Star Trek recipe for soaps?

[Sylph]

Interesting comment about Fringe:

[Sylph]

And a line from Damon Lindelof:

[marceline]

Yeah, but there are differing definitions of "cool." That's part of the problem. The person writing Soap A ten years ago thought one thing was cool, the person writing it now thinks something else is cool and the audience has to decide whether or not they're willing to buy into it.

Lost will always be Lindelof and Cuse's baby. Their vision will always permeate it. Soaps careen wildly from one vision to another between - and often within - writing regimes.

[MarkH]

Well, as a Lost viewer from day one...let me say...their vision is EXHAUSTING. At this point, because I can't "study" the show outside of the 38 minutes a week I give it...I have a loose grasp of the narrative and the open questions. But at some point it all got to be too much.

That is why daytime, with its predictable cliches and recycled storytelling, is BRILLIANT for the stay-at-home audience. Initially designed for the woman while she ironed, the shows still keep the challenge level low...and that's JUST RIGHT if you want to build loyalty. Because when a show becomes WORK (and let's face it, even soaps require a big learning curve to learn all the characters, situations, relationships, and backstories), most people just aren't going to put in the time and effort needed.

The serial drama (and Lost is obviously one) needs to be easy to digest if you more than a tiny niche audience to keep coming back.

[Sylph]

I don’t buy that “TV is for dumb people” argument at all.

The problem is that so few writers know structure and can’t tell a complex tale if their life depended on it. It’s not about complexity, it’s about how you present it to your viewers.

[Sylph]

P. S. Damon Lindelof also explained The Numbers and talked about shirtless Sawyer and his mother. Very applicable to daytime.

[MarkH]

Maybe not dumb people. But maybe for people who have more to do with their lives than obsess about a show and try to figure it out.

[Sylph]

But you are forgetting the other part of my post: that is precisely why it is important how you tell your tale.

[MarkH]

What do you think is a good example of this?

[marceline]

Wordy McWordWord. For all my love of sci-fi (I watch Lost, Heroes, Fringe, Terminator and Dollhouse) I willingly admit to throwing up a wall at a certain point. I'm simply not willing to put that level of study into it. When I see people at Lost boards discussing the glyphs on the wall of the Swan or unscrambling the name of some extra, I just shut down. I'm more a "Kate sucks!/Yay Rose and Bernard!" viewer but I enjoy the ride mainly because I know it will end next season. If Lost were still open-ended, I would probably have checked out by now.

But even though I don't participate in the dissection of minutiae, I believe that some level of complexity should be there for viewers willing to invest the energy. The creators are very mindful of that segment of their audience and they respect them. They consider it a joint venture. I don't get that feeling from soaps and haven't for a very long time.

Soaps inherently have that level of complexity in the fact that they endless amounts of rewritten history. So not only do viewers have to know it, they need to resolve the contradictions without the benefit of such outs as "time travel" or "moving the island." (Yeah, Jesse died on screen 20 years ago and Angie donated his organs but he's back. Nope, no wormhole needed.) We're always seeing complaints that soaps don't respect history - and I've often countered those complaints with my own about nostalgia - but balancing that history and finding a way to leverage it into a smart story that's also accessible to new viewers? Well let's just solve the crisis in Darfur while we're at it.

[Sylph]

I don’t think I’ll ever accept mysterious islands, weird numbers, hatches and stuff on daytime. That will simply never be its natural terrain. However, a little more tightly drawn & all-encompassing mysteries that spread for years a la Bill Bell... That's more like it. It's one tale, one mystery, one A story, but it involves everyone, there are turns after every other step and the ending is unpredictable.

[MarkH]

And I'll see your wordy mcword and raise it by a word. I started out going to all those websites and stuff...but my goodness...my Y&R obsession is enough . Also, it is ABSOLUTELY the fact that Lost will end that has kept me watching. Because I could not tolerate this if I thought it would go on forever.

Well, you raise an interesting point. I feel that soap viewers often lack the patience or interest to do the "off-camera" work. On my show, there is a very dour new character. And people are calling for her "sacking" because she is always so defended and dour. But she has only been on for a month. Moreover, with just a little off-camera dissection, it is easy to understand why she is so dour.

I don't think soap viewers, typically, have the patience for that stuff. If it is not on the stage, it's a problem.

[Sylph]

So you would say Fringe really didn't succeed in toning it down a bit?

[Sylph]

And I refer to this, marceline.

[MarkH]

I'm not marceline, but I stopped after the first four episodes. Massive Dynamic...trying to keep track of all the old experiments and freaks of the week. Nope, didn't work for me. How are the ratings?