LML Or MAB: Y&R

[SOAPSFOREVER]

A genre doesn't need to die off to be reborn. All entertainment is cyclical. Look at prime time comedies. They were huge in the 70s and 80s, went through a dormant period, but didn't totally disappear. They reinvented themselves, and some are quite popular again. It can be that way with soaps, too. As a viewer and a fan, I think it would be tragic not to have a few of the better soaps still on the air.

[DaytimeFan]

True, some did exist through the dormat periods...but by the time the genre had evolved the old shows were gone and the new ones were on the air. Those shows all died. Every last one of them.

That isn't the case with soaps. They've all outlived their competitors. If your comparison was right, Passions and/or Port Charles would have evolved the genre and would have outlived the other shows. But they didn't.

All the soaps need to die before the business model for daytime will get reworked to a mode of profitability if it is even possible. As well, the recycled writers who have decimated the genre creatively will have all died off. Sort of like the dinosaurs.

[SOAPSFOREVER]

If Passions and/or Port Charles had been the right formulas to bring soaps into a new/different era, your argument would have legs. However, Port Charles was nothing more than a lame spin-off of GH that morphed into a show about vampires. It was poorly produced, acted and horribly written. No way it would have been a model for something new for the daytime genre. As for Passions, it appealed to a very limited audience. It was ridiculously scripted, overacted and lacked any true emotional resonance. It was deeply flawed from the get-go. (Also, your argument about prime time comedies doesn't hold water. There's a standard shelf life for a successful prime time comedy, 7 to 9 years. That's not true for soaps. They can go for many decades. It's comparing apples and oranges -- two totally different genres.)

[EricMontreal22]

I get your point, but it is apples and oranges. Even with long runs like Bonanza, few radio or TV shows ever lived as long (one series) as soaps--it's a special case and I don't think it can directly compared atal.

And of course the writers thing isn't new--look at the crazy credits for soaps in the 60s and 70s and they're littered with writers who nearly destroyed one show and immediately are hired to a new thing. I know you know your stuff, Daytime Fan, but I do think SOME internet fans seem to think this is a new thing--and it isn't by any means (which doesn't excuse it of course). My fave example is James Lipton lol.

[DaytimeFan]

You see, we look at it very differently. I'm saying that no soap opera is going to be capable of being the 'right formula' because it doesn't exist anymore because the 'old formula' is still on the air and still making money. Plain and simple. The 'right formula' will only emerge after everything is gone. It's like the use of oil, that is only going to change when there isn't any left. Until that time comes, the focus will always be placed on reinventing, spinning; reworking that which is unworkable.

And what you have to realise is that a show like Passions, which I never liked, was the closest thing to a 'new' style of soap opera that the United States has seen, they broke the fourth wall in that show all the time. But again, it failed because it relied on the same, tired cliches that have sunk GL and ATWT and what will eventually sink OLTL, AMC, DAYS, GH, B&B and Y&R.

The mighty will fall. At the cost they are currently being produced for the shows don't have much life left in them.

You're absolutely right, the writer issue isn't new. However, it was never this repetitive or blatant. You have Jean Passante, who is head writer of a cancelled show, going to another show the moment her contract expires. You have Donna Swajeski and David Kreizman, also headwriters of a cancelled show, going to another show within months of their contracts expiring. If we can compare this to flushing a toilet, we're about to hit the part where the crap goes right into the sewer system. Back in the James Lipton era, we were only rinsing the top of the bowl.

[EricMontreal22]

Well to be fair--Lipton was seen as having almost killed Another World (Agnes came in to save him--but everyone knew his writing was largely what was killing the show in '66--though it didn't help that Irna and Bill Bell's first year never found the right tone, to start with). Then he had a disastrous few months at GL and then in 1970 he was CREATING and head writing a soap opera, Best of Everything, which barely lasted a half year. After that debacle what happened? he was immediately hired to HW Return to Peyton Place which, guess what, died under him! And yet he was STILL working. I think that's at least as inane as hiring Krizman--an Emmy winning writer with one soap as HW, and Swajeski who has some respect in the industry to HW AMC, though I agree that situation is still pretty insane.

[DaytimeFan]

Right, but then you have to consider that, in addition to the HW changes at OLTL and AMC...we have...

