Search For Tomorrow Discussion Thread

[vetsoapfan]

 

I think too much action (over characterization) and cartoonish elements are what destroyed the soap genre, actually. I have never seen "outlandish" material presented well on daytime TV. It has, IMHO, been painful and embarrassing to watch. Mind you, I do not hate the Corringtonsas much as I loathe other scribes; I just think their style was not a good match for SFT. Or OLTL. 

 

The Corringtons were much better suited to over-the-top films like OMEGA MAN and THE KILLER BEES.

 

(Seriously.)

 

Back in 1977, SFT's ratings were strong enough to save it, I believe. The network probably would have cancelled a low-rated game show or LOVE OF LIFE first, had Bell's second show been ready to go at that time.

[robbwolff]

Plus, as I recollect, CBS was toying with expanding SFT around that time.

[Soaplovers]

But didn't the Carrington reign stabilize the show..and led to them creating Texas due to their work on SAT?

 

All I know is that they created the Santells...and Sunny.

 

Plus, action storyline became the norm in the late 70s/early 80s...so they had to adapt.

 

Based on what I've read...the mid 70s was the last golden age of the show...with a multi generational approach....with Jo/Eunice still getting stories...but younger characters also got focus like jennifer, scott,kathy, liza...etc

[NothinButAttitude]

We're the Carringtons the one behind the infamous scene where Jennifer fell through a glass door? For those who've seen the scene, why is it so revered by SFT fans? 

[vetsoapfan]

 

I doubt their work on SFT directly lead to the Corringtons working on TEXAS. P&G often recycled writers from show to show, regardless of their success or failure on previous soaps. (Some things never change.)

 

True, in the early 1980s, soaps were jumping on the sci-fi/fantasy/adventure bandwagon, thanks to GH's painfully awful Ice Princess story, but it did not do any favors to old warhorses like SFT. One writer, Don Chastian, later admitted in the press that TPTB kept forcing the show to copy what GH was doing, no matter how wrong or destructive such material was for SFT. You just don't try to turn THE WALTONS into SHARKNADO, you know?

 

 

No, that was a few years before the Corringtons arrived.

[Khan]

I will admit that (judging from what I've been able to view online) the Corringtons lent to SFT a Southern-ish flair that doesn't appear in any other HW's work.  I mean, if you didn't know better, you'd swear (with all the faux accents, French-sounding monikers and wild plot turns) the show was based in New Orleans.

 

Having said that, I MUST know: were the Corringtons' responsible for that godawful song Steve Kaslo wrote for Liza?  "You Can Love Again" (or whatever the [!@#$%^&*] it was)?

Edited April 16, 2017 by Khan

[NothinButAttitude]

 

Oh OK. Were you watching the show during the time Jennifer fell through the glass door?

[vetsoapfan]

 

Yes. Even if I had not been watching at the time, the event was heavily promoted (the commercial showing her crashing through the glass was shown for several days beforehand), and I would have tuned in just to see it.

[NothinButAttitude]

 

Oh wow. This must've been one helluva an event. 

 

God I hate that I'll never get to see this treasure onscreen!

[vetsoapfan]

 

Different people enjoy different types of entertainment, and although I personally loathe low-brow camp/science fiction on soaps., there is apparently a market for that.

 

But for me, most of daytime dramas' true, treasure-worthy moments involved dynamic interpersonal-relationship material played out among three-dimensional, complex characters.  Most of this happened before the shows started being archived, and is now lost forever.  The only good thing about my being so old is that I was around the see soaps' best years.

[amybrickwallace]

 

I loathe it, too - and anything that is plot-driven rather than character-driven.

[NothinButAttitude]

 

Would you consider the moment with Jennifer to be low-brow or a strong, character-driven moment of the show?

[vetsoapfan]

 

The science-fiction crap temporarily brought mainstream-media attention to the soaps, and an influx of young, fly-by-night viewers, but I have always believed that it destroyed the genre in the long run. The mainstream media never understood our shows to begin with, and their celebrating the campiness and stupidity of the fantasy plots was akin to internet bloggers, who had never watched or appreciated DOWNTON ABBEY, cheering a stoner producer's story about Mary conceiving a child after a drunken night on a space ship with the Great Gazoo. Strangers to a show might love watching it be destroyed through ludicrous and insulting storylines; long-time fans did not. And all those kids and fly-by-night viewers who tuned in to laugh at the space aliens and clones disappeared shortly afterwards, anyway. Soaps are simply not their cip of tea. So the shows' integrity was destroyed for nothing.

 

The storyline was based on human emotion and interpersonal-relationship conflict, so it worked quite well. 

[Soaplovers]

 

I figured the jennifer falling through the glass worked cause of build up due to her troubled state of mind, desperation to hold onto her husband, and her jealousy of his closeness to another woman.

 

Would  the Jennifer killing Eunice story be in the same boat..or would that have been for shock value as well?  

[vetsoapfan]

 

I have never been a fan of the "spurned lover turns psycho and tries to murder a romantic rival" storylines, simply because so many of them are contrived and cliche, and come across as easy gimmicks rather than true, heartfelt drama.

 

Unless I am mistaken, it was Tex and Irving Elman who killed off Eunice, and their writing was always pretty bad, anyway. A good writer can make most stories work, but the Jennifer-kills-Eunice plot was unnecessarily damaging to the core of the show, did not lead anywhere, and not well written.