How Did You Get Into Soaps?

[GLATWT88]

I remember watching Days with my sister in the summer of the mid 90s. She was older and my brother and I had to watch what she was watching, but I didn't mind. Then in 98/99 she got into GH and I remember watching that with her as well. She would rush home from school to catch it and I would get home and watch as well sometimes. 

 

Then in 2001 MTV released their own soap, Spyder Games, and I remember watching that with my best friend. She went on vacation and asked me to record the episodes for her and then I ended up going on vacation and missed a large chunk of it. I actually found the entire series online when this whole quarantine started and I binged every single episode 

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So 2003, I had a woodshop class and my friends and I had gone into the teacher's room which was a separate compartment (like a closet) from the rest of the shop room and he had a small TV and it was on Guiding Light. Whatever it was that I saw (it was a masquerade) I got interested...part of me was curious because I had no idea there was a soap on at 10am that I wasn't even aware existed. I think I ended up going home and searching the TV grid online to figure out what I had just seen. Soon after, I began recording it and was hooked. I would set the VCR and record and come home and watch. Soon after I began recording all the soaps, only bits and pieces because I only had one VCR and it was an old one. The only two soaps that I watched entirely the whole time was GL and GH as those aired with no soap competition in their timeslot in the NYC area. When an exciting story was on sometimes I would change my VCR programs to record more of certain shows. I gathered the courage to tell my best friend that I was watching soaps and she told me that she watches AMC, because her computer teacher has it on during her class period. 

 

A short time later I went off to college and really only followed GL and sometimes when I was home would catch some episodes of the other soaps, but my schedule got crazy and I wasn't really following any soap. I did watch BB a few times from 2011 onward but not very regularly and  now since the quarantine I have tried to catch some here and there. 

 

 

[EricMontreal22]

Ah good old Spyder Games!

I didn't grow up in a household with any soap watchers.  My grandma remembers listening to Ma Perkins and Guiding Light and others when they were radio soaps and she was a kid, but that's it.  I do remember being very little and here in Canada AMC aired after Sesame Street (the Canadian version with French inserts instead of Spanish

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) and it fascinated me, especially that book, but mom would make me turn it off because soaps weren't appropriate for kids.

Anyway then when I was 11, Summer of 1991, I was stuck at home recovering from pneumonia, and somehow I started watching All My Children with the Natalie in the well/Introduction of Wildwind, etc, etc storyline.  I was hooked.  By the time I was back in school I had started rushing home during my lunch hour to watch as much as I could (it aired at noon here), and then within a few months I was recording it every day.  Even as a kid I was a geek about such things, so already I was getting every book about soap operas that I could from the library, I rather naively even wrote a letter to ABC asking for a tape copy of the first episode of AMC (they replied explaining they couldn't provide copies of episodes--it wasn't until much later that I sadly found out that there is no copy of the first episode...)  Schemering's wonderful Soap Opera Encyclopedia gave me a ton of the background/history of the genre, as did Dan Wakefield's All Her Children, still one of my fave soap books.  I did begin watching bits of the other soaps when I'd be home, though stuck faithfully to AMC.  At some point I did become hooked on Loving when I found out about the AMC crossovers (first Ceara and then the much more extensive Carter Jones one)--funny enough I had never even heard of Loving before--and also sometime in 1992 I became aware of the Billy Douglas storyline on One Life to Live so became hooked on it too (during one of its best eras, of course--but ABC was pretty strong in general then).  And, the rest is history.  I've gone in and out with soaps ever since, though I did stay loyal to AMC through thick and thin, Loving/The City until it finished and One Life to Live although there were a few rough spots where between being really busy, and the show being in a rough patch (such as the late 90s) I wasn't paying super close attention.

[GLATWT88]

My mom watched GH a bit in the early 80s and I just found out she watched Texas, too :)) I am watching Dallas and started binging during this quarantine. I visit her often to check on her and I casually mentioned it and she said she remembers it well and I that she used to watch Texas too. (Not sure even she understood much of what was happening as her English was limited as at the time she must have only been in the US a few years) My mom's tv habits transitioned as soon as Spanish language TV became more accessible here, she was a telenovela junkie that's probably where my sister and I got it from. When I was a kid, we were only allowed to stay up late if we watched her telenovelas with her.

