ATWT lack of diversity/balance

[DRW50]

Sorry!

[jfung79]

You make great points, and I agree with you in general, but I disagree with your specific examples of these departures as supporting your point.

Adam was let go by DK according to you, but Brad who left later is before DK? How do you know that? I also don't think soaps in general, or ATWT in particular, have a problem of too few young characters anyway.

Vienna is "non-american", but so is Simon who has just been written back in, and Damian who is also non-American continues to be frontburner.

Bonnie seems to be gone for awhile, but Jessica came back for her. Ben Harris also made a return for a few episodes. No reason they had to write Ben back if they were so clear about only wanting a conservative, middle-age, white viewership.

Mason was hardly a big draw for gay viewers. There are rumors of another character who will be Luke's new love interest.

The show is no more or less diverse now than it has been for years. There is a lot of work to do to make it more diverse, but there has been no change to indicate it is going for a more middle-aged, conservative, white audience recently.

[Meldus]

IMO that is the problem, there is no indication of any change. It's a fact that within the last year that all of the racial minority characters have been dropped. And unless there is some upcoming casting news, it doesn't seem like that is going to change and that is sad.

DK stated that the Adam storyline was dropped due to Mick coming onto the canvas. We knew that Austin Peck was let go this summer, so I assumed DK didn't have anything to do with AP's exit.

Jessica's return was a bit insulting and didn't want any sense. In fact, I much rather Jessica had never come back for one day for that mess. Let's be honest Jack spent all of five minutes with Ben before he went to save the other "Ben". If viewers would have missed those days, they would have never known that Jessica and Ben returned.

Mason was a failure because the writers refused to write a realistic gay triangle storyline. I blame the writers 100% for not utilizing Forbes March popularity and talent. And unless P&G is willing to let the show go full force with their gay characters than any new love interest for Luke isn't going to be any different than Brian or Mason.

[ReddFoxx]

ATWT has definitely always been the most Conservative soap. Looking at it's history, it's pretty much been the same as it has always been.

[All My Shadows]

I'm surprised I didn't catch this before. All of the CBS soaps have huge followings here, including Y&R, which several of the radio stations down here do daily recaps for. I can't speak of North LA (well...I kinda can...it can get pretty fuckin' ridiculous up there) but South LA isn't as racist as people might think. Remember, we have New Orleans, which is 67% black. Also, the outrageously high number of Catholics down here stopped the spread of any KKK activity.

On the subject of ATWT: Jade/Aaron could have and SHOULD HAVE happened!

[P.J.]

^^^There was one time the ratings were broken down by region, and the CBS soaps do significantly better in the South.

[SFK]

I don't even watch this show so maybe I should just keep my fat mouth shut, but I have caught bits and pieces while flipping the channel when Rex gets on my nerves or whatever and I've seen some of Luke and the scarfed one. To me, the beauty and great s/l potential in having a homosexual homewrecker so to speak is having him endear himself to both parties, and before you know it, all three men (or all three women) find themselves drawn to the other two people in the triangle and everyone's just a big ball of emotional mess. Now *there's* your Rachel/Steve/Alice for the new millenium. But I suspect prudish soaps would resist such a thing in fear of offending gays by portraying them as "sex hungry devils", which is not even the case here, of course physical attraction is a component, but I'm talking mental/emotional sturm und drang.

[DRW50]

I think the problem with that story would be that viewers would have no idea who they should care about, and all the relationships in the triangle would seem hollow. They might just lose interest in everyone involved.

That type of thing can be interesting in some genres but on a soap, which lives and dies by defined relationships, it would be more of a struggle.

[All My Shadows]

That's similar to something I once tried to write. I have a little set of files on my laptop that I made up out of a teen-based soap (Dawson's Creek-ish) about two siblings from southern California who are forced to move to small-town Midwest with their father. The story I wanted to write concerned two gay guys and a bisexual older guy (not older as in ooooolder, just a school year older). The two gay guys (Derek and Tommy) were in a relationship that was starting to show some cracks, and Derek meets the bisexual guy (Neal), who is friends with his step-sister. Derek and Neal get to know each other and Derek sleeps with Neal, but they don't have an emotional connection because to Derek, that and only that would be cheating. Meanwhile, Tommy and Neal get to know each other and have a relationship on a more emotional level, but unlike the Derek/Neal thing, Tommy doesn't make it sexual because to him, that and only that makes it cheating. So in the end it's a question of which is stronger: Derek and Tommy's relationship, which is both emotional and sexual; Tommy and Neal's relationship, which is strictly emotional; or Derek and Neal's relationship, which is strictly sexual?

I ended up scrapping the story and making Neal straight because it would have been just toooooo much happening in the span of episodes I wanted it to happen in.

[SFK]

Right, there would certainly be a lot of balls in the air (no pun intended), but I think in the hands of the right HW, he or she could have months and months of drama in a Super Triangle like that. And just as you were saying with the love&sex/love&love/sex&sex-type setup, those of course could ebb and flow or change entirely, and if you have a bisexual character, well there's even more quadrangle potential there. I don't think viewers need the writers telling them who to root for and it would be interesting to see how chemistry vs. true love, or our soap opera sense of what's right and wrong would help us form our allegiances.