The Curse of Daytime

[Sylph]

How is this possible? For how long has it been going on? All tied to that rule that the first 6 months, if the fans/viewers are lucky, of the new regime will be better, but then it will all start to plummet so quickly, fans won't know what hit them. Every time I think about this "rule" or "curse", AMC comes to mind: Megan McTavish > James Harmon Brown and Barbara Esensten > Charles Pratt Jr.

What I'd like to understand is - how is it possible that network executives:

1. aren't realising their approach isn't working and that it's actually toxic for their show?

2. aren't really trying to correct it appropriately instead hiring writers with worst records in history?

3. haven't had the thought Hey, would it cost me too much to take the hands-off approach and hire this Nancy Curlee [or insert the name of your favourite truely great daytime writer] woman to pen my show? Why don't I give it a shot?

Why is everything so upside down?

And yes, I know that the viewership has been eroding ever since daytime dramas hit the TV screen and that it would keep eroding even with Agnes Nixon writing AMC or Bill Bell any of his soaps.

[All My Shadows]

IMO, that quote simply proves that the shows sucking isn't primarily the fault of the headwriter. There are many circumstances that lead to a crappy show, and a less-than-wonderful writer is just a small part of it, I think.

[Cat]

Aside from current time-slots being unhelpful in attracting new viewers, IMO network execs are scared to do anything that pushes the envelope. Daytime is this tiny, cosy little world where everybody knows everybody else. TIIC promote the same old HWs and EPs because these people are their friends and acquaintances. They hang out at the same studios, dinner parties and bars. Frons alone must have worked with Pratt and Guza alone a couple hundred times on two different networks over a period of three decades.

Instead of laying out a vision going forward, they constantly look backward. Same people, same stories. Or they rip off a few SLs from Primetime or film. Honestly, if they weren't forced to cut salary costs, they wouldn't hire any new actors for contract roles if they could help it. They would just hire the same pool of "Daytime actors." It's like a miniscule, spectacularly inefficient Studio System. (Except the real Studio System died out in the late 60s as steepening economic and politic uncertainities, changing cultural mores and independent youngsters forged a new and more daring aesthetic).

[DeliaIrisFan]

Yeah, I'm ready to concede that these soaps have become too inflated for one person to truly get the credit or blame. The hour-long format was stretching it to begin with, though some head writers pulled it off in the '80s and '90s, but now they also have to juggle an ever-increasing number of scenes, a shift to subject matter that requires very technical editing and special effects, not to mention a surge in production costs and simultaneous huge drop in ad revenue that has made every minor creative decision something that the number-crunchers feel the need to weigh in on. To the extent that the original quote is true, yes: Each new show runner comes in, sees a show that isn't working, and gets rid of a number of characters they have no use for and replace them with newcomers. In the process, any momentum the previous stories had going is lost and viewers who were invested in the characters that were jettisoned tune out, so the ratings drop even further and viewers lament the loss of the things that were working under the previous regime, however insignificant they seemed at the time. The new stories and characters are too watered down by too many cooks in the kitchen to hook new or lapsed viewers, so the same process repeats itself, regardless of how good or bad the new writer or producer's reputation was in comparison to their predecessor's before signing on. In calling for for any show runner to be shown the door, I think we have to ask: Is there nothing in this writer or producer's experience that might come in handy, if not in completely turning the show around then at least in successfully advocating for something that might salvage some shred of the show's identity that might otherwise be lost or buy the show a little more time? Is there no glimpse of any underlying talent or creative impulse coming through on-screen, however much market-research it is buried underneath? They may be sublimating talent that they wish they could use to draw three dimensional characters or complex longterm stories by inserting some pithy one liners, or their desire to draw from the show's history by featuring an otherwise neglected veteran cast member in a throwaway scene. Would touches like that be lost in another round of behind-the-scenes musical chairs?

