Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome

[tanyia2]

The worst soap opera rapid aging happened on Guiding Light. Mel's daughter Leah went from a 2 month old infant to a 17 year old teenager overnight. I could never ever accept that freak of a character on Guiding Light.

[Quent]

When the SORASing is done gradually, I don't mind it. But when they do it so that characters like Phyllis on Y&R is now Grandma, something is wrong. And don't get me started on Brooke Logan.

The worst case of SORAS I've ever seen was Bonnie McKechnie on ATWT. Tamara Tunie, who played her mother Jessica Griffin, reportedly begged TPTB to at least just make her a teenager, not an adult.

[AlexElizabeth]

EJ on Days

Dani on OLTL

Duke on OLTL

Zane on OLTL (?). We don't actually see the kid but he's supposed to be 4 or 5 years old, yet every time he's mentioned they talk about him being in a boarding school and what not. Am I supposed to believe that Kevin has a teenage grandson?

Those are bad cases of SORASing that come to mind.

That is SO ridiculous!

[Khan]

Listen, this is OLTL, where people are brainwashed to forget they ever had children. I consider it a blessing Kevin has been left by the wayside; otherwise, not only would he have a teenaged grandson, but a split personality (or several), a sudden history of being abused as a child, and about five or six grown grandkids having babies with Fords as well. LOL!

[Michael]

I'm not against the idea of SORAS, and I actually think it's kind of fun that we get to see more generations onscreen than we would if everything happened in purely real time, but I hate when they do it out of order in a way that affects talking about the past. DAYS made a big mess by mixing up the Brady/Belle/Shawn/Philip group so badly. Now Brady is like mid-late 30s and Abby is 20, and they were born in the same year!

I think it's totally okay when you take, say, a character who's 12 in real time and make him/her be 16 years old onscreen. Or if they add a year here or there when they recast the child actors.

[Khan]

Exactly. Again, GUIDING LIGHT was arguably the biggest offender when they aged Leah Bauer. Not only did she become a teenager literally overnight*, she also became over a decade older than her half-brother, Jude, and his half-sibling, Zach Spaulding. Even though both Zach and Jude were born before her! Because of this slipshod SORAS'ing, it made Rick Bauer look as if he had cheated on Leah's mom, Mel, when he and Harley retro-conceived (that's another story) Jude.

* Once, some online friends and I joked about how Leah should look older with each new appearance. Like, at the top of the show, she's an infant in Mel's arms; but by the end, she's a seventy-year-old grandma, baking cookies in the Bauer kitchen.

[AlexElizabeth]

That's why I hated the Dani SORASing on OLTL, they made her older than her older brother Jack and messed up the birth order of Todd's children.

[Khan]

Worse, instead of rectifying the situation by SORAS'ing Jack as well, Carlivati tossed off an inappropriate joke about it, as if that alone would have resolved the issue.

[Antoyne]

What was the joke?

And honestly DAYS has an even bigger mess..Not only did they eff up Shawn/Belle/Phillip/Brady...but EJ, who was born after everyone is suddenly the oldest?

[AlexElizabeth]

When Jack first met Dani, he said something about how he thought she'd be younger.

[Quent]

Antoyne, you are SO right. EJ is without a doubt the worst case of SORAS. Don't forget Sami was running around causing drama when EJ wasn't even born. And now we are supposed to believe they are the same age?

[Gray Bunny]

I think the worse cases are when it affects the timeline of important instances for the adults who conceived the SORASed children. I don't mind so much the Belle/Brady/Shawn-D/Phillip SORASing or how Abby & Brady were born the same year, while Phillip & Will were born the same year, because it didn't really affect the parents. Victor & Kate are older so them having an instant teenager in 1999 didn't seem so bad (even though Kate was introduced in 1993). Jennifer looks amazing for her age so I'm glad her daughter is the correct age now, whereas John Black looks like he could be the father to a early-30something now.

The GL Leah thing was such a clusterf%ck of messiness and it served no plot purpose whatsoever.

[Khan]

Believe it or not, I think GUIDING LIGHT had a purpose in mind w/ aging Leah, but viewers raised such a stink over it that they had to back off. Unfortunately, though, the bell had been rung already, so de-SORASing Leah was out of the question.

[Gray Bunny]

I agree. Whatever plans they originally had was scrapped and they were left with an unusually older daughter for Rick and Mel to occasionally trot out.