Best Soap Opera Opening

[Soaplovers]

The best part of Models Inc was the intro... promised you glitz and excitement.. yet once you unwrapped the pretty wrapping paper.. all you got was either an empty box, or a fruitcake. 

 

I always saw Models Inc as a 90s attempt at Paper Dolls.

 

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[DaytimeFan]

 

That is a very juicy read, particularly his views on 'the old man' Aaron Spelling and Tori. 

[juppiter]

 

Very juicy, thanks for posting Carolineg. There is a good one with the Emily valentine actress on there too. 

[Khan]

 

It's incredible to me how a cast that good (and that gorgeous) wasn't enough to keep that show going.

[Soaplovers]

 

I watched it when it reran on SoapNet... Too many characters... it was also focused on the modeling agency and the Harper Cosmetic family, plus the family lives of the two teen models.  Too many items on the stove, not enough time to cook them to their full potential.

 

If it were me, I would have focused on the modeling agency aspect with the two teen models, Morgan Fairchild, the aging model (Mimi Rogers), and perhaps another two models to provide a good contrast.

[Faulkner]

I like the Titans opening because I love the theme song (“6 Underground” by Sneaker Pimps, which is about as ‘90s as you can get), but I don’t remember what happened on the show at all:

 

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The Pasadena opening used to crack me up, which all of the characters mugging it up like they were harboring Very Sinister Secrets:

 

 

[carolineg]

 

 

You're welcome.  It's a really good interview.  They have some good stuff on that site.

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I love the Titans opening because of 6 underground.  Love that song.  I know I watched it because of Ingo, but I couldn't tell you the character he played or a single thing about the show.  It had to be very forgettable but the cast is pretty good?  And by good, I mean all of them were pretty recognizable as soap stars

[Khan]

I never knew whether to take PASADENA seriously.

 

And I WANTED to like TITANS, since the set-up was classic soap.  Again, though, it really comes down to execution; and I feel like that's where that show was lacking.

[carolineg]

 

I also remember thinking it was in an odd time slot and NBC was an odd network for it.  Maybe better for Fox or CW/WB?   Again, I have very few memories of it, but I think it got pre-empted or was off the air for a bit and I just completely zoned out of it.  Okay, I checked Wiki and I guess it just moved timeslots, but from the Wiki entry not a whole lot is coming back to me still except the Casper Van Dien/Yasmine Bleeth/Perry King story.  I don't remember VP at all or Ingo lol.  It must have been awful or just boring.

[Khan]

 

It says a lot that even Yasmine Bleeth, who WAS capable of decent work once upon a time, was awful.

[DaytimeFan]

 

I think Pasadena didn't know what it wanted to be. The creator, Mike White, wrote a very dark show and it seemed much darker and less brash than most primetime soaps. It was on the wrong network at FOX - it was more suited to something like Showtime. It aired two weeks after 9/11 so was doomed from the start. I always enjoy Dana Delaney and Barbara Babcock played an emotionally distant and icy matriarch very well. 

 

Titans had all the elements of an Aaron Spelling prime time soap...and it was weighed down by the sheer number of cliches packed into the first 13 episodes. When you've managed to film Yasmine Bleeth run after Casper Van Dien at a beachside motel, in a marabou trimmed satin peignoir with matching heels, subsequently fall down a flight of stairs and lose the baby she's conceived with him despite being married to his father who died on their honeymoon an episode or two ago, you're doing an awful lot...maybe too much. NBC was also a total mismatch. It was the end of Aaron Spelling's career, and he didn't have a network holding deal, so this show was sort of like a shrieking eight headed hydra dying a death.

 

 

 

That conception of the show could have been a hit.

[Gray Bunny]

 

The same. The set-up and potential was there, and they had an all-star (i.e. SOAP STARS) cast, but the execution was lukewarm. They had one decent main story but all the "B" storylines were half-baked fluff.  That was MODELS INC's problem too, though I admit I actually loved the show at the time. 

 

For TITANS, it was also a matter of poor timing and wrong network. It was 2000, the FOX primetime soaps were done (90210 had just ended), and the concept had grown tired. Plus, it was on NBC. Just too many things working against this show to make it a success. 

 

 

Oops, should've finished reading the whole thread. Agreed. 

 

P.S. Why does Perry King always get offed too early? They should've kept him on Melrose Place for at least a good year. 

[DaytimeFan]

 

NBC has never managed to helm a primetime soap.

 

Perry King has that loveably bland quality that just say "should die by episode 5..."

[Khan]

 

Why IS that?  God knows they tried with "Flamingo Road."

 

For someone who trained at Yale AND Juilliard, Perry King is awfully, woefully wooden.

[j swift]

@Khan Not to go off on a Perry King tangent but I recommend his work in the 1978 film A Different Story (he plays a gay character that would seem a bit dated forty years later but it's a good performance) and The Prize Pulitzer, a TV movie about Roxanne Pulitzer's Palm Beach divorce scandal (memorable for the scene where Courtney Cox as the wife of the Kleenex fortune suggests a threeway) ; it was the first time that he played creepy and it seemed to influence a lot of his later castings.