 

I got really excited about that Billy storyline after watching the special. How wonderful that must have been to see representation on TV especially at that time...and telling stories that mattered. I think in some ways that's where soaps have gone wrong, as primetime TV has gotten more diverse, soaps in some ways to me seem less diverse. 

 

As for Loving and The City, ever since I got on soap opera message boards around the time I started watching soaps in 2003, I was always curious about those two soaps. I heard and read so much about the Loving murders and the transition to The City in the hope of reviving ratings. I actually searched for a few clips recently too and saved the Loving murders playlist for later viewing.

Edited May 21, 2020 by GLATWT88

[soapfave06]

I started watching when I was 8, my brother, cousin and I would sit right in front of the TV with my aunt and watch Passions. Timmy the doll and the wedding with the poison ring had me glued to the tv that summer. Then in the summer of 2003 my stepmom would have on As the World Turns with Lily trapped in the well and that is when I remember asking if soaps were really long movies that never ended (I think miniseries were popular back then too and I thought that's what miniseries were.) Then in the summer of 2005 my mom who was an ABC soap fan was watching OLTL during the Natalie/Evangeline kidnapped and set fire story but the rest of the show was boring to me. I finally got my own tv and found Passions on Syfy and discovered SoapNet when I found AMC during the time Janet had Babe kidnapped in the cabin, then I got into DAYS, OLTL and GH before OLTL became my sole favorite. I definitely prefer the more mystery/suspense stories (extremely lacking now) but the more I watched the more I cared about the relationships and by the time I was appreciating them all the soaps were decimating anything good they had going on. 

[ReddFoxx]

Like so many others, I got into soaps because of family. My mother and grandmother were ABC soap viewers, while my aunt was a Young and the Restless viewer, but I watched All My Children and One Life to Live with my grandmother.

[titan1978]

My grandmother watched most of the ABC lineup- OLTL, GH, and Edge of Night (her favorite).  She never cared for AMC.  I remember bits and pieces from times I was there watching with her or in the background, I was very little.  Stuff like Katrina Karr’s baby, Luke spotting Laura from the balcony and screaming her name, etc.  I could ask questions and bother her only during commercials.

She could get so much done in those breaks- fill the sink for dishes, change laundry, set up the ironing board, prep dinner.

 

I started watching because I had an interest with Frisco and Felicia on GH.  During one summer my sister and I got hooked on DAYS, and then eventually Y&R once Nina arrived.

 

In the order they aired in my town- Y&R at 11, DAYS at 12:30 to 1:30 (which overlapped with OLTL at 1:00, so we would watch both between commercials), OLTL lead to GH at 2.  One summer there we did that almost the entire break.

 

I also didn’t watch AMC until Natalie fell in the well, and Wildwind.  I watched that one after that too.

 

I always missed huge periods of time because of school, and didn’t start taping GH until Labine arrived.  Now I drop in and out of them all the time.  My longest stretch away was in the late 2000’s, I think I missed all of them for a couple of years.

Edited May 21, 2020 by titan1978

[Khan]

I got into soaps the old-fashioned way: through my mother, who was an avid fan of AMC, OLTL, EON, RH and of course, GL.

[mikelyons]

I began watching in utero. Seriously. My mother watched DARK SHADOWS growing up and watched AMC, OLTL, and Y&R from their first episodes. She stopped watching Y&R when AMC moved to an hour and they overlapped in the NYC market, thus making her give up Jill, Mrs. Chancellor, and Phillip. My grandmother was hooked on ATWT from 1956 through the expansions on ABC which lead to her becoming a ABC soap opera gal. My mother told me that when she was growing in the late 50s-60s, she kept hearing her mother & aunts talking about what Lisa did, Nancy, Bob, and whatnot and she thought they were real people for a very, very long time.

One of my earliest memories is a love scene on OLTL in the late-80s. 

I began watching AMC on my own in 1990 (I was seven. We were very progressive. I remember how nutty Emily Ann was & when she was shipped off to the loony bin.) I distinctly remember my "first episode" being the 1990 Thanksgiving episode where Hayley comes to town & crashes Thanksgiving at the Chandler mansion. From then on, I was hooked. OLTL, GH, and LOVING soon followed. My best friend watched Y&R, so I was always interested in that show. I also think the title THE YOUNG AND THE RESTLESS was so evocative mixed with "Nadia's Theme" that I couldn't not want to watch it.

