. Jobs don't matter, and in a lot of cases in daytime, family really doesn't even matter anymore, when every year a Quartermaine or two bites the dust with no regard to the CHANCE that a writer can come along in two years with better ideas for Alan Quartermaine (or AJ!) than Bob Guza ever had.

I find it so arrogant that we are quick to toss a "legacy" character (as much as I think the term undermines a character more than honors it since so many "legacy" characters are viewed as liabilities because they have history) because no one can be bothered to think of the character as multidimensional with demons and flaws and weaknesses that can be mined for future story. NO WAY was a character like Alan Quartermaine ever just ONE THING, categorized in a box. He was EVERYTHING, from a jealous lover who could KILL his wife rather than see her with another man, to a loving father who hadn't worked enough to make sure that his children felt EQUALLY loved, to a resentful son who despised his father's overbearing ways, to an insecure man who turned to drugs and nearly lost everything because he was lost and in pain. There are so many sides that exist or CAN exist in characters that the genre of daytime is IDEAL because we have the luxury to explore every side over an extended period of time. And if a viewer can really look at themselves and think humanity is limited and can be fully explored over the span of a short four year contract, then that's really sad.

[Sylph]

I was just pointing out that it will become to taxing for her to tape after a while. And they will have to find a way to get rid of her.

And, BTW, I find June Brown's character annoying as hell.

[JackPeyton]

I agree.

However, i have NO problem with vets, legacy chars, or whoever being killed off at anytime. I dont think just because a person has been on a show for xx amount of yhears emans they cant be touched.

the key is a GOOD complex storyline that has reactions as it should. Thats where soaps fail.