And there still wasn't all that much skin. Of course it probably seemed all that much more so being up against DAYS in many markets (where they used to have any excuse for shirtlessness--I mean guys don't all rip off their shirts when they decide to play basketball) and then was followed by Valentini's One Life To Live which of course had about three shirtless guys an episode (unfortunately often the same three). It did seem odd though that with falling ratings they never really tried to sex it up more--Imean I thought they hired Jordi Vilasuso for his pecs based on those short webisodes they had of his character before he came to the show basically in his underwear, but I think he was shirtless twice during his entire run).

I pretty much gave up on AMC after Stuart's whodunit, but I'd tune in occasionally. I was shocked by one scene with Daniel Cosgrove, who showed more skin than I've ever seen on daytime. Anyone who has seen it or the caps knows what I'm talking about, LOL.

Through JHB & BE, I remember a lot of skin. But ya, my AMC viewing became nearly nonexistent after Pratt seemed hell bent on destroying it. I did tune back in for Greenlee's return and watched pretty regularly through LB's interim stint, but tuned out again when it became too evident that DK & DS were just (way!) worse versions of JHB & BE.

Are you talking about this scene? LOL!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3PN7mF_lLI

Though not as much as the other soaps, I do think there was a considerable amount of skin on AMC in its last few years. Under Kreizman and Swajeski's tenure (and even LB), we got quite a bit of shirtless Griffin, Asher, JR and Scott. Ryan a few times. As for women, yeah not much. I do remember one time in 2010 when Annie was in her bikini at the park w/Scott

In the May and June 2007 recaps I've recently watched from SOAPnet, Sean Montgomery has been shirtless in every other episode! LOL.

I could never really invest in:

OLTL: I tried, several times, it just never grabbed me, I only ever watched it when there was a big event featuring an actress I appreciated (Fiona Hutchison, Robin Strasser and Catherine Hickland's respective exits and when Linda Dano joined the show). The fawning praise the show netted in its last years had me tune in and left me dumbfounded.

ATWT: Never understood it, always found it hollow and pedestrian.

GL: I only watched it with any consistency when Joan Collins played Alexandra Spaulding and when Linda Dano guest starred as a prison inmate.

PC: I tried with this soap as well because I love Lynn Herring...but the second Erin Hershey Presley and Kelly Monaco became leading ladies I checked out because the show seemed to desert its GH roots.

Soaps I've grown to hate:

GH: The violence, ageism, misogyny, there is nothing to like about GH for the last 8 years or so.

Y&R: Oh, how the mighty have fallen. It seems that the reasons most people hate Y&R are the reasons I loved it. The pauses, the arch quality of some of the actors, the slow pace, how seriously other actors take the characters (Braeden, Bergman, Scott, Cooper and Walton)...Y&R has fallen apart since Kay Alden left in 2007. I really would have preferred the show just end in 2007 rather than endure the crap that's on the air now.

Are you talking about this scene? LOL!

Yes! LOL.

It's not crazy or anything, but a lot more than I'm used to seeing on soaps . . .

I never cared enough to even check out ATWT and didn't care much for PC when I had the chance to watch it in reruns

ATWT was always old fashioned and epitomizing the worst of the CBS/P&G style. All the CBS actresses looked the same, and everyone on ATWT and GL looked middle aged and out of dept store catelog so white bread even K-Mart would shun it. The worst was whatever his name is that played Holden. As soon as I would see his face I would to turn the channel before I got angry.

I was just thinking about how I don't like Days Of Our Lives. I have never been able to get into it. To me the supernatual aspects of some storylines bore me.

I was trying to watch it the other day. And, when John and Hope kept mentioning past life and Alamania I was rolling my eyes.

I also cannot stand B&B. I used to like it. But, when it came the 'Brooke has sex with everyone in town except Stephanie' show I just had to give it up.

This is in no way a bash towards anyone's favorite soap. Soaps are like ice cream. Some people like chocolate. Some like Vanilla. I just wanna see what everyone thinks of a certain show. And, why they dislike them.

I love this topic and I agree, it's just a matter of taste. I also can't get into DAYS for the same reasons. I don't like supernatural/sci-fi stories on my soaps and whatever Stephano is doing with John & Hope just bores me.

Down to 4, and all are weak, with two helmed by schlockmeisters!

ANDREA

LMAO!

