SORASing: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

[amybrickwallace]

 

Not to mention her bond with her Uncle Mac. 😊

[Dr Neil Curtis]

The Ugly - Jamie Frame. It aged Rachel too early! Much similar to Julie Banning on Days and Ellen Stewart on ATWT

[KMan101]

 

I didn't mind it either at the time. They were still in high school but then for the Ciara rape story they were suddenly aged to 18.

[amybrickwallace]

I don't know if this was a retcon or not, but I've always found it hilarious that John O'Hurley played Peter Barton's father on Y&R despite being just ONE year older than him in real life. John O'Hurley said in an interview years ago that Peter Barton still calls him "Dad" jokingly whenever they happen to bump into each other. 😂

[cassadine1991]

I loved Jason and Robin

[SteelCity]

I feel like Days and B&B own this thread! EJ DiMera being the most blatant.

[Khan]

If only they had played up the age difference between EJ and Sami....

 

I feel like he actually aged backward (or was de-SORASed) when he was recast with Justin Deas.  To me, his predecessor, Tom Tammi, just appeared to be so much older than he was -- but that COULD be because Deas' Tom was such a radical departure, temperament-wise, from how Tom had been written and portrayed in the past.

[Sapounopera]

 

Tom Tammi looked like a leading man from the 60s, he could have been a Don recast. Justin Deas played a different character.

 

Did Tom "leave town" for a while before Deas showed up? 

[Gray Bunny]

I hate pointless SORASing. I could buy the aging of Belle, Shawn, Phillip to all be 15 years old in 1999 because of the ages of their respective parents. Granted, it made the whole Sami-stole-baby-Belle in '93 story a little goofy as they recall it years later with Sami/Belle being so close in age, but whatevs. 

 

It's the pointless ones, like Claire, Ciara & Theo immediately becoming seniors in highschool once they aged them. Why not play up the teen years? I seem to recall they were *supposed* to be 15-16 when they were SORASed in late 2015, but I guess they bumped up their ages when Ciara was raped? 

 

GL's Leah Bauer (Rick & Mel's daughter) was utterly pointless. Born in 2003 and was like 16 by around 2006. And it served no purpose. No storyline for her or her parents as a result. Instead, it made the timeline so goofy, when you compare the ages of other youngsters like Susan/Daisy (who stayed the same age for 10 years), Harley's two sons, Beth/Phillip's son (can't remember his name). 

[amybrickwallace]

 

He was named James after Jim Lemay (Anthony Addabbo), Beth's one-time husband. He died in a fire rescuing someone. 

[tune_in_tomorrow]

One example when I think it made sense was aging Nancy McGowan to around 17 or 18 on AW in '84. Nancy had been off the canvas for a few years so it shouldn't have been jarring, plus she was clearly still a "late in life" baby to Ada, who was close to 60 in 1984, significantly younger than big sister Rachel, and obviously younger than Jamie (who as Dr. Neil Curtis pointed out, WAS aged too dramatically).

[All My Shadows]

Still spending a lot of time with GL, and it's gross to me that Ross and Blake were such a heavy couple in the 90s and early 00s when he was a full-grown man with a career in law while she was still a preschooler in the 70s. He even defended her father in court for the rape of her mother. We talk so much about using history to guide storytelling. I'm glad GL never wheeled out flashbacks of Ross in scenes with 4-year-old Chrissy.

I just wish that one soap at some point what have made a very conscious decision to avoid SORAS at all cost and have every single child grow up naturally. So many people respond that "children aren't interesting," but first of all, you could write good stories about kids, and second of all, it wouldn't be about the damn kids, it would be about their parents who are still viable characters.

[amybrickwallace]

I think Santa Barbara did a good job of aging the kids naturally. Granted, there weren't that many kids on that show - Brandon was the most prominent, then Chip, Samantha and Adriana - but none of them were SORASED, or at least not drastically.

 

The Doctors were also very good with child actors and not rapidly aging the juvenile characters. For instance, Billy Allison (later Aldrich) came on as a 10- or 11-year-old in very early 1970. In 1980, he was in his very early 20s (and played by 22-year-old Alec Baldwin). Jennifer Houlton played Greta Powers for nearly nine years, taking the character from a little girl in ponytails to a teen mom.

[Bright Eyes]

With all the weirdness that happened, I don't think JER ever SORAS'ed anyone on Passions, not by much anyway. Who knows if it would have continued once he passed.

[titan1978]

I had no idea he had been Roger’s lawyer during that story.  That’s fascinating considering his pairing with Holly later.