SORAS

[Dion]

SORAS - Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome.

 

I've been meaning to start a thread about this for the past few days, partly inspired by the 'Too Young To be That Kid's Parents' thread', the 'Characters who had late in life births' and 'SOAP OPERA DIGEST 1991' threads.

 

What are some of the 'good' examples of SORAS?

i.e where rapidly aged characters became major characters in their own right

 

What are some failed exampes of SORAS?

i.e when somebody was rapidly aged but didn't last long on the canvas and was never seen or heard from again.

 

What are some of the most egregious examples of SORAS?

i.e rapidly aged characters whose parents probably also belong in this thread:

 

Is there a particular technique to SORAS that you prefer?

i.e sending a child off to a swiss boarding school, aging the child in stages etc.

 

Anything else that comes under the general topic of SORAS - including DeSORAS lol

 

The June 11, 1991 issue of Soap opera digest that @will81 posted has an article on the subject (posted before SORAS got it's name), on pages 68 - 72.

The article mainly focuses on Victoria Newman (Y&R), Kevin, Joey and Jessica Buchanan (OLTL) and Scotty Banning (DAYS).

 

[Khan]

As I've said in the past, SORAS-ing is a necessary evil.  Soaps don't have the luxury of allowing children to age naturally.

 

BUT...

 

It is ridiculous to have a child be two years old one day, and fifteen years old literally the next.  (Yes, GL's Leah Bauer, I'm looking at you.)

Edited June 6, 2020 by Khan

[All My Shadows]

I think SORAS is ridiculous and unnecessary, and it’s why characters that should still be on the front burner get pushed to the back. People will say “But what dramatic interest do we have in a 12-year-old?” We don’t NEED any dramatic interest in a 12-year-old because we should STILL be interested in the story of his/her parents - the drama is in watching them raise a preteen and how whatever conventional soap conflicts they’re dealing with affect the child. Then, when the child IS a viable character, TPTB aren’t just throwing together a character from scratch based on what they think they need on the canvas.

 

If you look at situations where a kid was allowed to age naturally (and I’m mostly thinking of AMC’s Tad), not a single thing was lost or missing because that kid aged naturally.

 

The UK soaps let their kids age naturally for decadesssss (I think they may have started dabbling in SORAS in the last 15 years), and because of it, their parents remained viable, front burner characters for years and years instead of being relegated to grandma status because TPTB needed a new 25-year-old and the baby born onscreen six years ago is perfect for the job.

 

Bob and Lisa trying to co-parent a teenage Tom, who has spent his entire life being bounced back and forth between his parents’ bullsht, in the late 70s would have been exquisite. 

Edited June 6, 2020 by All My Shadows

[Franko]

 I'd also place GH's Robin in this category.

 

I know I've mentioned it before, but this trope was being mocked as early as the '70s. Rupert Holmes' song "Soap Opera": "Here's the baby who just grew/15 years in only two ..." Still, let''s see ...

 

GOOD: Under the criteria given, many SORAS cases would count. To name a few ... Mike, Ed, Hope and Rick Bauer. Tom Hughes. Jamie Frame, plus Amanda and Matthew Cory. Mike Horton. Hope Williams. Jennifer Horton.

 

FAILED: Let's go with Ricky Williams (Y&R).

 

EGREGIOUS: I'm thinking Philip Kiriakis, who was born in 1995 and a teenager in 1999.

 

FAVORITE TECHNIQUES: When the show waits at least a few months before the character reappears. "Now, where is my son? He was here for Christmas/my wedding/grandma's birthday. *random hunk walks in* Oh, there you are!"

 

DESORAS: I'm thinking this one belongs to Mike Horton and Jamie Frame.

[Dion]

 

Yes, Leah's sorasing is one that I'd consider egregious. Didn't she leapfrog her older half-brother Jude in age?

 

 

I actually pretty much agree with all of this.

 

 

Not quite the same but that reminds me of Belle - who I believe was a 5 or 6 year old flower girl at John and Marlena's wedding, but had turned into 15 year old Kirsten Storms by the time John and Marlena got back from that horror honeymoon in Hawaii (barely a month later).

[carolineg]

 

Haha!  Belle was jarring.  I was going to say that.  And she was such an important child due to her history/conception.  Days probably could have waited on that or at least found a Brady at the same time.

 

Robin on GH and Starr on OLTL are really good examples of kids growing up and still being relevant in stories.  

 

Can I list EJ on Days as most egregious?  He was born after Will but is Sami's age lol?

[Dion]

Absolutely lol.

 

Just remembered that I was telling somebody about EJ just last week.

 

In fact now that I come to think of it, EJ probably was the original inspiration of this thread!

[carolineg]

 

He should be lol

 

Christie Clark's Carrie is the only child I can think of on Days that aged basically naturally even if she was replaced by Sexy!Older!Carrie for awhile.

 

I think Sami is a good example of someone who was SORASed and it worked fine and with a good story. Although kinda crappy parenting on Roman/Marlena's part to just let her parents raise Eric in Colorado until he was like 22 lol.