I also think we as armchair commentators are taking a very short view of what writers and producers are doing. Even in the glory days of soaps, when shows were much shorter and had far fewer scenes, I just don't think you could have analyzed every little nuance in the script and written a critique of the head writer's vision. The material has always been too voluminous and needs to be turned out too quickly. A soap is like life - and in life we have good days, bad days, and for many of us a lot of just mediocre days. The artistry in soaps - to the extent that soaps have ever approached the level of art, which I would argue they have - used to be in the big picture: stories that began so slowly, stemming naturally from who the characters had been established to be, and built up momentum over time that was more powerful than any one scene or episode.

Some of the classic episodes that have made their way online recently have been fascinating for this reason, sometimes not necessarily in the way I might have expected. I remember two episodes in particular that were posted on that old World of Soap Themes website: the 1969 episode of Another World in which Rachel met Steve for the first time at Lenore and Walter's wedding, and the 1975 episode of Love of Life that was right in the middle of the Christopher Reeve character's bigamy story. I wasn't alive when either of these episodes aired, but those stories were legends, and the first thing that I thought I knew about those legends was that Agnes Nixon wrote the Rachel/Steve/Alice triangle and Claire Labine and Paul Mayer wrote the LOL bigamy story. But I was shocked because according to the dates, that episode of AW aired after Agnes' OLTL had premiered on ABC, and that episode of LOL aired literally the Friday before Labine and Mayer's Ryan's Hope premiered. So Agnes could not have been still involved in AW when Rachel/Steve/Alice took off, and Claire and Paul had to be long gone from LOL once the sh!t hit the fan. Had they been mistakenly credited with these stories for so many decades? Well, I think the answer is yes and no. Back then, plot developments had longterm consequences, and once a story had been set in motion the shows were not as likely to completely change course in a way that was not organic. On AW, Agnes Nixon established Rachel as someone who was hellbent on finding a rich man no matter who she hurt because she was desperate to fill the void of her poor, fatherless childhood, and clearly her marriage to Russ had not done that for her. By introducing the Steve character, at that time the richest guy in Bay City but a man with some character flaws, and putting him in Rachel's orbit (Alice was Rachel's sister-in-law), the die was cast. These characters were well-drawn and it didn't take an Agnes Nixon to know how they would react to each other and the dramatic potential that was inherent in that. The same with LOL: The son of the show's longtime villainess and the nephew of the show's main heroine did something so cruel and selfish and scandalous by committing bigamy on a young, trusting heroine whom all of those veteran characters adored that there was going to be hell to pay when the truth came out. Labine and Mayer were long-gone when that happened, but they got the ball rolling. The true test of the successors to both of these writing regimes was to establish their own long-term stories that would have consequences for years to come, and I think that was what set the Nixons and the Labines and Mayers apart.

Nowadays, someone in the committee that writes these stories would have dropped the ball on making Rachel sympathetic in spite of the hideous things she did, and/or they would have painted Steve and Alice as either too cartoonishly "good" or too hypocritically selfish for viewers to care about them. And most likely they would have been cast with the prettiest, cheapest actors that could be found, talent and chemistry be damned. Agnes' successor would have probably hated all three characters and the viewers would have probably agreed, so they would have gotten carte blanche to write them off the show and go back to the drawing board. If the new writer showed any originality in the plot device they used to dispense with the characters, they would have been hailed as the second coming and people on the internet would have been hanging on every word in the scripts looking for the next example of their brilliance. When, of course, the irony is that the head writers have far less control over such minor details now than they did 40 years ago, when all the millions of viewers who watched AW had no idea who Agnes Nixon was.

[brimike]

^^^ This is a beautiful post. And so right on the money.

[Sylph]

It is. I liked every contribution so far in this thread.

However, they all seem to say: greatness is impossible, daytime is such a medium it can only produce garbage. That's the kind of attitude that emanates from this and has emanated from many other threads and discussions in the past.

What's most puzzling for me is the fact that people don't believe an inoffensive, OK, fun, good but not great soap is possible.

