TV LINE ranks 10 greatest soaps of all time

[dragonflies]

Pfffftt no OLTL on the list

 

 

[Faulkner]

And no ATWT.

[dragonflies]

 

Yep and IMO ATWT was far superior to GL and a few others on that list

[Faulkner]

 

It could have been an interesting list actually. Ryan’s Hope and Santa Barbara have their proponents as shows that elevated the genre, but their peaks were short-lived compared to long-running shows like ATWT and OLTL.

[Marlenaphan]

No to the whole list.

[JellicleCat]

This must be a joke, right?

A top 10 list of the greatest soaps without ATWT?! What the hell have they've been smoking? 

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[Faulkner]

And they brought up the Jonathan/Tammy as an expression of GL’s groundedness.

[ChitHappens]

Another world #7?  Hacks!  

[Faulkner]

I’m curious as to how old the TVLine editors are and were they old enough to watch, say, ATWT in its heyday. (I doubt many of them are old enough to have watched Santa Barbara to be honest.) Unlike with primetime (and with the exception of Dark Shadows), soaps haven’t had the benefit of constant reruns to introduce old stuff to new generations. We can watch I Love Lucy in its entirety; we can’t watch the first 20 years of ATWT. 

[JellicleCat]

 

That shouldn't matter though. They should know enough to realize that ATWT should be on this list. It was the first half-hour soap; it had the first supercouple (before such a thing was even invented) in Penny & Jeff; it was a ratings champ for 20 years; and perhaps most importantly it had the first soap superstar in Eileen Fulton and introduced the original vixen in Lisa. She was the blueprint for all the memorable soap vixens we've had since then: Rachel (AW), Erica (AMC), Jill (Y&R), Dorian (OLTL), Brooke (B&B) etc

I'm frankly amazed that TV LINE could leave it off the list. In my mind it should be #1, but at the very least top 3.

 

[vetsoapfan]

 

Well, IMHO, it depends on the era of the different shows. TGL was a powerhouse in the 1950s and 1960s, and still very good in most of the 1970s, early 1980s and then again from 1989 to 1992. ITA that ATWT was vastly superior to other soaps on TVLine's list, particularly from 1956 until 1980, when Mary Ellis Bunim began to screw the show up with bad headwriter choices, the veteran cast purge and outrageous fantasy crap. But when TGL and ATWT were both at their very best, I'd personally say it was a head-to-head horse race between those two fine shows.

 

I adore Claire Labine, but RH's quality years were few in comparison, so I would ultimately strike it from the Top 10 list. Santa Barbara, while revered by its cult fans, did have some fine actors and excellent scriptwriters who produced many wonderful individual scripts, but even they could not really make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. I'd eliminate SB from the list as well.

 

SB's love on that site is due to Michael A's influence. He's crowed about it being his all-time favorite soap. He loves high camp which not all soap fans do.

 

Most Top 10 lists found on the internet are puff pieces, with very little thought, logic, or research put into them. You can easily tell when no historians or even knowledgeable fans are on the voting committee.

[Faulkner]

If it’s about influence, sure. But if it’s about quality, a far more subjective criterion, I’d expect a level of familiarity with the shows that most modern viewers (and certainly the editors of media websites) simply wouldn’t have.

[vetsoapfan]

 

Right, which is why they shouldn't even PRETEND to have the ability to compile a credible list of shows they have no way to judge. 

[JellicleCat]

 

That's absolutely true. But then they should have called this list "Top 10 greatest soaps of the last 20/25 years" or something.

 

 

Bingo!

[Faulkner]

Exactly.

 

It’s a perfectly legitimate response to compare eight years of Santa Barbara to 54 years of As the World Turns and conclude that, pound for pound, Santa Barbara was better. In your opinion. Just as it is a legit response to prefer 60 episodes of The Wire to 500+ episodes of Gunsmoke. But if you haven’t watched *a good amount* of Gunsmoke, you have little credibility in making that judgment.