Where Has Character Connection Gone On Daytime?

[John]

I was Listening To Brandon's Buzz Last Night & Brandon talked With Mark Dobies (Daniel Coulson, OLTL; Noah Chase, GL) & He Said something I Totally Agree With. What Happened With Relationships and Family On Soaps. He Used Ryan's Hope As An Example. They Used To Do Lots Of scenes Of Folks At Ryan's Bar & Kitchen Scenes Where People Just Talked to Each Other About What Was Going On With Them. These Wonderful 7-10 minute long scenes got you so much into the head and heart of these characters. By Doing This Viewers Were immediately connected to them and their struggles.

Now a Days, These Type Of Scenes Are Few and Far Between. One Life To Live Had One This Week where Todd & Tea Were In Bed discussing The Past & Who Todd Was & How He Has evolved. that was One Of Those True Moments That Relies On History & Chemistry. Nothing More, Nothing Less. However, some fans took to message boards and said that was boring & Where's the action? Unfortunately Stunts Like Crashes, Blow Ups, Kidnappings, Mob Ties etc are now front & center. True Characters connecting with one another have been placed so far on the back burner they have fallen off the stove.

My question is how do we get back to those stories of interaction with these characters that made daytime drama so great that no one wanted to miss not only a day but a minute. I for one Don't think It's Too Late. Let's Figure This Out

Ideas?

[Ann]

Yeah, I got a simple ones. Eliminate the gimmicks and the stunts. Get back to story telling based on character development. Please

let there be happiness and light on a soap. They are way too dark these days. Too much gloom and doom, mobs, guns. Sure a soap has

to have that, but we could take it in much smaller doses. Don't keep playing musical couples. Build on a relationship and let it

flourish for longer than a minute. Get a fresh batch of writers that haven't written for soaps before. Maybe there would be more

fresh ides. Soaps have become stale with rinse, recycle, reuse. I know there can't always be something new, but certainly there should

be some freshness on a soap. Soaps have been seriously lacking the "wow factor" Nothing wows us. We become complacent because sometimes

there is nothing to root for. I know this on is practically impossible, with Brian Frons at the helm, but stop the micromanagement.

Allow the soaps themselves to have more input. Let us care about something again. Lately, I don't seem to care too much. So, those

are some ideas to share.

[quartermainefan]

I don't think that is possible. The modern audience just does not sit still for 10 minute scenes and I bet there would be a lot of people saying "oh my god, when does this scene end?!?"

I was reading that one episode of Edge Of Night was only one actor the entire 30 minute show: a lawyer giving a summation to the jury. Could you see that happening today in this age of "I only watch for ____"?

"

This isn't just an issue with daytime, it has happened at night too. People just don't have it in them to still still for slow, character scenes as much as they used to.

[Dr Neil Curtis]

That's the main problem with daytime you don't have to many fans devoted to the show, but to couplings or a specific characters.

I miss the days of coffee talk at the kitchen table. Like talks Maggie have in her kitchen or the talks Julie & Sami had on Days during Alice illness/death. Bring family back to daytime and family interaction could save soaps IMO.

[DeeeDee]

+1.

The solution is simple.

Tell good stories with good actors & people will watch.

[~bl~]

If someone watches for only one thing (and never cared about the rest of a program), why should they be catered to? The fans who were invested in many shows for a lot of reasons seem to be the ones running moreso than the other group. How many people in the general audience aka non-online people are there in comparison to the others?

[Ann]

More ideas:

These days, a story starts, but it very rarely has a middle and an end. There might be Point A and Point B. But, how do we get from

Point A to Point B? And, then until we might get to Point B we don't care how it got there. There needs to be more fluidity to a

story, making it seem like chapters of a book. And, continuity, too. Oftentimes on OLTL the story is all over the place. There is

no continuity. I know that could be because the show does not tape in sequence. But, sometimes the editing is terrible.

Also, I firmly believe that fan bases have had a lot to do with the decline in soaps. Fans seem to think they are entitled to something

when we are really not entitled to anything. The writers will do what they want anyway, but how about good writing based on the

story, certainly not on the pressure of fans to continue to badger s show to get what they want or else! Couple fan bases are the

worst! They think it's their way, or no way. And, they can be way over the top in their demands! To the point of badgering other

actors who just might get in their way.

Give me a quality show, with quality writing, with quality actors, and I will come!

[Titus Andronicus]

Absolutely.

YouTube has made it much easier to focus on one character or story, but that's been the case since the late 1970s when VCRs started to be mass-marketed. Soaps adjusted by telling stories faster, but you still had plenty of character-based storylines through even the mid 1990s.

