When was your favorite soap broken?

[will81]

Not overly familiar with ATWT, but I totally get what you are saying. I do know Lucinda Walsh somewhat and I totally see what you are saying. Women like that certainly don't seem to exist anymore. I think it has a lot to do with soaps being more about plot only and little about character. They avoid defining characters too much because it will stop them shifting them into whatever story they want to tell. 

[AllMyDaysatGH]

 

I'm pretty certain I'm the only person on earth who loved Fusion & its storylines. Obsessed!

 

DAYS: Touch The Sky Airlines. What on earth was going on w/ the show then? Unwatchable

[will81]

DAYS - Only in hindsight would I give this one to 1986 and the arrival of The Pawn. I know JER gets grief for dumbing down Salem and getting into some crazy and over the top stuff, but The Pawn was where the precedent was set and Days would never be the same. Roman's return in 1991 just cemented this. Anything JER did after that couldn't be considered crossing the line, it had already been done. 

 

I know Marlena was considered rather stupid during JER's run, but I can't say I had much faith in her mental capabilities when she decided some stranger with a completely different physical structure was her husband with some facial surgery. When Wayne Northrup returned as Roman, it seemed everyone simply blamed Stefano. In fact the only person who had issue with the whole thing was Roman and he was treated like a lunatic. 

 

 

[Paul Raven]

i would go back a few years to the Salem Slasher story. Not only did it present a second serial killer story in a matter of years but we had face masks that not only presented life like facial features but also seemed to transform body types as well. It represented a signal that there were new rules regarding storylines and suspension of disbelief.

[will81]

Had completely forgotten about that. Was this roughly the time the show was morphing more into General Hospital? I guess that was when the show started losing its identity and the beginning of it being whatever it needed to be to grab ratings. Dont get me wrong, given the chance I would re-watch a lot of those years for fun. Whatever the show became in the 80's and 90's, I could still enjoy it, though I think if I had been watching from 1965, it would have been difficult for me to move much past the early 80's.

[Paul Raven]

Yes I believe the decision was made that the show needed to change, which in theory was probably true, but the decision to go into fantasy eg spies, adventure etc and to drop the Hortons as the focus of the show  did irreparable damage that resonates till this day.

[will81]

True. I guess that period from the late 70's to the early 80's, roughly 79 - 81 or there abouts really resulted in this change happening. It does seem that was also the point at which NBC soaps sunk and never really recovered in terms of ratings, Days had some strong spots here and there, but TD was cancelled, SFT never really caught on, AW according to posts I have read recovered but the audience never really returned, SB was hailed by critics but audiences mostly ignored it. None of their new soaps ever really caught on, Texas must have been a big disappointment. 

 

78 - 82 was also a somewhat rough period for CBS as well I guess. Y&R dropped in the ratings between 80 - 82 and went through a big change, ATWT lost its dominance for the first time in 20 years though it seemed to still hold in the top 5 generally, Love of Life was cancelled, SFT was cancelled from CBS at least. Guiding Light was the only show on CBS to hold pretty steady during that time.

 

 

[titan1978]

Was the Salem Slasher’s usage of masks before or after Thom Racina took over as HW in 1984?  Because he certainly would have brought that GH style with him.

 

I know the story started before he arrived, but the masks seem like something he would do.

[AbcNbc247]

No. That storyline was all Margaret Depriest and Sheri Anderson. Racina didn’t show up until later in 1984.

[LostinHarmony]

 

Agreed, Jim’s 2nd stint at DAYS wasn’t the greatest although I did enjoy his first run.

 

Passions too was effected by Jim heading to DAYS for round 2, that was around the time Sheridan and Antonio were paired together and they couldn’t tell him she was with Luis, how excruciating that storyline was. The exits of longtime faves Molly Stanton and Jesse Metcalfe, and death of Josh Ryan Evans a year earlier didn’t help things either. Those 3 exits all but obliterated the supernatural aspects of the show that seemed to make PSNS magical, special and work. It was the perfect blend.

