Which soap plots do you miss, most?

[aMLCproduction]

I am new to OLTL Can u send me a PM about who is Shanes real dad?

It sounds to me a lot of u guys should be reading STEAM lol

[Y&RWorldTurner]

I agree but, I've never agreed with the nonsense that every single day should be a Friday cliffhanger. Um no, every day should be a natural progression in story that leads up to your Friday cliffhanger. Have cliffhangers yes, but don't go out of your way to somehow try to shock your audience every day for the hell of it.

[Khan]

There's a reason why Mike Horton's paternity reveal on DAYS, which took seven years to happen, is often cited as one of the best-ever for soaps. Even when the secret itself (that Bill, and not Mickey, had fathered Mike) was not the issue-of-the-moment, I'm sure it always colored the relationships among Bill, Mickey and Laura, providing layer upon delicious layer of subtext for these (and other) characters. That's soap opera!

[aMLCproduction]

I've heard about this and in fact Bill Bell gave interviews on this. I wish I could I've seen this. Was Bell the one who popped that story?

[quartermainefan]

I love cliff hangers. This is one of the places all soaps lost their way, trying to be maybe too subtle and too natural. They could all learn a thing from watching endings to Dynasty episodes. Natural, shmatural, give me something I can say "wow, what happens next???"

[Khan]

I never watched PORT CHARLES (only a few eps during the LML era), but from everything I've heard, Karen Harris seemed to be a HW who knew how to write short arcs in a way that didn't contradict characters' nature or insult viewers' intelligence. Too bad she didn't last long @ that job, though.

[Y&RWorldTurner]

Yes, and John Abbott never found out that Ashley Abbott wasn't his biological daughter.

[Soapsuds]

Douglas Marland was good at this. He didnt have a Friday cliffhanger every week. That was one thing I noticed back then about his writing.

[LoyaltoAMC]

I miss the intergenerational stories. I also miss scenes of people talking, just having conversations, even if they include a ton of exposition. I'm probably one of the few who doesn't watch for the OTT romance and supercouples. In fact, I think the supercouple phenom began to signal the creative death of soaps, because they stopped being these reperatory-type ensemble shows and more about manipulating the viewer to root for the "it" couple of the moment. I just miss the everyday connections that these characters had through their conversations, discussing who was sleeping with whom, etc. They still did some of that in the 80s. TPTB began to forget that soap opera is about reaction, not action. It's about the characters and how they react to what's going on within the plot, not the plot itself. Plots are great, but the characters and their reactions are what enrich the plots.

[Khan]

Josh Griffith was the first HW I recall who said that, and it was during that interview he and Michael Malone gave to SOD shortly before their grand (and ill-fated) return to OLTL. I hated the quote then, and I hate it even more now.

[Y&RWorldTurner]

No one knew how to stretch a story better naturally than Marland. Bill Bell knew how to do it, but at times you could get annoyed and feel like hitting your head against the wall, but I think Marland was a master at just giving the right amount away to keep you glued, and to not go out of his way in a contrived manner to shock his audience.

[Khan]

Nah, Pat Falken Smith did the reveal. But even then, she built up to it, so that it would have a major impact on story. It wasn't one of those out-of-the-blue plot twists that was quickly forgotten.

[aMLCproduction]

I miss stories that have big balls( like masq Balls, get ur heads out the gutter) or soemthing and a big event happens and all the towns folks are there to witness it

I also missed when soaps used to debut new openings and how I excited I used to be to see the new titles

I also miss when Y&R didn't used to show their opening montage until sometimes 8 or nine minutes into the show and sometimes even in the 2nd half of the show we would see characters pop up when they werent in the first half. Just to love that. Y&R also used to use their recurring characters very well Like John Silva, and Paul had an assistant I forget her name that had a thing for him

[Khan]

WORD.

I'm telling you, the wrong people are running this business.

[Soapsuds]

I remember being pissed at the time because all the other soaps had their Friday cliffhanger and Douglas didnt. Then on Monday or Tuesday we would get a cliffhanger that would last the week. But he did give us the Friday cliffhanger when the story dedicated.