You have to break writers, directors and producers from the 'throw it against the wall and see if it sticks' helter-skelter, flying-by-the-seat-of-their-pants, the-audience-is-a-hyper-five-year-old mentality. Low budgets aren't an excuse, either. One of the most popular shows in the history of television was Upstairs, Downstairs and it ran on a shoestring budget.

I used to work in a middle school. Despite growing up 40 years after the Andy Griffith Show originally aired, we had kids asking to see more of it once they were exposed. Good stories transcend generations.

[DeeeDee]

Soaps have to embrace diversity.

The more Daytime clings to obsolete paradigms the more it will continue to fail.

[EricMontreal22]

This is something I don't get--for ages now as ratings fall, the shows seem to focus more and more on younger characters, whiter characters, characters who are more "hot"--and it has NOT worked yet. This isn't new, it's been going on arguably since the 80s. I think people would be more likely to tune in if they saw a more diverse cast--I don't just mean ethnically (although that's a big part of it) but age wise, look wise (one reason I think cable shows often are appealing is the casts aren't all quite so look alike pretty/hnadsome in a generic way), etc. But it seems a lesson they'll never learn at this point.

[Chris B]

I don't think it's true that people won't tune in for these scenes. They aren't tuning in with what they're given now, yet viewers WERE tuning in when soaps were working. Besides, it's not too radical to have scenes with family members in simple interactions or friends. That can be a solid b-story for your episode to keep the action moving without shifting back and forth from various A-stories (which end up burning out faster).

[EricMontreal22]

This isn't quite the same, but does go to characterization. While in soaps, a person's career has often been rather arbitrary--unless they were doctors and lawyers (who famously Irna Philips first based her soaps around)--they did use to have interesting careers that helped define them. You read descriptions in the 70s about architexts, musicians, writers, etc--now most characters on a soap dopn't even seem to have ANY career unless they are a doctor, lawyer, cop (maybe model...) I dunno... (I mean I even found it interesting when AMC brought in the ill conceived character of Reece because she WAS an architect, something they--very loosely--brought into the plot). What percentage of the people we know in our lives are doctors, lawyers, cops, or heads of huge businesses that don't seem to have any real goal or use... I get why it's useful for plot to have characters be these fairly generic professions, but IMHO it makes it a Hell of a lot less interesting.

(I always think every soap should have at least one shrink on it--and not a shrink int he way we've seen Marty recently be on OLTL--it just seems such an obvious way to deal with many interesting aspects of these stories, yet it's been years it seems since we actually saw what happened in any shrink session, if we do actually see a character going to one--they usually cut the scene there and come back when it's over...)

[JackPeyton]

This is what made me fall back in love with days of our lives before and during its baby swap storyline. They had these lengthy scenes between characters where they were exposing themselves and opening up. Nicole, Sami, and even Mia were all put with various scene partners to push this story forward. Rafe, Will, Maggie, Brady, EJ, Stefano, and more were sounding boards and friends/foes that these woman opened up too. Not to mention the amazing scenes between the woman themselves. It was built up so well, from Nicole losing the baby to swapping Sami and Mia's. Then watching it all play out with the shocking twist of Gracy dying. Granted, it dragged from that point but the show still had these scenes between characters where they opened up and we as the audience saw something new in them.

The way the entire canvas was brought into this story is what made it work. It wasnt so much about Sami, Nicole, and Mia but family, friends, and lovers dealing with drama. It was soap opera. I wish they had been able to keep it up, but damn did it even go to hell after the truth came out.

[quartermainefan]

On the other hand, I remember trying to show a 20 year old "Goldfinger on DVD". He watched 10 minutes, deemed it slow, boring, no action, dull, and too old school for his tastes. That was 10 minutes before he started reaching for a magazine, and he was a college student at one of the top universities in the country who pulled As. He just was not able to relate to the slowness that was Sean Connery vs what you see in action films today.

Just imagine TV trying to turn back from CSI and Dexter and start making solidly written shows filmed in the style of Mannix or Cannon. It won't fly no matter how well written the stories are.

[DRW50]

I don't believe that the soaps moved away from longer scenes because of lack of viewer interest. I think that the soaps assume that viewers are too stupid to deal with long scenes. There's a real condescension towards viewers and it shows. There's no harm in making an effort. And I still see soaps doing endless, boring conversations on topics that go nowhere. That's the real reason for lack of interest. That and the characters have lost any meaning or value. If Bert Bauer had a lengthy conversation with Papa Bauer, then I would care, because I know Bert. I understand her. If Todd Manning has a long conversation, why should I care, when everything about this character has been junked to tell us that he's a "good" rapist who rapes out of love and who is a prize stud and perfect father with no worries in life?