Worst of soaps: 1950s to 1980s?

[vote4llama]

I was born in the early 90s so I guess I'm what they now call a "millennial." Ugh. It hate that word. It sounds stupid. So basically, I missed out when soaps were in their prime and my knowledge is limited to youtube, tape trading, wikipedia, and reading this board.

Obviously the genre is turmoil now so sometimes it's hard for me to fathom that there has always been troubles, even in the "golden age" of soaps.

So for people who watched soaps at any time those four decades (or didn't and just know), what would you consider to be some major clunkers? Whether it's actors, characters, storylines, general eras, writers, whatever.

From reading/watching some I have observed:

Ryan's Hope revolving door of recasts in the 80s

inconsistencies of Santa Barbara. I've seen a ton on Youtube. I love it and actually think it's some of the best soap I've seen, but it seems like they blew some major opportunities.

Iris to Texas. I watched most of "The Shooting of Alex Wheeler" and I loved it. But AW lost a million viewers right? And then Texas flopped.

Reading the ATWT tribute thread, a lot of people seemed bored with later 70s episodes.

Early Search for Tomorrow seemed like a mess

Guiding Light getting rid of the Bauers in the early 80s...maybe it didn't have immediate consequences but the show suffered down the line?

Edge of Night's timeslot shift. Was Henry Slesar fired? If so why would they do that?

[allmc2008]

Possibly November 25th, 1960. the day the Radio Soap died....

[applcin]

These are basically from the 80s:

Ryan's Hope focus on the wealthy Kirkland family (it was called Ryan's Hope, after all)

General Hospital's A Tale of Two Lauras...when Genie Francis left the show at the height of L & L 's popularity and they brought on Janine Turner as another long-haired young blonde named Laura (Templeton) while at the same time introducing Demi Moore's Jackie as a potential future love interest for Luke. I mean, people knew Genie was off the show and not expected to come back anytime soon so to be teased all that time with this storyline of Luke searching for Laura knowing he wasn't going to find her (at least not in the person of GF and to have replaced her outright wouldn't have gone over very well) and then having this stupid lookalike story going on....let's just say when Luke went camping and met Holly skinny-dipping, we were just happy to see him move on at that point.

Likewise, AMC tried to fill the void of Kim Delaney's departure as Jenny by hiring a lookalike actress to play a character named Sheila and pairing her with Greg.

[quartermainefan]

The Clunker for OLTL was when they abandoned the insane late 80s stories for the supposed more realistic typical soap crap that the early 90s ushered in. OLTL was crazy but it was totally unique with great characters in stories that could only be told on OLTL. The show threw that all away for more mundane domestic fare of the sort to be found on literally any and every other soap, therefore there was no need to have it on OLTL also. Back in that era we somehow went from underground cities of gold to aids quilts. Seeing how any soap could have an aids quilt but only OLTL could have an underground city of gold, I am not sure how that was a change worth having. I don't know the show ever had any remnants of charm or originality again.

[DRW50]

The death of Ryan's Hope was when Labine and Mayer had to sell it to ABC because they couldn't afford to keep up the costs anymore. Watch a late 1979 episode and take a look at Joe Novak and Kimberly Harris. They killed RH.

[Chris B]

I liked Joe and Kimberly. I think that the influence of ABC definitely hurt the show. Making them get rid of Sarah Felder, their best young actor, was so foolish. I liked the other Siobhan's, but nobody came close to Sarah Felder.

[DRW50]

I liked the first Joe, but he was still the same noble mobster that has gone on to pollute so many soaps.

[ChitHappens]

Kimberly was an albatross the show could not afford at that time. It was awful and the performer had to be one of the worst ever on Daytime. In the top 3 at least! To shackle her to Rae and Seneca? Criminal!

Joe was ok. I liked the first guy, but RB was much more sexy and edgy.

[applcin]

I liked Joe when it was Richard Muenz. I was a kid and thought he and Michael Levin were hot. I hated RB as Joe, They made Joe more slimy, plus RB had no appeal to me at all. That ended up carrying through to Mitch Laurence for me (as his character and dopey storylines drove me away from OLTL several times). But I agree on Kimberly (and Rae, actually...couldn't stand her either.)

But, as vote mentioned, the revolving door of recasts, particularly of the core Ryan family (Siobhan, Mary, Pat, Frank all with multiple recasts) didn't help.

I think RH (as other soaps also) tried to copy GH's formula that produced the immense popularity of Luke & Laura and part of that was the introduction of mobsters, a la Frank Smith. Then they combined the idea of an adventure theme with a popular movie, namely, Jaws, and had Joe saving Siobhan from a shark and King Kong, with Delia and the gorilla.

[robbwolff]

I'm not sure how accurate it is to say that what OLTL did in the late 1980s was unique and that those stories could only be told on OLTL. Many soaps in the 80s veered into fantasy elements -- Edge with subliminal perception, Texas with a poison gas that mummified its victims, GH with the Ice Princess and freezing of Port Charles, Guiding Light with Quint's search for the temple of gold, Loving with the devil showing up, etc. What we saw with OLTL in the early 1990s was a return to its roots and the return to damn good storytelling like Megan's death, Viki's alters, and the aforementioned AIDS quilt/homophobia story -- stories that still pack an emotional punch 20 years later.

[DramatistDreamer]

I think the Bauers had at least a symbolic/spiritual heart of GL in the 80s.' The death of Charita Bauer, well, nothing can be done to alleviate that. Even though the Lewises and the Shaynes did occupy an awful lot of storyline real estate in the late 1980s, Ed and Maureen became to GL what Bob and Kim and Nancy Hughes had become to ATWT (in spite of all the Snyder heavy stories). Teenage Bridget and all her clusterf*ck of poor decisions and hijinks and adolescent Michelle seemed to suggest that the Bauers could actually continue on into a new era successfully.

When they decided to off Maureen Bauer, that's really when that Bauer center became completely unglued.There were still good storylines in the '90s but that heart, that link to the show's history became unmoored, I think. It was one of those storylines where the immediate benefits were obvious (high ratings and Emmy awards) but down the road, ended up creating another void in the Bauer clan (and to even a relatively newer viewer like me, mid to late 1980s knew was the spiritual heart of the show) which this time seemed to remain unfilled.

I had kind of drifted away from GL by the time Michelle was married to the Mob (which seemed more like a GH storyline).

[Ryan Chamberlain]

One word.

Eterna.

[soapsnstuds]

I watched Santa Barbara in the 1980's. I was a teen living in a small midwestern town and oddly enough, nobody ever talked about Guiding Light or the ratings juggernaut General Hospital. SB seemed to be the show we all watched, especially in the summer since most of us didn't get VCR's until 1985 or 86.

Never noticed any inconsistencies but then again what 12 or 13 year old does? It was never boring, though and that was good enough for me. Kirk throwing Eden to the sharks, Gina driving her car over a cliff, Elena throwing Eden out of an airplane. I lived for this stuff!

Although I added literally every ABC soap to my viewing menu in 1992, none ever did for me what Santa Barbara did for almost a decade.

[Khan]

Preach.

[SoapDope]

Y&R died when Bill Bell no longer was in control. He developed alzheimers and had to leave the show in 1998. It has been a complete mess ever since. I also wished Bill hadn't entirely gotten rid of the Brooks/Fosters. The Abbotts were a welcome addition for the high glamour 80's, but they could have been mixed with the original core families.