 

I do hate the trope where the kids are at boarding school or camp and come back a million years older.  Like how many people, especially middle class people, send their kids to boarding school in real life?

[provocative]

I think Will was the last character on Days who aged naturally while still being on the show and reacting to what his parents did as a kid/teenager too. Abby as well maybe but she was on and off the show a lot. JJ is the opposite because he was born when Abby was a teenager but now the show acts like they grew up together and that there isn't a big age gap.

 

I also hate how they've messed up the ages of Sami/Eric/Brady/Belle. You'd think they were all in the same age bracket when that should obviously not be the case

[titan1978]

I think one of the keys is that the show has to do it gradually, and they can’t be tied to a major event like Belle was .  Having a little girl Belle at a wedding and teen Belle when her parents get home from the honeymoon was ridiculous.

 

But the truth is that when it is just normal SORAS (like Nicholas and Victoria on Y&R), we as the audience get over it pretty quickly. By normal I mean their parents seems age appropriate to their now teen kids, and it doesn’t mess up other children’s timelines within their family, and there are not several of them at once.  When it caused characters around them to no longer be the correct ages (EJ), or the parents clearly do not look old enough (Lily Y&R), or the show picks a kid from each family to age to create a summer storyline (DAYS) is when they always made

mw roll my eyes.

 

I enjoyed JMB as Lulu on GH.  But it did take me a bit to get over how long Laura was in a coma, and she is now a peer of Maxie and she was still not born yet when BJ died.  However, she and Genie sold their relationship so well when Laura woke up, that I ended up buying that she was the same character.

With Robin on GH- she was never more than a supporting player until just before her relationship with Stone. We saw plenty of her, but they let her get to the correct age to start being a lead.  She also was the child of two incredibly popular characters, and the three of them invested in their relationship so that even basic domestic scenes were entertaining.  They included her instead of her just playing in the corner, being kidnapped, or saying mommy I love you. That is part of why they didn’t recast her- Tristan and Finola would not let them, and then when they left they had waited too long for the audience.

Edited June 6, 2020 by titan1978

[Dion]

 

Will was quietly aged by about 3 years in 2002, and there were plans to age him a few more years in 2005, but these plans were scrapped partly because they wanted to "preserve the believability of Alison Sweeney and Bryan Dattilo as his parents".

 

https://web.archive.org/web/20160304062219/http://soapcentral.com/days/news/2005/0711-gerse.php

 

So I think Will has basically aged naturally since 2002.

 

That quote is quite interesting because it mentions a reason as to why certain characters are not aged - their parents are played by actors too young to plausibly have teenage children.

Edited June 6, 2020 by Dion
grammar

[GLATWT88]

I get everyone's frustration, but SORAS doesn't really bother me. I always saw it as an element to age young characters to teen or adulthood as it's easier to write stories from those perspectives. Also, from a labor laws standpoint, it's difficult to have children on sets for extended periods of time to really develop any in depth storylines (especially at the pace soaps churn out episodes) the sams way adults are able to do (and rightfully so).

 

I totally get the aspect of showing more of the child and parent dynamic in a slow progression instead of rushing through it, but personally I don't need to see every year of a 6 - 12 year old on screen. If I wanted more tween storylines, I could watch Degrassi and that's not shade. I lived for those Degrassi stories when they were in middle school, but not sure I need that as a major focus on my soap.

Also, I guess SORAS helps in situations where 40/50 year old characters are having babies, I  a few years they'll be aged into adulthood so it's like they actually had them a decade earlier. 

[AbcNbc247]

SORASing doesn't really bother me either. They just need to age the kids in the right order, and they often don't. That causes more continuity errors and mistakes than anything.

[All My Shadows]

But they didn’t! That’s such a huge problem for me. I know soaps don’t care about these things anymore, but if you’re going to write a late-in-life pregnancy where the mother’s age is a part of the story, you can’t just age the kid and pretend like the pregnancy wasn’t what it was. On ATWT, Bob and Kim celebrated the 25th anniversary of their 1985 wedding in 2010 as their clearly pushing 40 y/o son who was born of their marriage was in attendance. It’s just stoopit.
 

And I’m curious as to what everyone thinks is an acceptable SORAS. Obviously as much as I hate it and wish soaps never did it or stopped doing it (Agnes and Bill should’ve been the ones), I have to accept it if I’m going to be a fan of this genre, but I can not consider Nicholas Newman’s SORAS to be an easily acceptable one. Six to sixteen is ridiculous, and it’s extremely impatient.
 

And I cannot stress it enough - avoiding SORAS wouldn’t have meant writing storylines for tweens. It would’ve meant continuing to write decent stories for the adult parents instead of aging them into grandparenthood and/or having them share lovers with their children. 

Edited June 6, 2020 by All My Shadows

[GLATWT88]

Totally get what you're saying. I've just always took it as another element in soaps that you just accept and keep it moving. We accept most of the outlandish stories, so accepting that time has passed and that child aged was never an issue for me.

 

Now that you mention Nicholas going from 6 to 16, I wonder what was the most extreme case of SORAS on a soap.