The Remaining Soaps and The Next Generation

[DeeeDee]

Soaps have cast for looks for years.

 

The thing is a lot of those attractive actors were either already good actors prior to being cast or had the potential to grow into good actors with good writing. In this era soaps focus on controlling actors and/or annoying stans instead of writing character based stories.

 

Which is how you get a supposedly "huge" story for a character like Lauren that runs for a couple of weeks that maintains the status quo & provides no emotional relevance or fallout.

 

SSM's regime is like the last half of LML's run

[DramatistDreamer]

There's no proper planning for storyline arcs on these shows anymore.

 

Which is why I ask my perennial question: Do any of these headwriters take out a Whiteboard and plot storylines for an entire season?  I mean write them down on an actual whiteboard?

I don't think they do. That type of due diligence is not showing up in their stories.

 

@titan1978 your post led  me to something that I held back from mentioning in my previous post: writers used to carefully plot out their storylines- which often meant that introduction of the teen characters was more likely to happen on school breaks, spring and summertime when younger viewers were likely to watch and become interested in the show.

 

Up until the 90s teen characters had their own story arcs, sometimes intermingled with adult characters, and often independent of them with the other teens of the show. We saw Lily, Dusty and Meg attend high school- now school is an afterthought for a teen character.  The basics are not even being covered storywise.

 

The young set is clearly an afterthought in the writing.

 

 

Also, where are the Angie(s) and Jesse(s) of today??  Soaps are incapable of writing honest to goodness middle class and working class characters now, not to mention the lack of true diversity on these shows (racial, gender, economic) that is an outgrowth of a lack of diversity in the Writer's Rooms.

 

Anyone on Y&R who is not filthy rich ends up sleeping in their car??? Is that the only alternative to being rich now???

[titan1978]

Yes to your entire post @DramatistDreamer

 

Something else curious- they cast these teens then try to get them out of school age as fast as possible.  It's like they have to rush them towards a marriage and a who's the daddy storyline.

 

The more I think about it the writing is the issue.  They don't play the beats anymore, and they don't plan the arc out anymore.  

[frequentsoapfan]

I don't know why they even age these kids to 16 when within a year they make them 18 and push them as adults. And then they've been aging teens with no actual teen scene/other characters their age onscreen.  Friendships don't exist on soaps anymore and you see young adults doing things like gabbing about sex lives with parents and siblings instead of close friends

[kalbir]

Maybe the inconsistent SORASing of characters is why we don't see viable sets of high school aged, college aged, early career, etc.

[DeeeDee]

The soaps only inconsistently SORAS characters because they don't want to invest in building new characters.