This is easy Young and The Restless. Slow, plodding, dull, populated by annoying actors who think they are starring in Shakespeare. The thing I hated most about it was the unnatural pauses every actor gave trying to make their lines sound more dramatic than they actually are. That is always accompanied by a lot of staring. The staring I guess was always to facilitate the segues into and out of scenes, but it always just looked like people staring for no reason whatsoever and always for a beat or two too long. Wax faced Peter Bergman, Eric Braeden, Melody Thomas Scott, Jess Walton and Jeanne Cooper lead the charge to grate on my nerves. None of these people ever did anything for me really, and I would sooner watch the thespians of Passions than any one of them. Just an awful, awful show, and was always awful by my estimation. The one time I was able to watch a few episodes in a row was when Eddie Cibrian was on as the rapist. How this show has even a single fan I will never know.

Yeah, even when Bill Bell was writing it, I found it dull and so stereotypical with the close-ups where nothing interesting was happening.

I loved GH from the first, but I hated those stupid 80s WSB stories that went on forever. Parts of the 90s and 00s were pretty good, but when GH became Mob Central in 2003 it went downhill fast.

OLTL was great for a lot of years. I quit watching when it became too much work to FF through Natalie, Starr and Jess every day.

I was never able to get into Passions, but I don't like badly done camp.

The only soap I've always hated has been DOOL.

ICAM about Passions, GH and OLTL, although I lost interest in OLTL around the time Catherine Hickland left. For some reason, I just didn't care enough about the Buchanans at that point and Lindsay's manipulations were the only reason I kept tuning in.

I nearly forgot, Santa Barbara. I know I SHOULD like it. Intellectually I get the appeal of it, but the whole affair leaves me cold every time I try to get into it. Maybe the "everybody's rich" part of it? I had a similar problem with Dynasty too.

Also, the trouble with DAYS is that it has such a wildly varied sense of what it is as a show and what it's about. Not a decade has gone by in this show since Betty Corday's swansong that the show hasn't made a huge shift in its style. From Bell's envelope-pushing, to wild OTT capers and adventures underscored with serious topical drama, to Reilly's shallowing of the show to near-elementary school proportions (not that I minded his work), to the increasingly absurd attempts to capture that same lightning in a different (cheaper) bottle. This is a show that does not know what it wants to be anymore and frankly, I'm not surprised many people are left cold by it.

Interesting take on DAYS.

I'm with Gray Bunny: "hate" is a strong word. However, for me, PASSIONS never worked even as a parody of soaps. After all, true soap parodies such as "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman" and "Soap" managed to hire good actors who knew how to make characters relatable to audiences in spite of intentionally ridiculous storylines. But when the most captivating actor on PASSIONS turns out to be a chimp (or ape, or whatever the hell he was), something's wrong.

ITA!

B&B makes me very angry regarding social issues. I'm glad they have dropped them, hopefully for good. It was incredibly offensive to tell a story about how Storm made this noble sacrifice by blowing his brains out so Katie would have a heart. This is a very dangerous and romantic view of suicide, and it came out of nowhere - he became insane solely to tell this story. Then there was B&B's warped idea of Alzheimer's, which leads to a pool fight with Stephanie drowning Beth Logan and this all being forgotten in about a month. Why????

Remember the Forrester cousin who was molested by his uncle? B&B always brought up social issues for shock value and then dropped them.

I think this whole thread is surprisinly fascinating because it does seem to boil down to personal taste. See I think taken as a whole, AMC has had terrific acting and actually as an ensemble in its best eras it kinda reminds me of ATWT in terms of quality. Great theatre vets, usually better than average newbies playing the more pretty/hunky younger roles, etc. However, AMC has always been known to mix sincere characters and scenes and 'realism" with extreme ctheatrical camp characters and elements--something that really rubs some soap viewers the wrong way (and seemed to confuse the soap press in the 70s who genuinely resented the show for being so different, if the articles Carl has posted bear any witness). As I said, it's all personal taste, but even with Erica front and center, when I think of my much missed AMC I don't think of any of the elements you mention (and even when it was more sexually frank in the 90s it never had the parade of shirtless hunks that Days or the Bell shows in particular are always known for for me--ie shirtless at any excuse--but Pine Charles certainly is correct that oddly the past few years they seemed even afraid to have shirtless scenes, even for actors who seemed hired for that purpose alone--very odd).