I remember going to the library and reading SOAP OPERA HISTORY so many times it's not even funny. No one could check it out because it was in the Reference section. Mind you, all of the soap scrapbooks began coming out in 1995 (thanks, AMC) that I was in soap kid heaven. However, little did I know 1990-95 would be my golden period of soap viewership because with Disney acquisition of ABC, nothing was ever the same again. 

[All My Shadows]

I grew up with a huge soap-watching family, men and women, and in Louisiana, soaps or “the stories” mean CBS and that’s it. So the classic lineup of Y&R, B&B, ATWT, and GL was what you watched during the day with your grandma, aunt, older cousin, or whomever was babysitting you (my mom watched before I was born and can recount 80s storylines but stopped watching in the 90s). I will always always always remember my paternal grandma telling us that we couldn’t touch the TV “until 3” when GL went off.

 

I started watching AMC on my own in Summer 2001 when I was 11 and caught “hot” Jesse McCartney while channel surfing. I have literally no clue why that awful era of the show sucked me in, but hey, if they were looking for a new young viewer, I was it. My main stories were Leo/Laura and JR vs. David. I spent that summer obsessing over the show, reading the yearly story summaries on ABC.com that stretched back to the first year. I received a TV with VCR built in for Christmas that year and realized maybe that spring that I could record it and watch it. By then, the love of my life Jesse McC was gone, but I got back into it and continued to learn as much as I could.

 

I also branched out to other soaps and learned via WoST about the long-cancelled shows. I gave GH a shot but couldn’t get into it, but I sampled all of them during the summer, and eventually I would regularly watch DAYS, ATWT, and OLTL in addition to AMC. I also began to obsess over the old 80s primetime soaps even though I did not have SOAPnet and never had a chance to watch them, which was cause for MAJOR depression, let me tell ya. I just wanted to watch some Knots Landing, damn it!
 

While other kids were escaping into Harry Potter and the like, my escape was soaps. They mean a lot to me, and just when it feels like I’ve gotten over them, I’m hooked all over again. Getting into them sooooo late is low key a blessing because I can now go back and watch so much good stuff for the very first time. Sometimes, feels like they were never cancelled.

[kalbir]

It was the CBS game show block that lead me to their daytime dramas. My first favorite daytime program was The Price is Right and then I got into the rest of the CBS game show block. During the game shows I'd see promos for the daytime dramas and whenever I thought the promo looked good I'd start watching the daytime drama.

 

[Vee]

My ancient babysitter as a small child was an avid fan of Marland’s ATWT and Y&R in the 80s and early 90s. I vividly remember both intros and remember that Nadia’s Theme used to drive me nuts. I also vaguely recall the Peabo Bryson OLTL intro. I soaked up vague impressions of each show.

 

Some years later I got into them on my own when home from school. I immediately internalized OLTL around ‘93, gravitating to gritty, visceral performers like Susan Haskell or idiosyncratic ones like Hillary B. Smith. To this day Nora is probably still my favorite character. I’d never seen or heard anyone like Robin Strasser before, just the name “Dorian Lord” was foreboding- she fascinated me. I loved Max and Luna, later Patrick, Antonio and Andy, Todd and Blair. And Erika Slezak did and does remind me of my mother. I’ll always adore her. I became very taken with Reiko Aylesworth as Rebecca Lewis later.

 

To a preteen kid OLTL seemed less stereotypical, more mature and modern than the others on ABC, though I was instantly fascinated by Luke and Laura’s big return on GH and became a huge fan of it as well as to a slightly lesser extent AMC - I loved Dimitri, Edmund and Maria and was terrified of Janet. My early crush on Sarah Michelle Gellar quickly gave way to an equally strong crush on Jonathan Jackson, who was my age. I loved Kevin and Lucy, Robin, Bobbie, Emily etc. Those families onscreen were mine too. I also watched a lot of Reilly’s DAYS - I adored Lisa Rinna as Billie and RKK’s Bo, and the Gina/Hope story as well as Kristen, the possession etc were compulsive viewing to me. I also was big on mid-'90s Loving/The City, specifically the Loving Murders and the Hubbards.

 

I didn’t really begin to explore the CBS soaps until the late 90s, which was hardly a good time for most of them. It took me years to discover and appreciate their rich history.

Edited May 21, 2020 by Vee

[Franko]

My grandma , who passed away in 2016, watched most of the ABC lineup. I don''t think she ever saw an episode of LOVING, THE CITY or PORT CHARLES and as the years passed, she seemed to care less about AMC and OLTL. She seemed to stick with GH. In fact, we wanted to play "Faces of the Heart" at her funeral, but they had a strict policy against outside music.

