The Story of Soaps Primetime Special

[Aback]

 

Well, if that picture is anything to go by...

 

Is this the show that Jack Smith is collaborating with?

[ChitHappens]

 

I do believe I saw his name bounced around in the thread.

[Titus Andronicus]

John Stamos posted a few old backstage photos last night.

 

 

Another big problem of the special is that soaps were treated as one singular thing. There was no labeling of clips, much less anything to let anyone stumbling in know that Luke and Laura were a completely different show in a completely different time as Marlena levitating off the bed.

 

It's befuddling that telenovelas weren't mentioned at all, or that nearly nearly every nation with a network has tried soaps at some point. And you've got Carol Burnett, why not talk about her show's sendup of soaps, As the Stomach Turns? 

[AbcNbc247]

Interesting.

 

I'll have to check this out when it debuts.

[lucaslesann23]

Its a fan made thing but they got big names. Jack smith is a story consultant. They got a guiding light alum to play a character.

[ChitHappens]

 

Beth Ehlers

[BetterForgotten]

It's an audio soap though, right? We were just talking about how sad it was that the radio soap format died in this country a few days ago in the Radio Soap thread. 

[AbcNbc247]

Yeah. It's written by the same guy who writes There's Always Tomorrow on here. I'm enjoying that, so maybe I'll enjoy this too.

Edited May 20, 2020 by AbcNbc247

[BetterForgotten]

Well, if it's an audio soap, at least she probably won't be in close proximity to her male co-stars... 

[lucaslesann23]

What is that? Link

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[AbcNbc247]

It's an online soap. The episodes are posted on here in the Blogs section.

[DramatistDreamer]

 

Truth!

[EricMontreal22]

You recognize me from another forum?  Uh OH...  Are you sure you're not thinking of the ABC special devoted to the weddings of AMC/OLTL and GH?  It was marketed as a video tape but may have aired on tv too.  (I have a copy somewhere).

Those credits were often wrong--they never mentioned Brown writing Loving or co-creating The City for example (and also listed all the dates he was at the shows--as headwriter or just as script writer, but I guess that's understandable).

[EricMontreal22]

You know, usually the assumption that men don't watch soaps drives me crazy, but it didn't particularly in this special for some reason.  I felt that they DID make the point that men watched soaps.  It's true that the second (third?) segment was all about "by women for women" or whatever, which I can see ruffling feathers.  That said, I think it is a very important part of the soap opera narrative that traditionally these were stories aimed at women and often made by women.  That's a *huge* reason that they have not had much respect historically, and I think it's important to acknowledge that.  I know no one here is doing this, but elsewhere I've seen male viewership used as an indication of quality.  "I loved Edge of Night--did you know it had a large male viewership?  That's because it was so good."  (It's similar to how the press and others used to like to give soaps some legitimacy by naming all the celebrity fans--you know, it's not just something those uneducated housewives like!).  I think Eric Braeden is over-focusing on this element of the special when there's other stuff to complain about.

Oh, I get only focusing on American soaps.  I think it simply becomes WAY too broad to mention the soap tradition in other countries (and then you kinda have to go into how they are similar and yet so different in many ways). 

But I mentioned how they should have at *least* labelled those clips (which would not have been hard at all) and maybe dated them too.  As I said, it felt like the show both wanted to be accessible for soap newbies, and yet assumed an awful lot of knowledge from its audiences (even when they name drop, say, Gloria Monty they don't clearly say what exactly her role was at GH.  Or when they did their Irna and Agnes Nixon mentions--couldn't they at least write on the screen the soap operas they created??)

Ah but they are European so it doesn't count

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[All My Shadows]

 

I'm always here for EB cutting up, especially when he's completely justified with his ire, but I have to disagree with Chris Evans's "especially Y&R" comment. Y&R was definitely the most present CBS soap - it's not saying a LOT, but you definitely saw more of Y&R than you did of GL, ATWT, or even B&B (which I'm not sure was even included at all). There were some early 80s Nikki clips they kept showing.

 

I do. You can even see it here lol Within the first hour, Faulkner and myself both said it was well-done, but our comments took a turn for the negative as the special nosedived.

I'm glad EB and Chrishell are sharing their thoughts and I hope others did/do, as well. ABC needs to know from actual soap performers that this was not good.
 

I would absolutely adore this. Ken Burns's Country Music really set the bar for how to track and analyze the history of a pop culture phenomenon. It wasn't perfect, especially as it got to the end (but I get it - it was easy to address everything under the country music umbrella when the umbrella was smaller in the 1920s-1950s, once the genre blew up and exploded in the 1960s and beyond, you had to pick and choose what you'd highlight). That special had this amazing "from the roots up" feel about it that would work so well with soaps, especially when you consider country music and soaps were both born in the late 1920s and grew in popularity during the Great Depression.
 

Wasn't someone at some point talking about writing a play based on her life? Someone who actually had the ability to do it and get it produced, I mean.