[brimike]

I think "greatness in daytime" can only be seen in hindsight. I absolutely remember rushing home from school because my soap was "so good right now". But I also distinctly remember feeling that way a small portion of the time. As DeliaIrisFan pointed out, it was when months and months of spinning wheels and juggling balls was coming to a head. I don't think I've ever known a soap storyline was "amazing" until it was all over, and I looked back on it. Even then, my memory only focuses on the highlights of the story. Tony putting his head on Maxie's chest. Lily cutting herself on thorns and falling into Josh's arms as Iva rushes in with a pitchfork. Carrie punching Sami in her wedding dress. Grant shooting Ryan at the train tracks. The list goes on and on. But I don't always remember the other hundred episodes of build-up prior to that. When I say in one of my posts that [insert year] was a great year for [insert soap name here], I'm mostly talking about maybe fifty or sixty episodes out of two hundred and fifty. That's if I take a step back, gain some perspective. The other two hundred episodes? Probably ranged from average to downright dull.

Now, with every episode analyzed to death, I'm not so sure it's possible to recognize anything good (I won't even say "great", but I will say "good") on any soap opera. In five years from now, I think many of us will remember some storylines in these final days as good, even if we loathe them now. Hindsight is a really peculiar thing, especially when you're dealing with two hundred and fifty hours a year, for decades.

[DeliaIrisFan]

I for one wouldn't say that daytime is inherently such a medium that can only produce garbage, at all. I'm saying that the stranglehold that the money people have on these shows is currently making greatness impossible. I don't think that's insulting, because we are talking about completely arbitrary circumstances that have nothing to do with producing a soap opera and were not a part of the process when it was most successful, financially and otherwise. You could say that the great works of literature could not have been written by their authors while standing on their heads and dictating them to a third party, and you'd probably be right. The circumstances under which writers and producers are now having to turn out these soaps are about as constructive. However, under those circumstances, recognizing the attributes that a given show runner on the creative side may bring to the table and settling for a few enjoyable moments here and there, rather than constantly calling for change at what can now only be classified as the mid-management level, is not so off-base.

[Sylph]

That is why I ask, and this thread shifted from its purpose, why on Earth do these people keep turning the writers on their head and dictating them the story when they can clearly see the approach isn't working.

And, brimike, what a strange reply. Strange, yet I can understand it, though with some difficulty. You are telling me you watched a soap, and at best, you weren't entertained (at worst, you were bloody bored and angered by the show), yet two years after that you realised it was great? Greatness cannot be seen in real time? And are you telling me that perhaps we are considering Lynn Latham's Y&R rubbish now, but in 5 years we shall remember it fondly as the second golden age?

That line that you never thought of a storyline as great until it was over... Maaaan, that's bizarre! You can tell a story sucks right away. I.e. the premise is sh!t and too stretched, for example. Or perhaps the set-up was fabulous, but along the way, in the execution, something went awry. So perhaps it's doesn't get an A, but a B-.

Weird, man. How is this possible? You watched 50 superb episodes and kept watching a show for another 200 hundred which were "average" to "downright dull"?

[brimike]

Because it's about the journey. I didn't know in March where a story would be in September - so I could bitch and moan on a daily basis in March about how bad a set-up was - but if by September, it all managed to come together in a way that was both emotionally satisfying and effective, I would quickly forget how bad the story began, and a year later be in a conversation with somebody saying "Remember when they did THAT story? It was so good! Why don't they do character-driven stories like that again?!"

Nobody's saying Latham's the second-coming. God no. It's not always about brilliance and rubbish, the way you put it though. We, the audience, have ALWAYS sat through mediocre episodes of a show to get to a denouement.

Although you and I couldn't have more opposite television viewing habits from the numerous times you've scoffed at my posts, so I'm not surprised you found my response so "bizarre".

[Sylph]

Like I said: this doesn't mean the whole story was good. It means 3 things and you said it yourself:

1. set-up was lousy
   
2. execution left a lot to be desired
   
3. somehow the ending was satisfactory
   

Very different from This story was great from start to finish!

There are stories, some Bill Bell's, for example, which aren't quite so obvious and which startle you on every corner and which end in an imaginative, different way. But those are rare. The majority are very simple to assess.

[brimike]

***EDIT****

Eh. It doesn't really matter anyway.