For me the one that has always been the hardest to get into is Days (and by extension Passion which took everything I disliked about Days and multiplied it). I think I would have liked it in the Bell era and the early 80s, but for me it has always felt like it has the worst acting, the most *people hired cuz they're models but can't act*, the slowest and least real feeling stories and production "look". But I can't quite place why I feel this way (besides obvious reasons like the supernatural stuff etc--though supernatural elements on their own don't bother me exactly).

I did like GH during the Labine era, but it's never been a favorite of mine and I don't care for the 80s stuff I've seen or the past decade3 much--but the action/adventure style of soap never did much for me.

And I go back and forth on the Bell soaps--I like 70s Y&R from what I've seen, but his shows do seem to overemphasize some elements of soaps I dislike--a bit too overly serious even when playing camp (I appreciate the way humour traditionally was used on AMC), the slowness, the dramatic pauses, etc. But there have been periods I was hooked on.

So I guess for me it's the Nixon style of soap I love best, followed by the PGP format. But like I said I think much of this is personal taste--and also perhaps what we grow up with (AMC was my first soap).

Once again, Eric, I pretty much agree with you 100%!

Never could get into Loving nor The City watched on and off to see Angie and Tracey Quartermine but never could get with it.

PC lost my viewership when it went sci-fi, was going to go back to watching but learned of Karen Wexler's death.

B&B, I liked the characters but not the stories. enjoyed Betty White run on the show.

I keep hearing people say ATWT was too white bread.

Several years ago, I was eating lunch at our local diner, one of the television sets was on, and Passions was on. I saw several young people stop what they were doing and huddled themselves around the television. Those poor, misguided fools...I knew soaps when they were in their heyday. I'll never understand how an iconic show like Another World was thrown overboard for this nonsensical piece of doggie do-do.

ATWT was always old fashioned and epitomizing the worst of the CBS/P&G style. All the CBS actresses looked the same, and everyone on ATWT and GL looked middle aged and out of dept store catelog so white bread even K-Mart would shun it. The worst was whatever his name is that played Holden. As soon as I would see his face I would to turn the channel before I got angry.

You articulated it PERFECTLY. That's what bothered me so much, nobody was unique, everyone looked the same, middle aged and like they fell out of a Sears catalogue.

GL wasn't nearly as bad...and AW, I just loved, it must have been the NBC influence...CBS and P&G seemed to have this 'style' that aged horribly, in terms of writing and visual, over the years.

Edited May 9, 201213 yr by DaytimeFan

IMO most of the women on ATWT did not look the same. Lisa, Kim, Lucinda, Susan, just for starters, were very distinctive in style, appearance, and personality. Barbara was also very different, as was Margo, as was Julie, as was Emily, and later, Carly or Molly. Jessica was strikingly beautiful and you would not see anyone like her in a central role on most soaps.

I think all the soaps have become generic over time but I don't think the P&G soaps ever blurred together that much in recent years. I think GL and ATWT were very different for many many years.

Edited May 9, 201213 yr by CarlD2

IMO most of the women on ATWT did not look the same. Lisa, Kim, Lucinda, Susan, just for starters, were very distinctive in style, appearance, and personality. Barbara was also very different, as was Margo, as was Julie, as was Emily, and later, Carly or Molly. Jessica was strikingly beautiful and you would not see anyone like her in a central role on most soaps.

I think all the soaps have become generic over time but I don't think the P&G soaps ever blurred together that much in recent years. I think GL and ATWT were very different for many many years.

I agree. I don't think they looked alike, nor do I think they looked like they dressed from a Sears catalog. I wouldn't watch a soap where the women dressed like Kim Kardashian.

I loved AW and EON, but was not terribly fond of other P&G shows. I dropped in on ATWT and GL every so often, but I was never a huge fan. I watched a fair amount of SFT once it transitioned to NBC, but it never held any great appeal for me.

I found a lot to like in 80s OLTL and GH, and some things to like in the 90s versions, but I never got in to AMC. (Though I loved Phoebe and Opal as characters, and thought David Canary was terrific.)

I loved the CBS PGP soaps, but AW never did anything for me.

It had fabulous actors, but during its last 15 years or so, the stories were never gripping or consistent enough for me to want to follow on an everyday basis. I know I would have loved/enjoyed Lemay's work in the early to mid 70's though.

Even though GL and ATWT were older shows, I thought they aged and transitioned better with the times than AW did.

I think AW's strength was friendship and complex characterization - the family dynamics and strong stories weren't quite there. I think that died with Mac. I think AW always had great potential, even up to the end, the writing just kept letting them down.