Greatest Soap of All Time?

[titan1978]

Lucci has to be the most famous soap star of all time that stayed with their show. As popular as many other soap actors have been, she was famous for so long as Susan Lucci and Erica Kane.  She transcended her own show and genre for decades.  I think her Emmy attempts and losses for such a long time contributed, as did her ability to charm on talk shows that didn’t regularly have daytime actors as guests.  

 

This is coming from someone that enjoyed Erica, but wasn’t a huge fan.

 

 I think Lucci is an okay actor, not great.  But I can’t deny how famous she was.

[EricMontreal22]

Lucci was recognizable before all the Emmy stuff though--things like her ridiculous 1970s wine commercials, etc--she was sought out in the way not that many soap stars were already.

I think I agree with you that Frons did the most damage to AMC (as many have pointed out what happened to OLTL during his run seemed mostly not to be his doing--though who truly knows--since the soap never seemed to interest him.  He saw GH as a daytime Sopranos, AMC as a daytime Sex and the City--among other things--but...)  I actually liked some of McTavish's last tenure, at least at first--it certainly was better than the brief Rayfield stuff when AMC seemed like a Disney channel show or *something* and had no sense of identity or anything.  But...

One reason you don't mention too is I think AMC up to that point (2002 or so) had maintained a stronger sense of a consistent identity than GH or OLTL which went through many more distinct "phases" of what the show seemed to be about.  And that's even admitting the rough patches we got before Frons.  Part of that was of course due to Nixon (I recently read an interesting article by her son-in-law who spoke about his time writing dialogue for AMC and he stated that when she left her final stint as co-HW in 2001 and basically retired, ABC quickly fired the writers, including him, who she had hired... although she did still go to monthly or bi monthly story meetings to offer her input--at least until it was Pratt who officially had her barred from them...)

[KMan101]

 

Not to take this topic far off but the decline was pretty instantly noticeable then.

 

We need a catch-all thread to discuss things like this ... lol I know the cancelled soap threads often derail into these subjects but it's always fun (and depressing) to look back on things and talk about them again.

 

Over a few posts you've really summed up the same thoughts I've had regarding AMC and the Frons era. So disastrous. DAYS is "my" soap, but AMC has always had a special place in my heart (GL and OLTL have long fought for third place for me ... though I appreciate and love all the soaps for how unique they once were and could have still been)

 

To get back on topic, I'd say if you base it in terms of ratings the casual would say Y&R because it's been #1 for so long. It's also mainstream recognizable. AMC, DAYS and GH also benefited heavily from pop culture /mainstream media attention. Look at the buzz AMC and OLTL had when they debuted on the web. 

 

I've always thought AW and GL deserved more attention overall. AW was so underrated. But it really never got a chance to recover in the late 90s before the axe fell. 

 

Most soaps sadly had a lackluster late 90s and mostly horrible 2000s. This decade isn't much better.

 

If you go by awards, I'd have to do some research into that.

 

And of course we all have our opinions on "the best/greatest soap" ... lol

[EricMontreal22]

I'd love a thread like that.  WHile depressing, it's the kind of soap stuff I could discuss all day lol

I know at ABC the end of an era seems rather dramatically to have been 1997 for me.  OLTL became a *mess* around then, AMC rehired McTavish basically at the start of 98 for her messy return, The City (hey I thought the last half of it was good) was canceled and ABC gave up on trying new things for soaps and replaced it with the safer and cheaper PC, GH started to really become mob heavy...

[KMan101]

 

I'd agree. 97 was the turning point for a lot of soaps actually. DAYS was winding down from Reilly's craziness and he was leaving for Passions (Sussman tried but meh, 98 wasn't bad now looking back, but at the time, meh). GL fell apart quickly around 97 (I know some say the decline started earlier but as someone who just started watching at that time and then seeing the decline in the subsequent years ... ouch).

 

AW was struggling massively creatively. OLTL was about to enter it's dark age under Phelps and floundering at the time. 

 

ATWT was a hot mess. 

 

I'd love to get into it all more. Seriously, what was it that happened around 1995-1996-1997-1998 where the soaps just turned to [!@#$%^&*]? I also blame the look on the soaps with how they're filmed. DAYS almost had a primetime look to it. Now ... yeesh.

 

I look back and so many soaps wasted so much time for various reasons. I wish we had people invested in re-inveting the wheel and making soaps work and wanting to commit to trying them online, etc.

 

Sigh.

[EricMontreal22]

I wonder why that was?  Disney bought ABC in 96 I think, but it may have taken them a few years to restructure it, which could play a part there.  The OJ trial was... 94, right? 

[titan1978]

They collapsed because TPTB thought they were capable of getting back to early 1990’s ratings, instead of looking at what was the best that show was capable of getting by 1998.

 

 They tried every stunt possible- serial killers, returns from the dead, sweeps events, stunt casting, skewing younger, etc.

 

What they failed to realize was that the audience had changed.  There were more options now on cable.  An entire industry of crime reporting TV that became a thing with OJ suddenly had an entire network.  It was the beginning of cable news focusing on one story all day long- weather events, outlandish trials, etc.  Talk shows like Rickie Lake and Springer stole younger viewers interest.  MTV had a reality based soap to watch in the Real World/Road Rules that teens loved.  I know I did.

 

The networks and P&G were unhappy with solid ratings.  They wanted solid ratings from a few years ago, and they were not going to get them.  But they kept trying.  And in doing so alienated nearly every truly talented person writing and producing those shows, and also stopped developing the next generation of that talent.