B&B: Brad Bell

Y&R: Maria Arena (plus serial train wreck Hogan Sheffer and LML's sidekick Scott Hamner)

So more than half of the soaps are helmed by absolute hacks. I dare say in Lipton's era the garbage wasn't ever that concentrated.

DAYS and GH I'll leave alone, those shows seem to be trying to deliver enjoyable material, though it's debatable about how well they're succeeding.

[EricMontreal22]

You leave AMC alone too

No, that's fair enough. It was a different soap climate as well (plus, P&G back then were still obsessed with their writer rotation concept--that no matter how good or bad a team was at one soap afgter a year or two they exhange them with another to keep the show "fresh").

[bellcurve]

Did you even WATCH the show?! If you say yes, that would surprise me, given how often you glow about Y&R/B&B in the discussion threads.

There are periods of the show that weren't all that great, but there were periods of the show that were wonderful(Cullington & Harris).

The acting on PC, as a whole, isn't nearly as bad as you are making it out to be. But hey, anything to make your precious Bell shows look better.

And you are right, all entertainment is cyclical. The problem with Y&R/B&B or any other show holding on while the cycle returns is that there won't be anything LEFT of these shows by the time that cycle comes back around.

Game shows(IMO, being the closest example to soaps we can speak on in terms of cyclical entertainment) had a really slow period in the 90's and almost died off with the exception of syndicated stalwarts Wheel/Jeopardy and CBS' longrunning The Price Is Right. It finally took Who Wants to be a Millionaire in 1999 to really ramp up interest in gameshows in all dayparts.

Soaps really need a "Millionaire" that comes in and really revitalizes interest in the genre. MyNetworkTV was an attempt at that, as was Spyder Games. The problem with those shows, IMO, was never their budget or their timeslots. The problem is that the soap press and fans never ever kept an open mind. I'm not saying people should be forced to like anything they shouldn't, but the soap press should have reached out to these shows for interviews with their stars and with their head writers for articles. Something other than the casual mention in "Thumbs Up, Thumbs Down." Not embracing the new projects has really hurt interest in soaps.

Soap operas cannot survive if fans/reporters severely neglect the non-network up and coming. One GOODthing about We Love Soaps and Daytime Confidential is that they go beyond the scope of what the mainstream magazines consider "soap operas."

Mainstream soap projects that aim to revitalize soaps do exist. It's just that fans and magazines will let these shows die before they will ever accept the new brood. And that is sad.

[Jay]

There was also Norah Hanen Gannon Buchanan Rappaport (except they wrote the Rappaport part as non-Jewish) on OLTL. That's it as far as I know.

I've seen "Brad's mother" (Rebecca Montalcini Kaplan) in a number of nighttime shows. BONES comes to mind, in which she played a no-goodnik physics or chemistry professor. Lorna Raver is her name.

[Jay]

I could not be one bit more serious. Brad was a snore pre-LML, one of the prime reasons I never could stand to put a week's worth of episodes together at a time. She made him interesting for the very first time.

THE GRUGEON RELIQUARY ROQUED.

[Jay]

The current "writers" are killing (pre-killing?) the show so that no one will complain when it is canceled. NBC did this with AW, CBS is doing it with ATWT (with the marvelous little exception known as Ruke), and it may well have been done with GL (I hadn't watched it since 1992, so I don't know). What makes you -- any of you -- think Y&R is going to cheat the executioner? It would not surprise me if they hire Jean Passanante once she's done killing OLTL.

It's over folks. It was a good time while it lasted, but it's over.

[Jay]

They are running PASSIONS-IN-EXILE on some other soap opera, I noticed a couple of weeks ago. "Theresita" (sometimes when I get pissed at someone for being particularly moronic, yet I don't wish to tell them directly what a moron they are being, I call them "Theresita") has her eyes on "Ethan" once more. Or at least someone who looks a lot like Ethan. She's got that maniacal glint in her eye that made my remote finger back right up the other day. Theresita, we hardly knew ti.

[EricMontreal22]

OLTL had a core Jewish family at its start--the Siegels (sp?) who remained pretty prominent at least through the 70s

HA I was home when DAYS is on this past week, a rare thing, and saw EXACTLY that and just rolled my eyes and had to change the channel. Man...

[DeeeDee]