 

Anyway, I would watch TV with grandma after my nap. My earliest memory of GH is the episode when Brenda took a bubble bath and imagined nearly every young man in town showing up. I started grade school in 1995 and lost interest for a few years.

 

I picked back up in 1999, trying out B&B for a while. It was for the silliest reason. "Look at Me" by Geri Halliwell played during the joint Forrester-Spectra fashion show. Remember that one, where C.J. played pranks and Kimberly got her dress ripped off? This was around the time PASSIONS premiered, and I thought it would be fun to watch a soap from (nearly) the beginning. I hung around with PASSIONS and eventually DOOL until 2004 or so.

 

While I've got nostalgia blinders for watching soaps during that period, the real thrill was learning about them. I loved the trivia and anniversary coffee table books or the storyline synopses at places like Beth's Days Page, the AWHP and the Edge Homepage. I used to imagine creating a soap of my own.

 

If this isn't enough to solidify me as a permanent couch potato, I'd also like to make the claim the THE PRICE IS RIGHT and JEOPARDY! are partially responsible for my literacy. Think about it: words ranging from clues to product names simultaneously show up on screen and are spoken. Take that, Little Golden Books!

[AbcNbc247]

Started watching DOOL and AW with my mother and grandmother, who were long time fans. I was 3 but I have quite a few clear memories of both shows from this time. For some reason and I don’t even know why, I was Team Sami and I hated Carrie. I also liked Kristen a lot too.

 

I lost interest once I started school, but I got back into DAYS, and now Passions in the summer of 2001. I would record them on the family VCR. In 2004, the Port Charles Hotel Fire pulled me into GH. After a little while, I began to lose interest in GH. I followed it but I didn’t watch it. Once Passions was taken off NBC in 2007, I began watching ATWT but I couldn’t get into it, so I switched over to OLTL, which I thought was much better.

 

I started watching GH full time during the poison water storyline in the summer of 2012. And thanks to YouTube, I started watching current episodes B&B after I discovered the first 20 episodes were uploaded and loved them.

Edited May 21, 2020 by AbcNbc247

[Soapsuds]

My mother got me hooked on soaps. She watched all the CBS soaps....YR, ATWT, SFT and GL.  She could never get into Capitol or BB so we had a thirty minute break in between ATWT and GL.  My favorite of course was ATWT.

 

My mom also got me hooked on primetime soaps. Her favorite was Dallas as well as mine. We both watched live in 1980 when JR got shot. She loved all of the characters on the show. She never cared for Dynasty. She did watch Knots and FC but she never missed an episode of Dallas.

Edited May 21, 2020 by Soapsuds

[Faulkner]

Echoing the other stories: growing up in Missouri, my mother and sisters were big soap fans. They watched Santa Barbara in the morning, AMC at noon, and then ATWT, GL, and Y&R. I remember all of them vividly as a kid in the ‘80s. Y&R shifted between 3 and 4 pm on my city’s CBS affiliate, so I could watch after school. I was gripped by the melodrama of Jill, Sheila and Lauren, Nikki and Victor, Nina, Traci, and Katherine. Brad Carlton was an early crush. But I also was captivated by GL, especially Beverlee McKinsey’s Alex, and how Springfield seemed like such a richly layered and interconnected community under Nancy Curlee’s pen. Her GL became the standard by which I judged all soaps.

 

I watched a bit of Marland’s ATWT (I remember Neal Alcott and Royce Keller well, and Lucinda spotting an amnesiac Holden in NYC), but Gottlieb’s OLTL just felt more energetic and current, so that became an obsession, with Viki/Dorian, Marty, Rachel/Kevin, and Mia Korf’s Blair. Of course, I loved Natalie in the well, Will Courtlandt, Hayley/Brian, and those iconic stories on AMC. And like so many of us, I started subscribing to TVG (for Michael Logan), SOD, and SOW, and bought Christopher Schemering’s book, which opened my eyes to the world and history of soaps (and also gave me a critical perspective). And I became familiar with all of them, jumping over to AW, where Alicia Coppola’s Lorna captivated me. I really started watching DAYS when we moved to Mississippi, and the NBC station was initially the only channel we could get clearly without cable. And Reilly’s crazy vision was going strong at that time.