 

Which kills me.  Because ABC did go outside the box, and had tremendous success hiring Riche and Gottlieb/Malone.  And then decided to play it safe ever since to less quality.

 

 

Another thing people forget- Reilly on DAYS was a phenomenon, not something easily replicated.  It was the right show (audience used to outlandish by that point), the right characters (Marlena and her kids drove half the show’s storylines which long term viewers responded to), and he built the foundation for his crazy over a couple of years of traditional soap storytelling (the affair, Belle’s birth, Sami’s issues with her family and rape, Austin/Billie/Kate/Curtis) before we got a possession.

 

Everyone else just tried to rush into crazy to get a spike in ratings, even if it destroyed their shows in the long run.

[Faulkner]

Not to get too far off track, but I realized how little broadcast TV I watch during primetime aside from W&G and a couple other shows. And the primetime ratings for this past Wednesday and Thursday were just tragic across the board aside from NFL (and even football ratings weren’t spectacular). Everything has been collapsing over the past several decades, not just the soaps, which simply couldn’t afford to lose much. I don’t think they would have bucked the trend somehow. But that’s a whole other schpiel...

[EricMontreal22]

Titan, I think you're spot on.  An example being ABC dumping Broderick, Corley and her team from AMC who had solid but stagnant ratings (numbers that given all the variables you gave, they should have been happy with) only to see the ratings drop even more when replaced McTavish's pointedly much more sensationalist (JER inspired) writing.  Nixon, Bell and the other greats have always said that the shows are in danger when  start trying to do what another show is doing.

The drop with soaps happened first of course--I think one big reason simply that fewer and fewer people (ie housewives

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) were home in the day) but it's true that it's been something that's been steadily seen across the board with network tv.  And certainly, I follow quite a few TV shows--prob 6 primetime shows  a week at a time (it helps now with shorter seasons and the fact that cable and streaming services stagger their releases throughout the year).  At any given time that usually means maybe 2 are US network shows (unless you count PBS and I'm following something on Masterpiece or whatever, but I digress...) 

[Soapsuds]

Yes, I did but it wasn't the glory years of the early 80's late 70's.

Very low

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All soaps dropped off in quality around that time. They kept trying to do gimmicks instead of actual good stories and ATWT had lost Douglas Marland at that time. ATWT never recovered after he left except for maybe a few months of FMB EP the show. Once LB came on as HW from AMC the show went to hell pretty fast. 

[titan1978]

 

I will never understand her being barred from the writers room.  Jesus ABC.

 

 

[cct]

Soaps started to gain a different type of reputation in the nineties. First, was the perception these were "grandma's stories." They were stodgy and I could "not watch for six months/two years, and still be able to know what's going on."

 

The second was they were outlandish. Evil Twins. Back-from-the-dead. And eventually...possession.

 

Unfortunately, new people coming on board tried to play down the first while amping up the second. The value in the first was having the opportunity to play every beat of a story. Producers or writers or whomever really held the reins decided to fast-forward stories, and in the 2000s, even having key scenes playing out off camera.

 

The value in the second was to ret-con poor decision-making or giving an opportunity to an actor to return or "show off" their skills. Once we no longer believed you were really dead or saw that your evil twin was only the "good twin who dressed differently," it became more gimmicky, so we had to delve into voodoo, psychics, bad dolls, and...possession.

 

The general public wasn't having any of it after a while, if they even dipped in to begin with. Only the hardcore stayed. In the meantime, that hardcore audience (my grandmother's generation) began dying off, my mother's generation began working and rolling their eyes at the ridiculousness of the "new soaps." Gen X and the millennials may have dipped in on occasion, but didn't stay for long. There were enticing new shows on cable or Netflix to watch.

 

I think the biggest thing soaps failed to do was court a new audience in the nineties. These shows were typically passed on from generation to generation. OR maybe someone caught an episode when they were home sick from school and got hooked. But once we stopped "passing on" and had Judge Judy and old L&O reruns to watch when home in the daytime, the soaps had no new audience. We also saw elements of soaps creeping into primetime, explicitly with Dallas and Dynasty, and then later implicitly with Roseanne, ER and Friends. We could get enough of a "fix" there without having to cavort with outlandish storylines and slow-moving stories.

 

 

 

 

[juppiter]

I’ll do best (not necessarily best, but most influential/unique) soap by decade.

 

1960s: ATWT pioneered the genre, gave us those soapy tropes that the genre would come back to over and over.

 

1970s: Y&R really put the focus on youth and beauty. Sex sells. Great music and production can make a difference. 

 

1980s: GH supercouples and big moments are what you need on your soap. Soaps can have mainstream appeal when they play that up.

 

1990s: DAYS You can play up the old soap tropes, while adapting them to fit a modern narrative. A blend of traditional 60s ATWT, 70s sex appeal y&r, 80s GH supercouples, with supernatural added. 

 

2000s: Passions Really a combination of the 70s Y&R focus on youth and the 90s supernatural Days, but to the extreme. Set at the glacial pace of 60s ATWT, with the supercouples of 80s GH (without the substance.) basically, taking the lessons of the previous 4 decades and playing them to their logical extremes.

 

2010s: 

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[EricMontreal22]

Interesting.  I'd take exception to Passions merely because it was always bottom rated--in theory anyway I'd think the greatest soap would have to at least get decent numbers....

[OldGHFan]

I agree with ATWT being the best in the 60s, Y&R in the 70s and GH in the 80s.  AMC, GL and DAYS should get an overall Honorable Mention.  There were no real outstanding shows from the 90s on in my opinion.  Same old recycled stories, actors, producers day after day after day.  The shows today are just placeholders.  Game shows could fill the slots just as well.