New Yorker: Various Articles on Soaps Through the Years

[Cat]

Thank you for posting these! I love the New Yorker. I especially like the way that most of the articles here do not dismiss the soaps out of hand. I suspect some of the writers realy got into the shows and some of the characters, regardless of the slightly-jaded-and-amused-seen-it-all-before tone.

[DRW50]

I am bewildered that they keep saying Zoey and The City would have a touch of "Kids". I don't think so! Even in style, I don't really see that connection.

[SFK]

Seriously, that oh-so dated reference is just glaringly inaccurate. They didn't come CLOSE to touching the raw grit of Kids with Zoey, who although a good character, was really no different than a runaway/orphan punk character from the '80s.

[DRW50]

I don't even know if they were trying for that. I mean, Kids was hardcore compared to what you could have on soaps. Even though I haven't seen the movie in over ten years I still can't forget the ending. I don't even remember Zoey looking like anyone from Kids. Was she ever even someone with much of an edge? Or was she a Hot Topic poser?

[SFK]

That's what I'm saying, that's why the writer's "observation" just feels like a dated (and inaccurate) reference to me. Kids was of course very controversial and much talked about at the time, but it existed in a totally different universe than anything seen on The City, anything seen on daytime period.

Zoey was a teen (who felt more like early twenties) with funky colored hair and clothes who had a hard knock life. Closer to early Hayley on AMC, but with more of a chip on her shoulder. From day one you could tell that she'd be softened in only a matter of time, and she was... afterall, she was toting around the little girl Kayla who Angie and Jacob would try to adopt, that's not exactly the kind of thing the subjects in Kids would have ever done.

[DRW50]

Thanks. I didn't see a lot of the early City stuff, I just remember Zoey as this normal woman with kooky hair who dated Richard.

I guess he saw "edgy" New York young people as being like Kids, but that's kind of like saying The City was going to be Panic in Needle Park.

[EricMontreal22]

Carl--that's the tone of Talk of the Town in the mid 90s--slightly sarcastic, etc. I wouldn't take it so literally, LOL. She was sorta menat to be a cool urchin though at first--and even by the end of the show I felt she was unique at the time, she was a bit more legitimately like someone (as a teen at the time) I could picture in my life. So for soap terms I think she was pretty "authentic" (a term I hate). But yes the Kids thing is part of the humour- the New Yorker is an aquired taste

(City hadn't aired yet, and the author was just going off of the descriptions given to him about the new characters--Kids was all the talk back then so he probably threw it in cuz of that. No harm no foul)

[YRBB]

I don't know what to say about Sheffer's "no dick, no dick, no dick, no dick...." This attitude is so strong on today's Y&R, it's just fascinatingly hilarious. He just NEVER learns, does he?

However, I did enjoy the backstage look at the writer's room... I wish this was done more often.

[Paul Raven]

Thanks Eric,for sharing these and allowing us all access.Some interesting stuff.

Rereading the Sheffer stuff only makes me dislike him more.I'm sure there are many talented writers who understand and respect the genre,who are not given the opportunity,while this buffoon rides roughshod over Y&R.

[DRW50]

He's never had to learn because he's been excused and coddled by the soap press and a lot of fans wherever he goes, and he keeps getting hired.

[Sylph]