 

The years that followed seemed more like watching out of loyalty with a few good things here and there like crazy Beth, and the show almost seemed completely different despite long running storylines like Theresa/Ethan/Gwen still remaining. You could tell there was a clear divide in the fandom between the newer viewers rooting for Fancy/Luis and the longtime viewers that still longed for Sheridan/Luis. Fancy winning that battle seemed like a major FU to longtime viewers that were their from the beginning but at least Theresa got her Ethan.

[AbcNbc247]

2004 was basically the climax of Passions as a whole. So many stories that had began in 1999 (Eve’s past coming out, Chad’s paternity, Ivy getting back with Sam) ended and new stories began. But by the time the year ended, the show was broken and it probably was because of JER trying to pull double duty.

 

What broke it was the horrendous Martin and Katherine rewrite. Not only did it change or destroy every character involved, it basically just obliterated the established timeline and created so many plot holes.

 

As for your second point, Luis and Sheridan not ending up together in the end was a travesty. Even my mom, who didn’t even like Passions, was mad that they didn’t end up together.

 

 

[Mitch]

I think it does involve that but also involves TPTB taking any agency out of their women..in a genre geared towards women. Similar to Lucinda what GL did to Alex was abominable.  Turning her into a vicious shrew and causing Bev to leave the show, at that time she was still considered the best written and most intersting character for women over 50 to play, but then they bring in Marj and while it wasnt her fault, they turned Alex into a schreeching shrew who went from the head of the company and the family into an annoying pain in the ass to everyone. By the time the end came they had turned Alex into a woman who drugged her brother, and used Spaulding as a front for drugs(which Alex would never do..) then they turned her into a shy little house mouse who went from going toe to toe with Roger, to having to fight with lispy Marina Cooper over a guy who looked like a Chippendales dancer. All women lost their power and their personality, even Reva wasnt a complex women anymore.

[titan1978]

More than anything, I think what is summed up here is what actually killed soaps.  Not OJ, not stunts, not even recycled HW (all of those did their damage).  A fundamental shift in tone that ended up often demeaning their core audience, which was women.

On almost every show female characters became needy, weak, or a shrew.  Or all three.  They had no problem writing complexity for Victor Newman, Sonny Corinthos, Adam Chandler, etc.  And yet Ashley, Diane, and Nikki are chasing after a vial of his sperm.  All of a sudden none of these shows could do it for the women.

 

Look at Stephanie on B&B under Bill Bell, compared to Bradley.  Look at Laura on GH under Falken-Smith and Labine, and then under Guza.  She cried every day for almost a year, and then they just gave up on writing for her even though the Cassadine storyline she suggested and was centered around her reinvigorated the show.  The already mentioned Alex on GL.  Lucinda on ATWT.  Monica on GH.  Even on AMC, we could still write for the mess that was Erica Kane (because she was Lucci) , but they had to strip all personality and brains from people like Marcy Walker’s Liza and Brooke English.  Nora on OLTL- no brain, sometimes shrew, often chump.

 

I’m not saying a good vixen or shrew is bad for a show.  I love them.  But nearly every woman became a vixen, a shrew, or a chump.  And even then, if you were the vixen and stayed longer than three years you became the other two types.

[DramatistDreamer]

 

Facts! Some important points being made here.

 

The nuance and complexity was drained from the characters you mentioned and I could add others too. First they started with the women but finally after a decade or more, it's reached the men too. You see characters like Victor Newman and Sonny Corinthos becoming one-note one-dimensional almost utterly devoid of the complexity they once exuded.  It's become so predictable that regular viewers can practically quote their oft-overused lines before the character even utters the words. 

[Maxim]

I would say that The Bold And The Beautiful was a complete masterpiece from 1987 to 1993, after that it started slowly spoiling, with Brooke and Deacon, all while being interesting in 2002, then destroying the whole foundation of the show, which now became The Bold And Brooke's vagina. By 2012, when Stephanie died, it had some good storylines amid trash, but after trying to repeat Brooke and Deacon with Brooke and Bill in 2012-2013, and then completely focusing on the most boring character in the history of television - Hope, and the second most boring - Liam, it just DIED.

 

 

The show needs to be cancelled ASAP. And this is coming from a HARDCORE FAN, that at one point was so obsessed with this show, that it had it taped on VHS for years.

 

Bradley Bell is a horrible writer, he has no talent and Bold is a waste of potential.